We left the rest house in reasonable cheer. Everyone had slept well and I was feeling particularly optimistic. “This feels like a school expedition,” Peter said brightly, but before long a row developed.
Honey had been taciturn and somewhat irritable from the start. We drove over a series of potholes in the road which seemed perfectly aligned: we went up and down, up and down — so evenly I could have counted the beats on a sheet of music to it. This of course caused great hilarity in the back seat. “Just like riding a hobbled donkey,” Peter said.
“Bloody awful roads,” Honey snapped.
“Language,” Peter said with exaggerated severity.
“Bloody tinpot country,” said Honey.
“I shouldn’t complain,” said Peter. “We created it, after all.”
“Who’s ‘we’?” Honey snapped. I wanted to point out that those were the first words he had addressed to Peter directly, but it was not the right moment, so I kept counsel.
“We — the British. Pax Britannica. You and I,” Peter said blithely, almost singing the words.
“I am not responsible for the well-being of these roads, and nor is the British government. I am not to blame for the weather, the floods, the wet rot, the dry rot, the bloody fungus that creeps into every damned thing here. I’m not accountable for the cheating, lying, untrustworthy natives who lurk in every corner, or for the fact that every Englishman, every civilised person in this place, has to sleep with a pistol by his bed and a Bren gun in the sitting room. It isn’t my fault that pet dogs get eaten by snakes the size of a train or that children get beriberi. It isn’t my fault.”
“Of course not. It’s no one’s fault. It’s just an awful mess and that’s why we’re all here, trying to get a piece of it for ourselves.”
“Look here, Wormwood, I’ve had enough of this Bolshevik nonsense. If you want to pick up a gun and fight with those Chinaman Commies in the jungle, then you just go ahead. It’s hard enough to do our jobs without having to listen to your drivel.”
To my surprise, Peter did not back down. “I’d sooner fight with the Communists than with you.”
“This is treasonable insolence. It’s people like you who are tearing the world apart.”
“Treason? Not against this country. What jobs do you have to do anyway? Deciding how much gin to order for the club?”
“I run an enterprise that encompasses nearly two dozen mines across the country,” Honey said, as if that was the end of the discussion.
Peter did not respond immediately. After a while he said, “How nice for you.”
Honey snorted. “It’s the sun, that’s what it is. I’ve seen it before. Poor bugger comes out here and his head gets cooked by the sun. Goes crazy. Consorts with natives, thinks he’s one of them.”
Beads of rain began to fill the sky, sparkling in the still-dazzling sunlight.
Johnny said, “Look, a rainbow.” There it was, across an expanse of paddy fields, arched against a black backdrop of rain clouds. We drove through this curious drizzle for a while, the rainbow poised uncertainly in the distance. The heat waves rising from the road, the rain, the light — they all combined to make our eyes swim. Honey blinked hard and peered intently through the windscreen.
“There is a woman,” Johnny said, “again.”
“Where?” I asked. I could see nothing from where I sat.
“Just there,” Mamoru said. “The same one as before.”
We passed her slowly in silence. She sat impassively by the road, surrounded by her baskets of fruit. She watched us go by with glassy eyes.
After a while Honey said, “I don’t think that was the same woman.”
“We must be miles—miles—away from where we last saw her,” said Peter.
“Yes,” said Johnny as she receded into the distance.
I began to doze as the rain grew heavier and drummed on the roof of the car. I remembered the touch of Mamoru’s hands on mine in the garden of the rest house. I imagined him as a young boy, alone with only himself for company. For a while, Johnny’s peculiar odour (earth and perspiration) kept me from deep sleep, but soon I managed to shut myself off in my own universe.
I am not sure how much time elapsed before I awoke with a sore neck, my head lolling uncomfortably to one side. The rain clouds had closed in on us and it was very dark. I could hardly make out the shapes of the foliage on the edge of the road. No one was speaking, and we were moving extremely slowly.
“Christ,” Honey said softly.
Peter leaned close to me and whispered in my ear. “We’re lost.”
Ahead of us, I could see that the rain had turned the road into a shallow stream of mud.
“Our road became completely impassable,” Peter explained, “so we had to turn off onto another one. We haven’t the foggiest idea where we are.” The way he said it, whispering breathlessly, made our situation seem an adventure. I could tell, though, that Honey was worried.
I turned to Johnny and asked if he knew where we were. He frowned and shook his head slowly.
“Keep going,” said Mamoru. “We’re doing fine.” He spoke clearly and firmly.
