tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3190867490208167543.post-8180547937655378117Sun, 15 Jun 2008 02:55:00 +00002008-06-18T14:33:09.413+09:00The Fat White Woman, Chapter 11, Part 4“Yes, it’s a grand view, now that the rain has settled the sand. I’ve been looking at it, on and off, for very nearly thirty-five years and I’ve yet to tire of it. I doubt I ever shall.”<br /><br /> Farzaneh had not sensed the priest’s arrival and his voice, when he spoke to her, surprised her; made her, literally and visibly, jump. <br /><br />“I didn’t mean to startle you or impose myself. If you’d rather be on your own out here -”<br /><br /> “No, no,” Farzaneh, sounding more startled than she properly felt. “I - you can point things out to me - now that I can see what you might be pointing at.”<br /><br /> “Well, only if you’re sure. I’ve plenty of other things I could be doing, you know, so -" <br /><br /> “No, really, I would like your company - and I want you to show me things.” <br /><br /> She was, she knew, going too far, protesting too much, but she felt, as she had felt all the time she had been sick, that there was something between them, a quarrel unresolved, although she knew perfectly well that the quarrel had yet to happen, just as she knew perfectly well what the quarrel would be about when it did.<br /><br /> Whether Father Conteh, Jimmy as she was beginning to think of him, shared any of this sensibility, she was less certain for he seemed to be his usual self, the self she had grown accustomed to, a self that was kind, caring, considerate but that all the time kept a certain distance from her, as if she really were the shallow, silly, naive, badly educated, unread, un-English girl she felt she must so very often appear. He only said that the reappearance of his view and the reappearance of his guest, both after too long an absence deserved to be saluted with a drink, which he intended to have although he doubted Farzaneh would join him. When she asked for tea, he said something she could not quite catch and then called out to Mr Bah that he should bring tea for the “young missis” and whiskey for himself. <br /><br />This she understood. When he turned to her, smiled, and added, “as in the poem,” she did not. <br /><br /> They were outside together for a long time. He pointed out the sights of the town: the parliament building, one of Britain’s parting gifts; the State House that had been the governor’s mansion before the role of the female anopheles mosquito in the transmission of malaria had been discovered. The governor and of all his expatriate staff had subsequently withdrawn from the town to a white village in the green mountains, from which all Africans except servants were barred, that was called, that was still called, Hill Station. There were no white people living there now. They had been succeeded as occupants by the African elite but they too had abandoned the houses of Hill Station because of the security risk. <br /><br /> The priest pointed out the great cotton tree that was the real centre of the town, the place where the Royal Navy, in the days when the port had been home to one of the two British naval squadrons running anti-slaving patrols along the Coast, released seized cargoes of captured Africans, jolly jack-tars striking off the manacles and foot-shackles of these ‘recaptives’. Then, drawing her eyes away from the dull orange roofs, following out along a green band that became a bright yellow, almost but not quite golden, ribbon of sand, one frayed along its edge where the white surf of the blue sea bit into, his finger pointed here, “the hotels”, there “Dundee Village”, there “No 2 River”, and all the way along to the far distant yet still visible tip of the peninsula. <br /><br /> They stayed to watch while the sky slipped its colours from blue and gold to silver and red, the great bright dish of the sun becoming its own Icarus, falling slowly down through the sky towards the paling sea. <br /><br />“Watch now,” the priest said to the girl. And there was a moment when it seemed as if the world had caught fire. The sky flamed scarlet; the red soil of the land caught the glow and seemed a sudden ember. Farzaneh began to say something, to try to frame the words that might somehow form a testament to these few minutes of beauty, but he cut her off, saying again, “Watch now.” <br /><br />And as if at a given command, a great black cloud rose up into the air above the town, cartoon smoke against the reddened sky. <br /><br /> “The bats?” Farzaneh asked.<br /><br /> “The bats.” <br /><br /> And then it was night. Farzaneh shivered thinking about the bats, their wings wide and leathery in her imagination, and hooked, cruelly, somewhere at the tips. <br /><br /> Lights came on in the town: bright and artificial along the length of the quay, and out in the deep harbour waters where the boats rode against their cables, small and flickering where lamps and braziers burned along roads and in alleyways. <br /><br />“But do you notice anything different now?” the priest asked. <br /><br /> “Well, yes, the brightness - the air is so clear after the storm that even - you can even see the little candle lights, or it seems that you can.”<br /><br /> “I meant do you see what isn’t there -”<br /><br />To be continued ...
<p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/blogspot/tRiS?a=qx4l3w"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/blogspot/tRiS?i=qx4l3w" border="0"></img></a></p>http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/tRiS/~3/312146575/fat-white-woman-chapter-11-part-4.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (sonofpaddy)http://clivecollinsfiction.blogspot.com/2008/06/fat-white-woman-chapter-11-part-4.html
