The Wind Cannot Read

by Richard Mason

  “That’s something beyond our control. I only want you to do your best to look after her.”

  “That’s not very difficult,” I said.

  “You never know. You may have a hard time.”

  “I love her.”

  “Yes,” he said, “that does make a difference. You love her a great deal, and I’m going to rely on you.”

  Chapter Eight

  (1)

  Towards the end of October the Brigadier asked the instructors to make individual reports on all the students.

  Sabby said: “Please help, darling. I am no good at report.”

  We sat on the terrace after supper, beneath the standard-lamp. The rains had gone and this was the perfect season in Bombay. The evenings were delicious. We sat out without being too sticky or hot, and Bahadur brought us coffee and a glass of Madeira for myself, and except for the thought that we should not have this house together for many more weeks, we were marvellously happy.

  I took her sheaf of pencilled notes. She had scribbled on odd bits of paper in phrases that I would anywhere have recognized as Sabby’s. She had written about me:

  “This student is the best. I think he is awfully clever and he speaks very good Japanese. Only his accent is a little funny, but that is not important, because I can understand everything he says. He can say anything in Japanese.”

  “You are not going to send that in,” I said.

  “Oh yes, I am. And I am going to put on the end, ‘He is also very sweet and I like to bite his ears now and then.’ ”

  “There is no need to add that. Anybody can see from what you’ve written that you like to bite my ears.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “I do. You are not going to say that, because it isn’t true. I can only say a few very limited things in Japanese, and most of those are all right for this terrace, but they wouldn’t go down with prisoners-of-war.”

  “I don’t care, you are the best.”

  “I ought to be—I’ve spoken ten times as much as anybody else. But you’re not going to say so.”

  I looked through the other reports, and most of them were ‘fair’ and ‘quite good,’ and one was ‘rather good.’ Fenwick’s was the worst of all:

  “This person is not half so good as he thinks. He likes to use difficult long words, but he never gets them right. He is not as good as he ought, and if he goes on like this I don’t see how he will ever speak nicely.”

  “All these reports are transparent,” I said.

  “Like window?”

  “Yes, you can see right through them into what you think about the people.”

  “Darling, I tried so hard to do nice report.”

  “I know you did, but, darling, you are such a child sometimes.”

  “You are awfully unkind.”

  “I think it’s the kindest thing I could have said about you.”

  “Don’t you want Sabby to be grown-up?”

  “If you grew up nicely, it would be all right. But most people don’t grow up nicely at all, and the nicest parts about them are the parts that aren’t grown-up.”

  “I have only said in report what you have said. I copied because you said Mr. Fenwick is not half so good as he thinks.”

  “When you’re older,” I said, “you’ll find out that you have to modify that kind of thing when you write it on paper.”

  “Then please will you write.”

  I drafted out new reports, and I said that Fenwick was ‘one of the best,’ which was true, and that I ‘seemed to be getting a good grasp of the colloquial.’ It didn’t matter a great deal, because so long as we passed a reasonable standard nothing particularly hung upon who was best. In any case, there were informal exams., which were carried out by the Brigadier himself and by one or two officers who came down from Delhi. They took place a few days later. We went singly from room to room, and had a short chat with each in turn, and they marked us under five heads—fluency, accuracy, vocabulary, pronunciation, understanding. The results were pinned up on the notice-board, with all the marks totalled. An Army officer was at the top. He must have hidden his light under a bushel until then, because nobody had noticed he was outstanding. But he was Welsh, and his native accent had stood him in good stead, so that under this head he had got ninety per cent. I was told that when I imitated a Welshman speaking Japanese, my own accent improved considerably, but, as a rule, I spoke Japanese as I spoke my smattering of French, in round Anglo-Saxon accents. This got me only thirty-two per cent, and pulled me down to a bad second place. I did not care where I came, so long as I was better than Fenwick, which was happily the case. He was fifth. He went round saying:

  “I’ve no complaint at all to make about my own placing—it was a great surprise to see myself treated so favourablv. But I consider the whole method of examination most unfair. For instance, I was given only fifty per cent. for my vocabulary, and I can honestly say without boasting that mine is second to none.”

  Later on his grievance came closer to the surface, and he said to me:

  “I suppose you’re now patting yourself on the back for getting on to a good thing.”

  “I don’t understand you,” I said.

  “You got yourself good marks and a bit of — at the same time.’’ He used a word that is quite common amongst men, and I don’t think he can have intended it to have all the effect that it did; but it hit me like a bullet in the groin, and I did not even feel the impulse to strike him, but gasped and stared at him helplessly. My expression discomposed him. He knew he had been obscene and was embarrassed, and he tried to cover his embarrassment with a laugh: “You look as though you’re going to burst into tears.” That was what I felt like doing, but I only turned away in dreadful disgust.

  After the exam., when there was only a fortnight of the course left to go, we had a great celebration. Everybody was there, not excluding Mervyn, who had beaten the Service to an unconditional surrender and was waiting in Bombay for a boat back to England. He looked like a prisoner who had just got his reprieve, which is what he felt himself to be.

  Sabby came along, too, because all the other instructors were there, including the Brigadier. An Army officer paid her a great deal of attention. He was rather fat and jolly, and he thought he was making good headway. Later on in the evening I asked him how he was getting on with her, and he said:

  “Jove, you know, I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before. She’s frightfully good fun, you know.” At any rate, I thought, there were some people who still had no suspicion of anything between myself and Sabby; and I looked at this kind of thing with amusement and without any jealousy now. I let him sit next to her at dinner, and watched him trying to persuade her to drink wine. But she only had lemonade, and in this she drank the toasts.

  There was a toast to the King, and then Fenwick got up and toasted the Brigadier. We were all pleased to drink this toast, but you could see that Fenwick also felt glory in our enthusiastic response, because he had suggested it. Then the Brigadier made a little speech about the instructors, mentioning them each by name; and when he came to Sabby he said that his words could do no justice to her courage in coming out to India alone to teach entirely amongst men, and that if ever she had felt her position to be awkward, being a Japanese, he wanted her to remember always that we considered it a tremendous privilege to have someone amongst us who represented the finer qualities of a nation we unfortunately had to fight. He said that because of Sabby we had learnt that the language belonged to a culture and society that no one could but admire; and that once the very evil things were wiped clean out of the way, we should be qualified to play a part in re-establishing what was good.

  Sabby blushed deeply and looked down so that we could not see her face, and I knew that it was not only because of her modesty but also because of the shame she felt for her country. Everybody cried “Spee
ch!” but she only shook her head without looking up, and long afterwards she was still looking down into her lap, and I think that she was waiting for her tears to dry.

  After that the party became a lot more hilarious. Peter got up and announced that Mario and Dorcas were engaged, and Mario pretended to be angry because he had said he had not wanted it announced. They were sitting there together, the superbly handsome couple from the society magazine, looking as though they would carry the world at their feet. Dorcas’s blonde hair was swept back from her forehead in a grand, careless sweep and her face was marvellously white and English and competent, and in that instant I could imagine the rest of their lives to be spent in restaurants and theatre stalls and country houses, with horses and dogs and fine bottles of wine. We all cheered and drank to them. Then somebody got to his feet and said, “Another engagement. This time it’s Lamb and Sandra.”

  There was a bad moment of silence, because this was quite unexpected and we most of us knew that Sandra was Rosie’s friend; and then all of a sudden we remembered that she was also good-hearted and humorous, and there was a lot more noise and thumping of the table, and Lamb, who had obviously inspired the announce-ment, got up and made a speech, beaming through a pair of horn-rimmed glasses. He talked of Sandra as though she were a vestal virgin, and as though we all thought so, too; and now we were all very happy with drink and we laughed immoderately.

  Finally I got up and said that Peter’s book was going to be published. He had heard by wire two days before. The three hundred and seventy-three airgraphs had arrived at their destination safely and had made an immediate impression. It was another important thing to celebrate.

  We sat round the tables that bore the aftermath of the dinner and talked for hours. There was no shortage of drinks, because we had all subscribed money and the Brigadier had given two hundred rupees. Most of our little animosities were forgotten in a welter of fraternity, but I purposely did not go near Fenwick; I did not trust myself not to shake hands with him and forgive him everything. I knew that if I forgave him I should regret it the next day, and it was ridiculous to forgive someone because you had drunk too much wine and were feeling happy.

  I had Mervyn on one side of me. He was gayer than I had ever seen him and drunker than anyone.

  “You are suckers,” he said. “You’re all awful suckers. When you’re in the jungle again, just think of me in Chelsea.”

  “Maybe we don’t all want to go to Chelsea.”

  “Everybody wants to go to Chelsea.”

  “I don’t,” I said.

  “You’re a liar, or else a fool. In any case, you’re a sucker.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, don’t argue. It’s a beautiful place, Chelsea. In two months I shall be there. I shall have dinner at the Leopard, and drink absinthe and go home and have the hell of a night.”

  “You can’t get absinthe in London now.”

  “I don’t care. Anyway, I shall have the hell of a night. Where will you be in two months?”

  “Being dropped behind the lines in Burma, I expect.”

  “I hope that happens. It will serve you right for being a sucker and not wanting to go back to Chelsea.”

  “I never lived in Chelsea.”

  “Well isn’t there somewhere else you want to go back to? You’d like to go back to Bayswater. That’s not quite so good as Chelsea but it’s all right if you want to go back there.”

  “I don’t want to go back anywhere. I did once, but now I’ve got used to it.”

  “It’s only being a mug, getting used to things. It’s laziness. If you weren’t too lazy to have a place get on your nerves, you’d have been going out with me. It’s the easiest thing in the world.”

  “You nearly landed yourself in the mad-house for good.”

  “I took a risk. You’ve got to take risks. I got away with it, and you could if you weren’t a sucker. You’ve been through the jungle once, and now they’re going to send you again. This time it’ll kill you.”

  “Nonsense; interrogators don’t get killed.”

  “In the jungle anybody gets killed. You’ll get malaria and bullets and those filthy sores again.”

  “I’ll remember to think of you calling a taxi outside the Leopard and having intellectual conversations with artists’ models. Then I’ll realise it’s all worth while, winning the war.”

  “Don’t take that attitude—you little hero!”

  “I can promise you there’s no heroism in it.”

  “Yes, that’s it, you’re like all the rest, you’ve got to be a little hero. Well, heroes are only suckers. I’ve done my bit. I’ve had three years of this being pushed around, and now I’m going home. God, I’m going to make up for those three years.”

  “That’s right,” I said, “you’ve had enough. You go back and have your absinthe, and sometimes send me a postcard and let me know how you’re getting along.”

  “I’ll send you a postcard, if I remember. If you’re not dead, I’d love to send you one.”

  At eleven o’clock Sabby and I left. Most of them were still sitting around drinking and talking, but the Brigadier had gone and so had Mario and Dorcas. Fenwick was quite drunk. He seldom took alcohol and he had a weak head for it. He was singing and saying senseless things. I wished I could take a motion picture of him and show it him in the morning. As I passed him he said, “Watcha, old cock,” with a drunken bravado, still remembering how he had offended me. I said nothing, and he called after me for the benefit of those around him. “Whew, you’re on a high horse, talk about stuck up. . . .” I didn’t hear any more, because the door closed and I was alone with Sabby after what seemed hours of separation, and we didn’t care who had seen us leave together.

  We sat back in a ghari and hugged each other to show that we were glad the party was over, only from somewhere deep down there was a sadness welling up, and we had to try to be gay and flippant to prevent it from overflowing.

  “Michael is drunk with lots and lots of drink,” Sabby said.

  “Sabby is drunk with lots and lots of people and party.”

  “Yes, darling, we’re both drunk, only you are drunker, and when we get home I shall have to untie your laces and take off your shoes. Then you will see it is true that Japanese wives do that for drunk husband.”

  “Did I ever say it wasn’t?”

  “Don’t you remember, it was the first word you ever said to me when you asked is it true.”

  “Yes,” I said. “It was in your first class.”

  “And I had to laugh behind register, and everybody thought what an awful woman.”

  “Darling, don’t think about the past.”

  “You want to think about future?”

  “No; don’t think about anything except that it is a lovely night, and we are very happy and are going back to our own house.”

  “Yes, of course we are both very happy. Listen at nice noise of clopping horse.”

  “Who taught you to say clopping?”

  “Nobody, I just copied.”

  “Did you copy me?”

  “Yes. I always copy you.”

  “Good. I like you to do that, it makes me conceited.’’

  “You are not in the least bit conceited, darling.”

  “Yes, I am. I’m conceited about you and especially when you call me darling.”

  I had not been looking at the driver of our ghari. I suppose he had been whipping the horse because we had been going at a good rate, and suddenly it dropped down in its traces and we were thrown forward against the front of the carriage. Sabby uttered a little cry, and we jumped out and saw the great brown body of the animal heaving in the lamplight. It was lying on its side, pinned down by the shafts, its legs stuck out straight, and it was groaning from its throat as though it was in terrible agony and dying. Sabby rushed round to its head and patted its
nose with her hand, uttering little whimpers of sorrow. Then she began to talk to it: “It’s all right, horse. Driver’s taking away cart—please don’t die, horse.” She was like a gentle child, and this touched me and all the sadness in me gushed up overwhelmingly. The driver was tussling breath-lessly with the shafts. I went over and helped him, and when we had freed the harness we pulled away the ghari, and the horse stopped groaning and lay still. Sabby made the clucking noise that she had learnt in the Himalayas, and held out hopeful fingers to it. After a few seconds it struggled suddenly to its feet and walked a few yards and stood looking straight in front of it as though nothing had happened.

  “Poor horse only slipped,” Sabby said.

  “Thank heavens.”

  “I thought it was going to die when it made horrible voice.”

  We climbed back into the carriage and waited for the harness to be fixed again. It took some time because the horse did not like being shunted backwards into the shafts. But afterwards it started willingly, and the driver held his whip without using it.

  “Now you are sabishii,” I said.

  “Yes, darling.”

  “Couldn’t you go on being happy?”

  “No, darling, it doesn’t matter. So long as you love me I don’t mind being sabishii.”

  We held each other closely. I was not really drunk at all. It was a beautiful night, with an almost new moon. As we climbed the hill, up the tree-lined road, there were little scenes that might have been glimpses of Paris, except for the brown faces and the dhotis. It was a charming ride, and with the movement of the ghari the air was cool on our faces. Somewhere up to our left were the Towers of Silence, where vultures were perched on the parapets, with fat black bodies and bald heads, sleeping off their meals of human flesh. I asked Sabby if she would like to be a vulture.

  “But I am vulture already, eating up Parsee Michael.”

  “Do I taste nice?”

  “Yes, so nice that I don’t even eat mustard with you.”