The Rain Forest

by Olivia Manning

  ‘You want to sell to Lomax? Do you trust him?’

  ‘I trust no one.’

  They had reached the western gate that looked out on the car park and the orchards, the distant grassland and the white fortress of the police-post that straddled the road to the pass.

  On one side of the gateway, set in the thickness of the wall, was a small café. Its space, lit by holes in the brickwork, held half a dozen tables where Arabs sat before their coffee cups and played tric-trac. They were a grimy lot and one of them, more grimy than the rest, was, Musa said, the owner of the petrol pump. They all lolled about, as indolent in the semi-darkness as they would be in the heat of midday. Recognizing Musa, they stirred slightly and touched their brows and breasts in greeting. They eyed Kristy and as Musa led her into the darkness beyond the café, she began to doubt the wisdom of going farther. She caught the peculiar smell that sometimes came through the kitchen door at the Daisy, and said: ‘I ought to be going back.’

  ‘Don’t be afraid. No one will hurt you.’ Musa, climbing a stair formed in the broken brickwork, put a hand down and helped her up. They came out on to the top of the city wall. Before them there was a tower, built as a strong-point but now as ramshackle as the wall itself.

  ‘This is the casbah,’ Musa said.

  ‘Surely your friends don’t live here?’

  ‘Why not, if they have nowhere else to live?’

  The sun, beginning its decline, sent a slanting light over the orchards and Kristy knew she should start back while it was still light. She paused then, having come so far, she thought she might as well see what was to be seen. Musa had passed through a doorway into the tower and was descending steps to a floor below. When Kristy followed, she was repelled by the atmosphere inside. Outdoors, the wind blowing off the orchard had been as fresh as a sea-wind. Inside, they were met by a sickening, goatlike smell that became heavier as they descended. The lower room was large and derelict. It was so dark that Kristy stumbled over someone before she realized that people were lying on the floor. There was no movement among them. They were heaped together like bodies collected after a massacre.

  Musa shouted: ‘Wake up, my English friends.’

  One of them, a young red-bearded man, let his head loll round and looked at Musa through half-closed eyes. He mumbled: ‘You brought anything?’

  ‘Yes, a visitor. An English lady.’

  The bearded man rolled his head away and said: ‘Drop dead.’

  ‘There may be more life in the next room.’ Laughing with a boisterous unease, Musa led Kristy through a hole in the wall into a second room that had more light because part of its outer wall had fallen in. Here someone had tried to make a living-room with a table and a couple of greasy chairs that had probably come from the café. Two creatures – Kristy took them to be dogs – were scuffling about under the table. Though there was light and air, the atmosphere was heavy with an acrid, inhuman smell that came, she realized, from the dead birds that lay about on the floor.

  ‘This,’ Musa said, ‘is where the pigeons come to die. And under here, we have Billie and Laura.’

  Billie and Laura were not dogs after all: they were children.

  Kristy asked: ‘Whose are they? What are they doing here?’

  ‘The parents brought them here, then went off and left them.

  They were playing with what looked like a basket of rags until the rags began to whimper. Musa said: ‘The baby was born here.’

  ‘Here? In this room?’

  ‘Yes. They settled in for a few weeks, then, one day, they’d disappeared. It was the day the boat left. They’d gone.’

  ‘Leaving the children! But who looks after the children?’

  ‘They look after themselves. Billie is very good with the baby, aren’t you, Billie?’

  The boy nodded complacently and pulling the basket into Kristy’s view, stared up at her as though expecting her approbation. The baby’s skin was a greyish white but there was an unnatural tinge of pink about its eyelids and nostrils. Its eyes were bleared and milky, like the eyes of a very old person, and its mouth moved round and round, giving out a high whine of misery. Coming from under the table, the boy began to lift the child from the basket. He may have been eight or nine years of age but he was very small and Kristy was moved to help him.

  He said: ‘No, I can do it.’ With the baby in his arms, he walked round the room, looking in his kaftan, that trailed about him like a dirty night-shirt, a parody of comic fatherhood. But he was more than that. As he went, he rocked the child to comfort it then, having stopped its cry, he put it on the table and took a feeding-bottle from the basket. Pressing the teat between the child’s lips, he talked gently, coaxing it to drink. The whimper started again, the milk spluttered over the table and the girl under the table said scornfully: ‘What she wants is her nappy changed.’

  ‘You hold her, then,’ the boy said. ‘I’ll get some paper.’

  The girl came out and took hold of the baby while the boy, picking up a jug, went through a door and down some steps.

  ‘How on earth do they survive?’ Kristy asked.

  ‘They don’t do badly. They go to the Mission School and Father Matthew lets them eat there. They arouse pity. People give them money and my English friends send them out begging. They get half of what they pick up. And they’re practised thieves. They lift stuff from the market stalls. One way and another, they get all they need.’

  Billie, returning with a jug of water and a roll of toilet paper, began to clean the baby. While this was going on, a young woman sidled in from the first room and smiled on Kristy. Musa said:

  ‘This is Agnes. She’s rather sweet.’

  Agnes, hearing her name, came towards them, moving as though time had a different, slacker pace for her, and, as she came, she waved slowly towards the chairs and whispered: ‘Sit down. Do sit down.’ In her dream state, it seemed, she had reverted to the manners of a conventional upbringing.

  ‘I suppose she helps with the children?’

  Musa laughed: ‘How could she?’

  Laura, her arms on the table, her head on her hand, was gazing at Kristy. She would have been, in normal circumstances, a pretty blonde child. Now, for some reason, her long, neglected hair was falling out in patches so, together with her extreme thinness and dirt, she had a sick appearance. Having caught Kristy’s attention, she began to giggle and, bending down, she picked up a dead pigeon which she swung backwards and forwards over the baby’s face. Kristy moved to stop this play but before she could do anything, Billie had given his sister a blow that sent her back under the table.

  Laura began to bawl: ‘God’ll sock you for that.’

  ‘No, he won’t. You’re the one he’s after. He made your hair fall out.’

  The girl snuffled a while then asked: ‘Why is God such a ratty old bastard?’

  ‘Because he doesn’t exist, silly.’

  ‘They’re rather confused,’ Kristy said.

  ‘The Mission teaches them one thing and here they learn something different. And Laura’s faith has been shaken. She told the pigeons to rise and walk and they didn’t.’

  ‘I feel I should do something to help them, but what?’

  ‘Don’t worry. They don’t want your help. They’ve discovered how to live on their own. They’re like little wild cats: they don’t want to be tamed. And they can stay here as long as they like. This property belongs to my family and these people are my guests.’

  Kristy turned away: ‘I must go.’ As they descended a stair to the ground, she said: ‘The truth is, you encourage them to live like this.’

  ‘They don’t need encouragement. Would you rather I turned them into the street? That I cannot do. We Arabs have traditions of hospitality.’

  ‘You didn’t bring me here to show off your hospitality. You wanted me to see them. You think they justify your contempt for us.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think they’re afraid. They see the world bei
ng destroyed about them. They feel helpless and want to get away. The destroyers are too many and too powerful. You are one of them.’

  ‘Me?’ Musa laughed, disconcerted: ‘Because I want my family to profit by what it owns? Surely that’s a natural ambition?’

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid it is.’

  At the bottom of the stair, Musa said quietly: ‘Your people destroyed a way of life for us. When my father revolted, you deposed him. You were once a great race but now, I can pity you.’

  ‘Your pity excites your pride. And what do you mean to do?’

  Musa laughed again: ‘Why should I do anything?’

  They entered a ground-floor room that had been a stables but was equipped now as a mechanic’s yard. Two stripped-down car engines stood in the middle of the floor. A heavy double door led to the road outside. Two men were working here. Unlike the crowd upstairs, they were awake and knew what they were doing. And what were they doing? Kristy wondered.

  One of them was putting a greyish material, like dough, into a barrel. He jerked his head round as they entered. Seeing Kristy, he slapped a lid on to the barrel and stood grinning self-consciously. There were other barrels standing around. The other man was at a work-bench, tinkering with a piece of metal. A pungent smell of almonds, as from a quick-drying agent, filled the air.

  Musa introduced the men as Ahmed and Mohammed. ‘My assistants. We are all interested in mechanics. I like to recondition old car engines and if I can, I improve them. It is my hobby. We do it, as you would say, for fun.’

  Kristy laughed: ‘You are an amateur artisan, like Peter the Great.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Musa undid several bolts on the double doors and pushed them open. Outside, the orchards scented the air. He said: ‘It is more pleasant to return this way.’

  He smiled, knowing the sight of the young people in the upper rooms had shaken her. To show her composure, she breathed in the sweetness and said: ‘Delicious. Is that orange blossom?’

  ‘There is an orange grove near by. You have no fears walking back alone? Perhaps I should come with you?’

  ‘No, I have no fears.’

  ‘You are, as Dr Gopal says, advanced.’

  ‘I am less sure of that than I used to be.’

  Going off down the macadam road with its weeds and potholes, she compared herself with Musa’s English friends and knew that so far as they were concerned, she was as limited by convention as the other women at the Daisy. They had settled into the Casbah like a pack of rabbits and that was freedom if you did not mind the ruins falling on you. Yet, lying there, piled together, unconscious most of the time, they were the prisoners of their own habit. They were as trapped as she was. And she, caught up in the machinery of reproduction, found herself, for the first time in her life, content.

  She imagined, as she walked, that Musa was watching after her but when, at the corner, she turned to wave to him, he was not there. It was the moment of evening when the peaks appeared. She paused and watched for them. The sky was empty. Then in an instant they were there; the stone revenants that dominated the island.

  Whenever she saw them, she felt a frisson of wonder. They seemed to materialize like supernatural objects. She had heard them called the Guardians but did not know what they were supposed to guard. It might be the island but that, she suspected, was a lost cause. Perhaps they protected the one wild area that remained, the dark area of the rain forest. She could imagine, if one tried to invade it, they would close to keep it inviolable. She lifted her hand to them then began to run. Though she had told Musa she had no fears, she did not want to cross the plantation at night.

  She reached the Daisy in darkness. Coming in out of the spacious evening, she had a sense of mental contraction and need to adapt herself to a smaller environment.

  Hugh, who was sitting near the door, said angrily: ‘Where did you get to? I looked everywhere for you. It’s not safe for you to wander about the Medina alone.’

  ‘If you think that, you should take better care of me.’

  ‘You look as though you’ve been up to something.’

  ‘Perhaps I have. I saw that you and Hobhouse were in a state of emotional rapport so I took myself off and met a friend. What did you and Hobhouse do?’

  Hugh frowned and, looking away from her, pretended to be absorbed in the dissatisfaction about him. The bar should have opened up fifteen minutes before and the inmates of the pension, conditioned to alcohol at this hour, were restless with irritation. Hassan, now the appointed barman, was on the telephone, earnestly listening to someone who had been talking far too long. His second-in-command, an elderly African called Negumi, stood propped against the bar grille with half-shut eyes. Ogden called to him and pointed to his wrist-watch but Negumi shrugged as though time were a baffling Western concept in which he could not involve himself.

  Under the impression that Ambrose was mourning away inside Mrs Gunner’s room, Mrs Axelrod went to the door and looked at it. She said: ‘I’ve half a mind to give it a damned good rap.’

  Ogden, to stop her, called on a note of stern command: ‘Negumi, open that bar.’

  Negumi spread his hands to show he did not have the key. Hassan, trembling at this threat to his office, gestured to reassure Ogden while keeping the receiver to his ear.

  Simpson said: ‘Who’s on the line, Hassan?’

  ‘Ya sayyidi,’ Hassan answered miserably: ‘Ya sayyidi want special dinner.’

  ‘What?’ Released from all restraint, Mrs Axelrod let her voice rise to a screech: ‘So Gunner’s not here at all!’ She marched on Hassan in a menacing way, demanding: ‘Give me that key.’

  Hassan pleaded: ‘A little minute, sayyida. Only a little minute.’ He crouched away from her as she gripped his left wrist and prising open his bony, yellow fingers, found the key and waved it triumphantly in the air. Near weeping, he cried into the telephone: ‘Good-bye, please, sayyid. Sayyid, please say “good-bye”.’

  ‘Good-bye’ must have been said for Hassan was free at last to put down the receiver and stand, dejected, as Ogden and Simpson pushed up the bar grille and ordered Negumi to go behind and serve the drinks.

  ‘Bloody people,’ Kristy said fiercely. ‘They rage about the young, but look at them: avid for their own fix.’

  The inmates, excited by having got what they wanted, were having fun at Negumi’s expense, shouting orders – comic orders, for the most part – to ‘pot-boy, tapster, skinker or wine-waiter’ while Negumi grinned widely, delighted at having achieved prominence.

  Kristy said: ‘They’ve already forgotten Mrs Gunner.’

  ‘It’s the usual reaction. She’s gone but the rest have to carry on.’

  Hassan, unable to regain his invaded territory, went to the kitchen to order Ambrose’s special dinner. At seven o’clock, a taxi drew up and the front door was thrown open to admit Ambrose with Gurgur behind him. To Kristy, who loathed Gurgur, it seemed that Ambrose had brought in a real gurgur: a filthy and obscene carrion bird.

  Crossing the salon with an unsteady sway, Ambrose announced: ‘Mrs G.’s dead. Long Live Mr G. The old girl left me everything she had.’

  He seemed to expect condolences and congratulations but he got neither. He surveyed the guests with a tipsy smile and they stared back in cold disapproval of his riotous air. His face was red and his whole large person seemed to be extruding liquid. He brought in with him a smell of garlic and good eating, and a heavy, plummy scent of wine.

  Mrs Axelrod said: ‘I can see you’ve been celebrating.’

  Ambrose tilted up his chin in noble disgust at this suggestion and, stumbling and brushing against the tables, he led Gurgur to the Lettuce Room. As he went he shouted towards the bar: ‘Whisky. Two glasses and a bottle.’

  Ambrose’s dinner-table was a centre of attention. Mrs Axelrod went straight to it and called the other women to her. They walked round it as though it were a bier. It was not one table but four placed together and, no table-cloth being large enough, it was covered by a bed-s
heet. On it, Hassan had placed every piece of plated tableware the kitchen could provide. They were all so garlanded with flowers and greenery, it was not easy to see what was what but Mrs Axelrod, poking about, discovered six silver egg-cups and a toast-rack among the furnishings. Greatly elevated by her triumph over the bar key, she paraded and gesticulated so wildly that Kristy said:

  ‘That woman’ll end up in the bin.’

  Mrs Axelrod was still by the table, standing with hands clasped, head on one side, when Ambrose and Gurgur arrived.

  ‘Tell me,’ she smiled at Ambrose, ‘when is the wedding?’

  Ambrose ignored her but he looked flustered. He called to Hassan, who stood by expecting praise, and ordered him to remove some of the objects so there would be room for the plates. Order was brought to the table but nothing could disguise the poverty of the food.

  Simpson shouted to Ogden: ‘If Mrs Gunner could taste this meat, she’d turn in her . . .’ He gulped to a stop and Ambrose rebuked him with a look.

  At breakfast next day, Mrs Axelrod announced that Ambrose’s day of grace was over. ‘Either he pulls his socks up, or we will withhold cash.’ The guests watched for Ambrose’s arrival in the dining-room, but he did not appear. His table, over-loaded the previous night, was now bare. The men had to leave so the women were to present the ultimatum alone. They went to the salon to await Ambrose and Kristy followed to see what would happen. Nothing happened. Growing impatient, Mrs Axelrod hammered on the door of Mrs Gunner’s room and, getting no reply, opened it. There was no one inside. She then went to the office, looked in and said in a low threatening voice: ‘The bird has flown.’