simplest tasks without fingers and toes, and in any case a man who cares for nothing finds it difficult – or absurd – to be angry. There was one occasion when the crucifix which the fathers had left hanging on Querry’s wall was broken by some maladroitness on the part of the mutilated man and he expected Querry to react as he might have reacted himself if a fetish of his own had been carelessly or heartlessly destroyed. It was easy for him to mistake indifference for sympathy.
One night when the moon was full Querry became aware of the man’s absence as one might become aware of some hitherto unnoticed object missing from a mantelpiece in a temporary home. His ewer had not been filled and the mosquito-net had not been drawn down, and later, as he was on his way to the doctor’s house, where he had to discuss a possible cut in the cost of building, he met Deo Gratias stumbling with his staff down the central road of the leproserie as quickly as he was able on toeless feet. The man’s face was wet with sweat and when Querry spoke to him he swerved away into someone’s backyard. When Querry returned half an hour later he stood there still, like a tree-stump that the owner had not bothered to move. The sweat looked like traces of the night’s rain on the bark and he appeared to be listening to something a long way off. Querry listened too, but he could hear nothing except the rattle of the crickets and the swelling diapason of the frogs. In the morning Deo Gratias had not returned, and Querry felt an unimportant disappointment that the servant had not spoken a word to him before he left. He told the doctor that the boy had gone. ‘If he doesn’t come back tomorrow will you find me another?’
‘I don’t understand,’ Doctor Colin said. ‘I only gave him the job so that he might stay in the leproserie. He had no wish to go.’ Later that day a leper picked up the man’s staff from a path that led into the thickest bush, and brought it to Querry’s room where he was at work, taking advantage of the last light.
‘But how do you know that the staff is his? All the mutilated lepers have them,’ Querry asked and the man simply repeated that it belonged to Deo Gratias – no argument, no reason, just one more of the things they knew that he knew nothing about.
‘You think some accident has happened to him?’
Something, the man said in his poor French, had happened, and Querry got the impression that an accident was what the man feared least of all.
‘Why don’t you go and look for him then?’ Querry asked.
There was not enough light left, the man said, under the trees. They would have to wait till morning.
‘But he’s been gone already nearly twenty-four hours. If there has been an accident we have waited long enough. You can take my torch.’
The morning would be better, the man repeated, and Querry saw that he was scared.
‘If I go with you, will you come?’
The man shook his head, so Querry went alone.
He could not blame these people for their fears: a man had to believe in nothing if he was not to be afraid of the big bush at night. There was little in the forest to appeal to the romantic. It was completely empty. It had never been humanized, like the woods of Europe, with witches and charcoal-burners and cottages of marzipan; no one had ever walked under these trees lamenting lost love, nor had anyone listened to the silence and communed like a lake-poet with his heart. For there was no silence; if a man here wished to be heard at night he had to raise his voice to counter the continuous chatter of the insects as in some monstrous factory where thousands of sewing-machines were being driven against time by myriads of needy seamstresses. Only for an hour or so, in the midday heat, silence fell, the siesta of the insect.
But if, like these Africans, one believed in some kind of divine being, wasn’t it just as possible for a god to exist in this empty region as in the empty spaces of the sky
One night when the moon was full Querry became aware of the man’s absence as one might become aware of some hitherto unnoticed object missing from a mantelpiece in a temporary home. His ewer had not been filled and the mosquito-net had not been drawn down, and later, as he was on his way to the doctor’s house, where he had to discuss a possible cut in the cost of building, he met Deo Gratias stumbling with his staff down the central road of the leproserie as quickly as he was able on toeless feet. The man’s face was wet with sweat and when Querry spoke to him he swerved away into someone’s backyard. When Querry returned half an hour later he stood there still, like a tree-stump that the owner had not bothered to move. The sweat looked like traces of the night’s rain on the bark and he appeared to be listening to something a long way off. Querry listened too, but he could hear nothing except the rattle of the crickets and the swelling diapason of the frogs. In the morning Deo Gratias had not returned, and Querry felt an unimportant disappointment that the servant had not spoken a word to him before he left. He told the doctor that the boy had gone. ‘If he doesn’t come back tomorrow will you find me another?’
‘I don’t understand,’ Doctor Colin said. ‘I only gave him the job so that he might stay in the leproserie. He had no wish to go.’ Later that day a leper picked up the man’s staff from a path that led into the thickest bush, and brought it to Querry’s room where he was at work, taking advantage of the last light.
‘But how do you know that the staff is his? All the mutilated lepers have them,’ Querry asked and the man simply repeated that it belonged to Deo Gratias – no argument, no reason, just one more of the things they knew that he knew nothing about.
‘You think some accident has happened to him?’
Something, the man said in his poor French, had happened, and Querry got the impression that an accident was what the man feared least of all.
‘Why don’t you go and look for him then?’ Querry asked.
There was not enough light left, the man said, under the trees. They would have to wait till morning.
‘But he’s been gone already nearly twenty-four hours. If there has been an accident we have waited long enough. You can take my torch.’
The morning would be better, the man repeated, and Querry saw that he was scared.
‘If I go with you, will you come?’
The man shook his head, so Querry went alone.
He could not blame these people for their fears: a man had to believe in nothing if he was not to be afraid of the big bush at night. There was little in the forest to appeal to the romantic. It was completely empty. It had never been humanized, like the woods of Europe, with witches and charcoal-burners and cottages of marzipan; no one had ever walked under these trees lamenting lost love, nor had anyone listened to the silence and communed like a lake-poet with his heart. For there was no silence; if a man here wished to be heard at night he had to raise his voice to counter the continuous chatter of the insects as in some monstrous factory where thousands of sewing-machines were being driven against time by myriads of needy seamstresses. Only for an hour or so, in the midday heat, silence fell, the siesta of the insect.
But if, like these Africans, one believed in some kind of divine being, wasn’t it just as possible for a god to exist in this empty region as in the empty spaces of the sky
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