Gone to the Forest: A Novel (6 page)

T
HE FIRST DAY
the mountain exploded, the
old man held drinks at the farm. Among the whites, across the valley, there was a mood
of hilarity. The girl said that company was what they needed and word was sent out.
Dinner was ordered and the liquor trolley stocked. The neighboring whites—those
who remained and were not afraid to travel—came at dusk and Jose served drinks on
the veranda.

The men came without their wives, this being no time for a woman to
travel. They stood with a drink in their hand and admired the view. On the whole the old
man did not fraternize with these small landowners. These whites owned small plots of
land and were therefore considered grasping. They had survived in the land through
bluntness and cunning and were now
starting to come into their own,
what with the change taking place in the province.

They were men suited to this new age of violence. They were mobile and
unreliable, with a reputation for physical brutality. There were fistfights and beatings
on their farms and there had been shootings. The old man said they were men who did not
understand the boundaries of behavior. But the girl liked society and they were now what
passed for society in the valley. Therefore they had been invited to the farm.

It was almost a gathering like the old days, before the first departures
and the unrest, before the rumors of possible rebellion. There was candlelight and
crystal. There was in front of them a vast expanse of land. However, the men were tense.
They stood on the veranda and watched the mountain tear into the sky. They talked but
mostly drank from nervousness. They began with cocktails and then there was wine at
dinner. After dinner there were ports and liqueurs.

The girl played jazz records on the gramophone and watched as the nervous
men grew drunk. The scene loosened into a facsimile of the life back home. A poor one,
the blacks and grays blurring into the white. A certain amount of play acting being
involved. That play acting being imprecise. The girl smiled when the men made toasts to
the mountain. She smiled again when the old man brought out a box of cigars and the men
made toasts to the cigars.

Jose filled their glasses. The night progressed. The men were drunk but
still restrained. The girl also. She had no intention of being reckless. She stood up
and walked the
veranda. She was not wearing very much. Her body
exposed by her dress (his mother’s dress). Tom watched her and grew an ache in his
throat and groin. She saw him watching and went to the old man. She sat down beside him
on a stool.

In the morning, the men were still on the veranda. They had passed out in
their armchairs. The old man ordered lunch for the party. The men nodded thanks without
getting to their feet, and did not think of leaving the farm. Then it was noon and the
sky was still dark and lit with fire. Lightning cracked up through the sky. They could
see rivers of lava and the black cap of smoke continued to grow up above.

The men sat in the old man’s house and watched the mountain explode.
Jose moved down the line of armchairs. He pushed a cart of drinks and then brought trays
of cold food. The men ate and drank. The air now bearing permissiveness of a new kind.
The men visibly inhaling it. It was hot, and they untucked and unbuttoned their shirts.
There was not much conversation. One of the men said they might bring their wives for
dinner, the roads seeming safe enough. He used the telephone to ring back to his farm
and word was sent round.

There were eight men on the veranda that day and all eight stayed into the
night. At dusk their wives were driven to the farm by their natives. They had dressed
for the special occasion. With satin dresses and wraps to protect against the night air.
A table was set in the dining room and dinner was served. Now that the women had come
the atmosphere of nervous privilege was restored. The men made toasts to that privilege
and proceeded to drink themselves blind.

After dinner the gramophone was switched on again and
there was dancing and more drink. The girl came down after dinner. She had stayed in her
room all day—trays were sent at mealtimes and endless pots of tea—but now
she emerged. She was wearing a new dress, she had arranged her hair so that it looked
like it was falling but was not. There was rouge on her cheeks and lips and she had put
kohl on her eyes and smelled strongly of scent.

She was not even the most beautiful woman on the veranda. But she wove
through the crowd and she had been emboldened by the previous night and there are things
besides beauty. For example, the drunken lust of men. Which filled the veranda. Having
been so good, the girl was now restless. The presence of the other women had spurred her
instinct for competition. Therefore she moved across the veranda and she made the other
women disappear. Nothing doing with their lace and ribbon and powder.

Abruptly, the old man stood up. He announced he was retiring for the
night. He had no intimation of what was to come, such a thing being impossible for his
arrogance to fathom. The other men nodded and watched him disappear across the veranda.
The sour stench rising from their armpits. They had done no more than stand in the
washroom and sponge their faces and necks. Their clothes still smelled of alcohol and
animal must. They were forgetting where they were and making themselves at home.

Always a bad sign. The gramophone cranked. The girl danced down the length
of the veranda. The men watched with drunken intent and the women watched, too. The girl
did not notice about the men but did about the women. She
laughed. Never having had a husband, she had therefore never worried about losing one.
She was a little drunk. One of the women abruptly rose to her feet and crossed the
veranda.

The other women followed. They were not going to sit and watch their
husbands with the girl. The husbands’ thoughts being legible to the wives. The
wives knowing what the husbands were capable of, having had a lifetime to learn. The
women were outraged but the outrage was a cover—there were things happening that
they had no interest in seeing. As they left they were aware of having stayed too long
as was.

The men were left alone with the girl and she gave a special shimmy to
celebrate her victory. Laughter rang out across the veranda. The girl turned up the
volume on the gramophone and said something about cigars. One of the men found the box
and lighter. The girl passed the box around and the men lit their cigars. Which
smoldered and smoked as they watched her. She had stopped dancing and stood smiling as
she rubbed her wrists against the jut of her hip.

The record on the gramophone clicked off. The men smoked their cigars in
silence and looked at the girl. When they had met her the day before she had stood
between the old man and his son and blushed for the duration of the introduction. They
hadn’t known what to think. The girl seemed simple enough but what was happening
between the two men was nothing simple. Not a rivalry as such. For a time they could not
understand it.

But now that confusion lifted and they saw the girl for what she was: a
spreader of unrest and confusion. The girl was a
woman. She was a
body—just a body, and evidently a gifted one. All the parts being in working
order. The shoulder and neck, the legs and waist and back. (The girl also enjoyed her
body. She had faith in it. It was hard as a rock and impenetrable, and thus far it had
served her well.)

The girl stood before the men. One stood and came to her and she smiled as
he approached. He laid a hand on her shoulder. Gently, he pushed one strap down and then
the other. In a manner that was almost inconsequential. He chucked her under the chin
and looked into her face. The girl was still smiling as he stepped back and looked at
his handiwork and then the girl stopped.

Doubt crossed her face, if anyone had been there to notice. But there was
no one—the room was empty in that respect. So the doubt stayed on her face. Doubt
as to what was presently unfolding. It was on her face when she kicked off one shoe and
then the other shoe (they were pinching, they were hurting so, she did not think she
could stay in them one second longer). It was on her face as the shoes skittered across
the floor and came to a stop.

The men stared at the shoes. They were tiny. Tiny things of leather and
satin. There was a logic to the shoes. Quality and all that. Standards. Propriety.
Everything that was currently escaping them—the very idea of being civilized
itself—as they sat in their armchairs and watched the girl. They stared at the
shoes and then they raised their eyes and looked at the girl.

W
HO WAS NOT
having
an easy time of it and therefore kept her head high and her back rigid. She was
conscious of the cool tile beneath her bare feet. The gust of wind through her armpits.
The dress was now hanging off her nipples, her nipples were now all that stood between
decency and nakedness and lucky for her they were spectacularly erect. Her nipples were
a matter of note. Always had been.

She laughed. It sounded hysterical in the silence and she stopped, mouth
dry. Truth be told her sense of humor had deserted her. There was plenty to laugh about
but she wasn’t laughing. She could see the humor, she could see the jokes and
punch lines. A woman standing in front of a man, that was already good for some laughs.
But she was not in the mood for laughter. She shivered, even though it was hot.

One month ago she arrived in the country and she saw there was nothing
here she could not handle, nothing beyond the arid air. She had been warned that it was
wild country going wilder, but she had already survived the drawing rooms at home. Home
being a ruthless territory, cruelty on display with the silk and china. She had almost
been relieved by the barren expanse of country. She had not thought—did not
think—that men could be changed by means of landscape.

But now here she was and for the first time she sensed that this was
something different, of which she did not have the measure. Something she did not
currently understand. Later she would look back on this moment and she would see that
there were a hundred things she might have done, at this moment as with any moment, at
this moment which was just
like any other moment. But then her mind
was blank. Small and hard and blank. Like a pebble. Her mind was a pebble. Nothing
adhered to its surface.

So she did what she always did. When her mind was blank, when the sickness
set in, when her skin began to itch and burn. What she always did, a woman’s only
purchase on power. She took her clothes off. She reached up her hands and undid the hook
and eye closure. She pulled down the zipper of her dress, this cunningly designed dress,
more expensive than anything she had ever owned.

It was going to happen anyway so she might as well be the one to do it.
Not that she was a fatalist but the zipper slid down without protest and now the dress
was hanging off her back. Taking off your clothes was easy. Putting them back on was the
hard part. Now look. She was down to her skivvies and they were not clean. It
didn’t matter. She could sing a song and nobody would notice. Children should be
seen and not heard. The saying referred strictly to the girls, the girls who would grow
up to be ladies.

Not that she was a lady. She was, however, a product of her society. It
was getting hard to think, hard to figure it out, because now there was wetness growing.
A slick between her legs and the thrall of physical longing. Well, a woman felt the
weight of a man looking, a woman liked to be wanted, and here were several men, here a
group of men. Who could see the wetness for all she knew.

She exhaled and tried to keep her head straight. Lust and the mistakes
that were made in its wake. A trail of them,
each bigger than the
last. Desire was what plagued women, it was what tripped them up. She thought: a woman
should seek out dry land. Be rid of lust at last. Which made nothing good or clear.
Which only gathered around a woman, inutile and collecting dust. Men did not like the
women who wanted it. Men would rather force themselves on the women who didn’t.
The logic being dismal but clear.

At the same time, a man would take what he could get and always did. One
of the men stood up. She raised her head to look at him. He was plain, he was nothing as
a man. He moved slowly, with both hands spread before him. Like he thought she was a
rabbit or a rabid animal. She watched and saw the gleam flicker into his eyes. Her body
relaxed a notch. After all they were men. After all they were the same. She smiled and
then she watched his face harden in front of her and the smile died on her lips.

She stood in the blast of hunger that came from his body and the hatred
coming from his eyes. Hatred for her as a woman. She became afraid. Panic swung through
her body and then she changed her mind. A woman can change her mind, she thought. A
woman can get wet between the legs and loosen her dress and she still has the right to
change her mind. Doesn’t she? Isn’t that what they said?

She felt the situation slipping out of her control. She stumbled and tried
to guess at the damage. There was the old man. They were afraid of him—that could
work for her or against her, likely against. She had seen the store of resentment in the
faces of the men. Built over time and carefully fortified. Brick
by
brick and then the wall broke and wiped out whatever stood in its way. Due to either bad
luck or stupidity.

She had made a situation for herself on the farm and a good one. But now
it was turning to mud and faster than she could believe. It was not fate and not
inevitable but it was what was going to happen. Now the man was standing in front of
her. He walked his eyes across her body and then to her face. The interest being more
knot than attraction. His lust being caught up in complicated things. Like power and
shame and fear. She thought: we are not so different. I know you, there are things that
we share.