A Far Sunset

THIRTEEN

Paul Marlowe banged the calabash hard against the step of the verandah where he was sitting. Silently, Mylai Tui poured some more kappa spirit into it.

He took a long swig and felt a bitter satisfaction as the fiery liquid wrought havoc in his throat and his stomach. He was getting drunk rapidly and he didn’t give a damn.

‘Big breasted brown-faced bitch,’ he muttered in English.

‘My lord?’ said Mylai Tui uncertainly.

‘Say Paul, damn you! ’ Again in English.

‘Paul?’ repeated Mylai Tui anxiously. It was the only word she had caught.

‘Thank you,’ he snapped in Bayani. ‘Now be silent. There are times when a man needs to become a fool. This is one of them.’

Mylai Tui bowed her head and sat cross-legged, cradling the pitcher of kappa spirit in her lap, mindful of the future needs of Poul Mer Lo.

It was twilight and the nine moons of Altair Five were pursuing each other across the sky like … Like what? thought Paul Marlowe … Like frightened birds … Nine cosmic cinders on the wing…

‘I am dead,’ he said in English. ‘I am a corpse with a memory … What the hell is going on in Piccadilly Circus tonight? Who won the test match, and what sensational scandals will break in the Sunday papers tomorrow? For clearly tonight is Saturday night. Therefore let there be a great rejoicing.’

He emptied the calabash, shuddered, and banged it against the verandah step once more. Silently, Mylai Tui refilled it.

He wanted to listen to Beethoven—any old Beethoven would do. But the nearest stereo was a fair number of light years away. Damn!

‘I shall declaim,’ said Paul Marlowe to no one in particular. ‘Is there not reason to declaim? It was in another country and, besides, the wench is dead.’

‘Paul?’ said Mylai Tui uncertainly.

‘Shut up! Jew of Malta—I think—by kind permission of a bleeding ancestor.’

‘Paul?’

‘Shut up, or I will gorily garotte you, you brown-bottomed whore.’ He began to laugh at the alliteration, but the laughter degenerated into a fit of coughing. He cleared his throat.

‘Paul?’ said Mylai Tui again, with great temerity.

‘Be silent, you bloody ignorant female beast! I speak the words of some goddamned twentieth-century poet whose name temporarily escapes me … Why do I speak the words of said anon poet? I will tell you, you little Bayani slut. Because there is a hole inside me. A hole, do you hear? A damn big hole, one heart wide and twenty fight-years deep … I am dead, Horatio … Where the hell is the rest of that rot-gut?’

Mylai Tui said nothing. If it pleased her lord to speak with the voice of a devil, obviously there was nothing to be said. Or done.

‘Where the hell is the rest of that rot-gut?’ demanded Paul Marlowe, still in English.

Mylai Tui did not move.

He stood up, lurched forwards unsteadily and kicked the pitcher out of her hands. The kappa spirit was spilled all over the verandah. Its sweet smell rose suffocatingly.

Paul Marlowe fell flat on his face and was sick.

Presently, when she had cleaned him up, Mylai Tui man, aged to drag him inside the house. She tried to lift him up to the bed but was not strong enough.

He lay snoring heavily on the floor.