I just have one more question for my friend, she said, pointing to Dorrigo. Then I’ll be back over with you to talk turf accountancy.
And, that short conversation done, she turned back to Dorrigo and froze the blue uniform out so completely that, after a moment or two, he returned to the others.
3
WHAT QUESTION?
I have no idea what question, she said.
He feared she was playing with him. His instinct was to get away but something held him there.
What’s the book? she asked, pointing to his hands.
Catullus.
Really? She smiled once more.
Dorrigo Evans wanted to be free of her but he was unable to free himself. Those eyes, that red flower. The way—but he would not believe it—the way she seemed to be smiling at him. He pushed one hand behind his back, drummed his fingers on the book spines there, on Lucretius and Herodotus and Ovid. But they made no reply.
A Roman poet, he said.
Read one of his poems to me.
He opened the book, looked down, and looked up.
You sure?
Of course.
It’s very dry.
So’s Adelaide.
He looked back down to the book and read—
I felt another hunger poke
Up between
My tunic and my cloak.
He closed the book.
It’s all Latin to me, she said.
Us both, Dorrigo Evans said. He had hoped to insult her with the poem and realised he had failed. She was smiling again. Somehow she made even an insult of his sound like he was flirting, until he began to wonder if he wasn’t.
He looked to the window for help. There was none.
Read more, she said.
He hastily flicked some pages, stopped, flicked through a few more, stopped, and began.
Let us live and love
And not care tuppence for old men
Who sermonise and disapprove.
Suns when they sink can rise again,
But we—
He felt a strange rising anger. Why was he reading this, of all poems? Why not something else that might give offence? But some other force had hold of him now, was guiding him, keeping his voice low and strong, as he went on.
But we, when our brief light has shone,
Must sleep the long night on and on.
She pinched the top of her blouse with her thumb and forefinger, tugging it upwards while all the while looking at him with eyes that seemed to say she’d really like it tugged downwards.
He closed the book. He didn’t know what to say. Many things rushed through his mind, diverting things, innocuous things, brutal things that got him away from the bookcase, away from her and that terrible gaze, her eyes of ferocious blue flame—but he said none of them. Of all the stupid things he might say, all the things he felt rude and necessary, he instead heard himself saying— Your eyes are—
We were talking about what a nonsense love is, a stranger’s voice interrupted.
Turning, Dorrigo saw that most hapless of pretenders, the close friend, had come over from the ring of admirers to join them and, presumably, take the blue eyes back. Perhaps feeling he had to address Dorrigo as well, the friend smiled at him, trying, Dorrigo felt, to gauge who Dorrigo Evans was, and where he stood with the woman. Undone, he would have liked to have told him.
Most people live without love, the friend said. Wouldn’t you agree?
I don’t know, Dorrigo replied.
The friend smiled, a twist of the mouth for Dorrigo, a slow opening for her, a complicit invitation for her to return to his company, his world, the swarm of drones. She ignored the pretender, turning her shoulder to him and saying she would be back in a minute; making it clear that he was to leave in order that she might stay with Dorrigo. Because this was strictly, well, them, though Dorrigo, watching her silent but clear communication, realised he had not wished for it nor consented to it.
All these conversations about love, continued the pretender, just nonsense. There’s no need for love. The best marriages are ones of compatibility. The science shows that we all generate electromagnetic fields. When one meets a person with opposite ions aligned in the right direction, they’re attracted. But that’s not love.
What is it then? asked Dorrigo.
Magnetism, said the pretender.
4
MAJOR NAKAMURA WAS bad at cards yet he had just won the final hand, because it was understood both by his junior officers and the Australian POWs playing with him that it was better that he didn’t lose. Through his interpreter, Lieutenant Fukuhara, Nakamura thanked the Australian colonel and major for the evening. The Japanese major stood up, stumbled backwards, almost fell, but recovered his balance. Nakamura seemed oddly ebullient in spite of nearly falling flat on his face.