Free The Devil's Garden by Edward Docx Page B

remoteness, was host to the best of them. And Tord’s sect was among the
most steadfast and sophisticated. They operated under the burnished fig leaves of health, education and an improvement in living standards. They founded schools and hospitals. Most of all, they
studied the languages. They affected that the linguistic emphasis was coincidental or academic, but the simple truth was that they sought keenly to translate the Bible. Indeed, this was why Tord
was great amongst them – he was already at work on rendering the Gospels into the hitherto unbreached language of the Yora. In the tribe of the missionaries, these were the feathers of
highest distinction
    I stepped out of my hut into the trill of the forest night. Why was I so pleased to see him? The answer further dismayed me: it was because I was hoping for moral support in the event of any
further brutality. I was hoping that Tord’s indignation – partaking, as it must, in the wider indignation of the Son of God – would be righteous and forceful and that I would be
able to ally myself with him and splint up my own conviction. For one thing I was sure of: if Tord was here, he would not let evil pass. And though I knew that his convictions were based on
enduring falsehoods, I was – it seemed – profoundly grateful for the cover those same falsehoods provided for me.
    IV
    I was awoken by the violence of her kick. I said her name but she was deaf to me. Her anger had dissipated but we had not been the same together since the night of the
fire.
    There were unfamiliar noises coming from the direction of the comedor – the intermittent sound of men and alcohol, cries, raucousness, the repetitive grunt of music just audible
beneath. The soldiers must have returned. Where had they been so late? I had slept for no more than two hours – less. With all my being, I longed for the Station to be returned to us.
    Something was rustling in the dry leaves below the hut. We were drowning in the lack of rain and it was impossible to breathe. Sole shuddered; dreams were passing through her, whispering their
solicitudes one to the next. I sat up. The darkness was close in the room, but here and there a faint pearl light pooled. The moon must have risen above the forest. She stirred. I was still. I
waited. Her murmuring became words I neither understood nor recognized. A frown passed across her brow. Then she curled deeper into her sleep. I thumbed her hair from her face; it was unwaveringly
straight and so black that in the sunlight it seemed almost blue. Aside from a year in the capital, she had lived mostly in the physical world of the river and the trees and her body was dense with
such a life; sure, strong and well-proportioned. Sometimes, when everyone else was asleep, we went to the bathing huts to wash one another by the dim light of a hanging lamp and I found that my
fingers rose and fell across the muscled contour of her shoulders and that her calves were full to my palm. She slept without a pillow.
    She stirred again. I soothed. She settled. I lay still. Whenever we slept together, these wordless duets of ours played on through the night; though we were barely conscious, it was as if our
bodies were about some quiet communion that they wished to protect from the searchlight of the mind.
    Now, without warning, she turned herself onto her front, raised herself on her elbows and hung her head. I reached for the kerosene lamp behind me. The room flared into view; the shadows
stretched and shrank back. The animal moved again beneath the hut. Her cheekbones were fiercely broad and high, so that she seemed both defiant and shy whenever she looked up.
    ‘I hate this,’ she murmured. ‘What’s happening?’
    ‘They got back about half an hour ago. They’re having some kind of a party. Here – have some water.’
    She remained on her front and swigged awkwardly from the bottle. The white sheet fell from her shoulders.
    ‘My husband came here,’ she