Free Darkness Visible by William Golding

But of course, Mr Pedigree’s curse came with him. Moreover, either time or Australia or the two together quickly sharpened his vague feelings of bewilderment into downright astonishment; and this at last found words somewhere in his head.
    “Who am I?”
    To this, the only answer from inside him was something like: you came out of nowhere and that is where you are going. You have injured your only friend; and you must offer up marriage, sex, love, because, because, because ! On a cooler view of the situation, no one would have you, anyway. That is who you are.
    He was also someone who lacked more skin than he knew. When he had come at last to realize just how great an effort even the kindest people had to make not to be visibly affected by hisappearance he ducked away from any intercourse he could. It was not just the unattainable creatures (and pausing for forty minutes at Singapore, that doll-like figure in its glittering clothes and standing submissively by the passenger lounge) but a minister and his kindly wife, and others. His Bible, on India paper and in squashy leather, gave him no help. Neither—though in his innocence he had thought it might—did his English voice and emergence from the Old Country. When they were assured that he did not think himself special and did not look down on Australia and did not expect preferential treatment, his workmates were unkinder than they might have been through sheer annoyance at being wrong and missing a treat. Also there was a quite gratuitous confusion.
    “I don’t care what you’re bleeding called. When I say ‘Matey’ I mean ‘Matey’. My bleeding oath!”
    —And turning to the Australian equivalent of Mr Parrish—
    “Telling me how to speak the King’s bleeding English!”
    But Matty left the ironmonger’s for a very simple reason. The first time he had to take some boxes of china to the Wedding Gifts Department he found it presided over and rendered unspeakably dangerous by a girl both pretty and painted. He saw at once that travel had not solved all his problems and he would have gone back to England there and then except that it was impossible. He did the best he could, which was to change jobs as soon as there was one to be had. He got work in a bookshop. Mr Sweet who ran it was too short-sighted and vague to grasp what a handicap Matty’s face would be. When Mrs Sweet, who was not short-sighted or vague, saw Matty she knew why nobody browsed in the shop as they used. The Sweets, who were much richer than English booksellers would be, lived in a country house outside the city and soon Matty was established there, in a minute cottage that leaned against the main building. He was odd-job man; and when Mr Sweet had had him taught to drive, chauffeur between the house and the shop. Mrs Sweet, her face averted, pointed out that his hair would keep in place better if he wore a hat. Some deep awareness of self rather than awareness of identity made him choose a black one with a broad brim. It suited both the mournful, good side of his face, and the lighter, but contracted and more formidable left side where the mouth and eye were both pulled down. It lay so close to the purple knob of his ear that peopleseldom noticed his ear was anything out of the ordinary. Piece by piece—jacket, trousers, shoes, socks, roll-neck sweater, pullover—he became the man in black, silent, distant, with the unsolved question waiting on him.
    “Who am I?”
    One day after he had taken Mrs Sweet to the shop and was waiting to bring her back, he stood by the tray of battered books that were displayed outside the shop and all at fifty cents or less. One seemed curious. It had wooden covers on either side and the back was so worn the title was illegible. Idly he picked it out and found it was an old Bible, heavier in wood than squashy leather, though the paper was much the same. He leafed through the familiar pages, stopped suddenly, turned back, then forwards, then back again. He