Free Darkness Visible by William Golding Page A

bent his face nearer the page and began to mutter under his breath, a mutter that died away.
    One of Matty’s characteristics was a capacity for absolute inattention. Speech would wash over him without leaving a trace in his mind. It is likely that in the Australian churches he attended less and less—and in the English churches, and far back in class, at Foundlings—there was talk of the difficulty of moving from one language to another; but explanations must have failed before the present fact of black print on a white page. In the very middle of the twentieth century there was a kind of primitive grating between Matty and the easy world of his fellows that sorted out, it seemed, filtered out, ninety-nine per cent of what a man is supposed to absorb and gave the remaining one per cent the shiny hardness of stone. Now, therefore, he stood, the book in his hands, lifted his head from it and stared aghast through the bookshop.
    It’s different!
    That night he sat at his table with both books before him and began to compare them, word by word. It was after one o’clock in the morning when he stood up and went out. He walked the straight and endless road up and down until the morning when it was time to drive Mr Sweet into the city. When he got back and put the car away it seemed to him that he had never heard before how the quality of bird-noise in the countryside was a kind of mad laughter. It disturbed him so much that he cut a lawn quite unnecessarily, to hide in the noise of the machine. When they heard the first whirr! the flock of sulphur-crested cockatoos thathaunted the tall trees round the low house took off, crying and circling, then fled away across the sunburnt grass where the horses grazed—fled to and filled a solitary tree a mile off with their whiteness and movement and clamour.
    That evening after high tea in the kitchen he took out his two books and opened them both at the title-page. He read each title-page several times. At last he sat back and shut his book of squashy leather. He took it, went out, across the nearer lawn and along through the vegetable garden. He came to the fence that lay between the garden and the way down to the pool where the yabbies swam. He looked at the miles of moonlit grass that swept away to where there were dim hills on the horizon.
    He took out his Bible and began to tear the pages out, one by one. As he tore each, he let the breeze take it, fluttering from his hand to blow away turning over and over into the distance where it was hidden at last among the long grass. Then he went back to his cottage, read in the other Bible between wooden covers for a time, said his mechanical prayers, went to bed and to sleep.
     
    That was the beginning of what was mostly a happy year for Matty. He had a time of conflict with himself when the new girl who served in the village store proved to be pretty; but she was so pretty that she quickly moved on to be replaced by one to whom he could be peacefully indifferent. Happily he moved round the grounds or through the house, his lips moving, the good side of his face as cheerful as one side of a face can be. He never took his hat off where other people could see him and this led to rumours in the village that he slept in it, which was not true. It was not the kind of hat he could sleep in, being broad-brimmed, as everyone knew very well; but the story suited him, matched his withdrawal. The early sun, and always the moon, would find him in his bed, the long smear of black hair lying all ways to one over the pillow, the white skin of his skull and left face disappearing and reappearing as he moved in his sleep. Then the first birds would jeer and he would jerk upright, to sink back for a few moments before he got out of bed. After the bog and the basin he would sit and read, in the book with the wooden covers, his mouth following the words, his good side frowning.
    During the day his lips would continue to move, whether he was driving the