The Desert Islander | Page 7

I am doing about your leg, can I?"
said Mr. White irritably, as he restarted the car.
"A million times more--a million times more," thought Constantine
hysterically, but with an effort he said nothing.
As the wet evening light smouldered to an ashen twilight, they drove
into Mo-ming, which was to be their night's stopping-place. Outside the
city wall they were stopped by soldiers; for Mo-ming was being
defended against the enemy's advance. After twenty minutes' talk in the
clanking Cantonese tongue, the two white men were allowed to go
through the city gate on foot, leaving the Ford in a shed outside, in the
care of Mr. White's coolie. Mr. White carried his beautiful little kit-bag
and expected Constantine to carry the camp-bed.
"What--and leave my balalaika in the car?" protested Constantine
childishly.
"I think it would be safe," said Mr. White, only faintly ironic. "Hurry

up. I must go at once and call on the general in charge here. I don't
want to have my car commandeered."
Constantine limped along behind him, the camp-bed on one shoulder,
the balalaika faintly tinkling under his arm. They found the inn in the
centre of a tangle of looped, frayed, untidy streets--a box-like gaunt
house, one corner of which was partly ruined, for the city had been
bombarded that day. The inn, which could never have been a
comfortable place, was wholly disorganized by its recent misfortune;
most of the servants had fled, and the innkeeper was--entirely
engrossed in counting and piling up on the verandah his rescued
possessions from the wrecked rooms. An impudent little boy, naked
down to the waist--the only remaining servant--showed Mr. White and
Constantine to the only room the inn could offer.
"One room between us?" cried Constantine, thinking of his shameful,
possibly verminous, clothes and his unwashed body. He felt unable to
bear the idea of unbuttoning even the greasy collar of his tunic within
sight of that virgin--new kit-bag. Its luminous whiteness would seem in
the night like triumphant civilization's eye fixed upon the
barbarian--like the smug beam of a lighthouse glowing from the
mainland upon that uncouth obstruction, a desert island. "I'm not
consistent," thought Constantine. "That's my trouble. I ought to be
proud of being dirty. At least that is a home-made condition."
"Yes--one room between us," said Mr. White tardy. "We must do the
best we can. You look after things here, will you, while I go and see the
general and make the car-safe."
Left alone, Constantine decided not to take off any clothes at all--even
his coarse greatcoat--but to say that he had fever and needed all the
warmth he could get. No sooner had he come to this decision than he
felt convinced that he actually was feverish; his head and his injured
leg ached and throbbed as though all the hot blood in his body had
concentrated in those two regions, while ice seemed to settle round his
heart and loins. The room was dreary and very sparsely furnished with
an ugly, too high table and rigid chairs to match. The beds were simply
recesses in the wall, draped with dirty mud-brown mosquito-veils.

Constantine, however, stepped more bravely into this hard, matted
coffin than he had into Mr. White's clean attic bed. As he lay down, his
leg burned and throbbed more fiercely than ever, and he began to
imagine the amputation--the blood, the yawning of the flesh, the
scraping of the saw upon the bone. His imagination did not supply an
anaesthetic. Fever came upon him now in good earnest; he shook so
much that his body seemed to jump like a fish upon the unyielding
matting, he seemed to breathe in heat, without being able to melt the
ice in his bones. Yet he remained artistically conscious all the time of
his plight, and even exaggerated the shivering spasms of his limbs. He
was quite pleased to think that Mr. White would presently return and
find him in this condition, and so be obliged to be interested and
compassionate. Yet as he heard Mr. White's heavy step on the stair,
poor Constantine's eye fell on the fastidious white kit-bag, and he
suddenly remembered all his fancies and fears about vermin and smells.
By the time Mr. White was actually standing over him, Constantine
was convinced that the deepest loathing was clearly shown on that
superior, towering face.
"I can't help it--I can't help it," cried Constantine, between his
chattering teeth.
Mr. White seemed to ignore the Russian's agitation. "I think the car'll
be all right now," he said. "I left the coolie sleeping in it, to make sure.
The general was quite civil and gave me a permit to get home; but it
seems it's utterly impossible for us to drive on to Lao-chow. Fighting
on the