The Empire Trilogy - J. G. Farrell [667]
At some time in the past few days Adamson had acquired a dog, a black and white sheepdog which had mysteriously adopted him at one of the fires he had attended and which added to his air of detachment. Very often when the Mayfair party arrived the dog would appear first out of the smoke, would examine them, sniffing and wagging its tail, and then disappear into the smoke again, returning presently with Adamson. Then Adamson would briefly explain the nature of the fire to the Major and the plan for fighting, or at least containing it … for the bombs which caused the fires continued to fall with ritual precision, day after day, very often at ten or eleven o’clock in the morning and again in the afternoon, but always more rapidly than the fires, death and destruction which they brought about could be dealt with. The truth was that although the staff at the Central Fire Station in Hill Street continued to map the new outbreaks as best they could, there were likely to be as many ‘unofficial’ fires burning briskly in the docks or elsewhere in the city as those which had been reported and mapped. But somehow Adamson and his dog found out about these fires, sifted them and matched them against the pumps and fire-engines available, deciding which were the least dangerous and could be left to burn, and which had to be stopped then and there.
Once or twice, when the Major happened on an unattended fire on his way to the docks, he anxiously sought out Adamson to report it, only to find out that Adamson already knew about it. ‘Let it burn, Major,’ he would say with a curious, ironic smile and then go on to explain in his casual manner where the Mayfair pumps might come in useful. At times Adamson was to be seen in a jeep he had found somewhere, manoeuvring in and out of the piles of rubble and masonry that lay in the streets, while the black and white dog sat up on the seat beside him looking around with keen interest as if ready to alert his companion to any new fire that broke out. But more often, because of the dense traffic of military vehicles unloading equipment and trying to move food stores from the threatened godowns to some safer location in the city, Adamson and his dog moved about on foot. Matthew, in particular, watched them with keen interest.
Despite his weariness, the hectic life he was leading, the constant danger, and his worries lest Vera should be trapped in Singapore, Matthew had not ceased to feel that novel sense of fulfilment which he had first experienced at the timber-yard fire. The satisfaction of doing something practical, the results of which were visible and practical, in the company of friends seemed to him so powerful that he was amazed that he should never have considered it before. While he had been cudgelling his brains with the question: ‘What is the best way in which to live one’s life?’ with no other result than that a substantial part of that life had gone by in the process, the answer had been all around him, being demonstrated by the most ordinary of people.
Watching Adamson and his dog, calm but determined, going about their business, Matthew thought: ‘Surely there are people like this all over the world, in every country, in every society in every class or caste or community! People who simply go about doing the things that have to be done, not just for themselves but for everybody.’ Such people, whether they were Socialists, or Capitalists, or Communists, or paid no attention to politics at all, because they were entirely committed to whatever job it was they were doing were bound to be the very backbone of their society; without them people like himself who spent their