Troubles - James Gordon Farrell [163]
The room was still in darkness but the door was open. A faint murmur came from the moonlit balcony that lay beyond the window. He paused—afraid that Sarah might have returned here with someone else—but now the speaking voice rose querulously, becoming audible; a confused string of obscenities reached his ears. The voice was unrecognizable, but an image flashed into the Major’s mind—of a man he had seen mortally wounded sitting hunched in a shell-hole with his intestines in his lap like a mess of snakes, his blue lips still quivering with an unending rigmarole of curses while his eyes turned milky.
The Major blundered forward and stepped out on to the balcony. There was only one person there: a man leaning over the balustrade, his face illuminated by the bright pool of glass that lay beneath. It was Evans. A bottle stood on the stone parapet beside him. He paid no attention to the Major, perhaps had not even heard his footfall, but continued his muttered, gulping commentary on the dazzling scene below. On the whores and whoremasters, the bitches in heat and the lecherous old goats, the cowards and the swine who thought they were so high and mighty, their day would come, the wheel would turn...
The Major grasped him by the frayed collar of his shirt and wrenched him back from the balustrade with a hiss of splitting cloth. He was swaying on his feet and the Major had to hold him up, fingers dug into the stained lapels of his jacket. Sudden anger gripped him. He shook Evans with all his strength; all the growing bitterness of the last hour, of the weeks and months of receding hope, all the tragedy and despair of the years in France exploded in one violent discharge of hatred concentrated on the loosely swaying head in front of him. Slowly the pale lids crept down over the tutor’s bleary eyes and a tear trickled down to the corner of his mouth.
“I hate them! I hate them all!” And he shuddered convulsively, his chin sinking on to his chest. The Major’s anger abated suddenly. Evans’s knees sagged and the Major had to stagger forward to keep his own balance. It was all he could do to keep him from falling. For a long moment he stood there, holding the tutor upright by the lapels. But then, with a sudden access of strength, Evans straightened up and tore himself free, throwing his head and shoulders forward over the parapet. The Major lunged after him, afraid that he was about to throw himself over. But Evans had begun to vomit copiously, a thick yellow fluid that splattered on the illuminated glass below. Unaware, the black and white gentlemen on the other side of the glass continued to revolve mechanically with the softly flowing silk and taffeta of the ladies.
“You’re disgusting.” The hand that the Major reached out to grasp Evans by the shoulder and help him back was shaking. Evans’s eyes were closed and his features had relaxed into a strangely peaceful expression. It was difficult to get him back through the window and across the dark room. “You’ll hear more of this tomorrow.”
In the corridor a shadowy figure detached itself from a doorway. “Murphy, come here!” the Major shouted. “What d’you think you’re doing there anyway?” But then he remembered that the uncouth old manservant had been instructed to keep himself out of the way until the guests had departed, for fear that his cadaverous appearance would upset the ladies.
“Never mind. Take Evans back where he came from and put him to bed. And clean him up while you’re at it. You’d better lock him in his room until tomorrow morning.”
The tutor’s sour breath still seemed to hang in the room as the Major moved back to the balcony to retrieve the bottle left on the parapet. It was empty. He left it where it was. There was a pause in the dancing. The music had come to a stop; the musicians were mopping their shining heads and consulting each other. Suddenly across the empty floor the twins came into sight, towing the beaming but reluctant