The enigma of arrival: a novel - By V. S. Naipaul Page 0,36

four in the afternoon that when I went shopping in Salisbury on the mid-afternoon bus I needed to take a flashlight for the short walk back from the bus stop.

Country darkness! Big things could happen almost secretly. And one such thing happened in the thatched cottage with the straw pheasant on the roof.

It was Mrs. Phillips who gave me the news.

She said, two days after the event, “Brenda’s dead.”

She added, and it seemed calmly, “Les murdered her.”

“Murdered,” the formal word, rather than “killed.” We use formal words, even empty words, when events are big.

I thought of the way they had both appeared on the lawn during the pear picking—two birds in bright plumage. I thought of the face of the satisfied lover offering me the vegetables at the kitchen door, the gift of the happy man. Then I thought of Italy and the Michael Allen van going about its money-making business, spreading the name around—while Les was running about in his red car looking for a new job.

So hard to contemplate, the physical act, the setting, the finality, the body, just a few hundred yards away. I thought of the least intrusive question I might ask. “Where did he kill her?”

“Right in that cottage. On Saturday night.”

Saturday night! Was it a night of drink and temper? It wasn’t what I associated with them.

Mrs. Phillips said: “She taunted him.”

And “taunted” I felt to be a technical word, as technical as “murdered.” It had sexual connotations. She, the Italian runaway, had done the sexual taunting. She had not come back abashed. She had done the taunting, the goading. How often, to punish someone for her Italian failure, she must have “taunted” him! And it was hard not to feel that she didn’t have some idea of what she was provoking. And how, having started on the job of destruction—he had used a kitchen knife—having started on that, from which very quickly there was no turning back, however much in a corner of his mind he might have been wishing it all undone, healed again, how he must have struck, until the madness and the life was over! All in that little thatched cottage with the ruined garden.

Worker bees work till they die. When they die other bees clear the hive, get rid of the bodies. Because bees work and are clean. And so, without disturbance, without many people knowing, even people on the bus, the cottage was cleansed and cleared of its once precious life, its once precious passions.

She “taunted” him—it was the verdict. And all hearts were with the living, the survivor, the man; as, had it occurred the other way, they would have been with the woman. The police were discreet, hardly seen, almost as secretive as the event itself. More information was to be had from the local weekly paper than from immediate neighbors. They had seen very little, and didn’t want to blame one partner more than the other: everyone drawn close at this moment to Brenda and Les, seeking to remember them, and responding to this very near event almost as to a family tragedy.

One local formality remained. Brenda’s “things” had to be collected. And some weeks later, before the winter turned to spring with the gales of spring, Brenda’s sister came to collect Brenda’s things from the unoccupied cottage, where there was no longer a dark-red motorcar.

Collecting the dead person’s things: it was like something from the old world—an aspect of the idea of sanctity, an aspect of decent burial, the honoring of the dead—and it seemed to call for some ritual. But there was none. The coming for the dead woman’s things was matter-of-fact. I wouldn’t have known about it if I wasn’t in the kitchen of the manor, settling some little bill with Mrs. Phillips, when Brenda’s sister came to call.

Mrs. Phillips knew Brenda’s sister. It was another indication of the Phillipses’ “town” life, their life outside the manor and the village. Mrs. Phillips became much graver when Brenda’s sister said what she had come for. I was moved myself. And we all went, after introductions, to Mrs. Phillips’s sitting room with its view of the down and the river, the water meadows and the big aspens of the garden, the old stone terrace, the urns, the moss, the mottled stone, the seed bells for the birds, the lines of washing—the mixture of big-house garden and backyard domesticity which I had seen (through rain and mist) on my first day in the grounds when,