of Africa there had come India and Goa, and the cruel thought of those hands working for months or years on those extravagant chairs and settees for the governor here. It was like being given a new glimpse of our own history. Two hundred and fifty years: in certain parts of London that time would have been within reach, and romantic to re-create; in India, too, in the shadow of the great temple of our town; but here, in the governor's house, so far from everything, so far from history, it was terrible.
There would have been more than a hundred people in the room. Many of them were Portuguese, and I doubt whether any of them thought as I was thinking. The world was closing down for them in Africa; I don't think anyone there would have questioned that, in spite of all the speeches and the ceremonial; but they were all easy, enjoying the moment, filling the old room with talk and laughter, like people who didn't mind, like people who knew how to live with history. I never admired the Portuguese as much as I admired them then. I wished it was possible for me to live as easily with the past; but of course we were starting from opposite points.
And all this time I was thinking of Graça—Carla's convent-school friend, the wife of the new manager. I had been in the upstairs room for some time when I saw her. I hadn't seen her or her husband at the parade in the square, and wasn't looking for her here. It seemed to me a great piece of luck, a kind of gift, seeing her like this, when I wasn't looking for her. But I didn't want to force anything. I knew nothing about her apart from the little I had heard from Carla, and I might have misread her eyes. I thought it better, for greater security, to see whether accident wouldn't bring us together. And, slowly, accident did. We came together, she alone, I alone, in front of a Goan settee and an old Portuguese governor. I found again everything I had seen in her eyes. I was full of desire. Not the dumb, headlong, private desire of London, but a desire that came now from knowledge and experience and truly embraced the other person. At the same time I was quite shy. I could scarcely bear to look at her eyes. They promised such intimacies.
I said, “I would like to see you.” She said, “With my husband?” So he, poor man, was at once put out of the way. I said, “You know that's a foolish question.” She said, “When do you want to see me?” I said, “Tomorrow, today. Any day.” She pretended to take me literally. “Today there's a big lunch here. Tomorrow there's going to be our Sunday lunch.” I said, “I'll see you on Monday. Your husband will be going to the town to talk to government people about the price of cashew and cotton. Ask him to bring you to the house. It's on the way. We'll have a light lunch and then I'll drive you home. On the way we'll stop at the German Castle.” She said, “When we were at the convent school we were sometimes taken there on an excursion. The Africans say it's haunted by the German who built it.”
After the Monday lunch I made no excuses to Ana. I had worked out none, and was ready for the worst if she objected. I simply said, “I'll drive Graça home.” Ana said to Graça, “I'm glad you're settling in.”
The German Castle was an abandoned estate house. I had gathered years before from various pieces of estate-house gossip that it was used for assignations. That was really all I was going by. It was an hour's fast drive, in a plain beyond the rock cones, which began at a certain stage to show in the distance as a joined-up range, low and blue. The plain was sandy and semi-fertile, and it looked empty, with villages hidden in the natural camouflage of sand and green. The Castle was on a slope in this apparent emptiness, and you could see it from far away. It was an enormous, extravagant estate house, wide and high, with a round concrete turret on either side of the front verandah. It was because of these turrets that the house was known as the Castle. The man who had built on such a scale