【有声英语文学名著】蝇王（4）

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CHAPTER FOUR

Painted Faces and Long Hair

The first rhythm that they became used to was the slow swing from dawn to quick dusk. They accepted the pleasures of morning, the bright sun, the whelming sea and sweet air, as a time when play was good and life so full that hope was not necessary and therefore forgotten. Towards noon, as the floods of light fell more nearly to the perpendicular¹, the stark² colours of the morning were smoothed in pearl and opalescence³; and the heat—as though the impending⁴ sun’s height gave it momentum—became a blow that they ducked, running to the shade and lying there, perhaps even sleeping.

Strange things happened at midday. The glittering sea rose up, moved apart in planes of blatant⁵ impossibility; the coral reef and the few, stunted⁶ palms that clung to the more elevated parts would float up into the sky, would quiver, be plucked apart, run like rain-drops on a wire or be repeated as in an odd succession of mirrors. Sometimes land loomed⁷ where there was no land and flicked⁸ out like a bubble as the children watched. Piggy discounted all this learnedly as a “mirage⁹”; and since no boy could reach even the reef over the stretch of water where the snapping sharks waited, they grew accustomed to these mysteries and ignored them, just as they ignored the miraculous¹⁰, throbbing¹¹ stars. At midday the illusions merged¹² into the sky and there the sun gazed down like an angry eye. Then, at the end of the afternoon, the mirage subsided¹³ and the horizon became level and blue and clipped as the sun declined. That was another time of comparative coolness but menaced by the coming of the dark. When the sun sank, darkness dropped on the island like an extinguisher and soon the shelters were full of restlessness, under the remote stars.

Nevertheless, the northern European tradition of work, play, and food right through the day, made it impossible for them to adjust themselves wholly to this new rhythm. The littlun Percival had early crawled into a shelter and stayed there for two days, talking, singing, and crying, till they thought him batty and were faintly amused. Ever since then he had been peaked, red-eyed, and miserable¹⁴; a littlun who played little and cried often.

The smaller boys were known now by the generic¹⁵ title of “littluns”. The decrease in size, from Ralph down, was gradual; and though there was a dubious¹⁶ region inhabited by Simon and Robert and Maurice, nevertheless no one had any difficulty in recognizing biguns at one end and littluns at the other. The undoubted littluns, those aged¹⁷ about six, led a quite distinct, and at the same time intense, life of their own. They ate most of the day, picking fruit where they could reach it and not particular about ripeness and quality. They were used now to stomach-aches and a sort of chronic¹⁸ diarrhoea. They suffered untold¹⁹ terrors in the dark and huddled²⁰ together for comfort. Apart from food and sleep, they found time for play, aimless and trivial, among the white sand by the bright water. They cried for their mothers much less often than might have been expected; they were very brown, and filthily²¹ dirty. They obeyed the summons of the conch, partly because Ralph blew it, and he was big enough to be a link with the adult world of authority; and partly because they enjoyed the entertainment of the assemblies. But otherwise they seldom bothered with the biguns and their passionately²² emotional and corporate²³ life was their own.

They had built castles in the sand at the bar of the little river. These castles were about one foot high and were decorated with shells, withered²⁴ flowers, and interesting stones. Round the castles was a complex of marks, tracks, walls, railway lines, that were of significance only if inspected with the eye at beach-level. The littluns played here, if not happily at least with absorbed attention; and often as many as three of them would play the same game together.

Three were playing here now—Henry was the biggest of them. He was also a distant relative of that other boy whose mulberry-marked face had not been seen since the evening of the great fire; but he was not old enough to understand this, and if he had been told that the other boy had gone home in an aircraft, he would have accepted the statement without fuss or disbelief.

Henry was a bit of a leader this afternoon, because the other two were Percival and Johnny, the smallest boys on the island. Percival was mouse-coloured and had not been very attractive even to his mother; Johnny was well built, with fair hair and a natural belligerence²⁵. Just now he was being obedient because he was interested; and the three children, kneeling in the sand, were at peace.

Roger and Maurice came out of the forest. They were relieved from duty at the fire and had come down for a swim. Roger led the way straight through the castles, kicking them over, burying the flowers, scattering²⁶ the chosen stones. Maurice followed, laughing, and added to the destruction. The three littluns paused in their game and looked up. As it happened, the particular marks in which they were interested had not been touched, so they made no protest. Only Percival began to whimper with an eyeful of sand and Maurice hurried away. In his other life Maurice had received chastisement²⁷ for filling a younger eye with sand. Now, though there was no parent to let fall a heavy hand, Maurice still felt the unease of wrong-doing. At the back of his mind formed the uncertain outlines of an excuse. He muttered something about a swim and broke into a trot²⁸.

Roger remained, watching the littluns. He was not noticeably darker than when he had dropped in, but the shock of black hair, down his nape and low on his forehead, seemed to suit his gloomy face and made what had seemed at first an unsociable remoteness into something forbidding. Percival finished his whimper and went on playing, for the tears had washed the sand away. Johnny watched him with china-blue eyes; then began to fling up sand in a shower, and presently Percival was crying again.

When Henry tired of his play and wandered off along the beach, Roger followed him, keeping beneath the palms and drifting casually²⁹ in the same direction. Henry walked at a distance from the palms and the shade because he was too young to keep himself out of the sun. He went down the beach and busied himself at the water’s edge. The great Pacific tide was coming in and every few seconds the relatively³⁰ still water of the lagoon³¹ heaved forwards an inch. There were creatures that lived in this last fling of the sea, tiny transparencies that came questing in with the water over the hot, dry sand. With impalpable organs of sense they examined this new field. Perhaps food had appeared where at the last incursion there had been none; bird droppings, insects perhaps, any of the strewn detritus³² of landward life. Like a myriad³³ of tiny teeth in a saw, the transparencies came scavenging over the beach.

This was fascinating to Henry. He poked³⁴ about with a bit of stick, that itself was wave-worn and whitened and a vagrant³⁵, and tried to control the motions of the scavengers. He made little runnels that the tide filled and tried to crowd them with creatures. He became absorbed beyond mere³⁶ happiness as he felt himself exercising control over living things. He talked to them, urging them, ordering them. Driven back by the tide, his footprints became bays in which they were trapped and gave him the illusion of mastery. He squatted³⁷ on his hams at the water’s edge, bowed, with a shock of hair falling over his forehead and past his eyes, and the afternoon sun emptied down invisible arrows.

Roger waited too. At first he had hidden behind a great palm bole; but Henry’s absorption with the transparencies was so obvious that at last he stood out in full view. He looked along the beach. Percival had gone off, crying, and Johnny was left in triumphant³⁸ possession of the castles. He sat there, crooning to himself and throwing sand at an imaginary Percival. Beyond him, Roger could see the platform and the glints of spray where Ralph and Simon and Piggy and Maurice were diving in the pool. He listened carefully but could only just hear them.

A sudden breeze shook the fringe of palm trees, so that the fronds³⁹ tossed and fluttered. Sixty feet above Roger, a cluster of nuts, fibrous lumps as big as rugby balls, were loosed from their stems. They fell about him with a series of hard thumps⁴⁰ and he was not touched. Roger did not consider his escape, but looked from the nuts to Henry and back again.

The subsoil beneath the palm trees was a raised beach; and generations of palms had worked loose in this the stones that had lain on the sands of another shore. Roger stooped, picked up a stone, aimed, and threw it at Henry—threw it to miss. The stone, that token of preposterous⁴¹ time, bounced five yards to Henry’s right and fell in the water. Roger gathered a handful of stones and began to throw them. Yet there was a space round Henry, perhaps six yards in diameter, into which he dare not throw. Here, invisible yet strong, was the taboo⁴² of the old life. Round the squatting⁴³ child was the protection of parents and school and policemen and the law. Roger’s arm was conditioned by a civilization that knew nothing of him and was in ruins.

Henry was surprised by the plopping sounds in the water. He abandoned the noiseless transparencies and pointed⁴⁴ at the centre of the spreading rings like a setter. This side and that the stones fell, and Henry turned obediently but always too late to see the stones in the air. At last he saw one and laughed, looking for the friend who was teasing him. But Roger had whipped behind the palm bole again, was leaning against it breathing quickly, his eyelids⁴⁵ fluttering. Then Henry lost interest in stones and wandered off.

“Roger.”

Jack⁴⁶ was standing⁴⁷ under a tree about ten yards away. When Roger opened his eyes and saw him, a darker shadow crept beneath the swarthiness of his skin; but Jack noticed nothing. He was eager, impatient, beckoning⁴⁸, so that Roger went to him.

There was a pool at the end of the river, a tiny mere dammed back by sand and full of white water-lilies and needle-like reeds. Here Sam and Eric were waiting, and Bill. Jack, concealed⁴⁹ from the sun, knelt by the pool and opened the two large leaves that he carried. One of them contained white clay, and the other red. By them lay a stick of charcoal⁵⁰ brought down from the fire.

Jack explained to Roger as he worked.

“They don’t smell me. They see me, I think. Something pink, under the trees.”

He smeared⁵¹ on the clay.

“If only I’d some green!”

He turned a half-concealed face up to Roger and answered the incomprehension of his gaze.

“For hunting. Like in the war. You know—dazzle paint. Like things trying to look like something else——”

He twisted in the urgency of telling.

“—like moths⁵² on a tree trunk.”

Roger understood and nodded gravely. The twins moved towards Jack and began to protest timidly about something. Jack waved them away.

“Shut up.”

He rubbed the charcoal stick between the patches of red and white on his face.

“No. You two come with me.”

He peered at his reflection and disliked it. He bent⁵³ down, took up a double handful of lukewarm water and rubbed the mess from his face. Freckles⁵⁴ and sandy eyebrows⁵⁵ appeared.

Roger smiled, unwillingly⁵⁶.

“You don’t half look a mess.”

Jack planned his new face. He made one cheek and one eye-socket white, then he rubbed red over the other half of his face and slashed⁵⁷ a black bar of charcoal across from right ear to left jaw⁵⁸. He looked in the mere for his reflection, but his breathing troubled the mirror.

“Samneric. Get me a coco-nut. An empty one.”

He knelt, holding the shell of water. A rounded patch of sunlight fell on his face and a brightness appeared in the depths of the water. He looked in astonishment⁵⁹, no longer at himself but at an awesome⁶⁰ stranger. He spilt the water and leapt to his feet, laughing excitedly. Beside the mere, his sinewy⁶¹ body held up a mask that drew their eyes and appalled⁶² them. He began to dance and his laughter became a bloodthirsty snarling⁶³. He capered⁶⁴ towards Bill, and the mask was a thing on its own, behind which Jack hid, liberated⁶⁵ from shame and self-consciousness. The face of red and white and black, swung through the air and jigged⁶⁶ towards Bill. Bill started up laughing; then suddenly he fell silent and blundered away through the bushes.

Jack rushed towards the twins.

“The rest are making a line. Come on!”

“But——”

“—we——”

“Come on! I’ll creep up and stab——”

The mask compelled them.

*

 

Ralph climbed out of the bathing-pool and trotted⁶⁷ up the beach and sat in the shade beneath the palms. His fair hair was plastered over his eyebrows and he pushed it back. Simon was floating in the water and kicking with his feet, and Maurice was practising diving. Piggy was mooning about, aimlessly picking up things and discarding them. The rock-pools which so fascinated him were covered by the tide, so he was without an interest until the tide went back. Presently, seeing Ralph under the palms, he came and sat by him.

Piggy wore the remainders of a pair of shorts, his fat body was golden brown, and the glasses still flashed when he looked at anything. He was the only boy on the island whose hair never seemed to grow. The rest were shock-headed, but Piggy’s hair still lay in wisps over his head as though baldness were his natural state, and this imperfect covering would soon go, like the velvet⁶⁸ on a young stag’s antlers.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said, “about a clock. We could make a sundial. We could put a stick in the sand, and then——”

The effort to express the mathematical processes involved was too great. He made a few passes instead.

“And an airplane, and a TV set,” said Ralph sourly, “and a steam engine.”

Piggy shook his head.

“You have to have a lot of metal things for that,” he said, “and we haven’t got no metal. But we got a stick.”

Ralph turned and smiled involuntarily. Piggy was a bore; his fat, his ass-mar and his matter-of-fact ideas were dull: but there was always a little pleasure to be got out of pulling his leg, even if one did it by accident.

Piggy saw the smile and misinterpreted it as friendliness⁶⁹. There had grown up tacitly among the biguns the opinion that Piggy was an outsider, not only by accent, which did not matter, but by fat, and ass-mar, and specs, and a certain disinclination for manual labour. Now, finding that something he had said made Ralph smile, he rejoiced and pressed his advantage.

“We got a lot of sticks. We could have a sundial each. Then we should know what the time was.”

“A fat lot of good that would be.”

“You said you wanted things done. So as we could be rescued.”

“Oh, shut up.”

He leapt to his feet and trotted back to the pool, just as Maurice did a rather poor dive. Ralph was glad of a chance to change the subject. He shouted as Maurice came to the surface.

“Belly⁷⁰ flop⁷¹! Belly flop!”

Maurice flashed a smile at Ralph who slid easily into the water. Of all the boys, he was the most at home there; but to-day, irked by the mention of rescue, the useless, footling mention of rescue, even the green depths of water and the shattered, golden sun held no balm. Instead of remaining and playing, he swam with steady strokes under Simon and crawled out of the other side of the pool to lie there, sleek⁷² and streaming like a seal. Piggy, always clumsy, stood up and came to stand by him, so that Ralph rolled on his stomach and pretended not to see. The mirages⁷³ had died away and gloomily he ran his eye along the taut⁷⁴ blue line of the horizon.

The next moment he was on his feet and shouting.

“Smoke! Smoke!”

Simon tried to sit up in the water and got a mouthful. Maurice, who had been standing ready to dive, swayed back on his heels, made a bolt for the platform, then swerved⁷⁵ back to the grass under the palms. There he started to pull on his tattered⁷⁶ shorts, to be ready for anything.

Ralph stood, one hand holding back his hair, the other clenched⁷⁷. Simon was climbing out of the water. Piggy was rubbing his glasses on his shorts and squinting⁷⁸ at the sea. Maurice had got both legs through one leg of his shorts—of all the boys, only Ralph was still.

“I can’t see no smoke,” said Piggy incredulously. “I can’t see no smoke, Ralph—where is it?”

Ralph said nothing. Now both his hands were clenched over his forehead so that the fair hair was kept out of his eyes. He was leaning forward and already the salt was whitening his body.

“Ralph—where’s the ship?”

Simon stood by, looking from Ralph to the horizon. Maurice’s trousers gave way with a sigh and he abandoned them as a wreck⁷⁹, rushed towards the forest, and then came back again.

The smoke was a tight little knot on the horizon and was uncoiling slowly. Beneath the smoke was a dot that might be a funnel⁸⁰. Ralph’s face was pale as he spoke⁸¹ to himself.

“They’ll see our smoke.”

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