A Burnt Out Case Read Online Free PDF Page A

can’t reach them by truck. They are down by the river. Then there are the Chantins about eight hours farther on – unless they’ve gone home, I can’t remember. And last of all there’s always Rycker at the second ferry, about six hours from Luc. You’d get a warm welcome from him, I’m sure of that.’
    ‘I’d rather sleep in the lorry,’ Querry said. ‘I’m not a sociable man.’
    ‘I warn you, it’s not an easy journey. And we could always wait for the boat.’
    He paused a while for Querry to answer, but all that Querry found to say was, ‘I shall be glad to be of use.’ The distrust between them deadened intercourse; it seemed to the doctor that the only sentences he could find to speak with any safety had been preserved for a long time in a jar in the dispensary and smelt of formaldehyde.
    II
    The river drew a great bow through the bush, and generations of administrators, who had tried to cut across the arc with a road from the regional capital of Luc, had been defeated by the forest and the rain. The rain formed quagmires and swelled the tributary streams until the ferries were unusable, while at long intervals, spaced like a layer of geological time, the forest dropped trees across the way. In the deep bush trees grew unnoticeably old through centuries and here and there one presently died, lying half collapsed for a while in the ropy arms of the lianas until sooner or later they gently lowered the corpse into the only space large enough to receive it, and that was the road, narrow like a coffin or a grave. There were no hearses to drag the corpse away; if it was to be removed at all it could only be by fire.
    During the rains no one ever tried to use the road; a few colons in the forest would then be completely isolated unless, by bicycle, they could reach the river and camp there in a fisherman’s village until a boat came. Then, when the rains were over, weeks had still to pass before the local government could spare the men to build the necessary fires and clear the road. After a few years of complete neglect the road would have disappeared completely and forever. The forest would soon convert it to a surface crawl, like the first scratches on a wall of early man, and there would remain then reptiles, insects, a few birds and primates, and perhaps the pygmoids – the only human beings in the forest who had the capacity to survive without a road.
    The first night Querry stopped the truck at a turn in the road where a track led off towards the Perrins’ plantation. He opened a tin of soup and a tin of Frankfurters, while Deo Gratias put up a bed for him in the back of the truck and lit the paraffin cooker. He offered to share his food with Deo Gratias, but the man had some mess of his own ready prepared in a pot wrapped in an old rag, and the two of them sat in silence with the truck between them as though they were in separate rooms. When the meal was over Querry moved round the bonnet with the intention of saying something to Deo Gratias, but the ‘boy’ by rising to his feet made the occasion as formal as though Querry had entered his hut in the village, and the words, whatever they were, died before they had been spoken. If the boy had possessed an ordinary name, Pierre, Jean, Marc, it might have been possible to begin some simple sentence in French, but Deo Gratias – the absurd name stuck on Querry’s tongue.
    He walked a little way from the truck, because he knew how far he was from sleep, up the path which led eventually to the river or to the Perrins, and he heard the thud of Deo Gratias’s feet behind him. Perhaps he had followed with the idea of protecting him or perhaps because he feared to be left alone in the dark beside the truck. Querry turned with impatience because he had no wish for company, and there the man stood on his two rounded toeless feet, supported on his staff, like something which had grown on that spot ages ago and to which people on one special day made