The Outcasts Read Online Free PDF Page A

“Hung over and maimed.”
    â€œWho’s the foreman?”
    â€œRamesh. An Indian, about sixty, very capable. Softspoken and always calm, a bit of a philosopher. You may be disturbed by the relatively slow pace. Was that mentioned?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œWe are in the tropics.” Philips shrugged. “You must see it, and feel it. You must keep your temper. You must be patient.”
    Morrison accepted the “must” provisionally. “This Ramesh: what’s his first name?”
    â€œRamesh is his first name. His last name is Rampersand but everyone calls him Ramesh.”
    A glistening scarlet butterfly flittered across the blue water and came to rest on a dusty potted palm. A small ginger cat was asleep on the diving-board.
    â€œAnd we will have dinner soon with a man named Goray, who is of the government.”
    But Morrison was too tired, and here came Gordon with their breakfast: ordinary bacon and eggs, except that the bacon was back-bacon and the eggs were overcooked. The two ate in near-silence, and then Morrison excused himself and slept.
    That afternoon they bought his clothes in an arcade, a tunnel through a gloomy office-building, street to street, with squatting venders like malignant mushrooms, thriving in the cool shadow and bargaining in resigned boredom. The arcade was a haven because the prevailing winds, though they prevailed seldom, swept gently through it. Nothing else swept through it; they waded in empty tin cans, empty cigarette boxes, empty tobacco spills, empty peanut shells, gobs of spittle, broken bottles, poultry feathers, and shards of coconut shell.
    Morrison liked the city. He even liked the offices of Schendel S.A., six rooms in a massive Victorian-Dutch-Colonial building with high ceilings and innumerable mysterious stairways. He met his fellow engineers, young graduates who complimented him insistently on his bridge and were rude to their clerks. He examined the books without real interest. He passed judgment on small projects, on blueprints, on renderings, on the lavatory, which had been refurbished. He had the joy of meeting black men named Isaacson, Utu, and Vieira-Souza. In the office and out he heard many languages, all softly spoken, purling, soothing. They entered him and he too spoke softly, and there was no hurry. He learned that there were six kinds of people: Europeans, blacks, Orientals, Indians, Amerindians and Portuguese, and he wondered what the Portuguese thought about that. Each night at sundown, as they drank on the second-storey terrace and contemplated the avenue and its burdens, its motion, its slaughter, each night at sundown a thin, silvery trill lamented the day, teeee-teeee-teee, from some corner of the ragged shrubbery. “Oh yes,” said the Indian waiter. “The six o’clock bee. Not really a bee,” he confided. “A bird. Oh my yes. A very small bird.”
    When the waiter was gone, Philips said, “Oh my yes. Not really a bird either. Oh my no. Really a kind of cricket.”
    â€œWhy do you make fun of him?”
    â€œI make fun of everybody,” Philips said. “In time I will make fun of you.”
    â€œThat’s too easy. Who is Goray, exactly, and should I behave in any special way?”
    â€œExactly is too much,” Philips said. “Approximately is within my powers. Approximately, he is a man in his fifties, very clever and good, and an assistant, or deputy, to the minister of the interior, in whose jurisdiction lie our road and our bridge. Goray and Van Alstyne were friends, and he has taken a great interest in the project.”
    â€œOh.” He sensed that Philips knew what he was about to ask. “Am I to understand that he is …”
    â€œIs?”
    â€œIs on our payroll?”
    Philips leaned back, and because he regretted the need for the question Morrison dismissed it for the moment and examined Philips’s face, which had altered as he came to