Another arid morning, wet nakedness under the mosquito-net panting in the humid air. The brown and green frogs had engaged at midnight, hopping into action, brekekekking martially. Corpses in no-frog's-land, the wounded piled up at the regimental aid posts, orderlies bringing succour to the feebly croaking. The brown staff, the green staff, each far back at base, plotted simple strategies, sent up reserves. All night long the deep-chested chorus hopped into people's dreams and out again. The battlefield was near the Astana. Lights went on and off all night, fitfully, quenched at last by a dry sun replacing a sharp moon.
The moon of Islam on its banners. The carpet was lugged to the entrance to the courtyard of the Mosque. A long tunnel of a marquee, erected yesterday by the Municipal Dog Catchers, was to bless the entering heads with temporary relief from the sun's blasts and nagging, while the carpet beneath was to bless the feet with softness. A tented enclosure for the important was stuck with pennants, a Technicolor Battle of Bosworth. Tiny metal chairs were ranged under the sun for the many, many others. The fountain splashed before the white portico, cooling only its basin. To early comers the Mosque itself seemed a crouched leprous sun-beast, bulbous, pillared, the golden dome the spike-nippled breast of a supine giant Amazon. It was terrifying and somewhat obscene, like its Semitic God. Loudspeakers solemnly counted in the National Language, testing, testing.
Long before the police with clarinets, the police with rifles, the common people were at the skirts of the court, brown and black, clad in hot orange, scarlet and purple. And then the khaki police for use and the white police for ceremony, and soon the Europeans and the Asiatics and the Africans of good class began to appear, already sweating, their cars parked far away. The metal chair-seats scorched, damp flowered on backs and under armpits, white stone glared, gold burned against hot blue, the fountain cooled itself. Beer-drinkers were soon shod and gloved and hatted in sweat. The ladies, garden-party-attired, fanned their necks with their programmes. The heat, my dear, the heat, the heat. The sun was here no Brighton holiday blessing; it was the enemy, the devil that came long before the world. It climbed, calibrating the long time of waiting.
The first dignitary, mounting the saluting-base and honoured with music, came like a cool wind or tiny cloud of relief. But was it imagination, or was the sweat dryer, did the pennants shake, the apex of the turban at the saluting-base twitch in the air? Some looked up and saw real clouds billowing in, pulled up from the horizons like eiderdowns slipped off the Great Bed of Ware. And then, with human fickleness, people began to fear the big hand on the sun's mouth and the spoilsport clouds. When the Britsh representative stood to six bars of his national galliard, a drop or two struck like thin notes of a glockenspiel. Those near the fountain thought, at first, that it was the fountain. The honoured with salutes ran up the steps of the saluting-base and down again to their sheltered places. The anthems speeded their tern pi, the silence between them shrank.
As the rain played its preludiallargo, staccato ma non troppo, the black Caliph came on in shining robes, blessing all — the police band, the rain, the spectators — under a yellow umbrella. Behind him were elders of the faith, one with the Word on a golden cushion, one with a crozier that had no hook. Boys, youngsters of the faith, marched in, in good time, behind. The Caliph and his entourage reached the portico, stood in stone shelter before the massy doors. The rain attacked its allegro movement, reserving its drums for the climax. Those wet with sweat shrugged humorously, ready to be dressed in a mackintosh, wellingtons, sou'wester of rain. The women mooed and danced, pulped programmes held above their hats. Canvas above important heads began to leak. The loudspeakers crackled and a voice, deep as the voice of a record played at half the prescribed speed, spoke a poem of praise and thanksgiving in the National Language.
Then the rain played presto furioso with kettle-drums. The sky gaped stupidly and spewed pure water. All sound else was drowned. On their battlefield near the Astana the frogs still fought and carried off their dead, forgetting what the fight was about. "In the name of Allah the Beneficent, the Merciful," bellowed the rain, "I would that thou wouldst an thou wouldst wouldst wouldst aaaah." An Arabic prayer croaked inaudibly to the drowned world. Then the Caliph asked for the key to the massy doors of the Mosque.
"The key!"
"Who has the key?" "Where is the key?" "The key, the key!"
"Does nobody know where the key is?"
"Somebody must have the key!”
"The key, the key, the key!"
The rain cracked, hurled and kettle-drummed, vomited like a whole sick heaven over the Mosque and the whole black kingdom, heedless of human time or of any time but its own.
oooooOooooo
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