The Rains Came by Louis Bromfield

Author:Louis Bromfield [Bromfield, Louis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Novela, Otros
Publisher: ePubLibre
Published: 1937-09-30T16:00:00+00:00

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Part III

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ON THE frail wooden balcony which ran round the second floor of Mr. Bannerjee’s house Edwina and Ransome awaited the swift Indian sunrise. From there, through openings in the masses of peepul and banyan trees, they had a view of that part of the flooded burning town which lay in the low ground between them and the Great Palace. Most of the fires had been drowned quickly by the torrents of rain or by the flood itself, but three or four of the more important buildings—what Ransome judged to be Great Market, the Courts of Justice and the Central Administration offices—still burned stubbornly, throwing up sudden jets of fire which cast on the thick clouds overhead the sullen menacing reflection of flames. The strange sound of a whole city wailing with a single voice was gone presently, and there was only silence save for an occasional distant solitary cry of anguish and chill terror, like the howls of the jackals when they came out of the jungle in the evening to hunt.

Once he said, “I’ll fetch you a shawl. It’s silly standing there dressed as you are. You’ll be soaked. You don’t know what this monsoon rain is like. Roofs mean nothing. The dampness penetrates everywhere.” He spoke quite simply as if, instead of watching the death of a great city, they were watching a cinema, but the sound of his own voice startled him a little, as if there was something of bad taste in his speaking at all.

He found a Kashmiri shawl that was used as a covering for one of the Indian beds, and when he had wrapped it round her shoulders, over the white dress and all the jewels, they were silent again, watching. At moments when the flames of one building or another leapt high in the air, the reflected light from the clouds illumined the water, revealing there all sorts of nasty things floating just beneath the surface.

Tom thought, “Tomorrow it will begin to stink. Tomorrow will be horrible, and the day after, and the day after . . . with all this heat and rain.” But the jackals would feed well and the vultures and the crocodiles, risen now in the flood out of the thick smelly mud of the river. They could swim anywhere now, into the very heart of the town.

Then the wind, rising, tore apart the clouds for a little while, and in the velvety blackness of the open sky the stars appeared again, the Indian stars that were different from stars elsewhere, more brilliant than ever now in the clean-washed air. But in a little while the stars disappeared again and there was only the low roof of blood-red clouds. Inside the house the wailing of Mr. Bannerjee began once more, a wailing in which there was the terror of a hurt animal.

Edwina said, “I wish that nasty little man would stop making such a noise. That’s worse than everything else.

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