The Crescent Moon

by Francis Brett Young

A length of white-washed stoep supported on slender pillars faced her, and from the stoep a flight of wide steps descended to the sandy path over which she had climbed out of the forest. There was no fence or boma to mark the transition from the desert to the sown; so that the House of the Moon was really set like any Waluguru village in a sudden clearing of the forest; and this seemed strange to Eva, for she had imagined that the house of Godovius would be more in keeping with his wealth and power. She had expected to find a garden carefully tended, an oasis of urbanity and fragrance. Fragrance indeed there was. The wave of perfume which had met her emerging from the forest path eddied gently in the garden space about the open cups of many moon-pale blossoms, blooms of the white moon-flower from which the scent named frangipani is distilled: and although she was happily unaware of this perfume’s associations, Eva felt that she hated it, that its cloying sweetness robbed the air of life. Very pale and ghostly the flowers hung there in the faint moonlight, in so great a congregation that one was aware of their life, and thought of them as verily living creatures, silent only because they were entranced with their own sweetness. In the gloom of the long verandah no light shone. The windows within were unlighted. The long house seemed as empty as the building of circular stone which she had passed below.

Eva mounted the steps. Over the floor of white stone a big lizard moved noiselessly. There was a fluttering sound in the masses of bougainvillea above the porch, a clapping of wings, and a little flight of doves fluttered out above the moon-flower blossoms and vanished into the forest. “This place is full of doves,” she thought. It was so quiet that she began to wonder if they were the only tenants.

She remembered that in Africa people do not wait for an invitation to enter the houses of their friends, nor for servants to announce their coming. No doubt Godovius would have expected her to open the door and walk into the house, and yet she hardly liked to do this, for the whole place seemed to be sleeping under some spell which it might be rash to break. For a moment she stood waiting on the threshold. It was a double door massively made, with panels of fine mosquito netting instead of glass. Inside it she imagined there must be a wide flagged passage, smelling of damp. She saw that the pillars supporting the lintel were of a different kind of stone from that of which the rest of the house was built: they were smooth, and their capitals were carved into the shape of the head of some bird of prey with hooked beak and staring eyes. While she hesitated she remembered the pitiful room of James, down at the mission, and the last that she had seen of James himself, lying on his back, with his mouth open, breathing stertorously, and clutching at his head with unconscious hands . . . thin, incapable hands.

She tried to open the door, and found it locked. So this was the end of her adventure. . . . An end so pathetic to the courage which she had screwed up that she wouldn’t accept it. She beat upon the door with the palms of her hands.

A light appeared. Through the mosquito gauze she saw a small figure approaching, swathed in a white cloth and carrying a blizzard lamp. She thought it was that of a child, but a hand fumbled with the key in the lock and she saw that the lantern-bearer was an old and shrivelled woman who stared at her but did not speak.

Eva stammered over her Swahili. Was this the house of Godovius? . . . Was the bwana in?

The old woman only stared. Then, she remembered the name that she had been wanting—Sakharani. She repeated her question in that form. The old woman nodded. She opened wide her mouth and pointed with her finger. Eva saw a collection of hideous teeth and a purple stump that once had been a tongue. It was very horrible. And then the creature led her along the passage and pushed open the door of a long, low room. On the open hearth a wood fire flickered, from which she carried a light to a copper lamp that swung from the ceiling. When this was done she shuffled out of the room. The hanging lamp with its reflectors of copper shed a mellow light, and when Eva’s first bewilderment was past she began to appreciate the embellishments of Godovius’s room. It resembled no room which she had ever seen before: nor, for that matter, was it in the least like what she had imagined the room of Godovius would be. To begin with, the floor was covered with a soft carpet in the pattern of which the lamplight illumined warm colours. On either side of the fireplace an immense divan upholstered in crimson lay. One of them was half covered with a barbarous kaross of leopard skins, the other piled deep with cushions of silk. The door by which she had entered was covered by a portière of heavy velvet of the same crimson colour with a wide hem of tarnished gold. Everywhere there were cushions, big, soft cushions. And there were no books. The air of the room seemed in keeping with its furniture, for even here the cloying scent of the moon-flowers had penetrated. Eva had an impulse to open the window, or at any rate to draw the crimson curtains; but the atmosphere of the place suggested that liberties must not be taken with it. She wondered why on earth they had lit a fire . . .

By this time, her eyes being more accustomed to the mild light, she began to regard the room in greater detail. She saw that the mantelpiece above the fireplace had been made out of the same smooth soapstone which she had noticed in the lintel of the outer door, and that the ends of the beams were carved with the same conventional figure of a bird’s head. On the mantelpiece itself stood other pieces of soapstone carving: two small, quern-shaped cylinders chased with rings of rosettes; three smaller and more elementary versions of the original bird pattern. She supposed that they were curios of the country, but was rather puzzled to find the one symbol so often repeated. She decided that she would ask James about them. From these she passed to an examination of the pictures, in heavy frames of gold, which decorated the walls. They were not easily seen; for the copper reflector of the hanging lamp cast its rays downwards, leaving a colder light for the upper part of the room. The first that she came to was a painting in oils of the bust and shoulders of a Masai girl, her head thrown back, her lips smiling and eyes closed. From her ears hung crescent-shaped ornaments of gold, and a big golden crescent was bound across her forehead: a clever painting, with the suggestion of a shimmer of moonlight on her smooth shoulders. Eva wondered why her eyes were closed, and why she smiled. Would Godovius never come? . . .

On the opposite wall hung a large framed photograph. Eva stood on tiptoe to examine it. When she saw what it was, she was overwhelmed with a sudden and awful feeling of shame. She had never felt so ashamed in her life. She found herself betrayed into a funny childish gesture: she put her hands to her eyes. “Now I can never look at him again,” she thought. . . . “Oh, dear, how terrible . . .”

But the Godovius of the picture was obviously not ashamed. He was younger than the Godovius that she knew: the face smooth and unlined, the full lips smiling. In this presentation, despite the German colonial uniform of white duck which he wore, one could not help seeing that he was of Jewish extraction. One hand clasped the hilt of his sword, the other arm was linked through that of a woman, a white woman with a stolid, eminently Teuton face. And the woman was naked . . . stark naked. To any English eyes the photograph would have come as a shock. And Eva was a simple country girl, who knew no more of life than the little shop at Far Forest had shown her. She couldn’t get over it. She sat down among the downy cushions on the scarlet settee and blushed. She thought: “I must go. I can’t stay in this dreadful house. I should die if I met him now. I can’t. . . . I can’t.”