Island

Young Murugan evidently had his reasons for not wanting it to be known that he had been in Rendang. Boys will be boys. Boys will even be girls.

When you laugh like that," he remarked in a tone of scientific detachment, "your face becomes curiously ugly."

Taken aback, Will tried to cover his embarrassment with a piece of facetiousness. "It's always ugly," he said.

the lights, this time, were green, and for ten hideous seconds Babs's rosy alcove became a womb of mud and, on the bed, Babs herself was corpse-colored, a cadaver galvanized into posthumous epilepsy.

"Here and now, boys," shouted the bird.

But Will Farnaby was neither here nor now.

So what's all the fuss about?" the child inquired.

There was no malice or irony in her tone, not the slightest implication of blame. She was just asking a simple, straightforward question that called for a simple, straightforward answer. Yes, what was all the fuss about? The snake hadn't bitten him; he hadn't broken his neck. And anyhow it had all happened yesterday.

And he had ended by promising Will a handsome bonus if his efforts should be crowned with success. Enough to give him a full year of freedom. “No more reporting. Nothing but High Art, Art, A-ART.”

“You’re mistaken. He’s a military dictator. That means there’s death in the offing. And death is always news. Even the remote smell of death is news.” He laughed. “That’s why I was told to drop in on my way back from China.”

Young Murugan evidently had his reasons for not wanting it to be known that he had been in Rendang. Boys will be boys. Boys will even be girls.

“But why did they teach him those things? Why ‘Attention’? Why ‘Here and now’?”

“Well…” She searched for the right words in which to explain the self-evident to this strange imbecile. “That’s what you always forget, isn’t it? I mean, you forget to pay attention to what’s happening. And that’s the same as not being here and now.”

“For God’s sake,” he implored.

“God?” the child repeated with sudden interest. “Which god?” she asked. “There are such a lot of them.”

“Any damned god you like,” he answered impatiently.

“I don’t really like any of them,” she answered. “I like the Compassionate One.”