Jim Crace - Continent

We look to the teacher for his explanation. But he is being playful. He has none. He is teasing us, that is all. ‘Soon,’ he says, ‘thanks to Awni’s obsequious petitions, this town, with its oil lamps, its hand pumps, its long nights, its stillness, will be a powered cauldron of heat and light and sound. It will spin with electricity. And it will disappear.’

AWNI HAS closed the solemn inner room of the Rest House restaurant to all but electricians. He will give no explanation. Guests, travellers and those townspeople with time and money now eat and drink at crowded tables on the veranda. It is marvellously successful: stranger jostles with stranger; titbits are exchanged; trays of food are passed from hand to hand to inaccessible tables; whispers are inaudible, everybody shouts.

‘Be patient,’ Awni tells his customers. ‘Soon these inconveniences will be forgotten and my rooms re-opened…’But those on the veranda are not listening. A bat-moth is flapping wildly amongst the tables and customers are trying to read its signs. It pauses for an instant of rest on a plate of pomatoes and is caught. An upturned glass jug — hastily emptied of water over veranda floor and customer shoes — is lowered over the moth’s arched black wings. The eaters and drinkers gather round and wait. For a minute or so, the moth strikes the jug with its wings, and quivers — but then it quietens, spreads itself across the fruit, and plays dead. Now the customers are as equally still and silent. All eyes trace a line along the bat-moth’s body and down its red-tipped tail spike. The spike is pointing at the policeman’s wife. The moth is telling her fortune. She counts the grey smudges along the moth’s still back: seven children! She measures its wing-latch: long life! She peers closely and nervously at the four black wings: the love wing, the money wing, the pleasure wing are perfect. But one hind wing is ragged at the edge, an injury. ‘Bad health,’ says the policeman’s wife. She lifts the glass jug and the bat-moth flaps and spirals once again amongst the tables.

‘Soon these inconveniences will be forgotten,’ repeats Awni, striking at the moth with his hand. But still his customers are not listening. Now the policeman’s wife is standing with her back against the shuttered window of the restaurant (her face lit like an actress by the bending flames of candle and lamps) and is singing.

‘The night is warm,

The night is long;

We are alone, alone, alone.’

There are tears in the electricians’ eyes as they stand at their table on the veranda and raise their glasses to the singer. These are the times that their grandfathers spoke of: music, food and good humour. ‘Soon,’ says Awni, ‘there will be improvements.’

IN DAYLIGHT, the veranda becomes a workplace. The electricians rest their reels of wire against chairs and spread their drills and screws and fittings on tables. They are working on the electrification of the inner room and on its preparation for the opening ceremony. Warden Awni has tacked a notice (hand-decorated and lettered by a calligrapher in the city) on the veranda wall: ‘The Warden of this Rest House, in pursuance of his Honoured Duties towards Residents and Travellers, announces that, to mark the Advent of Electrical Power, Modernizations are in process with all the Urgency required to secure their completion in time for the Visit to these Premises of our Friend and Benefactor, the Minister, and Representatives…’

Who can read any further without first resting, drawing breath and sneaking forward to explore within? None of the townspeople, certainly. Curiosity impels them along the veranda to the open door, through which electricians are passing with the fussing preoccupation of weevils in cake. There, just as Awni has promised, is the box of glass mangoes, dull and disappointing. A wooden crate, the size of four coffins, contains what the children have identified as a small white truck. It is the new icebox. Cartons of cola and beer and fruit drinks await refrigeration. Table lamps with New York skylines as a friezed motif are packed in shredded bark. A liquidizer gleams beside its newly fitted socket. And against the far wall is a square, flat box, as wide as a demon’s cartwheel. ‘This is my centrepiece,’ says Awni, but will say no more. ‘It is the world’s largest petition,’ suggests the teacher. ‘Awni is respectfully requesting the provision of a wetter climate. Next time it rains Awni will take the credit.’ But the children know better. They have climbed on tables and peered into the open top of the box. Inside are a set of aeroplane propellers, cut from the heaviest, the most polished and tiger-grained tarbony, each blade the height of a man.

There are no secrets in this town (‘At least, none that we know of’). So when Awni banishes all the children from the veranda and herds them at the rim of the Rest House land with the youngest and cruellest of the electricians to stand guard, we all leave our homes and our fields to join the crowd and call out, ‘What’s the fuss? What are we missing?’ ‘Keep back,’ says Awni. ‘You’ll find out in good time.’ ‘Find out what? Won’t you tell?’

Awni closes the door from the veranda to the restaurant. All we can hear now is the hammering and chipping and nailing of electricians at work. He stands with his back to the door facing out over the veranda towards the crowd. The youngest and the cruellest electrician can control children with stern words but he cannot hold the crowd. It edges forward until it lines the veranda steps.

‘What’s the fuss, Awni?’

‘There is no fuss. You’re making the fuss. Go home!’

‘What’s going on?’

‘Nothing … improvements…’

‘What improvements? Why can’t the children see? What are they making for you in there? An electric woman?’

Even Awni laughs at this.

‘Listen,’ he says, coming close to us. ‘Be patient. You see these?’ He points to the petitions and lofty announcements which decorate the wall. ‘Now this town is on the map. We have electricity. Soon the road will be made up. Then we will have an airstrip, a cinema, a radio transmitter, a factory, our own abattoir. But first we have electricity … so let us be ambitious, let us have the best electricity in the world. Let the Minister come here and see how we excel with electricity. Then he will nod and say to himself, “Ah, that town has vision. Send engineers, send aeronauts, send projectionists, send radio operators, send industrialists, send slaughtermen. Send money. Turn that town into a city!”’

‘But what are you hiding, Warden Awni?’

‘I will show you,’ he says. We crowd behind him as he throws back the door to the inner room of the restaurant. Inside, the electricians are standing on chairs and tables, their arms lifting and pushing towards the ceiling.

‘Let us see. What is it? What is it?’

A thin girl crawls past Awni into the room and walks into the centre of the circle of electricians. She looks up and then returns to the crowd at the door.

‘They’re fixing the propeller to the ceiling,’ she says. ‘They’re making an aeroplane.’

Awni stands aside for us all to enter and admire. ‘It is my gift to this town,’ he says, ‘to mark the visit of the Minister and the installation of electrical power. It is the largest, the finest fan in the land.’

The last screw of the fitting which attaches Awni’s fan to the ceiling is tightened. An electrician pushes against one of the huge polished blades. It turns resentfully, unpowered, its tip nearly reaching the restaurant walls. Its shadow, cast by the light from the veranda windows, is a huge black moth. ‘Solid wood, solid metal,’ says Awni boastfully. ‘A monumental fan.’