A Reed Shaken by the Wind by Gavin Maxwell Read Free Book Online Page A

policy to cover these houses against fire.
    In fact the gale that night did start a fire in a neighbouring village, and left half its inhabitants homeless; one of the greatest disasters, other than death or disease, that can afflict the marsh people; for they may have to travel great distances to replace the high reeds from which the houses are built, and to buy at the time of their greatest poverty the new reed matting with which to cover them.
    This was my first night in a village house, and but for one incident it was typical enough of the pattern of all those thatfollowed it. Sometime before midnight Thesiger said that we were ready to sleep, and the assembled company of guests began to file out of the house. Our host scattered the ashes of the fire, and our canoe boys spread out blankets on the floor about it and disposed our effects with the extreme precaution against robbery that is customary in the marshes. Jacket and trousers formed the pillow, and Sabeti, who had assumed responsibility for me, stowed my every possession beneath my sleeping bag—field-glasses, camera, gun—until I felt like a Gulliver reclining on a Lilliput mountain range. Then began the massage that is one of the strangest, and at times most painful, customs of marsh society. It is a deep kneading massage that seems to leave no muscle unexplored, and to the uninitiated it is at first extremely uncomfortable. The people themselves have the profoundest belief in its therapeutic value, but its practice is a purely social custom, a gesture of goodwill and friendship that may be extended to convey various shades of meaning. While it is practically a ritual before retiring, it may be employed at any time or in any place, and one’s immediate neighbour as one sits among a crowd of guests in a house or stands in a throng out of doors may start work upon biceps or thigh as casually and thoughtlessly as he would play with the string of beads that is his inseparable toy.
    Sabeti’s massage was agonising on the limbs and ticklish on the torso; I squirmed under it for a quarter of an hour before I felt that good manners would permit me to say that it was enough. Thesiger, I noticed, was submitting to the combined mauling of Amara and Hassan with the greatest apparent equanimity. At last it was over, and the lantern was extinguished, and under the cover of the darkness I surreptitiously removed my gun and field-glasses from their excruciating position below my spine. The gun I laid in the few inches between me and the wall; I was barricaded in by the sleeping bodies of Sabeti, Hassan and Kathia, and to me it seemed secure enough from any thief in the night. I twinedthe strap of my field-glasses through the fingers of my left hand and went to sleep.
    I sleep very lightly, and I woke with a start without knowing what had awoken me. It was quite dark, and there were gentle snores all round me, and not so gentle snores from Sabeti, whose shaven head was touching mine, as he shared my pillow with his feet in the opposite direction. I could see nothing at all but the paler slit of night sky at the door, and I could hear nothing else but the rattle and batter of the gale in the reeds of the house. I was about to settle down again when I felt a gentle exploratory tug on the strap of the field-glasses between my fingers. I moved my right hand over to the strap, and felt gently up it. I touched a hand, and instinctively I grabbed it; then, even as I did so, I realised that the fellow to it might be holding a knife, and as the fingers wrenched back out of mine I let go. For an instant the paler slit of the door was darkened as the visitor slipped out. I put my hand out in the dark and felt for my gun where I had laid it a few inches from my side and there was nothing there. I realised that my sybaritic attitude towards sleeping with a gun under my spine would be exposed, and my subterfuge revealed, but I felt that there was nothing for it but to wake Sabeti. I fished