Angels and Insects by A. S. Byatt Read Free Book Online Page A

way up the thirty, forty feet to the canopy, eating its way into the very substance of its host until that dies—and the Sipó perforce crashes down with it. You hear the strange retorts of crashing trees suddenly in the silence, like cracks of gunshot, a terrible and terrifying sound I could not for some months explain to myself. Everything there is inordinate, Miss Alabaster. There is a form of the violet, there—see, here are some—that grow to be a huge tree. And yet
that
is in so many ways the innocent, the unfallen world, the virgin forest, the wild people in the interior who are as unaware of modern ways—modern evils—as our first parents. There are strange analogies. Out there, no woman may touch a snake. They run to ask you to kill one for them. I have killed
many
snakes for frightened women. I have been fetched considerable distances to do so. The connection of the woman and the snake in the garden is made even out there, as though it is indeed part of some universal pattern of symbols, even where Genesis has never been heard of—I talk too much, I bore you, I am afraid.’
    ‘Oh no. I am quite fascinated. I am glad to hear that our Spring world in some sense remains your ideal. I want you to be happy here, Mr Adamson. And I am most intrigued by what you have to say of the women and snakes. Did you live entirely without the company of civilised peoples, Mr Adamson? Among naked savages?’
    ‘Not entirely. I had various friends, of all colours and races, during my stay in various communities. But sometimes, yes, I was the only white guest in tribal villages.’
    ‘Were you not afraid?’
    ‘Oh, often. Upon two occasions I overheard plots to murder me,made by men ignorant of my knowledge of their tongue. But also I met with much kindness and friendship from people not so simple as you might suppose from seeing them.’
    ‘Are they really naked, and painted?’
    ‘Some are. Some are part-clothed. Some wholly clothed. They are greatly given to decorating their skins with vegetable dyes.’
    He was aware of the limpid blue eyes resting on him, and felt that behind her delicate frown she was considering his relations with the naked people. And then felt that his thoughts smutched her, that he was too muddied and dirty to think of her, let alone touch at her secret thoughts from his own secret self. He said, ‘Those floating grasses, even, remind me of the great floating islands of uprooted trees and creepers and bushes that make their way along the great river. I used to compare those to
Paradise Lost
. I read my Milton in my rest-times. I thought of the passage where Paradise is cast loose, after the Deluge.’
    Matty Crompton, without lifting her eyes from the stream surface, provided the quotation.
    ‘then shall this mount
    Of Paradise by might of waves be moved
    Out of his place, pushed by the horned flood,
    With all his verdure spoiled, and trees adrift,
    Down the great river to the opening gulf,
    And there take root an island salt and bare,
    The haunt of seals, and orcs, and sea-mews’ clang.’
    ‘Clever Matty,’ said Eugenia. Matty Crompton did not answer, but made a sudden plunge and twist with her fishing net and brought up a thrashing, furious fish, a stickleback, large, at least for a stickleback, rosy-breasted and olive-backed. She tipped it out of the net into the jar with the other captives, and the little girls crowded round to look.
    The creature gasped for a moment and floated inert. Then it could be seen to gather its forces. It blushed rosier—its chest was the most amazing colour, a fiery pink overlaid, or underlaid, with the olive colour that pervaded the rest of it. It raised its dorsal fin, which became a kind of spiny, draconian ridge, and then it became an almost invisible whirling lash, attacking the other fish, who had nowhere, in their cylindrical prison, to hide. The water boiled. Eugenia began to laugh, and Elaine began to cry. William came to the rescue, pouring fish from