For hour after hour the door did not open. The trackers, unfortunate creatures, were given no respite in honor of the rain; they were out in it, hauling us, and incessantly their cries, in an ambiguous heartfelt tone that might have expressed either ecstasy or agony, or both at once, came to us through the dismal air: “Ayah!…Ayah!…,” while the head tracker wove melodies of an incongruous haunting gaiety in and out, in and out. I lay and watched the cabin door. It remained shut. I was sad. My watch had stopped running; perhaps dampness had got into it. I felt terribly lost without it, as if time no longer passed, as if the hours no longer moved without the little wheel-like thing in my pocket for them to roll along on; it seemed to me that we might be suspended forever in mid-morning, like the mist drops around us in mid-air, while the trackers and the river might pull in vain against each other, so that we would be caught hanging in both time and space.

The door opened, but for a long time no one came out. Then Su-ling came out with a pot of tea.

She came straight across the wet deck to where I lay in the arched cabinway and poured me a cup with scarcely any greeting.

I said, with the helpless appeal of patient to nurse, “Stay! Sit down. Tell me about the river.”

“I cannot,” she said, not looking at me.

“Because of what?”

For answer she held up the teapot and poked its spout toward the cabin door, as if to signal that her husband was just then terribly thirsty for tea. I asked her again to stay. She answered by turning away and starting back toward the door whose openness mocked me now. I called after her cautiously, trying to make my voice loud enough for her to hear but not loud enough to enter where she was about to, begging her, because loneliness and timelessness had, frankly, made a beggar of me, to come back when she could and talk with me. She made no response, but passed through the open door, and turned it into a closed door, while I became absurdly angry at the junk’s master and hers. Oh, I hated him.