“No, please,” stammered the prince. “Never mind that. We came for the carnival. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb you. Please continue with your . . .” He broke off, embarrassed, and stepped back through the doorway and out into the passage. From the other room there came a yell of pain, and he could see Thanakar rising from the bed, holding his finger.

“Ah,” he cried. “She bit me. Like a wild animal.” And then he smiled.

* * *

“They hate us,” remarked Abu sadly, later, as they walked down to the docks.

“They have their reasons.”

“But we are good men, aren’t we? We do our best. We treat them kindly.”

“And if we were bad men and treated them cruelly, what defense could they have? That’s the point.

What law restrains us? I have seen my own father knock a servant’s teeth out with his fist.”

“He must have been provoked.”

“He was not provoked at all,” exclaimed Thanakar, irritated by his friend’s lack of imagination. “He was a cruel man. Maybe not always, but after a lifetime in the army. It’s the life we lead. You know that for every two like us there are twenty like him. They think God himself gave them their tattoos.”

“Then I’m thankful to be unfit for military service. You should be too.”

“I should be. Do you know where we’re going?”

“I’m following you.”

They were walking arm in arm, because they had walked too far for the doctor’s bad leg. He stopped for a moment under a streetlamp in the small deserted street, to take his weight off it, to lean on Abu’s shoulder. Looking up into his face, he thought he saw some resemblance there to the prince’s sister.

Seeing her fifteen days before, at the commissar’s dinner, he was surprised that brother and sister could be so unalike. Under the streetlamp, he took pleasure in reconstructing the memory of her features from her brother’s face. Prince Abu was balding, fat, sweet, ineffectual, sweating heavily even in the cold night, his eyes bright and rebellious under folds of unhealthy skin, as if they were held prisoner in his face.

Again, his lips were fat, but under them his teeth were white and delicate, like pearls hidden in a flapping purse.

In his sister, it was as if the barriers of flesh were stripped away, and Thanakar could imagine that their skulls would look the same. Their teeth, their eyes were similar.

“Why are you looking at me?” asked Abu, smiling.

“Do you mind if we wait here for a minute?”

“If you like.”

In a way, her eyes were like her husband’s too. Perhaps that’s what bound the three of them together in that strange house, the lack of harmony between their faces and their eyes. She was a perfect example of her class, docile and submissive. It was part of the obligation of her name always to speak pleasantly. But even though by law and custom she was forbidden ever to make any bitter judgment or any harsh remark, yet her eyes complained. The brightness, the bitterness in them combined with the perfection of her manners to make a tension that seemed sexual.