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By Martin Cruz Smith
(Introducing a scene and characters)
A police boat directed a light toward tar-covered pilings and water, turning a black scene white. Havana was invisible across the bay, except for a single line of lamps along the seawall. Stars rode high, anchor lights rode low, otherwise the harbor was a still pool in the night.
Soda cans, crab pots, fishing floats, mattresses, Styrofoam bearded with algae shifted as an investigation team of the Policía Nacional de la Revolución took flash shots. Arkady waited in a cashmere overcoat with a Captain Arcos, a barrel-chested little man who looked ironed into military fatigues, and his Sergeant Luna, large, black and angular. Detective Osorio was a small brown woman in PNR blue; she gave Arkady a studied glare.
(Description as metaphor; animate objects)
When I stepped away from the window the evening clouds were still there. They seemed to be waiting. Should I tell them a story too? I promised it. But they didn't even hear me. To make myself understood and to diminish the distance between us, I called out: "I am an evening cloud too." They stopped still, undoubtedly taking a good look at me. Then they stretched toward me their fine, transparent rosy wings. That is how evening clouds greet each other. They had recognized me.
(Describing a scene; limited POV that characterizes the narrator)
Above the entrance to the main hall - the Salon Bordurin-Renaudas - someone had hung, undoubtedly only a little while ago, a large canvas which I did not recognize. It was signed by Richard Severand and entitled "The Bachelor's Death," It was a gift of the state.
Naked to the waist, his body a little green, like that of a dead man, the bachelor was lying on an unmade bed. The disorder of sheets and blankets attested to a long death agony.
(Description in third person omniscient, as is typical of science fiction)
Basilica was not in sight yet, but Elemak knew the road. Knew it as well as he knew the skin of his own face in the mirror, every mole of the surface, every peak or declivity that snatched at the razor and bled. He knew the shadows of every hour of the day, where water might be waiting after a rain, where robbers might hide.
(Description in first person; describes the scene and, at the same time, characterizes the speaker)
She turned her face to profile and her skin, from copper to red, suddenly became sad. . . . And she said, still by the lamp, that she had spent the whole afternoon on all fours, washing the tiles and saying: "Eyes of a blue dog," until people gathered at the door and said she was crazy. Now when she finished speaking, I remained in the corner, sitting, rocking in the chair. . . . Her tightened teeth gleamed over the flame. . . . From the other side of the lamp she asked for a cigarette. The butt had disappeared between my fingers. I had forgotten that I was smoking.
(Description in the form of a scanning eye or camera that sees only brief impression of the scene)
They took her down to Constitution Station one windy morning, small
flags blowing from the pushcarts in the plaza, a piece of pie in the
railroad station restaurant, and the enormous entrance to platform 14.
Between Ines and her mother they kissed her so much that her face
felt like it'd been walked on, soft and smelly, rouge and Coty powder,
wet around the mouth, a squeamish feeling of filth that the wind
eradicated with one large smack.
Chapter One
As I rode back across the high Transvaal plateau from our jaunt in the Wood Bush I was, I remember, in contented mood. The journey had been an indulgence, I would not deny it, but I had been weary from too many months of hard labour, and the landscape in these parts was of a sweetness that recalled my Scottish glens and soothed my spirit. Our task had been to look into certain of the less technical aspects of land settlement in that distant and potentially fertile region. My responsibilities committed me to spend many hours in the saddle but I welcomed my release from an earlier role in this country, where I had had to suffer the misery of Boer mothers in the camps to which their menfolk's recalcitrance had consigned them. With that behind, I could respond in good faith to the invigorating challenge of this strange and bewitching country. I had picked up a little of the Boer language, the taal, and I flattered myself that as a Scot, a Presbyterian and a countryman, I was not too far from being a kinsman of these infuriating yet honest and companionable people; as one old farmer in Krugersdorp had lately conceded to me, while he proffered his mampoer brandy, I scarcely qualified as an Engelsman.
There were moments when I could imagine how in other circumstances my loyalties might have been strained. Now that Kruger and his gang were out of it -- the old rogue safely in European exile where his great age and declining health would certainly bury him -- the last battle of the defeated Boer had a tragic appeal. Perhaps we might have given more credence to the more liberal elements in the Transvaal, to Joubert, for instance, and Louis Botha. Perhaps such men, with others, like Smuts, might yet signal us the way ahead.
These were my traitorous thoughts, provoked by youthful energy and good spirits, as my wagon clattered across the stony tracks of the northern Transvaal. I had left the crags and virgin forest of the Berg far behind me by now and the mules made good speed because the dust of the open plateau was kept down by the evening showers of the high summer. I had left myself no space to dawdle, for Lord Milner himself had specified that I was to be returned to Sunnyside, our mansion headquarters to the north of Johannesburg, in time for the arrival of the Chamberlains when, he was kind enough to intimate, I could expect to be introduced to my master. That, he seemed to suggest, might be no bad idea, which I took to mean that I had now been on his staff for nearly eighteen months and, as we all knew the path of reconciliation and reconstruction would be a long one, we should consider -- in the great man's company -- whether or not my own career need delay me much longer in southern climes. It was not my business to speculate whether Lord Milner might have similar thoughts on his mind. He had already carried immense burdens and those of us in intimate daily contact with him were aware of the rumours that he was anxious to retire. No doubt these matters were to feature in their weeks in Sunnyside.
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