The English Patient – Sometime a Fire (excerpt)

The Sikh sets up a tent in the far reaches of the garden, where Hana thinks lavender was
once grown. She has found dry leaves in that area which she has rolled in her fingers and
identified. Now and then after a rain, she recognizes the perfume of it.
At first, he will not come into the house at all. He walks past on some duty or other to do
with the dismantling of mines. Always courteous. A little nod of his head. Hana sees him wash at
a basin of collected rainwater, placed formally on top of a sundial. The garden tap, used in
previous times for the seedbeds, is now dry. She sees his shirtless brown body as he tosses water
over himself like a bird using its wing. During the day she notices mostly his arms in the short-
sleeved army shirt and the rifle which is always with him, even though battles seem now to be
over for them.
He has various postures with the gun - half-staff, half a crook for his elbows when it is
over his shoulders. He will turn, suddenly realizing she is watching him. He is a survivor of his
fears, will step around anything suspicious, acknowledging her look in this panorama as if
claiming he can deal with it all.
He is a relief to her in his self-sufficiency, to all of them in the house, though Caravaggio
grumbles at the sapper’s continuous humming of Western songs he has learned for himself in
the last three years of the war. The other sapper, who had arrived with him in the rainstorm,
Hardy he was called, is billeted elsewhere, nearer the town, though she has seen them working
together, entering a garden with their wands of gadgetry to clear mines.
The dog has stuck by Caravaggio. The young soldier, who will run and leap with the dog
along the path, refuses to give it food of any kind, feeling it should survive on its own. If he finds
food, he eats it himself. His courtesy goes only so far. Some nights he sleeps on the parapet that
overlooks the valley, crawling into his tent only if it rains.
He, for his part, witnesses Caravaggio’s wanderings at night. On two occasions, the
sapper trails Caravaggio at a distance. But two days later Caravaggio stops him and says, Don’t
follow me again. He begins to deny it, but the older man puts his hand across his lying face and
quiets him. So the soldier knows Caravaggio was aware of him two nights before. In any case,
the trailing was simply a remnant of a habit he had been taught during the war. Just as even now
he desires to aim his rifle and fire and hit some target precisely. Again and again he aims at a
nose on a statue or one of the brown hawks veering across the sky of the valley.
He is still very much a youth. He wolfs down food, jumps up to clear away his plate,
allowing himself half an hour for lunch.
She has watched him at work, careful and timeless as a cat, in the orchard and within the
overgrown garden that rises behind the house. She notices the darker brown skin of his wrist,
which slides freely within the bangle that clinks sometimes when he drinks a cup of tea in front
of her. He never speaks about the danger that comes with his kind of searching. Now and then an
explosion brings her and Caravaggio quickly out of the house, her heart taut from the muffled
blast. She runs out or runs to a window seeing Caravaggio too in the corner of her vision, and
they will see the sapper waving lazily towards the house, not even turning around from the herb
terrace.
Once Caravaggio entered the library and saw the sapper up by the ceiling, against the
trompe l’oeil – only Caravaggio would walk into a room and look up into the high corners to see
if he was alone – and the young soldier, his eyes not leaving their focus, put out his palm and
snapped his fingers, halting Caravaggio in his entrance, a warning to leave the room for safety as
he unthreaded and cut a fuze wire he had traced to that corner, hidden above the valance.
He is always humming or whistling. ‘Who is whistling?’ asks the English patient one
night, having not met or even seen the newcomer. Always singing to himself as he lies upon the
parapet looking up at a shift of clouds.
When he steps into the seemingly empty villa, he is noisy. He is the only one of them
who has remained in uniform. Immaculate, buckles shined, the sapper appears out of his tent, his
turban symmetrically layered, the boots clean and banging into the wood or stone floors of the
house. On a dime, he turns from a problem he is working on and breaks into laughter. He seems
unconsciously in love with his body, with his physicalness, bending over to pick up a slice of
bread, his knuckles brushing the grass, even twirling the rifle absent-mindedly like a huge mace
as he walks along the path of cypresses to meet the other sappers in the village.
He seems casually content with this small group in the villa, some kind of loose star on
the edge of their system. This is like a holiday for him after the war of mud and rivers and
bridges. He enters the house only when invited in, just a tentative visitor, the way he had done
that first night when he had followed the faltering sound of Hana’s piano and come up the
cypress-lined path and stepped into the library.
He had approached the villa on that night of the storm not out of curiosity about the
music but because of a danger to the piano player. The retreating army often left pencil mines
within musical instruments.

I Define the following words and expressions.

 To dismantle
 Sundial
 To hum
 To trail
 To veer

II Match the words to their definitions.

Sikh lodge (soldiers) in a particular place, especially a civilian's house
or other nonmilitary facility
Grumble a low protective wall along the edge of a roof, bridge, or balcony
Sapper member of a monotheistic and panentheistic religion that
originated in the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent
Parapet complain about something in a bad-tempered way.
Billet a soldier responsible for tasks such as building and repairing roads
and bridges, laying and clearing mines

III True or false?

Taut - tightly drawn, tense
Muffled – (of sound) loud
Trompe l’oeil - a painting or design intended to create a visual illusion
Fuze - a mechanical or electrical device on a bomb that causes it to explode
Immaculate – not mature enough
On a dime - used to refer to a maneuver that can be performed within a small area or short
distance
Mace - a heavy spiked club
Faltering - an overwhelming flood, torrent

IV Translate the following phrases and sentences into Serbian.

 He has various postures with the gun - half-staff, half a crook for his elbows when it is
over his shoulders.
 He is a relief to her in his self-sufficiency.
 entering a garden with their wands of gadgetry to clear mines
 The trailing was simply a remnant of a habit he had been taught during the war.
 He wolfs down food.
 looking up at a shift of clouds
 on a dime
 He seems casually content with this small group in the villa, some kind of loose star on
the edge of their system.

V Answer the questions in your own words.

 Who is Kip?
 Who does the Sikh befriend soon after his arrival at the villa?
 What are Hana’s impressions of Kip?
 How much is the patient aware of the sapper?
 Explain the following quote on Caravaggio: ‘only Caravaggio would walk into a room
and look up into the high corners to see if he was alone’.
 How does Kip fit with the villa group?
 When he first arrives at the villa, where does the young Sikh worry a bomb has been
hidden?