The Scorpion God: Three Short Novels by William Golding

malachite that lay on her eyelids and matted her eyelashes into necessary shade. So she stared sullenly at the water; and if her expression was to be read, it was as one of shame, brazened out.
    The Head Man stood before her. He held his chin in his right hand and rested his right elbow in the palm of his left. He was smiling still, but his smile was tight.
    Pretty Flower lowered her chin and stared at the pavement.
    “You see—I failed. I know He’s angry with me. All the time I know it.”
    “With me too. With all of us.”
    “I shall never, never forgive myself.”
    The Head Man stirred. His smile became wry.
    “We may none of us have the time.”
    She looked up, startled. Her bosom went in and out.
    “You mean he’ll drown us all?”
    “There is a—strong possibility. That is why I have ventured to thrust myself on you. I said there is little time. None the less, we who are responsible for the people must do what can be done. We must take thought. You see, Pretty Flower—in this emergency I may call you Pretty Flower, may I not?”
    “Anything.”
    “What distinguishes man from the rest of creation?”
    “I don’t know!”
    “His capacity to look at facts—and draw from them a conclusion.”
    He began to pace to and fro on the terrace, hands clasped behind his back.
    “First,” he said, “we must establish the facts.”
    “What facts?”
    “Who kept the sky up? Mm?”
    “Well—He did.”
    “Who, year after year in His—paternal generosity—made the river rise?”
    “He did, of course.”
    “ This time—is there another God yet?”
    “No,” said Pretty Flower heavily. “Not yet.”
    “Therefore —who makes the river rise now?”
    “He does. I thought——”
    The Head Man held up one finger.
    “Step by step. Yes. He does. We have established the first fact. Now for the second. How high was the water when He entered His Motionless Now?”
    “At the Notch Of Excellent Eating.”
    “Which was after the occasion when you say you failed. But at that time He must have been pleased. You see?”
    “But——”
    “Your woman’s heart must not struggle against the granite durability of rational demonstration.”
    Her eyes widened.
    “What does that mean?”
    The Head Man meditated for a moment.
    “The words are difficult admittedly; but they mean that I am right and you are wrong.”
    She straightened in the seat and smiled a little.
    “Partly, perhaps.”
    “Nevertheless, do not be too happy, Pretty Flower—not too happy!”
    “There is no fear of that.”
    “The fact, then. Something angered Him after he entered the House of Life.”
    He paused, and resumed his pacing. Then, at the point of a turn, he stopped and faced her.
    “They have said—and it would be false modesty to deny it—that all knowledge is my province. What a man can know, I know.”
    She looked back at him under her heavy fringe of lashes. A smile moved only one corner of her mouth.
    “You know about me, too?”
    “I know that you have been in this deep seclusion. Now these things have to be said, otherwise we cannot deal with them. His anger concerns a person in whom—unconsciously perhaps—you take a deep interest. There. I have said it.”
    For a moment her face was dusky with blood; but the smile stayed where it was.
    “Again, I don’t know what you mean.”
    “I refer, of course, to the Liar.”
    The blush came and went but her eyes never left him. He continued in the same cool voice.
    “It is necessary, Pretty Flower. We cannot afford the comfort of self-deceit. There is nothing you cannot tell me.”
    Suddenly she buried her face in her hands.
    “Wrong upon wrong. Vice so ingrained, wickedness so deep, so dirty——”
    “Poor child, poor, poor child!”
    “Monstrous thoughts and indescribable——”
    He was close to her. He spoke gently.
    “Leave these thoughts where they are and they fester. Take them out and—they are gone. Come, my dear. Let us be two humble souls, hand-in-hand,