Darkness Visible by William Golding Page A

down in black by his twigs and pot and matchboxes he looked silly and a naughty boy kicked his pot over and all the grown-ups cried out “Oh no! You little sod! That’s reely naughty! You might have broke it!”
    Then, as Matty gathered his matchboxes and twigs and pot together, everyone drifted away. Matty went away too, watched absently by a park-keeper.
    The next day, Matty had moved out to where the twigs would not be damp from the water that the automatic jets sprinkled on the grass lawns by the State House. He found a kerb near the central parking lots, a kind of nonplace with rank grass andseeding flowers, rank under the vertical sun. Here it took him a little longer to gather a group. In fact he was an hour at his building and might have got his matchboxes all vertically arranged the way any game of patience will come out at last given enough time but there was a little wind and he could never get more than eight or nine on top of the other before they fell over. However, at last the children came and stopped and then the adults and he got his attention and his laughter and a naughty boy and “Oh no, the wicked little sod!” So then he was able to lay his twigs and put the pot on top and strike a match and light the twigs and he got more laughter and then applause as if he was a clown who had suddenly done something clever; and through the laughter and the applause you could hear the crackling of the twigs under the pot and the twigs blazed and grass blazed and the flower seeds went bang, bang, bang and a great flame licked across the wasteland and there were shrieks and screams and people beating each other out and the children and people scattering and the screech of brakes as they ran into the road and the crash as cars shunted each other and cries and curses.
     
    “You know,” said the secretary, “you mustn’t do it.”
    The secretary had a thatch of silver hair that was as carefully arranged, as carefully wrought as a silver vessel. He had the same accent, Matty could hear, as old Mr Pedigree had had all those years ago. He spoke mildly.
    “Will you promise me not to do it again?”
    Matty said nothing. The secretary leafed through some papers.
    “Mrs Robora, Mrs Bowery, Mrs Cruden, Miss Borrowdale, Mr Levinsky, Mr Wyman, Mr Mendoza, Mr Buonarotti—an artist do you think?—You see when you singe as many people as that—and they are very, very angry—oh no! You really must not do it again!”
    He put the paper down, laid a silver pencil on it and looked across at Matty.
    “You’re wrong, you know. I believe your sort of person always has been. No, I don’t mean in the, the content of the message. We know the state of things, the dangers, the folly of taking a meteorological gamble; but we are elected you see. No. You are wrong in supposing that people can’t read your message, translate your language. Of course we can. The irony is—the irony alwayswas—that predictions of calamity have always been understood by the informed, the educated. They have not been understood by the very people who suffer most from them—the humble and meek—in fact, the ignorant who are helpless. Do you see? All Pharaoh’s army—and earlier than that the firstborn of all those ignorant fellahin—”
    He got up and went to the window. He stood looking out of it, his hands clasped behind his back.
    “The whirlwind won’t fall on government. Trust me. Neither will the bomb.”
    Still Matty said nothing.
    “What part of England do you come from? The south, surely. London? I think you would be wise to return to your own country. I can understand that you won’t stop what you are doing. They never do. Yes. You had better go back. After all—” and he swung round suddenly—“that place needs your language more than this one.”
    “I want to go back.”
    The secretary sank easily into his chair.
    “I’m so pleased! You are not really—You know, we felt what with that most unfortunate episode with the