The man watching was aware of Japanese grasses beneath his boots-of earth and gravel and of stunted shrubbery trembling nearby.
The little ship, sailing to its appointments, passed among islands all glorious with morning, on a blue course channelled by mine- sweepers. Men and women are said to grow young again in death, but Gardiner, his snappers removed, his slack jaw bound up forever, had appeared immeasurably withered on the night of his death. They stopped the jeep on a spur, jumping down among tough grasses to look out at sea and islands and to watch, some moments, the small white departing ship, elderly, simple, and shapely, that would have carried Gardiner to Hong Kong on the first leg of his deleted journey. In the crystal morning, Leith was driving with Talbot into green hills: discarding the exploded dockland, winding around ledges of emerald rice. Shirley Hazzard (1931-2016) is the author, most recently, of Greene on Capri, a memoir of Graham Greene, and several works of fiction, including The Evening of the Holiday, The Bay of Noon, and The Transit of Venus, winner of the 1981 National Book Critics Circle Award. The following is an excerpt from the novel by Shirley Hazzard that won the National Book Award.
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