Chapter Three
The Count, riding one of the attractive small Balinese horses, reached the village where he was told that Roxana lived.
On either side of the street were deep ditches and beyond them an unbroken line of high mud walls crowned with thatch and punctuated by tall elaborately carved gateways.
Some of the streets he passed through were dark green tunnels beneath overarching trees.
There were children playing by every roadside as naked as the day they were born and lean dogs leaping at him in and out of gateways.
Fighting c***s in their baskets made a pattern of sound and colour close to the walls.
He had learned that a fighting c**k must never be bored and so they were placed by their owners on the streets so that they could watch the passers-by.
There was red hibiscus and
