Countenance

I am now around three-quarters of the way through War and Peace, the gargantuan endeavour I began during my journey to Mozambique back in February. It is what one could best term a ‘slog’. It is somewhat gripping in places, but also incredibly laboriously written. Most of Tolstoy’s sentences go something like…

‘The orderly, who with his fine, straight nose, would have appeared handsome were it not for his thin, twitching, compressed lips, sunken and fixed eyes and pale, sallow countenance…’

…when, given that everyone is described as having pale skin and sunken eyes (wartime in nineteenth century Russia and no dietary supplements), he could just say…

‘The orderly…’

I suppose one does not start War and Peace looking for efficiency, so I will persevere to the end.

I always enjoy Maputo’s streets, especially this stretch near one of the hospitals where traders flog various uniforms – mostly for domestic workers – from coat hangers attached to trees.