The Sheltering Sky - Bowles, Paul [119]
That evening Belqassim dined with her, forcing her to swallow the fatty food after showing her with eloquent gestures that she was undesirably thin. She rebelled; the stuff made her feel ill. But as always it was impossible not to do his bidding. She ate it then, and she ate it the following day and the days that came after that, She grew used to it and no longer questioned it. The nights and days became confused in her mind, because sometimes Belqassim came to bed at the beginning of the afternoon and left her at nightfall, returning in the middle of the night followed by a servant bearing trays of food. Always she remained inside the windowless room, and usually in the bed itself, lying among the disordered piles of white pillows, her mind empty of everything save the memory or anticipation of Belqassim’s presence. When he climbed the steps of the bed, parted the curtains, entered and reclined beside her to begin the slow ritual of removing her garments, the hours she had spent doing nothing took on their full meaning. And when he went away the delicious state of exhaustion and fulfilment persisted for a long time afterward; she lay half awake, bathing in an aura of mindless contentment, a state which she quickly grew to take for granted, and then, like a drug, to find indispensable.
One night he did not come at all. She tossed and sighed so long and so violently that the Negro woman went out and got her a hot glass of something strange and sour. She fell asleep, but in the morning her head was heavy and full of buzzing pain. During the day she ate very little. This time the servants looked at her with sympathy.
In the evening he appeared. As he came in the door and motioned the black woman out, Kit sprang up, bounded across the room and threw herself upon him hysterically. Smiling, he carried her back to the bed, methodically set about taking off her clothing and jewelry. When she lay before him, whiteskinned and filmy-eyed, he bent over and began to feed her candy from between his teeth. Occasionally she would try to catch his lips at the same time that she took the sweets, but he was always too quick for her, and drew his head away. For a long time he teased her this way, until finally she uttered a long, low cry and lay quite still. His eyes shining, he threw the candy aside and covered her inert body with kisses. When she came to, the room was in darkness and he was beside her, sleeping profoundly. After this he sometimes stayed away two days at a time. Then he would tease her endlessly until she screamed and beat him with her fists. But between times she waited for these unbearable interludes with a gnawing excitement that drove every other sensation from her consciousness.
Finally there came a night when for no apparent reason the woman brought her the sour beverage and stood above her looking at her sternly while she drank it. She handed back the glass with a sinking heart. Belqassim would not be there. Nor did he come the next day. Five successive nights she was given the potion, and each time the sour taste seemed stronger. She spent her days in a feverish torpor, sitting up only to eat the food that was given her.
It seemed to her that sometimes she heard the sharp voices of women outside her door; the sound reminded her of the existence of fear, and she was haunted and unhappy for a few minutes, but when the stimulus was removed and she no longer thought she heard the voices, she forgot about it. The sixth night she suddenly decided that Belqassim never would come back. She lay dry-eyed, staring at the canopy over her head, the lines of its draperies dim in the light of the one carbide lamp by the door where the woman sat. Spinning a fantasy as she lay there, she made him come in the door, approach the bed, pull back the curtains-and was astonished