The Sheltering Sky - Bowles, Paul [34]
“I guess they must have. But thanks anyway.” Tunner laughed.
“You don’t mind changing, do you?”
“Why? Is the other room so bad? No, I don’t mind. It just seems like a lot of damned nonsense for just a day. No?”
“Maybe it’ll be more than a day. Anyway, I’d like Kit to be here across from me.”
“Of course. Of course. Better let her know too, though. She’s probably in the other room there in all innocence, thinking it’s the best in the hotel.”
“It’s not a bad room. It’s just on the back, that’s all. It was all they had yesterday when I reserved them.”
“Righto. We’ll get one of these monkeys to make the shift for us.”
At lunch the three were reunited. Kit was nervous; she talked steadily, mainly about post-war European politics. The food was bad, so that none of them was in a very pleasant humor.
“Europe has destroyed the whole world,” said Port.
“Should I be thankful to it and sorry for it? I hope the whole place gets wiped off the map.” He wanted to cut short the discussion, to get Kit aside and talk with her privately. Their long, rambling, supremely personal conversations always made him feel better. But she hoped particularly to avoid just such a tite-a-tite.
“Why don’t you extend your good wishes to all humanity, while you’re at it?” she demanded.
“Humanity?” cried Port. “What’s that? Who is humanity? I’ll tell you. Humanity is everyone but one’s self. So of what interest can it possibly be to anybody?”
Tunner said slowly: “Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I’d like to take issue with you on that. I’d say humanity is you, and that’s just what makes it interesting.
“Good, Tunner!” cried Kit.
Port was annoyed. “What rot!” he snapped, ‘You’re never humanity; you’re only your own poor hopelessly isolated self.” Kit tried to interrupt. He raised his voice and went on. “I don’t have to justify my existence by any such primitive means. The fact that I breathe is my Justification. If humanity doesn’t consider that a justification, it can do what it likes to me. I’m not going to carry a passport to existence around with me, to prove I have the right to be here! I’m here! I’m in the world! But my world’s not humanity’s world. It’s the world as I see it.”
“Don’t yell,” said Kit evenly. “If that’s the way you feel, it’s all right with me. But you ought to be bright enough to understand that not everybody feels the same way.”
They got up. The Lyles smiled from their corner as the trio left the room.
Tunner announced: “I’m off for a siesta. No coffee for me. See you later.”
When Port and Kit stood alone in the hall, he said to her: “Let’s have coffee out in the little cafe by the market.”
“Oh, please!” she protested. “After that leaden meal? I couldn’t ever walk anywhere. I’m still exhausted from the trip.”
“All right; up in my room?”
She hesitated. “For a few minutes. Yes, I’d love it.” Her voice did not sound enthusiastic. “Then I’m going to have a nap, too.”
Upstairs they both stretched out on the wide bed and waited for the boy to arrive with the coffee. The curtains were drawn, but the insistent light filtered through them, giving objects in the room a uniform, pleasant rose color. It was very quiet outside in the street; everything but the sun was having a siesta.
“What’s new?” said Port.
“Nothing, except as I told you, I,m worn out from the train trip.”
“You could have come with us in the car. it was a fine ride.”
“No, I couldn’t. Don’t start that again. Oh, I saw Mr. Lyle this morning downstairs. I still think he’s a monster. He insisted on showing me not only his own passport, but his mother’s, too. Of course they were both crammed with stamps and visas. I told him you’d want to see them, that you liked that sort of thing more than I did. She was born in Melbourne in t899 and he was born in 1925, 1 don’t remember where. Both British passports. So there’s all your information.”
Port glanced sideways at her admiringly. “God, how did you get all that without letting him see you staring?Ó “Just shuffling the pages quickly. And she’s down as a journalist and he