The Sheltering Sky - Bowles, Paul [36]
“Yes,” said Kit, “but I’m not sure I prefer the warm countries. I don’t know. I’m not sure i don’t feel that it’s wrong to try to escape the night and winter, and that if You do you,ll have to pay for it somehow.”
“Oh, Kit! You’re really crazy.” He helped her up the side of a low Cliff. The desert was directly below them, much farther down than the plain from which they had just climbed.
She did not answer-It made her sad to realize that in spite of their so often having the same reactions, the same feelings, they never would reach the same conclusions, because their respective aims in life were almost diametrically opposed.
They sat down on the rocks side by side, facing the vastness below. She linked her arm through his and rested her head against his shoulder. He only stared straight before him, sighed, and finally shook his head slowly.
It was such places as this, such moments that he loved above all else in life; she knew that, and she also knew that he loved them more if she could be there to experience them with him. And although he was aware that the very silences and emptinesses that touched his soul terrified her, he could not bear to be reminded of that. It was as if always he held the fresh hope that she, too, would be touched in the same way as he by solitude and the proximity to infinite things. He had often told her: “it is your only hope,” and she was never sure what he meant. Sometimes she thought he meant that it was his only hope, that only if she were able to become as he was, could be find his way back to love, since love for Port meant loving her—there was no question of anyone else. And now for so long there had been no love, no possibility of it. But in spite of her willingness to become whatever he wanted her to become, she could not change that much: the terror was always there inside her ready to take command. It was useless to pretend otherwise. And just as she was unable to shake off the dread that was always with her, he was unable to break out of the cage into which he had shut himself, the cage he had built long ago to save himself from love.
She pinched his arm. “Look there!” she whispered. Only a few paces from them, atop a rock, sitting so still that they had not noticed him, was a venerable Arab, his legs tucked under him, his eyes shut. At first it seemed as though he might be asleep, in spite of his erect posture, since he made no sign of being conscious of their presence. But then they saw his lips moving ever so little, and they knew he was praying.
“Do you think we should watch like this?” she said, her voice hushed.
“It’s all right. We’ll just sit here quietly.” He put his head in her lap and lay looking up at the clear sky. Over and over, very lightly, she stroked his hair. The wind from the regions below gathered force. Slowly the sky lost its intensity of light. She glanced up at the Arab; he had not moved. Suddenly she wanted to go back, but she sat perfectly still for a while looking tenderly down at the inert head beneath her hand.
“You know,” said Port, and his voice sounded unreal, as voices are likely to do after a long pause in an utterly silent spot, “the sky here’s very strange. I often have the sensation when I look at it that it’s a solid thing up there, protecting us from what’s behind.”
Kit shuddered slightly as she said: “From what’s behind?”
“Yes.”
“But what is behind?” Her voice was very small.
“Nothing, I suppose. Just darkness. Absolute night-“
“Please don’t talk about it now.” There was agony in her entreaty. “Everything you say frightens me, up here. It’s getting dark, and the wind is blowing, and I can’t stand it.”
He sat up, put his arms about her neck, kissed her, drew back and looked at her, kissed her again, drew back again, and so on, several times. There were tears on her cheeks. She smiled forlornly as he rubbed them away with his forefingers.
“You know what?” he said with great earnestness. “I think we’re both afraid of the