The Sheltering Sky - Bowles, Paul [49]
He sighed: the tea-party had accomplished exactly the contrary to what he had hoped it might. She sensed what was in his mind, and presently she said: “Don’t think about me. Whatever happens, I’ll be all right if I’m with you. I enjoyed it tonight. Really.” She pressed his hand. But this was not quite what he wanted; resignation was not enough. He returned her pressure halfheartedly.
“And what was that little performance of yours at the end?” he asked a moment later.
“I couldn’t help it. He was being so ridiculous.”
“It’s not a good idea generally to make fun of your host,” he said coldly.
“Oh, bah! If you noticed, he loved it. He thought I was being deferential.”
They ate quietly in the nearly-dark patio. Most of the garbage had been cleared away, but the stench of the latrines was as strong as ever. After dinner they went to their rooms and read.
The next morning, when he took breakfast to her, he said: “I nearly paid you a visit last night. I couldn’t seem to sleep. But I was afraid of waking you.”
“You should have rapped on the wall,” she said. “I’d have heard you. I was probably awake.”
All that day he was unaccountably nervous; he attributed it to the seven glasses of strong tea he had drunk in the garden. Kit, however, had drunk as much as he, and she seemed not in the least nervous. In the afternoon he walked by the river, watched the Spahis training on their perfect white horses, their blue capes flying behind in the wind. Since his agitation appeared to be growing rather than diminishing with the passage of time, he set himself the task of tracing it to its source. He walked along with his head bent over, seeing nothing but the sand and glistening pebbles. Tunner was gone, Kit and he were alone. Everything now depended on him. He could make the right gesture, or the wrong one, but he could not know beforehand which was which. Experience had taught him that reason could not be counted on in such situations. There was always an extra element, mysterious and not quite within reach, that one had not reckoned with. One had to know, not deduce. And he did not have the knowledge. He glanced up; the river-bed had become enormously wide, the walls and gardens had receded into the distance. Out here there was no sound but the wind blowing around his head on its way from one part of the earth to another. Whenever the thread of his consciousness had unwound too far and got tangled, a little solitude could wind it quickly back. His state of nervousness was remediable in that it had to do only with himself: he was afraid of his own ignorance. If he desired to cease being nervous he must conceive a situation for himself in which that ignorance had no importance. He must behave as if there was no question of his having Kit, ever again. Then, perhaps, out of sheer inattention, automatically, it could happen. But should his principal concern at the moment be the purely egocentric one of ridding himself of his agitation, or the accomplishment of his original purpose in spite of it? “I wonder if after all I’m a coward?” he thought. Fear spoke; he listened and let it persuade-the classical procedure. The idea saddened him.
Not far away, on a slight elevation at a point where the river’s course turned sharply, was a small ruined building, without a roof, so old that a twisted tree had grown up inside it, covering the area within the walls with its shade. As he passed nearer to it and could see inside, he realized that the lower branches were hung with hundreds of rags, regularly torn strips of cloth that had once been white, all moving in the same direction with the wind. Faintly curious, he climbed the bank and went to investigate, but on approaching he saw that the ruin was occupied: an old, old man sat beneath the tree, his thin brown arms and legs bound with ancient bandages. Around the base of the trunk he had built a shelter; it was clear to see that he lived there. Port stood looking at him a long time, but he did not lift his head.
Going more slowly, he continued. He had brought with him some figs, which