The Sheltering Sky - Bowles, Paul [70]
Chapter 21
It was a long night. They came to a bordj built into the side of a cliff. The overhead light was turned on. The young Arab just in front of Kit, turning around and smiling at her as he lowered the hood of his burnous, pointed at the earth several times and said: “Hassi Inifel!”
“Merci,” she said, and smiled back. She felt like getting out, and turned to Port. Fie was doubled up under his coat; his face looked flushed.
“Port,” she began, and was surprised to hear him answer immediately. “Yes?” His voice sounded wide awake.
“Let’s get out and have something hot. You’ve slept for hours.”
Slowly he sat up. “I haven’t slept at all, if you want to know.”
She did not believe him. “I see,” she said. “Well, do you want to go inside? I’m going.”
“If I can. I feel terrible. I think I have grippe or something.”
“Oh, nonsense! How could you? You probably have indigestion from eating dinner so fast.”
“You go on in. I’ll feel better not moving.”
She climbed out and stood a moment on the rocks in the wind, taking deep breaths. Dawn was nowhere in sight.
In one of the rooms near the entrance of the bordj there were men singing together and clapping their hands quickly in complex rhythm. She found coffee in a smaller room nearby, and sat down on the floor, warming her hands over the clay vessel of coals. “He can’t get sick here,” she thought. “Neither of us can.” There was nothing to do but refuse to be sick, once one was this far away from the world. She went back out and looked through the windows of the bus. Most of the passengers had remained asleep, wrapped in their burnouses. She found Port, and tapped on the glass. “Port!” she called. “Hot coffee!” He did not stir.
“Damn him!” she thought. “He’s trying to get attention. He wants to be sick!” She climbed aboard and worked her way back to his seat, where he lay inert.
“Port! Please come and have some coffee. As a favor to me.” She cocked her head and looked at his face. Smoothing his hair she asked: “Do you feel sick?”
He spoke into his coat. “I don’t want anything. Please. I don’t want to move.”
She disliked to humor him; perhaps by waiting on him she would be playing right into his hands. But in the event he had been chilled he should drink something hot. She determined to get the coffee into him somehow. So she said: “Will you drink it if I bring it to you?”
His reply was a long time in coming, but he finally said: “Yes.”
The driver, an Arab who wore a visored cap instead of a turban, was already on his way out of the bordj as she rushed in. “Wait!” she said to him. He stood still and turned around, looking her up and down speculatively. He had no one to whom he could make any remarks about her, since there were no Europeans present, and the other Arabs were not from the city, and would have failed completely to understand his obscene comments.
Port sat up and drank the coffee, sighing between swallows.
“Finished? I’ve got to give the glass back.”
“Yes.” The glass was relayed through the bus to the front, where a child waited for it, peering anxiously back lest the bus start up before he had it in his hands.
They moved off slowly across the plateau. Now that the doors had been open, it was colder inside.
“I think that helped,” Port said. “Thanks an awful lot. Only I have got something wrong with me. God knows I never felt quite like this before. If I could only be in bed and lie out flat, I’d be all right, I think.”
“But what do you think it is?” she said, suddenly feeling them all there in full force, the fears she had been holding at bay for so many days.
“You tell me. We don’t get in till noon, do we? What a mess, what a mess!”
“Try and sleep, darling.” She had not called him that in at least a year. “Lean over, way over, this way, put your head here. Are you warm enough?” For a few minutes she tried to break the jolts of the bus for him by posting with her body against the back of the seat, but her muscles soon tired; she leaned back and relaxed, letting his head