The Sheltering Sky - Bowles, Paul [86]
Again he sighed. “I feel very sick. I feel awful. There’s no reason to be afraid, but I am. Sometimes I’m not here, and I don’t like that. Because then I’m far away and all alone. No one could ever get there. It’s too far. And there I’m alone.”
She wanted to stop him, but behind the stream of quiet words she heard the entreaty of a moment back: “Please stay here.” And she did not have the strength to stop him unless she got up and moved about. But his words made her miserable; it was like hearing him recount one of his dreams-worse, even.
“So alone I can’t even remember the idea of not being alone,” he was saying. His fever would go up. “I can’t even think what it would be like for there to be someone else in the world. When I’m there I can’t remember being here; I’m just afraid. But here I can remember being there. I wish I could stop remembering it. It’s awful to be two things at once. You know that, don’t you?” His hand sought hers desperately. “You do know that? You understand how awful it is? You’ve got to.” She let him take her hand, pull it towards his mouth. He rubbed his rough lips along it with a terrible avidity that shocked her; at the same time she felt the hair at the back of her head rise and stiffen. She watched his lips opening and shutting against her knuckles, and felt the hot breath on her fingers.
“Kit, Kit. I’m afraid, but it’s not only that. Kit’ All these years I’ve been living for you. I didn’t know it, and now I do. I do know it! But now you’re going away.” He tried to roll over and lie on top of her arm; he clutched her hand always tighter.
“I’m not!” she cried.
His legs moved spasmodically.
“I’m right here!” she shouted, even louder, trying to imagine how her voice sounded to him, whirling down his own dark halls toward chaos. And as he lay still for a while, breathing violently, she began to think: “He says it’s more than just being afraid. But it isn’t. He’s never lived for me. Never. Never.” She held to the thought with an intensity that drove it from her mind, so that presently she found herself lying taut in every muscle without an idea in her head, listening to the wind’s senseless monologue, For a time this went on; she did not relax. Then little by little she tried to draw her hand away from Port’s desperate grasp. There was a sudden violent activity beside her, and she turned to see him partially sitting up.
“Port!” she cried, pushing herself up and putting her hands on his shoulders. “You’ve got to lie down!” She used all her strength; he did not budge. His eyes were open and he was looking at her. “Port!” she cried again in a different voice. He raised one hand and took hold of her arm.
“But Kit,” he said softly. They looked at each other. She made a slight motion with her head, letting it fall onto his chest. Even as he glanced down at her, her first sob came up, and the first cleared the passage for the others. He closed his eyes again, and for a moment had the illusion of holding the world in his arms-a warm world all tropics, lashed by storm. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no,” he said. It was all he had the strength to say. But even if he had been able to say more, still he would have said only: “No, no, no, no.”
It was not a whole life whose loss she was mourning there in his arms, but it was a great part of one; above all it was a part whose limits she knew precisely, and her knowledge augmented the bitterness. And presently within her, deeper than the weeping for the wasted years, she found a ghastly dread all formed and growing. She raised her head and looked up at him with tenderness and terror. His head had dropped to one side; his eyes were closed. She put her arms around his neck and kissed his forehead many times.
Then, half-pulling and half-coaxing, she got him back down into bed and covered him. She gave him his pill, undressed silently and lay down facing him, leaving the lamp burning so she could see him as she fell asleep. The wind at the window celebrated her dark sensation of having attained a new depth of solitude.
“Chapter