decision for him. He knew also that Debra as a lovely, blind, best
selling authoress would have been a sensation, and a tour would have
launched her into the superstar category.
This made his own procrastination even more corrosive. He tried to
re-think and rationalize his delay in posting the letter to Dr. Edelman.
He told himself that the light-sensitivity did not mean that Debra could
ever regain her vision; that she was happy now, had adjusted and found
her place and that it would be cruel to disrupt all this and offer her
false hope and probably brutal surgery.
In all his theorizing tried to make Debra's need take priority, but it
was deception and he knew it. It was special pleading, by David Morgan,
for David Morgan for if Debra ever regained her sight, the delicately
hal anced structure of his own happiness would collapse in ruin.
One morning he drove the Land-Rover alone to the farthest limits of
Jabulani and parked in a hidden place amongst camel Thorn trees. He
switched off the engine and, still sitting in the driving-seat, he
adjusted the driving-mirror and stared at his own face. For nearly an
hour he studied that ravage expanse of inhuman flesh, trying to find
some redeeming feature in it, apart from the eyes, and at the end he
knew that no sighted woman would ever be able to live close to that,
would ever be able to smile at it, kiss and touch it, to reach up and
caress it in the critical moments of love.
He drove home slowly, and Debra was waiting for him on the shady cool
stoop and she laughed and ran down the steps into the sunlight when she
heard the Land-Rover. She wore faded denims and a bright pink blouse,
and when he came to her she lifted her face and groped blindly but
joyously with her lips for his.
Debra had arranged a barbecue for that evening, and although they sat
close about the open fire under the trees and listened to the night
sounds, the night was cool. Debra wore a cashmere sweater over her
shoulders, and David had thrown on his flying jacket.
The letter lay against his heart, and it seemed to burn into his flesh.
He unbuttoned the leather flap and took it out. While Debra chatted
happily beside him, spreading her hands to the crackling leaping flames,
David examined the envelope turning it slowly over and over in his
hands.
Then suddenly, as though it were. a live scorpion, he threw it from him
and watched it blacken and curl and crumple to ash in the flames of the
fire.
It was not so easily done, however, and that night as he lay awake, the
words of the letter marched in solemn procession through his brain,
meticulously preserved and perfectly remembered. They gave him no
respite, and though his eyes were gravelly and his head ached with
fatigue, he could not sleep.
During the days that followed he was silent and edgy.
Debra sensed it, despite all his efforts to conceal it and she was
seriously alarmed, believing that he was angry with her. She was
anxiously loving, distracted from all else but the need to find and cure
the cause of David's ills.
Her concern only served to make David's guilt deeper.
Almost in an act of desperation they drove one evening down to the
String of Pearls, and leaving the Land Rover they walked hand in hand to
the water's edge.
They found a fallen log screened by reeds and sat quietly together. For
once neither of them had anything to say to each other.
As the big red sun sank to the tree-tops and the gloom thickened amongst
the trees of the grove, the nyala herd came stepping lightly and
fearfully through the shadows.
David nudged Debra, and she turned her head into a listening attitude
and moved a little closer to him as he whispered.
They are really spooky this evening, they look as though they are
standing on springs and I can see their muscles trembling from here. The
old bulls seem to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown, they are
listening so hard their ears have stretched to twice their usual length,
I swear. There must be a leopard lurking along the edge of the reed
bed, he broke off, and exclaimed softly, oh, so that's it?" "What is it,
David?" Debra tugged at his arm insistently, her curiosity spurring her.
A new fawn! David's delight was in his voice. One of the does has
lambed. Oh God, Debra! His legs are still wobbly and he is the palest
creamy beige- He described the fawn to her as it followed the mother
unsteadily into the open. Debra was listening with such intensity, that
it was clear the act of birth and the state of maternity had touched
some deep chord within her.
Perhaps she was remembering her own dead infant. Her grip on his arm
tightened, and her blind eyes seemed to glow in the gathering dusk, and
suddenly she spoke.
Her voice low, but achingly clear, filled with all the longing and
sadness which she had suppressed.
I wish I could see it, she said. Oh God! God Let me see. Please, let
me see! and suddenly she was weeping, great racking sobs that shook her
whole body.
Across the pool the nyala herd took fright, and dashed away among the
trees. David took Debra and held her fiercely to his chest, cradling
her head, so her tears were wet and cold through the fabric of his
shirt, and he felt the icy winds of despair blow across his soul.
He re-wrote the letter that night by the light of a gas lamp while Debra
sat across the room knitting a jersey she had promised him for the
winter and believing that he was busy with the estate accounts. David
found that he could repeat the words of the ari nal letter perfectly and
it took him only a few minutes to complete and seal it.
Are you working on the book tomorrow morning? he asked casually, and
when she told him she was, he went on. I have to nip into Nelspruit for
an hour or two.
David flew high as though to divorce himself from the earth. He could
not really believe he was going to do it. He could not believe that he
was capable of such sacrifice. He wondered whether it was really
possible to love somebody so deeply that he would chance destroying that
love for the good of the other, and he knew that it was, and as he flew
on southwards he found that he could face it at last.
Of all persons, Debra needed her vision, for without it the great wings
of her talent were clipped. Unless she could see it, she could not
describe it. She had been granted the gift of the writer, and then half
of it had been taken from her. He understood her cry, Oh God!
God! Let me see. Please, let me see, and he found himself wishing it
for her also. Beside her need his seemed trivial and petty, and
silently he prayed.
Please God, let her see again He landed the Navajo at the airstrip and
called the taxi and had it drive him directly to the Post Office, and
wait while he posted the letter and collected the incoming mail from the
box.
Where now? the driver asked as he came out of the building, and he was
about to tell him to drive back to the airfield when he had inspiration.
Take me down to the bottle store, please, he told the driver and he
bought a case of Veuve Clicquot champagne.
He flew homewards with a soaring lightness of the spirit. The wheel was
spinning and the ball clicking, nothing he could do now would dictate
its fall. He was free of doubt, free of guilt, whatever the outcome, he
knew he could meet it.
Debra sensed it almost immediately, and she laughed aloud with relief,