He seems puzzled by our motion — hah! must look to him like flight, recoil, he unable, at such a separation, to envision any shape to our career — but o constancy! he but devotes more strength to the cause, more of his failing strength, feet now pigeon-toed now splayed, arms flung like torn sails grappling for a stay, pelvis now thrust forward now twisted to one side, head swaying precariously on his thin white (is it for art’s sake we prolong this miserable journey? what matter! for art or no, let him know extremity! — how else obtain impact for its counterpart?) neck. His approach in some other circumstances might even serve for comedy, this ungainly, high-legged, limbs-awry dance in the hot sun. It’s his isolation cuts the humor. If anything is a serious thing, it must be he.
Our speed is not constant. No, were it so, we would leave him behind at the end, we would have to inscribe additional circles to catch him from the rear, a dull and pointless strategy. So our velocity diminishes, doubtless at a computable rate. He does not know that He merely dances on, arms and legs outflung, dances on helplessly — yet full of hope, that old disease — scratching his helix across the desert floor, less true perhaps than our perfect circle, yet for that the more beautiful, his steaming white helix on the burnt red plane. His robe seems not so much a robe as a… a winding sheet! Death! we cry inwardly, but beat back the (alarming!) absurdity. It’s the sun, only the sun, the glare, heat — but only for a moment! it is, and to the end will be, a leper in a white tunic. And he, not we, will die.
Down the last arc segment we glide, dosing it now, our task more than two-thirds done, the worst of it over. Our pace letting up, steadily — he is close enough now for us to see his eager smile: strange that smile! for his mouth is split apart at the corners, and even not smiling he would surely seem to. Crusted eyes protruding over shiny white cheekbones, tattered ends of his white flesh confusing themselves with (peculiar, perhaps, this sensuous digression, and just at this moment, but there’s, you see, a kind of pleasure to be had in it, a need being reached) confuse themselves with his fluttering robe, flake off in a scaly dust that blurs his outline, dance lightly around him as he staggers wildly on, closing in on us. The flesh, the flesh reminds of mica: translucent layers of dead scaly material, here and there hardened into shiny nodules, here and there disturbed by deep cavities. In the beds of these cavities: a dark substance, resem bling blood not so much as… as: excrement. Well, simple illusion, blood mixed with pus and baked in the sun, that’s what it is. His bare feet leave a trail of this viscous brown
But now — oh my god! — as a mere few paces separate us, our point of origin — and end! — just visible before us, the brute reality slams through the barriers of our senses: the encounter is now imminent! Absorbed in our visual registrations, our meaningless mathematics, our hedonistic pleasure in mere action and its power-how could we have wasted it all! — we had forgot what was to come at the end! had we thought, only thought, we could have drawn two circles, or ten circles, postponed this ultimate experience, could have, but the choice was ours just once, our impulsive first action has become — alas! — a given, the inexorable governor of all that remains — or has the leper had us all along? did his pace allow two circles? and does it matter? for the encounter must come, mustn’t it? whether after one circle, two circles, or ten.
It is of no consequence. There is in us that conditions acceptance. We turn to greet the leper.
Our hands, my hands, appear before us, ruddy, hairy, thickwristed, muscular, fine rich blood pounding through them, extended now for the embrace. They do not tremble. The leper, tongue dangling—god! nearly black! — frothing pitifully at the mouth, eyes blank, whole wretched body oozing a kind of milky sweat, hurls himself into our arms, smothering us, pitching us to the red clay, his sticky cold flesh fastening to us, me, his black tongue licking my face, blind eyes, that whine! his odors choking us, we lie, I lie helpless under the sickening weight of his perishing flesh. Then, in die same instant, it is over. Purged of all revulsions, we free ourselves from him, lay him gently on the red earth, dry his final ecstatic tears. At first, we make an effort to claw the earth with our fingers, dig a hole large enough to conceal the blight of his gathering decay. But we weary of it: the earth is hard, burial an, old reflex. We leave him lie and sit beside to wait Under the desert sun. We wait, as he waited for us, for you. Desperate in need, yet with terror. What terrible game will you play with us? me.
A PEDESTRIAN ACCIDENT
Paul stepped off the curb and got hit by a truck. He didn’t know what it was that hit him at first, but now, here on his back, under the truck, there could be no doubt. Is it me? he wondered. Have I walked the earth and come here?
Just as he was struck, and while still tumbling in front of the truck and then under the wheels, in a kind of funhouse gambado of pain and terror, he had thought: this has happened before. His neck had sprung, there was a sudden flash of light and a blaze roaring up in the back of his head. The hot — almost fragrant — pain: that was new. It was the place he felt he’d returned to.
He lay perpendicular to the length of the truck, under the trailer, just to the rear of the truck’s second of three sets of wheels.
All of him was under the truck but his head and shoulders. Maybe I’m being born again, he reasoned. He stared straight up, past the side of the truck, toward the sky, pale blue and cloudless. The tops of skyscrapers closed toward the center of his vision; now that he thought about it, he realized it was the first time in years he had looked up at them, and they seemed inclined to fell. The old illusion; one of them anyway. The truck was red with white letters, but his severe angle of vision up the side kept him from being able to read the letters. A capital “K,” he could see that — and a number, yes, it seemed to be a “14.” He smiled inwardly at the irony, for he had a private fascination with numbers: fourteen! He thought he remembered having had a green light, but it didn’t really matter. No way to prove it. It would have changed by now, in any case. The thought, obscurely, troubled him.
“Crazy goddamn fool he just walk right out in fronta me no respect just burstin for a bustin!”
The voice, familiar somehow, guttural, yet falsetto, came from above and to his right People were gathering to stare down at him, shaking their heads. He felt like one chosen. He tried to turn his head toward the voice, but his neck flashed hot again. Things were bad. Better just to lie still, take no chances. Anyway, he saw now, just in the corner of his eye, the cab of the truck, red like the trailer, and poking out its window, the large head of the truckdriyer, wagging in the sunshine. The driver wore a small tweed cap — too small, in fact: it sat just on top of his head.
“Boy I seen punchies in my sweet time but this cookie takes the cake God bless the laboring classes I say and preserve us from the humble freak!”
The truckdriver spoke with broad gestures, bulbous eyes rolling, runty body thrusting itself in and out of the cab window, little hands flying wildly about Paul worried still about the light It was important, yet how could he ever know? The world was an ephemeral place, it could get away from you in a minute. The driver had a bent red nose and coarse reddish hair that stuck out like straw. A Bard shiny chin, too, like a mirror image of the hooked nose. Paul’s eyes wearied of the strain, and he had to stop looking.