Frank couldn’t speak. ‘I’m sorry,’ the man said, ‘but I absolutely refuse to pay you in dollars.’
He held his rage back: ‘I don’t want money for this work.’
‘The last person who said that turned out to be a spy.’
Shelley stood up angrily: ‘I didn’t bring the spy along. Look, Frank, don’t play hard to get. The reality is always a little sordid. Just go along with it. It’s a hell of a lot smoother that way.’
Frank understood, not being without his rock-bottom sense of realism, saying that if a condition of his being allowed to go was to accept money, then he preferred payment when he came back. It wasn’t his habit to get paid until after the work was done. ‘They don’t do that where I come from.’
‘You’re not there any more,’ Shelley said.
‘Part of me is, or I wouldn’t be doing this job. I’m not in it for kicks and I’m not out for money. We can talk about that when we get back, otherwise I don’t go.’ They discussed it now, in French, and then in Arabic when they thought Frank was getting the gist of it. He wasn’t, stayed out front looking at the books until Shelley came to say that stalemate had broken by their giving in. Frank was surprised that an issue had been made of it at all. ‘That’s how they are,’ Shelley said. ‘Everybody has to learn.’
Frank spent an hour in the American library, went in for a few minutes out of the rain. He picked up a volume of Arab stories and read one, about how a stream had reached the edge of the desert and was in danger of being sucked away completely by the sand. The stream knew that its destiny was to cross the desert but it didn’t know how. A voice said that the wind got across safely enough, so why couldn’t a river? ‘Let yourself be absorbed by the wind, and the wind will get you across.’ But the river didn’t want to lose its individuality. ‘You won’t lose it,’ said the voice, ‘because the wind will absorb all your moisture, carry you over the desert, let you fall like rain, and then you’ll be a river once more.’ ‘But I shall be a different river,’ said the river. ‘You’ll be different after any experience,’ argued the voice, ‘and that is all to the good. But if you stay here trying uselessly to get across you’ll end up as a salty quagmire. If you let the wind carry you over the desert you’ll then know what your true identity is.’
Frank liked the tale, wondered why he’d had to come as far as Tangier for the accident of reading it. Going south, he’d see the desert, but not roam far into it. The slow days were beating down his spirit, and he wanted to set off, though at the same time aching at the thought of having to leave Myra at such a point in their lives.
He woke at four o’clock, more disturbed than he’d imagined, birds of prey and an insomniac beast worrying him all night. He had coffee and bread in the kitchen to a low murmur of sleepless people out of the Emsallah district on one side, and a roistering noise from a couple of cabaret places on the other. A boat-hooter sounded in the port, a low, dreadful gut-mover indicating a funnel and row of lights about to set off for another land, which caught at his stomach like an ancestral voice, tugged at his journeyman legs. But it’s not so bad, he thought, because I’m moving as well, in another direction, but moving just the same. It’s harder for those said good-bye to, for Myra who’s got to stay among all the indications of what our life’s been like. I only want to live properly with her; to work hard by the day, until life is so absorbing that it jets by. Yet his return was only ten days away, and there was no use trying to wring three months of sentiment out of it.
He did not know how to say good-bye. He stood in the dark bedroom. He had never said good-bye to anyone he was in love with. The thought of leaving her turned him to salt, to ice. He stood there, her face hardly visible, trying to tell himself he wasn’t in love with her, that to be so would mean a defeat for all he had lately surmised and stood for. But he was leaving too much, felt as if about to drop from the last grip of the lifesaving rope end. He blamed such thoughts on the morning, when the brain was clear and ruthless, showing in true light one’s bravery and apprehension.
She felt his presence by the bed. ‘Are you going?’
He waited a moment: ‘I don’t have to. Nobody’s dragging me. If only they were.’
‘You’re saying this for my sake,’ she said, opening her eyes. ‘I’ll see you quite soon.’
‘I’m a fool,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to leave you both.’
She sat up. ‘I know. But don’t make it too difficult. I know how much you want to go.’
‘I love you,’ he said. ‘My roots are in you.’ You did love me, she thought. You’re incapable of love. You’ve wanted to be free of it for so long that now you’ve made it, you’ve won. ‘Just take care,’ she said, ‘that’s all.’
‘I’m running guns to the Algerians,’ he said.
‘I know. I’m glad. But Miriam already told me.’ She hoped that Shelley knew there was no danger in taking him from her at such a time.
‘If we can burst that frontier we’ll be O.K. I’ll be careful. I’m cool enough’ — feeling at last that there was no limit to what he could do. ‘I’ve come full circle, going off on a thing like this. I feel as if I left the factory only yesterday, got paid up, clocked-out, and took a plane down. There’s a natural connection between that work and what I’m going to do. My muscles feel it, and my head as well. It’s not much perhaps, but it means everything to me. I used to dream of being able to do something, but I’m not doing anything. I see that now. I’m just being myself. I’ve learned to be myself. I want to prove it finally though. Then I’ll come back. You’ll be all right. I know you’ll look after yourself.’
‘I’ve got Miriam and a few friends. You make it sound more final now. Do you think you won’t come back?’
‘No. I’ll come back. This is just dawn talk.’ But the tears bled out of her. Desolation would rend her bones and close her eyes, but there was no one to tell, Frank least of all. He roared her name, unfragmented syllables thrown out by his exploding heart. He felt it emptying, knelt by the bed, his hand under the clothes, smoothing her breasts, her enlarging belly. ‘He’ll be there when you come back,’ she said, her throat hardening into firmness, ‘but not if you come back too late.’
‘I’ve got so much to look forward to. That sort of thing used to frighten me, but not now. It’ll be an easy trip. Shelley’s been there before, and swears it’s a piece of cake. It’s just the fact of leaving you for any time at all that creases me.’
It was cruel and weird, this voluntary wilful parting. He kissed her and left, casually, as if coming back in ten minutes with fresh bread for their breakfast.
She lay still, the door slamming through her, feeling that he’d never open it again. If he weren’t back in two weeks she would take a plane to London, go to the house in Buckinghamshire and wait for her baby which, by time scheme but not physical possibility of touch, could have been George’s. After that, she would carve out her own life as Frank was carving out his, in action and not love. If he survived his crossing of the desert he would know where to find her. In that sense they belonged to each other and she would always wait for him.
The blue light of dawn clawed at her belly. She had a baby, and love must die. The universe was taking it back. Where the claws of love had rested the flesh was rotten. Frank knows this, and is acting it out in the only way possible, by leaving me. Will God allow the world to be proletarianized in this way? He’s emptied me of love, but I feel better than I’ve ever felt in my life. To live out a great emptiness is to fulfil yourself completely. I can’t put into words what has happened.