Выбрать главу

— Yes, you. . look rested. Ludy said that looking up at him intending, with the look confirming the word, to escape both; but the word — Rested! repeated, closed on him and he stared lost darting among the contrivances of the face before him, until it turned away, and released him on a hoarse whispered, — Rested?

— Yes, you were going into the church this morning? and then, the old man…

— He wouldn't let me in.

— Yes but. I shouldn't think he could tell you…

— Standing out there on the porch with his keys, he was looking at the dawn himself, and he wouldn't let me in. Rested? when I thought I'd found a place to stop. But he wouldn't let me in. What did you think we were doing, arguing, if he wouldn't let me in.

— Well to tell the truth. .

— All right, that's a way of putting it. "To tell the truth." All right but, finally if the things that were real to other people, weren't real to me? and if… never mind. But it almost ended that way. If he'd let me in it might have, ended that way.

— Why wouldn't he let you in?

— No, you don't understand? being real just like that? It wasn't so simple. "To tell the truth," I like that though. "To tell the truth. ." Listen, here's part of it: He sent me on. Go where you're wanted, he said.

— Yes, if you've. . killed a man. . Ludy withdrew slightly, — to give yourself up…

— Killed a man! that? That, that, there's no fruit of that. Killing a man, no that's got nothing to do, it ends right there. Stephen was looking down into the palms of his hands, trembling opened before him, the thumbs crooked in and the skin drawn tight bringing color to the lines: he looked, as though searching evidence for acquittal in hands which like the heart, knew their own reasons.

— 1 didn't mean. .

— What?

— But there was something else I meant to ask you, I…

— In a killing like that, you don't get permission, you don't seduce, you don't agree. You don't even touch. So there's no breaking faith theie. In a killing like that, they don't consent, he finished in a harsh decisive whisper, dropping his hands slowly, and then taking up again, his voice became clearer, the words more rapid working out their own logic. — Go where you've sinned, and give yourself up, do you think I mean the police? Why do you think he sent me away then, just like the old man sent me on. Do you think it's that simple? I did. And it wasn't. They wouldn't let it be, they weren't. . children. And now, to start it again. I've been a voyage, I'll tell you. . "To tell the truth. .?" yes, but not yet. I've been a voyage starting at the bottom of the sea. I willingly fastened the tail to my back, "I'll scratch your eyes till you see awry, and all you see will seem fine and brave. ." Good God, what a luxury he was! A journey like him sailing off the Cape forever, the Germans dressed that up, though, with a woman, but it's not that simple. Corne into Toledo at night, it's monstrous, with only the stars, the heaps of broken buildings, all weight and shadow, and you'll never see it that way again, after you've waked the next morning and walked through the town all laid out under foot in the daylight, and where were you wandering the night before? It's all different by daylight. Find Valencia, with the sky brocaded with fire, in the heat of the summer, there's a telephone exchange there Sangre, I liked that. The women fanning themselves in the trains, fanning down into their crowded bosoms, that old woman's face like La Mancha after the July harvest. There are pieces spread everywhere. "A souvenir of New York," he'd ask me for, or "Give me some money for medicine," always medicine, and he'd show me a swollen leg before he'd play the guitar, and say it was his heart gone bad, that old gypsy looking at my frayed cuff, and he said he could have it fixed nicely, he'd a friend a tailor. It fit him, too. Hiding money in another pocket at the last conscious minute, and then the next morning searching everywhere for it, the shame of it!. . and then finding it, so carefully put away, and out to celebrate the husbandry of the night before. Commuting between disasters, and always the land and the sky, and now, starting it again? I'll tell you how cold it is in the desert at night, and they think Africa's only the heat of the sun! I was only there because I wasn't anywhere else. You'd see a town with two walls overlapping, and a man disappear into the wall, everything regulated to the gait of a camel, an ass hobbled on a brown rock hillside and palms at the bottom. Do you wonder why I'm telling you all this? Do you believe me? Here…

He got up and rummaged in his clothes, and came out with a fragment of clay pottery; some other things dropped but he didn't look down after them. — That's from Leptis Magna, it's not pretty is it, you can still see the thumbprints on it, from molding the edge here. What do you keep a thing like that for, from Leptis, and Arabs crouching making tea over sheep-dung fires on the marble floor, the temple of Hera, and the lilies sprung from her milk, and the Roman's ruins run right down into the sea.

Ludy stooped to pick up what had dropped, some crumpled one- peseta notes, and a raggedly cut out picture on canvas stiff with the cracked paint, a sharply detailed figure of an old man drawn out, being flayed by detached hands. — This, he said, holding up the likeness, — it's the old man, the porter here, is it? The face. .

— Old men, he's like all the. . old men, Stephen said, starting to reach for it, then he waved it away. — He told me. . look at their difference in ages, he's sixty and more, and she's still a child, and they're still in love. It's. . that, now do you understand? It's here he can be closest to her now, while he's waiting. But for me? That's when he said no, and sent me on again. He's here, a penitent?. . but it's different, for she comes to him here, and. . all this time he's carrying on this love affair, being loved. But for me, that's why he sent me on, to find what. . what he has here.

— But. . after what he did. .

— After what he did, and he learned only through her suffering, Stephen brought out more loudly, — Now… If she comes to him carrying lilies that turn to fire? And the fire, what do you think it is? If that was the only way he could learn? So now do you see why he sends me on? If somewhere I've. . done the same thing? And something's come out of it, something. . like… he has. While I've been crowding the work alone. To end there, or almost end running up to the doors there, to pound on the doors of the church, do you see why he sent me on? Look back, if once you're started in living, you're born into sin, then? And how do you atone? By locking yourself up in remorse for what you might have done? Or by living it through. By locking yourself up in remorse with what you know you have done? Or by going back and living it through. By locking yourself up with your work, until it becomes a gessoed surface, all prepared, clean and smooth as ivory? Or by living it through. By drawing lines in your mind? Or by living it through. If it was sin from the start, and possible all the time, to know it's possible and avoid it? Or by living it through. I used to wonder, how Christ could really have been tempted, if He was sinless, and rejected the first, and the second, and the third temptation, how was He tempted?. . how did He know what it was, the way we do, to be tempted? No, He was Christ. But for us, with it there from the start, and possible all the time, to go on knowing it's possible and pretend to avoid it? Or… or to have lived it through, and live it through, and deliberately go on living it through.

He took a few steps down the hill, and stood looking over the valley, where smoke was rising from the drift of roofs of the town, and further on the mountainsides.