Logically she should not have found such a statement reassuring, but the fact that he agreed with her she found deliciously comforting. However, he continued: “The mistake you make is in being afraid. That is the great mistake. The signs are given us for our good, not for our harm. But when you are afraid you read them wrong and make bad things where good ones were meant to be.”
“But I am afraid,” protested Kit. “How can I change that? It’s impossible.”
He looked at her and shook his head. “That is not the way to live,” he said.
“I know,” she said sadly.
An Arab entered the shop, bade her good evening, and purchased a pack of cigarettes. As he went out the door, he turned and spat just inside it on the floor. Then he gave a disdainful toss of his burnous over his shoulder and strode away. Kit looked at Daoud Zozeph.
“Did he spit on purpose?” she asked him.
He laughed. “Yes. No. Who knows? I have been spat upon so many thousand times that I do not see it when it happens. You see! You should be a Jew in Sba, and you would learn not to be afraid! At least you would learn not to be afraid of God. You would see that even when God is most terrible, he is never cruel, the way men are.”
Suddenly what he was saying sounded ridiculous. She rose, smoothed her skirt, and said she must be going.
“One moment,” he said, going behind a curtain into a room beyond. He returned presently with a small parcel. Behind the counter he resumed the anonymous air of a shopkeeper. He handed the parcel across to her, saying quietly: “You said you wanted to give your husband milk. Here are two cans. They were the ration for our baby.” He raised his hand as she tried to interrupt. “But it was born dead, last week, too soon. Next year if we have another we can get more.”
Seeing Kit’s look of anguish, he laughed: “I promise you,” he said, “as soon as my wife knows, I will apply for the coupons. There will be no trouble. Allons! What are you afraid of now?” And as she still stood looking at him, he raised the parcel in the air and presented it again with such an air of finality that automatically she took hold of it. “This is one of those occasions where one doesn’t try to put into words what one feels,” she said to herself. She thanked him saying that her husband would be very happy, and that she hoped they would meet again in a few days. Then she went out. With the coming of night, the wind had risen somewhat. She shivered climbing the hill on the way to the fort.
The first thing she did on arriving back in the room was to light the lamp. Then she took Port’s temperature: she was horrified to find it higher. The pills were no longer working. He looked at her with an unaccustomed expression in his shining eyes.
“Today’s my birthday,” he murmured.
“No, it isn’t,” she said sharply; then she reflected an instant, and asked with feigned interest: “Is it, really?”
“Yes. This was the one I’ve been waiting for.”
She did not ask him what he meant. He went on: “Is it beautiful out?”
“No.”
“I wish you could have said yes.”
“Why?”
“I’d have liked it to be beautiful out.”
“I suppose you could call it beautiful, but it’s just a little unpleasant to walk in.”
“Ah, well, we’re not out in it,” he said.
The quietness of his dialogue made more monstrous the groans of pain which an instant later issued from within him. “What is it?” she cried in a frenzy. But he could not hear her. She knelt on her mattress and looked at him, unable to decide what to do. Little by little he grew silent, but he did not open his eyes. For a while she studied the inert body as it lay there beneath the covers, which rose and fell slightly with the rapid respiration. “He’s stopped being human,” she said to herself. Illness reduces man to his basic state: a cloaca in which the chemical processes continue. The meaningless hegemony of the involuntary. It was the ultimate taboo stretched out there beside her, helpless and terrifying beyond all reason. She choked back a wave of nausea that threatened her for an instant.
There was a knocking at the door: it was Zina with Port’s soup, and a plate of couscous for her. Kit indicated that she wanted her to feed the invalid; the old woman seemed delighted, and began to try to coax him into sitting up. There was no response save a slight acceleration in his breathing. She was patient and persevering, but to no avail.
Kit had her take the soup away, deciding that if he wanted nourishment later she would open one of the tins of milk and mix it with hot water for him.
The wind was blowing again, but without fury, and from the other direction. It moaned spasmodically through the cracks around the window, and the folded sheet moved a bit now and then. Kit stared at the spurting white flame of the lamp, trying to conquer her powerful desire to run out of the room. It was no longer the familiar fear that she felt—it was a steadily mounting sentiment of revulsion.
But she lay perfectly still, blaming herself and thinking: “If I feel no sense of duty toward him, at least I can act as if I did.” At the same time there was an element of self-chastisement in her immobility. “You’re not even to move your foot if it falls asleep. And I hope it hurts.” Time passed, expressed in the low cry of the wind as it sought to enter the room, the cry rising and falling in pitch but never quite ceasing. Unexpectedly Port breathed a profound sigh and shifted his position on the mattress. And incredibly, he began to speak.
“Kit.” His voice was faint but in no way distorted. She held her breath, as if her least movement might snap the thread that held him to rationality.
“Kit.”
“Yes.”
“I’ve been trying to get back. Here.” He kept his eyes closed.
“Yes—”
“And now I am.”
“Yes!”
“I wanted to talk to you. There’s nobody here?”
“No, no!”
“Is the door locked?”
“I don’t know,” she said. She bounded up and locked it, returning to her pallet, all in the same movement. “Yes, it’s locked.”