“I wanted to talk to you.”
She did not know what to say. She said: “I’m glad.”
“There are so many things I want to say. I don’t know what they are. I’ve forgotten them all.”
She patted his hand lightly. “It’s always that way.”
He lay silent a moment.
“Wouldn’t you like some warm milk?” she said cheerfully.
He seemed distraught. “I don’t think there’s time. I don’t know.”
“I’ll fix it for you,” she announced, and she sat up, glad to be free.
“Please stay here.”
She lay down again, murmuring: “I’m so glad you feel better. You don’t know how different it makes me feel to hear you talk. I’ve been going crazy here. There’s not a soul around—” She stopped, feeling the momentum of hysteria begin to gather in the background. But Port seemed not to have heard her.
“Please stay here,” he repeated, moving his hand uncertainly along the sheet. She knew it was searching for hers, but she could not make herself reach out and let it take hold. At the same moment she became aware of her refusal, and the tears came into her eyes—tears of pity for Port. Still she did not move.
Again he sighed. “I feel very sick. I feel awful. There’s no reason to be afraid, but I am. Sometimes I’m not here, and I don’t like that. Because then I’m far away and all alone. No one could ever get there. It’s too far. And there I’m alone.”
She wanted to stop him, but behind the stream of quiet words she heard the entreaty of a moment back: “Please stay here.” And she did not have the strength to stop him unless she got up and moved about. But his words made her miserable; it was like hearing him recount one of his dreams—worse, even.
“So alone I can’t even remember the idea of not being alone,” he was saying. His fever would go up. “I can’t even think what it would be like for there to be someone else in the world. When I’m there I can’t remember being here; I’m just afraid. But here I can remember being there. I wish I could stop remembering it. It’s awful to be two things at once. You know that, don’t you?” His hand sought hers desperately. “You do know that? You understand how awful it is? You’ve got to.” She let him take her hand, pull it towards his mouth. He rubbed his rough lips along it with a terrible avidity that shocked her; at the same time she felt the hair at the back of her head rise and stiffen. She watched his lips opening and shutting against her knuckles, and felt the hot breath on her fingers.
“Kit, Kit. I’m afraid, but it’s not only that. Kit! All these years I’ve been living for you. I didn’t know it, and now I do. I do know it! But now you’re going away.” He tried to roll over and lie on top of her arm; he clutched her hand always tighter.
“I’m not!” she cried.
His legs moved spasmodically.
“I’m right here!” she shouted, even louder, trying to imagine how her voice sounded to him, whirling down his own dark halls toward chaos. And as he lay still for a while, breathing violently, she began to think: “He says it’s more than just being afraid. But it isn’t. He’s never lived for me. Never. Never.” She held to the thought with an intensity that drove it from her mind, so that presently she found herself lying taut in every muscle without an idea in her head, listening to the wind’s senseless monologue, For a time this went on; she did not relax. Then little by little she tried to draw her hand away from Port’s desperate grasp. There was a sudden violent activity beside her, and she turned to see him partially sitting up.
“Port!” she cried, pushing herself up and putting her hands on his shoulders. “You’ve got to lie down!” She used all her strength; he did not budge. His eyes were open and he was looking at her. “Port!” she cried again in a different voice. He raised one hand and took hold of her arm.
“But Kit,” he said softly. They looked at each other. She made a slight motion with her head, letting it fall onto his chest. Even as he glanced down at her, her first sob came up, and the first cleared the passage for the others. He closed his eyes again, and for a moment had the illusion of holding the world in his arms—a warm world all tropics, lashed by storm. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no,” he said. It was all he had the strength to say. But even if he had been able to say more, still he would have said only: “No, no, no, no.”
It was not a whole life whose loss she was mourning there in his arms, but it was a great part of one; above all it was a part whose limits she knew precisely, and her knowledge augmented the bitterness. And presently within her, deeper than the weeping for the wasted years, she found a ghastly dread all formed and growing. She raised her head and looked up at him with tenderness and terror. His head had dropped to one side; his eyes were closed. She put her arms around his neck and kissed his forehead many times.
Then, half-pulling and half-coaxing, she got him back down into bed and covered him. She gave him his pill, undressed silently and lay down facing him, leaving the lamp burning so she could see him as she fell asleep. The wind at the window celebrated her dark sensation of having attained a new depth of solitude.
XXIII
“More wood!” shouted the lieutenant, looking into the fireplace where the flames were dying down. But Ahmed refused to be prodigal with the wood, and brought in another small armful of the meager, gnarled branches. He remembered the early mornings of bitter cold when his mother and sister had got up long before dawn to set out across the high dunes toward Hassi Mokhtar; he remembered their return when the sun would be setting, and their faces, seamed with fatigue, as they came into the courtyard bent over double beneath their loads. The lieutenant would often throw on the fire as much wood as his sister had used to gather in the entire day, but he would not do it; he always brought in a scant amount. The lieutenant was quite aware that this was sheer recalcitrance on Ahmed’s part. He considered it a senseless but unalterable eccentricity.
“He’s a crazy boy,” said Lieutenant d’Armagnac, sipping his vermouth-cassis, “but honest and faithful. Those are the prime qualities to look for in a servant. Even stupidity and stubbornness are acceptable, if he has the others. Not that Ahmed is stupid, by any means. Sometimes he has a better intuition than I. In the case of your friend, for instance. The last time he came to see me here at my house. I invited him and his wife for dinner. I told him I would send Ahmed to let him know exactly which day it would be. I was ill at the time. I think my cook had been trying to poison me. You understand everything I am saying, monsieur?”
“Oui, oui,” said Tunner, whose ear was superior to his tongue. He was following the lieutenant’s conversation with only a slight amount of difficulty.
“After your friend had left, Ahmed said to me: ‘He will never come.’ I said: ‘Nonsense. Of course he will, and with his wife.’ ‘No,’ said Ahmed. ‘I can tell by his face. He has no intention of coming.’ And you see he was right. That very evening they both left for El Ga’a. I heard only the next day. It’s astonishing, isn’t it?”
“Oui,” said Tunner again; he was sitting forward in his chair, his hands on his knees, looking very serious.
“Ah, yes,” yawned his host, rising to throw more wood on the fire. “A surprising people, the Arabs. Of course here there’s a very heavy admixture of Soudanese, from the time of slavery—”
Tunner interrupted him. “But you say they’re not in El Ga’a now?”
“Your friends? No. They’ve gone to Sba, as I told you. The Chef de Poste there is Captain Broussard; he is the one who telegraphed me about the typhoid. You’ll find him a bit curt, but he’s a fine man. Only the Sahara does not agree with him. Some it does, some not. Me, for example, I’m in my element here.”
Again Tunner interrupted. “How soon do you think I can be in Sba?”
The lieutenant laughed indulgently. “Vous etes bien pressi! But there’s no hurry with typhoid. It will be several weeks before your friend will care whether he sees you or not. And he will not be needing that passport in the meantime! So you can take your time.” He felt warmly toward this American, whom he found much more to his liking than the first. The first had been furtive, had made him vaguely uneasy (but perhaps that impression had been due to his own state of mind at the time). In any case, in spite of Tunner’s obvious haste to leave Bou Noura, he found him a sympathetic companion, and he hoped to persuade him to stay a while.