I sleep a sleep of utter exhaustion. I barely emerge into wakefulness when she lifts the edge of the huge bear-fur and snuggles against me. "A child gets cold in the night"-that is what I think in my bemddle-ment, hauling her into the crook of my arm, dozing away. Perhaps for a while I am fast asleep again. Then, wide awake, I feel her hand groping under my clothes, her tongue licking my ear. A ripple of sensual joy runs through me, I yawn, stretch, and smile in the dark. Her hand finds what it is seeking. "What of it?" I think. "What if we perish in the middle of nowhere? Let us at least not die pinched and miserable!" Beneath her smock she is bare. With a heave I am upon her; she is warm, swollen, ready for me; in a minute five months of senseless hesitancy are wiped out and I am floating back into easy sensual oblivion. When I wake it is with a mind washed so blank that terror rises in me. Only with a deliberate effort can I reinsert myself into time and space: into a bed, a tent, a night, a world, a body pointing west and east. Though I lie sprawled on her with the weight of a dead ox, the girl is asleep, her arms clasped slackly around my back. I ease myself off her, rearrange our covering, and try to compose myself. Not for an instant do I imagine that I can strike camp on the morrow, march back to the oasis, and in the magistrate's sunny villa set about living out my days with a young bride, sleeping placidly by her side, fathering her children, watching the seasons turn. I do not shy at the thought that if she had not spent the evening with the young men around the campfire she would very likely not have found any need for me. Perhaps the truth is that it was one of them she was embracing when I held her in my arms. I listen scrupulously to the reverberations of that thought inside me, but cannot detect a plunging of the heart to tell me I am injured. She sleeps; my hand passes back and forth over her smooth belly, caresses her thighs. It is done, I am content. At the same time I am ready to believe that it would not have been done if I were not in a few days to part from her. Nor, if I must be candid, does the pleasure I take in her, the pleasure whose distant afterglow my palm still feels, go deep. No more than before does my heart leap or my blood pound at her touch. I am with her not for whatever raptures she may promise or yield but for other reasons, which remain as obscure to me as ever. Except that it has not escaped me that in bed in the dark the marks her torturers have left upon her, the twisted feet, the half-blind eyes, are easily forgotten. Is it then the case that it is the whole woman I want, that my pleasure in her is spoiled until these marks on her are erased and she is restored to herself; or is it the case (I am not stupid, let me say these things) that it is the marks on her which drew me to her but which, to my disappointment, I find, do not go deep enough? Too much or too little: is it she I want or the traces of a history her body bears? For a long time I lie staring into what seems pitch blackness, though I know the roof of the tent is only an arm's length away. No thought that I think, no articulation, however antonymic, of the origin of my desire seems to upset me. "I must be tired," I think. "Or perhaps whatever can be articulated is falsely put." My lips move, silently composing and recomposing the words. "Or perhaps it is the case that only that which has not been articulated has to be lived through." I stare at this last proposition without detecting any answering movement in myself toward assent or dissent. The words grow more and more opaque before me; soon they have lost all meaning. I sigh at the end of a long day, in the middle of a long night. Then I turn to the girl, embrace her, draw her tight against me. She purrs in her sleep, where soon I have joined her.
We rest on the eighth day, for the horses are now in a truly pitiable state. They chew hungrily at the sapless fibre of the dead reed-stalks.
They bloat their bellies with water and break wind massively. We have fed them the last of the linseed and even a little of our bread. Unless we find grazing in a day or two they will perish.
We leave our well behind us, and the mound of earth we dug, to press on northwards. All of us walk except the girl. We have abandoned whatever we can afford to lighten the horses' burden; but since we cannot survive without fire they must still carry bulky loads of wood.
"When will we see the mountains?" I ask our guide.
"One day. Two days. It is hard to say. I have not travelled these parts before." He has hunted along the eastern shore of the lake and the periphery of the desert without having reason to cross it. I wait, giving him every chance to speak his mind, but he seems unperturbed, he does not believe we are in danger. "Perhaps two days before we see the mountains, then another day's march before we reach them." He screws up his eyes, peering into the brown haze that veils the horizon. He does not ask what we will do when we get to the mountains.
We reach the end of this flat pebbly waste and ascend a series of rocky ridges to a low plateau, where we begin to meet with hummocks of withered winter grass. The animals tear savagely at them. It is a great relief to see them eat.
I wake up with a start in the middle of the night, filled with a dire sense that something is wrong. The girl sits up beside me: "What is it?" she says.
"Listen. The wind has stopped."
Barefoot, wrapped in a fur, she crawls after me out of the tent. It is snowing gently. The earth lies white on every side beneath a hazy full moon. I help her to her feet and stand holding her, staring up into the void from which the snowflakes descend, in a silence that is palpable after a week of wind beating ceaselessly in our ears. The men from the second tent join us. We smile foolishly at each other. "Spring snow," I say, "the last snow of the year." They nod. A horse shaking itself off nearby startles us.
In the snowbound warmth of the tent I make love to her again. She is passive, accommodating herself to me. When we begin I am sure that the time is right; I embrace her in the most intense pleasure and pride of life; but halfway through I seem to lose touch with her, and the act peters out vacantly. My intuitions are clearly fallible. Still, my heart continues its affectionate glow towards this girl who so briskly falls asleep in the crook of my arm. There will be another time, and if not, I do not think I mind.
A voice is calling through the slit of the tent-mouth: "Sir, you must wake up!"
I am dazedly aware of having overslept. It is the stillness, I think to myself: it is as if we are becalmed in the stillness.
I emerge from the tent into daylight. "Look, sir!" says the man who woke me, pointing north-east. "Bad weather on the way!"
Rolling down upon us over the snowy plain is a gigantic black wave. It is still miles away but visibly devouring the earth in its approach. Its crest is lost in the murky clouds. "A storm!" I shout. I have never seen anything so frightening. The men hurry to take down their tent. "Bring the horses in, tether them here in the centre!" The first gusts are already reaching us, the snow begins to eddy and fly.
The girl is beside me on her sticks. "Can you see it?" I say. She peers in her crooked way and nods. The men set to work striking the second tent. "The snow was not a good sign after all!" She does not reply. Though I know I should be helping, I cannot tear my eyes from the great black wall roaring down upon us with the speed of a galloping horse. The wind rises, rocking us on our feet; the familiar howl is in our ears again.