«It’s all my fault. Don’t give it another thought, poor darling».
He would not have it that way. «No, no, no,» he said. «There’s no excuse». And in an excess of contrition he rose and sat down heavily on the bed beside her. The tray tipped perilously.
«Be careful, darling!» she exclaimed. «I shall have peas and wine all over me in another moment». But he had already seized her hand and was covering it with quick kisses. He was floating in the air, impelled by a hot, dry wind which enveloped him, voluptuously caressed him. For the space of two long breaths she was silent, and he heard his own breathing, and confused it with the sound of the wind that was blowing him along, above the vast, bare, sunlit valley. The skin of her arm was smooth, the flesh was soft. He pulled her further toward him, over the balancing tray.
«Be careful!» she cried again in alarm, as the tray tilted in his direction. «No, no!»
The wine glass went over first; the icy stain on his thigh made him jump convulsively. Then, very slowly it seemed to him, plates slid and tumbled toward him as the tray overturned and buried the lower part of his body in a confusion of china, glassware and warm food. «Oh!» she cried. But he held her more tightly with one arm, sweeping the tray and some of the dishes onto the floor with the other. And he scrambled up to be completely near her, so that there were only a few thicknesses of wet cloth, a fork and a spoon or two between them, and presently, after a short struggle with pieces of clinging clothing, nothing but a few creamed mushrooms.
«For God’s sake, no! Not like this!» she was on the point of shouting, but as if she sensed how tenuous was the impulse that moved him, she thought: «At this very moment you’re hoping desperately that nothing will happen to stop this. So you did want it to happen. Why wouldn’t you admit it? Why can’t you be frank? You wanted it; let it happen, even this way. Even this way». And so she said nothing, reaching out and turning off the light beside the bed. A word, she told herself, could have broken the thread by which he hung suspended from the sky; he would have fallen with a crash into the room, a furiously embarrassed young man with no excuse for his behavior, no escape from his predicament, no balm for his injured pride. «He’s very sweet. And a little mad. So compact. Not at all like Luis. But could I really love any man I don’t respect? I don’t respect him at all. How can one respect an impersonal thing? He’s scarcely human. He’s not conscious of me as me. As another natural force, perhaps, yes. But that’s not enough. I could never love him. But he’s sweet. God knows, he’s sweet».
The soft endless earth spread out beneath him, glowing with sunlight, untouched by time, uninhabited, belonging wholly to him. How far below it lay, he could not have said, gliding soundlessly through the pure luminous air that admitted no possibility of distance or dimension. Yet he could touch its smooth resilient contours, smell its odor of sun, and even taste the salt left in its pores by the sea in some unremembered age. And this flight — he had always known it was to be made, and that he would make it. This was a corner of existence he had known was there, but until now had not been able to reach; at present, having discovered it, he also knew he would be able to find his way back another time. Something was being completed; there would be less room for fear. The thought filled him with an ineffable happiness. «Ah, God,» he murmured aloud, not knowing that he did so.
Beyond the windows the rising wind blew through the cypresses, bringing with it occasionally the deeper sound of the sea below. Regularly the drawn white curtains on one side of the room glowed white as the lighthouse’s beam flashed across it. Daisy coughed.
«You’re a slut,» she said to herself. «How could you ever have allowed this to happen? But it’s ghastly! The door’s not locked. One of the servants may knock at any minute. Just collect yourself and do something. Do something!»
She coughed again.
«Darling, this is dreadful,» she said softly, smiling in the dark, trying to keep her voice free of reproach. He did not answer; he might have been dead. «Darling,» she said again hesitantly. Still he gave no sign of having heard her. For a moment she drifted back into her thoughts. If one could only let go, even for a few seconds, if only one could cease caring about everything, but really everything, what a wonderful thing it would be. But that would probably be death. Life means caring, is one long struggle to keep from going to pieces. If you let yourself have a really good time, your health goes to pieces, and if your health goes, your looks go. The awful part is that in the end, no matter what you have done, no matter how careful you may have been, everything falls apart anyway. The disintegration merely comes sooner, or later, depending on you. Going to pieces is inevitable, and you haven’t even any pieces to show when you’re finished. «Why should that be a depressing thought?» she wondered. «It’s the most obvious and fundamental one there is. Mann muss nur sterben. But that means something quite different. That means we are supposed to have free will».
Far in the distance, out over the Atlantic, she heard the faint hum of a plane as the dark mountain and the Villa Hesperides were included briefly within the radius of its sound. Northward to Lisbon, southward to Casablanca. In another hour Luis might be hearing that same motor as it circled above the airport.
«Darling, please!» She struggled a little to free herself from his embrace. Since he still held her, she squirmed violently and managed to sit up, bathed in sweat, wine and grease. The air of the room suddenly seemed bitter cold. She ran her hand tentatively over her stomach and drew it back, disgusted. Quickly she jumped out of bed, locked the door into the corridor, drew her peignoir around her, and disappeared into the bathroom without turning on any light.
She stayed in the shower rather longer than was necessary, hoping that by the time she came out he would have got up, dressed, and perhaps cleared away some of the mess around the bed. Then she could ring, say: «I’ve had a little accident,» and have coffee served. When she opened the bathroom door the room was still in darkness. She went over to the night table and switched on the light. He lay asleep, partially covered by the sheet.
«But this is the end!» she told herself. And with an edge of annoyance in her voice: «Darling, I’m sorry. You absolutely must get dressed immediately». He did not stir; she seized his shoulder and shook it with impatience. «Come along! Up with you! This little orgy has gone on long enough…»
He heard her words with perfect clarity, and he understood what they meant, but they were like a design painted on a wall, utterly without relation to him. He lay still. The most important thing in the world was to prolong the moment of soothing emptiness in the midst of which he was living.
Taking hold of the sheet, she jerked it back over the foot of the bed. Then she bent over and shouted in his ear: «You’re stark naked!» Immediately he sat upright, fumbling ineffectively around his feet for the missing cover. She turned and went back into the bathroom, calling over her shoulder: «Get dressed immediately, darling». Looking into the mirror, arranging her hair, she said to herself: «Well, are you pleased or displeased with the episode?» and she found herself unable to answer, dwelling rather on the miraculous fact that Hugo had not walked in on them; the possibility of his having done so seemed now more dreadful each minute. «I must have been quite out of my senses». She closed her eyes for an instant and shuddered.
Dyar had pulled on his clothing mechanically, without being fully conscious of what he was doing. However, by the time he came to putting on his tie, his mind was functioning. He too stood before a mirror, smiling a little triumphantly as he made the staccato gestures with the strip of silk. He combed his hair and knelt by the bed, where he began to scrape up bits of food from the floor and put them on the tray. Daisy came out of the bathroom. «You’re an angel!» she cried. «I was just going to ask if you’d mind trying to make a little order out of this chaos». She lay down on a chaise longue in the center of the room and pulled a fur coverlet around her, and she was about to say: «I’m sorry there was no opportunity for you to have a shower, too,» when she thought: «Above all, I must not embarrass him». She decided to make no reference to what had occurred. «Be a darling and ring the bell, will you, and we’ll have coffee. I’m exhausted».
But apparently he was in no way ill at ease; he did as she suggested, and then went to sit cross-legged on the floor at her side. «I’ve got to get going,» he said to himself, and he was not even preoccupied with the idea of how he would broach the subject of his departure; after the coffee he would simply get up, say good-bye, and leave. It had been an adventure, but Daisy had had very little to do with it, beyond being the detonating factor; almost all of it had taken place inside him. Still, since the fact remained that he had had his way with her, he was bound to behave in a manner which was a little more intimate, a shade on the side of condescension.
«You warm enough?» He touched her arm.
«No. It’s glacial in this room. Glacial. God! I can’t think why I didn’t have a fireplace installed when they were building the house».
Hugo knocked on the door. For ten minutes or so the room was full of activity: Inez and another girl changing the sheets, Mario cleaning up the food from the floor, Paco removing grease spots from the rug beside the bed, Hugo serving coffee. Daisy sat studying Dyar’s face as she sipped her coffee, noting with a certain slight resentment that, far from being embarrassed, on the contrary he showed signs of feeling more at ease with her than earlier in the evening. «But what do I expect?» she thought, whereupon she had to admit to herself that she would have liked him to be a little more impressed by what had passed between them. He had come through untouched; she had the uneasy impression that even his passion had been objectless, automatic.
«What goes on in your head?» he said when the servants had all gone out and the room had fallen back into its quiet.
Even that annoyed her. She considered the question insolent. It assumed an intimacy which ought to have existed between them, but which for some reason did not. «But why not?» she wondered, looking closely at his satisfied, serious expression. The answer came up ready-made and absurd from her subconscious; it sounded like doggerel. «It doesn’t exist because he doesn’t exist». This was ridiculous, certainly, but it struck a chord somewhere in the vicinity of the truth. «Unreal. What does it mean for a person to be unreal? And why should I feel he is unreal?» Then she laughed and said: «My God! Of course! You want to feel you’re alive!»
He set his cup and saucer on the floor, saying: «Huh?»
«Isn’t that what you said to me the first night you came here, when I asked what you wanted most in life?»
«Did I?»
«You most assuredly did. You said those very words. And of course, you know, you’re so right. Because you’re not really alive, in some strange way. You’re dead». With the last two words, it seemed to her she heard her voice turning a shade bitter.
He glanced at her swiftly; she thought he looked hurt.
«Why am I trying to bait the poor man?» she thought. «He’s done no harm». It was reasonless, idiotic, yet the desire was there, very strong.
«Why dead?» His voice was even; she imagined its inflection was hostile.
«Oh, not dead!» she said impatiently. «Just not alive. Not really. But we’re all like that, these days, I suppose. Not quite so blatantly as you, perhaps, but still».
«Ah». He was thinking: «I’ve got to get out of here. I’ve got to get going».
«We’re all monsters,» said Daisy with enthusiasm. «It’s the Age of Monsters. Why is the story of the woman and the wolves so terrible? You know the story, where she has a sled full of children, crossing the tundra, and the wolves are following her, and she tosses out one child after another to placate the beasts. Everyone thought it ghastly a hundred years ago. But today it’s much more terrible. Much. Because then it was remote and unlikely, and now it’s entered into the realm of the possible. It’s a terrible story not because the woman is a monster. Not at all. But because what she did to save herself is exactly what we’d all do. It’s terrible because it’s so desperately true. I’d do it, you’d do it, everyone we know would do it. Isn’t that so?»
Across the shining stretches of floor, at the bottom of a well of yellow light, he saw his brief case waiting. The sight of it lying there reinforced his urge to be gone. But it was imperative that the leave taking be casual. If he mentioned it vaguely now, the suggestion would be easier to act upon in another five minutes. By then it would be eleven-thirty.
«Well,» he began, breathing in deeply and stretching, as if to rise.
«Do you know anyone who wouldn’t?» He suddenly realized that she was serious about whatever it was she was saying. There was something wrong with her; she ought to have been lying there contentedly, perhaps holding his hand or ruffling his hair and saying a quiet word now and then. Instead she was tense and restless, talking anxiously about wolves and monsters, seeking either to put something into his mind or to take something out of it; he did not know which.
«Do you?» she insisted, the words a despairing challenge. It was as if, had he been able to answer «Yes,» the sound of the word might have given her a little peace. He might have said: «Yes, I do know someone,» or even: «Yes, such a person exists,» and she would perhaps have been comforted. The world, that faraway place, would have become inhabitable and possible once again. But he said nothing. Now she took his hand, turned her face down to him coquettishly.
«Speaking of monsters, now that I recall your first evening here, I remember. God! You’re the greatest monster of all. Of course! With that great emptiness in your hand. But my God! Don’t you remember? Don’t you remember what I told you?»
«Not very much of it,» he said, annoyed to see his chance of escape being pulled further away from him. «I don’t take much stock in that sort of stuff, you know».
«Stock, indeed!» she snorted. «Everyone knows it’s perfectly true and quite scientific. But in any case, whether you take stock or not — what an expression! — just remember, you can do what you want. If you know what you want!» she added, a little harshly. «You have an empty hand, and vacuums have a tendency to fill up. Be careful what goes into your life».
«I’ll be careful,» he said, standing up. «I’m afraid I’ve got to be going. It’s getting late».
«It’s not late, darling,» she said, but she made no effort to persuade him to stay on. «Call a cab». She pointed to the telephone. «It’s 24–80».
He had not thought of that complication. «I’ll walk,» he said. «I need the exercise».
«Nonsense! It’s five miles. You can’t».
«Sure I can,» he said smiling.
«You’ll get lost. You’re mad». She was thinking: «He probably wants to save the money. Shall I tell him to have it put on our bill?» She decided against it. «Do as you like,» she said, shrugging.
As he took up his briefcase, she said: «I shall see you down to the door,» and despite his protestations she walked ahead of him down the stairs into the hall where a few candles still burned. The house was very still.
«The servants are all in bed, I guess,» he said.