“Oh, you don’t know me! When I’m nervous or upset, right off I’m high.”
He looked at his watch. “Well, we’ve got another eight hours at least. We might as well dig in. Is it all right with you if I change seats and sit with you?”
“Of course. I asked you to when we first got on, so you wouldn’t have to ride backwards.”
“Fine.” He rose, stretched, yawned, and sat down beside her very hard, bumping against her. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I miscalculated the beast’s gyrations. God, what a train.” His right arm went around her, and he pulled her toward him a little. “Lean against me. You’ll be more comfortable. Relax! You’re all tense and tight.”
“Tight, yes! I’m afraid so.” She laughed; to her it sounded like a titter. She reclined partially against him, her head on his shoulder. “This should make me feel comfortable,” she was thinking, “but it only makes everything worse. I’m going to jump out of my skin.”
For a few minutes she made herself sit there without moving. It was difficult not to be tense, because it seemed to her that the motion of the train kept pushing her toward him. Slowly she felt the muscles of his arm tightening around her waist. The train came to a halt. She bounded up, crying: “I want to go to the door and see what it looks like outside.”
He rose, put his arm around her again, held it there with insistence, and said: “You know what it looks like. just dark mountains.”
She looked up into his face. “I know. Please, Tunner.” She wriggled slightly, and felt him let go. At that moment the door into the corridor opened, and the ravaged-looking woman in black made as if to enter the compartment.
“Ah, pardon. Je me suis trompee,” she said, scowling balefully, and going on without shutting the door behind her.
“What does that old harpy want?” said Tunner.
Kit walked to the doorway, stood in it, and said loudly: “She’s just a voyeuse.” The woman, already halfway down the corridor, turned furiously and glared at her. Kit was delighted. The satisfaction she derived from knowing that the woman had heard the word struck her as absurd. Yet there it was, a strong, exultant force inside her. “A little more and I’ll be hysterical. And then Tunner will be helpless!”
In normal situations she felt that Port was inclined to lack understanding, but in extremities no one else could take his place; in really bad moments she relied on him utterly, not because he was an infallible guide under such circumstances, but because a section of her consciousness annexed him as a buttress, so that in part she identified herself with him. “And Port’s not here. So no hysteria,please.” Aloud she said: “I’ll be right back. Don’t let the witch in.”
“I’ll come with you,” he said.
“Really, Tunner,” she laughed. “I’m afraid where I’m going you’d be just a little in the way.”
He strove not to show his embarrassment. “Oh! Okay. Sorry.”
The corridor was empty. She tried to see out the windows, but they were coated with dust and fingermarks. Up ahead she could hear the noise of voices. The doors onto the quai were closed. She went into the next coach; it was marked “ll,” and it was more brightly lighted, more populous, much shabbier. At the other end she met people coming into the car from outside. She crowded past them, got off and walked along the ground toward the front of the train. The fourth-class passengers, all native Berbers and Arabs, were milling about in the midst of a confusion of bundles and boxes, piled on the dirt platform under the faint light of a bare electric bulb. A sharp wind swept down from the nearby mountains. Quickly she slipped in among the people and climbed aboard.
As she entered the car, her first impression was that she was not on the train at all. It was merely an oblong area, crowded to bursting with men in dun-colored burnouses, squatting, sleeping, reclining, standing, and moving about through a welter of amorphous bundles. She stood still an instant taking in the sight; for the first time she felt she was in a strange land. Someone was pushing her from behind, obliging her to go on into the car. She resisted, seeing no place to move to, and fell against a man with a white beard, who stared at her sternly. Under his gaze she felt like a badly behaved child. “Pardon, monsieur,” she said, trying to bend out of the way in order to avoid the growing pressure from behind. It was useless; she was impelled forward in spite of all her efforts, and staggering over the prostrate forms and the piles of objects, she moved into the middle of the car. The train lurched into motion. She glanced around a little fearfully. The idea occurred to her that these were Moslems, and that the odor of alcohol on her breath would scandalize them almost as much as if she were suddenly to remove all her clothing. Stumbling over the crouched figures, she worked her way to one side of the windowless wall and leaned against it while she took out a small bottle of perfume from her bag and rubbed it over her face and neck, hoping it would counteract, or at least blend with, whatever alcoholic odor there might be about her. As she rubbed, her fingers struck a small, soft object on the nape of her neck. She looked: it was a yellow louse. She had partly crushed it. With disgust she wiped her finger against the wall. Men were looking at her, but with neither sympathy nor antipathy. Nor even with curiosity, she thought. They had the absorbed and vacant expression of the man who looks into the handkerchief after blowing his nose. She shut her eyes for a moment. To her surprise she felt hungry. She took the sandwich out and ate it, breaking off the bread in small pieces and chewing them violently. The man leaning against the wall beside her was also eating—small dark objects which he kept taking out of the hood of his garment and crunching noisily. With a faint shudder she saw that they were red locusts with the legs and heads removed. The babble of voices which had been constant suddenly ceased; people appeared to be listening. Above the rumbling of the train and the rhythmical clacking of the wheels over the rails she could hear the sharp, steady sound of rain on the tin roof of the car. The men were nodding their heads; conversation started up again. She determined to fight her way back to the door in order to be able to get down at the next stop. Holding her head slightly lowered in front of her, she began to burrow wildly through the crowd. There were groans from below as she stepped on sleepers, there were exclamations of indignation as her elbows came in contact with faces. At each step she cried: “Pardon! Pardon!” She had got herself wedged into a corner at the end of the car. Now all she needed was to get to the door. Barring her way was a wild-faced man holding a severed sheep’s head, its eyes like agate marbles staring from their sockets. “Oh!” she moaned. The man looked at her stolidly, making no movement to let her by. Using all her strength, she fought her way around him, rubbing her skirt against the bloody neck as she squeezed past. With relief she saw that the door onto the platform was open; she would have only to get by those who filled the entrance. She began her cries of “Pardon!” once more, and charged through. The platform itself was less crowded because the cold rain was sweeping across it. Those sitting there had their heads covered with the hoods of their burnouses. Turning her back to the rain she gripped the iron railing and looked directly into the most hideous human face she had ever seen. The tall man wore cast-off European clothes, and a burlap bag over his head like a haik. But where his nose should have been was a dark triangular abyss, and the strange flat lips were white. For no reason at all she thought of a lion’s muzzle; she could not take her eyes away from it. The man seemed neither to see her nor to feel the rain; he merely stood there. As she stared she found herself wondering why it was that a diseased face, which basically means nothing, should be so much more horrible to look at than a face whose tissues are healthy but whose expression reveals an interior corruption. Port would say that in a non-materialistic age it would not be thus. And probably he would be right.
She was drenched through and shivering, but she still held on to the cold metal railing and looked straight ahead of her—sometimes into the face, and sometimes to one side into the gray, rain-filled air of the night behind it. It was a tete-a-tete which would last until they came to a station. The train was laboring slowly, noisily, up a steep grade. From time to time, in the middle of the shaking and racket, there was a hollow sound for a few seconds as it crossed a short bridge or a trestle. At such moments it seemed to her that she was moving high in the air and that far below there was water rushing between the rocky walls of the chasms. The driving rain continued. She had the impression of living a dream of terror which refused to come to a finish. She was not conscious of time passing; on the contrary, she felt that it had stopped, that she had become a static thing suspended in a vacuum. Yet underneath was the certainty that at a given moment it would no longer be this way—but she did not want to think of that, for fear that she should become alive once more, that time should begin to move again and that she should be aware of the endless seconds as they passed.
And so she stood unmoving, always shivering, holding herself very erect. When the train slowed down and came to a stop, the lion-faced man was gone. She got off and hurried through the rain, back toward the end of the train. As she climbed into the second-class carriage, she remembered that he had stepped aside like any normal man, to let her pass. She began to laugh to herself, quietly. Then she stood still. There were people in the corridor, talking. She turned and went back to the toilet, locked herself in, and began to make up by the flickering lantern overhead, looking into the small oval mirror above the washstand. She was still trembling with cold, and water ran down her legs onto the floor. When she felt she could face Tunner again, she went out, down the corridor, and crossed over into the first-class coach. The door of their compartment was open. Tunner was staring moodily out the window. He turned as she went in, and jumped up.
“My God, Kit! Where have you been?”
“In the fourth-class carriage?” She was shaking violently, so that it was impossible for her to sound nonchalant, as she had intended.
“But look at you! Come in here.” His voice was suddenly very serious. He pulled her firmly into the compartment, shut the door, helped her to sit down, and immediately began to go through his luggage, taking things out and laying them on the seat. She watched him in a stupor. Presently he was holding two aspirin tablets and a plastic cup in front of her face. “Take these,” he commanded. The cup contained champagne. She did as she was told. Then he indicated the flannel bathrobe on the seat across from her. “I’m going out into the passageway here, and I want you to take off every stitch you have on, and put on that. Then you rap on the door and I’ll come in and massage your feet. No excuses, now. Just do it.” He went out and rolled the door shut after him.
She pulled down the shades at the outside windows and did as he had told her. The robe was soft and warm; she sat huddled in it on the seat for a while, her legs drawn up under her. And she poured herself three more cups of champagne, drinking them quickly one after the other. Then she tapped softly on the glass. The door opened a little. “All clear?” said Tunner.
“Yes, yes. Come in.”
He sat down opposite her. “Now, stick your foot out here. I’m going to give them an alcohol rub. What’s the matter with you, anyway? Are you crazy? Want to get pneumonia? What happened? Why were you so long? You had me nuts here, running up and down the place, in and out of cars asking everybody if they’d seen you. I didn’t know where the hell you’d gone to.”
“I told you I was in the fourth-class with the natives. I couldn’t get back because there’s no bridge between the cars. That feels wonderful. You’ll wear yourself out.”
He laughed, and rubbed more vigorously. “Never have yet.”
When she was completely warm and comfortable he reached up and turned the lantern’s wick very low. Then he moved across and sat beside her. The arm went around her, the pressure began again. She could think of nothing to say to stop him.
“You all right?” he asked softly, his voice husky.
“Yes,” she said.
A minute later she whispered nervously: “No, no, no! Someone may open the door.”
“No one’s going to open the door.” He kissed her. Over and over in her head she heard the slow wheels on the rails saying: “Not now not now, not now not now . . .” And underneath she imagined the deep chasms in the rain, swollen with water. She reached up and caressed the back of his head, but she said nothing.
“Darling,” he murmured. “Just be still. Rest.”
She could no longer think, nor were there any more images in her head. She was aware only of the softness of the woolen bathrobe next to her skin, and then of the nearness and warmth of a being that did not frighten her. The rain beat against the window panes.
The roof of the hotel in the early morning, before the sun had come from behind the nearby mountainside, was a pleasant place for breakfast. The tables were set out along the edge of the terrace, overlooking the valley. In the gardens below, the fig trees and high stalks of papyrus moved slightly in the fresh morning wind. Farther down were the larger trees where the storks had made their huge nests, and at the bottom of the slope was the river, running with thick red water. Port sat drinking his coffee, enjoying the rain-washed smell of the mountain air. just below, the storks were teaching their young to fly; the ratchet-like croaking of the older birds was mingled with shrill cries from the fluttering young ones.
As he watched, Mrs. Lyle came through the doorway from downstairs. It seemed to him that she looked unusually distraught. He invited her to sit with him, and she ordered her tea from an old Arab waiter in a shoddy rose-colored uniform.
“Gracious! Aren’t we ever picturesque!” she said.
Port called her attention to the birds; they watched them until her tea was brought.
“Tell me, has your wife arrived safely?”
“Yes, but I haven’t seen her. She’s still asleep.”
“I should think so, after that damnable trip.”
“And your son. Still in bed?”
“Good heavens, no! He’s gone off somewhere, to see some cald or other. That boy has letters of introduction to Arabs in every town of North Africa, I expect.” She became pensive. After a moment she said, looking at him sharply: “I do hope you don’t go near them.”
“Arabs, you mean? I don’t know any personally. But it’s rather hard not to go near them, since they’re all over the place.”
“Oh, I’m talking about social contact with them. Eric’s an absolute fool. He wouldn’t be ill today if it hadn’t been for those filthy people.”
“Ill? He looks well enough to me. What’s wrong with him?”
“He’s very ill.” Her voice sounded distant; she looked down toward the river. Then she poured herself some more tea, and offered Port a biscuit from a tin she had brought upstairs with her. Her voice more definite, she continued. “They’re all contaminated, you know, of course. Well, that’s it. And I’ve been having the most beastly time trying to make him get proper treatment. He’s a young idiot.”
“I don’t think I quite understand,” said Port.
“An infection, an infection,” she said impatiently. “Some filthy swine of an Arab woman,” she added, with astonishing violence.