The road was bad almost immediately. At each bump Port slid down lower in his seat. Noticing that he made no effort to avoid slipping more, Kit said at length: “Where are you going? On to the floor?” When he answered, he said only: “What?” and his voice sounded so strange that she turned sharply and tried to see his face. The light was too dim. She could not tell what expression was there.
“Are you asleep?” she asked him.
“No.”
“Is anything wrong? Are you cold? Why don’t you spread your coat over you?”
This time he did not answer.
“Freeze, then,” she said, looking out at the thin moon, low in the sky.
Some time later the bus began a slow, laborious ascent. The fumes from the exhaust grew heavy and acrid; this, combined with the intense noise of the grinding motor and the constantly increasing cold, served to jar Kit from the stupor into which she had sunk. Wide awake, she looked around the indistinct interior of the bus. The occupants all appeared to be asleep; they were resting at unlikely angles, completely rolled in their burnouses, so that not even a finger or a nose was visible. A slight movement beside her made her look down at Port, who had slid so low in his seat that he now was resting on the middle of his spine. She decided to make him sit up, and tapped him vigorously on the shoulder. His only reply was a slight moan.
“Sit up,” she said, tapping again. “You’ll ruin your back.”
This time he groaned: “Oh-h-h!”
“Port, for heaven’s sake, sit up,” she said nervously. She began to tug at his head, hoping to rouse him enough to start him into making some effort himself.
“Oh, God!” he said, and he slowly wormed his way backward up onto the seat. “Oh, God!” he repeated when he was sitting up finally. Now that his head was near her, she realized that his teeth were chattering.
“You’ve got a chill!” she said furiously, although she was furious with herself rather than with him. “I told you to cover up, and you just sat there like an idiot!”
He made no reply, merely sat quite still, his head bent forward and bouncing up and down against his chest with the pitching of the bus. She reached over and pulled at his coat, managing little by little to extricate it from under him where he had thrown it on the seat. Then she spread it over him, tucking it down at the sides with a few petulant gestures. On the surface of her mind, in words, she was thinking: “Typical of him, to be dead to the world, when I’m wide awake and bored.” But the formation of the words was a screen to hide the fear beneath—the fear that he might be really ill. She looked out at the windswept emptiness. The new moon had slipped behind the earth’s sharp edge. Here in the desert, even more than at sea, she had the impression that she was on the top of a great table, that the horizon was the brink of space. She imagined a cubeshaped planet somewhere above the earth, between it and the moon, to which somehow they had been transported. The light would be hard and unreal as it was here, the air would be of the same taut dryness, the contours of the landscape would lack the comforting terrestrial curves, just as they did all through this vast region. And the silence would be of the ultimate degree, leaving room only for the sound of the air as it moved past. She touched the windowpane; it was ice cold. The bus bumped and swayed as it continued upward across the plateau.
It was a long night. They came to a bordj built into the side of a cliff. The overhead light was turned on. The young Arab just in front of Kit, turning around and smiling at her as he lowered the hood of his burnous, pointed at the earth several times and said: “Hassi Inifel!”
“Merci,” she said, and smiled back. She felt like getting out, and turned to Port. Fie was doubled up under his coat; his face looked flushed.
“Port,” she began, and was surprised to hear him answer immediately. “Yes?” His voice sounded wide awake.
“Let’s get out and have something hot. You’ve slept for hours.”
Slowly he sat up. “I haven’t slept at all, if you want to know.”
She did not believe him. “I see,” she said. “Well, do you want to go inside? I’m going.”
“If I can. I feel terrible. I think I have grippe or something.”
“Oh, nonsense! How could you? You probably have indigestion from eating dinner so fast.”
“You go on in. I’ll feel better not moving.”
She climbed out and stood a moment on the rocks in the wind, taking deep breaths. Dawn was nowhere in sight.
In one of the rooms near the entrance of the bordj there were men singing together and clapping their hands quickly in complex rhythm. She found coffee in a smaller room nearby, and sat down on the floor, warming her hands over the clay vessel of coals. “He can’t get sick here,” she thought. “Neither of us can.” There was nothing to do but refuse to be sick, once one was this far away from the world. She went back out and looked through the windows of the bus. Most of the passengers had remained asleep, wrapped in their burnouses. She found Port, and tapped on the glass. “Port!” she called. “Hot coffee!” He did not stir.
“Damn him!” she thought. “He’s trying to get attention. He wants to be sick!” She climbed aboard and worked her way back to his seat, where he lay inert.
“Port! Please come and have some coffee. As a favor to me.” She cocked her head and looked at his face. Smoothing his hair she asked: “Do you feel sick?”
He spoke into his coat. “I don’t want anything. Please. I don’t want to move.”
She disliked to humor him; perhaps by waiting on him she would be playing right into his hands. But in the event he had been chilled he should drink something hot. She determined to get the coffee into him somehow. So she said: “Will you drink it if I bring it to you?”
His reply was a long time in coming, but he finally said: “Yes.”
The driver, an Arab who wore a visored cap instead of a turban, was already on his way out of the bordj as she rushed in. “Wait!” she said to him. He stood still and turned around, looking her up and down speculatively. He had no one to whom he could make any remarks about her, since there were no Europeans present, and the other Arabs were not from the city, and would have failed completely to understand his obscene comments.
Port sat up and drank the coffee, sighing between swallows.
“Finished? I’ve got to give the glass back.”
“Yes.” The glass was relayed through the bus to the front, where a child waited for it, peering anxiously back lest the bus start up before he had it in his hands.
They moved off slowly across the plateau. Now that the doors had been open, it was colder inside.
“I think that helped,” Port said. “Thanks an awful lot. Only I have got something wrong with me. God knows I never felt quite like this before. If I could only be in bed and lie out flat, I’d be all right, I think.”
“But what do you think it is?” she said, suddenly feeling them all there in full force, the fears she had been holding at bay for so many days.
“You tell me. We don’t get in till noon, do we? What a mess, what a mess!”
“Try and sleep, darling.” She had not called him that in at least a year. “Lean over, way over, this way, put your head here. Are you warm enough?” For a few minutes she tried to break the jolts of the bus for him by posting with her body against the back of the seat, but her muscles soon tired; she leaned back and relaxed, letting his head bounce up and down on her breast. His hand in her lap sought hers, found it, held it tightly at first, then loosely. She decided he was asleep, and shut her eyes, thinking: “Of course, there’s no escape now. I’m here.”
At dawn they reached another bordj standing on a perfectly flat expanse of land. The bus drove through the entrance into a court, where several tents stood. A camel peered haughtily through the window beside Kit’s face. This time everyone got out. She woke Port. “Want some breakfast?” she said.
“Believe it or not, I’m a little hungry.”
“Why shouldn’t you be?” she said brightly. “It’s nearly six o’clock.”
They had more of the sweet black coffee, some hard-boiled eggs, and dates. The young Arab who had told her the name of the other bordj walked by as they sat on the floor eating. Kit could not help noticing how unusually tall he was, what an admirable figure he cut when he stood erect in his flowing white garment. To efface her feeling of guilt at having thought anything at all about him, she felt impelled to bring him to Port’s attention.
“Isn’t that one striking!” she heard herself saying, as the Arab moved from the room. The phrase was not at all hers, and it sounded completely ridiculous coming out of her mouth; she waited uneasily for Port’s reaction. But Port was holding his hand over his abdomen; his face was white.
“What is it?” she cried.
“Don’t let the bus go,” he said. He rose unsteadily to his feet and left the room precipitately. Accompanied by a boy he stumbled across the wide court, past the tents where fires burned and babies cried. He walked doubled over, holding his head with one hand and his belly with the other.
In the far corner was a little stone enclosure like a gun-turret, and the boy pointed to it. “Daoua,” he said. Port went up the steps and in, slamming the wooden door after him. It stank inside, and it was dark. He leaned back against the cold stone wall and heard the spider-webs snap as his head touched them. The pain was ambiguous: it was a violent cramp and a mounting nausea, both at once. He stood still for some time, swallowing hard and breathing heavily. What faint light there was in the chamber came up through the square hole in the floor. Something ran swiftly across the back of his neck. He moved away from the wall and leaned over the hole, pushing with his hands against the other wall in front of him. Below were the fouled earth and spattered stones, moving with flies. He shut his eyes and remained in that expectant position for some minutes, groaning from time to time. The bus driver began to blow his horn; for some reason the sound increased his anguish. “Oh, God, shut up!” he cried aloud, groaning immediately afterward. But the horn continued, mixing short blasts with long ones. Finally came the moment when the pain suddenly seemed to have lessened. He opened his eyes, and made an involuntary movement upward with his head, because for an instant he thought he saw flames. It was the red rising sun shining on the rocks and filth beneath. When he opened the door Kit and the young Arab stood outside; between them they helped him out to the waiting bus.
As the morning passed, the landscape took on a gaiety and softness that were not quite like anything Kit had ever seen. Suddenly she realized that it was because in good part sand had replaced rock. And lacy trees grew here and there, especially in the spots where there were agglomerations of huts, and these spots became more frequent. Several times they came upon groups of dark men mounted on mehara. These held the reins proudly, their kohl-farded eyes were fierce above the draped indigo veils that hid their faces.
For the first time she felt a faint thrill of excitement. “It is rather wonderful,” she thought, “to be riding past such people in the Atomic Age.”
Port reclined in his seat, his eyes shut. “Just forget I’m here,” he had said when they left the bordj, “and I’ll be better able to do the same thing. It’s only a few hours more—then bed, thank God.”