A Bend in the River - V.S. Naipaul [116]
She said, “Raymond. Oh, Raymond. No, no. I’m all right. I’m sorry. I’m coming right away.”
She put on her skirt and shoes, and through the door that she left open she swung out into the passage. No pause, no hesitation: I heard her pattering down the staircase—what a sound now! The bed, where nothing had occurred, was in a mess—for the first time, after she had been: I had had the last of that housewifely service. There were the marks of her head on the pillow, the gathers in the sheet from her movements: things now rare, indescribably precious to me, those relics in cloth that would go so soon. I lay down where she had lain, to get her smell.
Outside the door Metty said, “Salim?” He called again, “Salim.” And he came in, in his underpants.
I said, “Oh, Ali, Ali. Terrible things happened tonight. I spat on her. She made me spit on her.”
“People quarrel. After three years a thing doesn’t just end like this.”
“Ali, it isn’t that. I couldn’t do anything with her. I didn’t want her, I didn’t want her. That is what I can’t bear. It’s all gone.”
“You mustn’t stay inside. Come outside. I will put on my pants and shirt and I will walk with you. We will walk together. We will walk to the river. Come, I will walk with you.”
The river, the river at night. No, no.
“I know more things about your family than you, Salim. It is better for you to walk it off. It is the best way.”
“I’ll stay here.”
He stood about for a little, then he went to his room. But I knew that he was waiting and watching. All the back of my swollen hand was aching; my little finger felt dead. The skin was blue-black in parts—that too now a relic.
I was ready when the telephone rang.
“Salim, I didn’t want to leave. How are you?”
“Dreadful. And you?”
“When I left I drove slowly. Then after the bridge I drove very fast, to get back here to telephone you.”
“I knew that you would. I was waiting for it.”
“Do you want me to come back? The road is quite empty. I can be back in twenty minutes. Oh, Salim. I look dreadful. My face is in an awful state. I will have to hide for days.”
“You will always look wonderful to me. You know that.”
“I should have given you some Valium when I saw how you were. But I thought about that only when I was in the car. You must try to sleep. Make some hot milk and try to sleep. It helps to have a hot drink. Let Metty make some hot milk for you.”
Never closer, never more like a wife, than at this moment. It was easier to talk on the telephone. And when that was over, I began to watch through the night, waiting for daylight and another telephone call. Metty was sleeping. He had left the door of his room open, and I heard his breathing.
There came a moment, with the coming of the light, when suddenly the night became part of the past. The brush strokes on the white-painted window panes began to show, and at that time, out of my great pain, I had an illumination. It didn’t come in words; the words I attempted to fit to it were confused and caused the illumination itself to vanish. It seemed to me that men were born only to grow old, to live out their span, to acquire experience. Men lived to acquire experience; the quality of the experience was immaterial; pleasure and pain—and above all, pain—had no meaning; to possess pain was as meaningless as to chase pleasure. And even when the illumination vanished, became as thin and half nonsensical as a dream, I remembered that I had had it, that knowledge about the illusion of pain.
The light brightened through the white-painted windows. The disturbed room changed its character. It seemed to have become stale. The only true relic was now my aching hand, though if I had looked I would have found a hair or two from her head. I dressed, went downstairs and,