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By Root 21324 0

— as pain does when it goes on too long, spreading from a specific member to flood a whole area of the body or the mind. The lovely grooves of the rockets upon the dark sky filled us only with the sense of a breath-taking con gruence to the whole nature of the world of love which was soon to relinquish us. This particular night was full of a rare summer lightning: and hardly had the display ended when from the desert to the east a thin crust of thunder formed like a scab upon the melodious silence. A light rain fell, youthful and refreshing, and all at once the dark-ness was full of figures hurrying back into the shelter of the lamplit houses, dresses held ankle-high and voices raised in shrill pleasure. The lamps printed for a second their bare bodies against the trans-parent materials which sheathed them. For our part we turned wordlessly into the alcove behind the sweet-smelling box-hedges and lay down upon the stone bench carved in the shape of a swan. The laughing chattering crowd poured across the entrance of the alcove towards the light; we lay in the cradle of darkness feeling the gentle prickle of the rain upon our faces. The last fuses were being defiantly lit by men in dinner-jackets and through her hair I saw the last pale comets gliding up into the darkness. I tasted, with the glowing pleasure of the colour in my brain, the warm guiltless pressure of her tongue upon mine, her arms upon mine. The mag-nitude of this happiness — we could not speak but gazed abun-dantly at each other with eyes full of unshed tears. From the house came the dry snap of champagne-corks and the laughter of human beings. ‘Never an evening alone now.’

‘What is happening to Nessim?’

‘I no longer know. When there is something to hide one becomes an actor. It forces all the people round one to act as well.’

The same man, it was true, walked about on the surface of their common life — the same considerate, gentle punctual man: but in a horrifying sense everything had changed, he was no longer there. ‘We’ve abandoned each other’ she said in a small expiring

whisper and drawing herself closer pressed to the very hilt of sense and sound the kisses which were like summaries of all we had shared, held precariously for a moment in our hands, before they should overflow into the surrounding darkness and forsake us. And yet it was as if in every embrace she were saying to herself:

‘Perhaps through this very thing, which hurts so much and which I do not want ever to end — maybe through this I shall find my way back to Nessim.’ I was filled suddenly by an intolerable depression.

Later, walking about in the strident native quarter with its jab-bing lights and flesh-wearing smells, I wondered as I had always wondered, where time was leading us. And as if to test the validity of the very emotions upon which so much love and anxiety could base themselves I turned into a lighted booth decorated by a strip of cinema poster — the huge half-face of a screen-lover, mean-ingless as the belly of a whale turned upwards in death — and sat down upon the customer’s stool, as one might in a barber’s shop, to wait my turn. A dirty curtain was drawn across the inner door and from behind it came faint sounds, as of the congress of crea-tures unknown to science, not specially revo lting — indeed inter-esting as the natural sciences are for those who have abandoned any claims of cultivating a sensibility. I was of course drunk by this time and exhausted — drunk as much on Justine as upon the thin-paper-bodied Pol Roget. There was a tarbush lying upon the chair beside me and absently I put it on my head. It was faintly warm and sticky inside and the thick leather lining clung to my forehead. ‘I want to know what it really means’ I told myself in a mirror whose cracks had been pasted over with the trimmings of postage stamps. I meant of course the whole portentous scrimmage of sex itself, the act of penetration which could lead a man to despair for the sake of a creature with two breasts and le croissant as the picturesque Levant slang has it. The sound within had increased to a sly groaning and squeaking