The Sheltering Sky - Bowles, Paul [3]
“What is it?” he asked.
“Nothing.” She paused. “I’m just a little upset. I don’t think you should have told that dream in front of Tunner.”
He did not dare say: “Is that why you cried?” But he said: “In front of him! I told it to him, as much as to you. What’s a dream? Good God, don’t take everything so seriously! And why shouldn’t he hear it? What’s wrong with Tunner? We’ve known him for five years.”
“He’s such a gossip. You know that. I don’t trust him. He always makes a good story.”
“But who’s he going to gossip with here?” said Port, exasperated.
Kit in turn was annoyed.
“Oh, not here!” she snapped. “You seem to forget we’ll be back in New York some day.”
“I know, I know. It’s hard to believe, but I suppose we will. All right. What’s so awful if he remembers every detail and tells it to everybody we know?”
“It’s such a humiliating dream. Can’t you see?”
“Oh, crap!”
There was a silence.
“Humiliating to whom? You or me?”
She did not answer. He pursued: “What do you mean, you don’t trust Tunner? In what way?”
“Oh, I trust him, I suppose. But I’ve never felt completely at ease with him. I’ve never felt he was a close friend.”
“That’s nice, now that we’re here with him!”
“Oh, it’s all right. I like him very much. Don’t misunderstand.”
“But you must mean something.”
“Of course I mean something. But it’s not important.” She went back into her own room. He remained a moment, looking at the ceiling, a puzzled expression on his face.
He started to read again, and stopped.
“Sure you don’t want to see Fiancee for Rent?”
“I certainly don’t.”
He closed his book. “I think I’ll take a walk for about a half an hour.”
He rose, put on a sports shirt and a pair of seersucker trousers, and combed his hair. In her room, she was sitting by the open window, filing her nails. He bent over her and kissed the nape of her neck, where the silky blonde hair climbed upward in wavy furrows.
“That’s wonderful stuff you have on. Did you get it here?” He sniffed noisily, with appreciation. Then his voice changed when he said: “But what did you mean about Tunner?”
“Oh, Port! For God’s sake, stop talking about it!”
“All right, baby”, he said submissively, kissing her shoulder. And with an inflection of mock innocence: “Can’t I even think about it?”
She said nothing until he got to the door. Then she raised her head, and there was pique in her voice: “After all, it’s much more your business than it is mine.”
“See you soon,” he said.
Chapter 4
He walked through the streets, unthinkingly seeking the darker ones, glad to be alone and to feel the night air against his face. The streets were crowded. People pushed against him as they passed, stared from doorways and windows, made comments openly to each other about him-whether with sympathy or not he was unable to tell from their faces-and they sometimes ceased to walk merely in order to watch him.
“How friendly are they? Their faces are masks. They all look a thousand years old. What little energy they have is only the blind, mass desire to live, since no one of them eats enough to give him his own personal force. But what do they think of me? Probably nothing. Would one of them help me if I were to have an accident? Or would I lie here in the street until the police found me? What motive could any one of them have for helping me? They have no religion left. Are they Moslems or Christians? They don’t know. They know money, and when they get it, all they want is to eat. But what’s wrong with that? Why do I feel this way about them? Guilt at being well fed and healthy among them? But suffering is equally divided among all men; each has the same amount to undergo Emotionally he felt that this last idea was untrue, but at the moment it was a necessary belief. it is not always easy to support the stares of hungry people. Thinking that way he could walk on through the streets. It was as if either he or they did not exist. Both suppositions were possible. The Spanish maid at the hotel had said to him that noon: “La vida es pena.”
“Of course,” he had replied, feeling false even as he spoke, asking himself if any American can truthfully accept a definition of life which makes it synonymous with suffering. But at the moment he had approved her sentiment because she was old, withered, so clearly of the people. For years it had been one of his superstitions that reality and true perception were to be found in the conversation of the laboring classes. Even though now he saw clearly that their formulas of thought and speech are as strict and as patterned, and thus as far removed from any profound expression of truth as those of any other class, often he found himself still in the act of waiting, with the unreasoning belief that gems of wisdom might yet issue from their mouths. As he walked along, his nervousness was made manifest to him by the sudden consciousness that he was repeatedly tracing rapid figure-eights with his right index finger. He sighed and made himself stop doing it.