Пол Боулз - Let it come down

«How about you?» He would not admit it.

«I told you long ago I was feeling it. At the moment I’m about to take off on a non-stop flight to Arcturus».

«You are, are you?» His voice was unfriendly. «Personally, I think the stuff is a fake. I’m not saying it has no effect at all, but I don’t call feeling jumpy and having my heart beat twice too fast, I don’t call that a kick, myself».

She laughed commiseratingly. «You should have drunk your whiskey, darling. You’d have felt more at home with it. Mais enfin …» She sat up and rang the bell. «I expect the kitchen is in a turmoil because we’re taking so long with our tea».

All during the dinner Daisy talked unceasingly; often Dyar found himself replying in monosyllables, not because he was uninterested, although occasionally he had very little idea what she was saying, but because half the time he was off somewhere else in a world of his own. He did not know what he was thinking about, but his brain was swarming with beginnings of thoughts fastened on to beginnings of other thoughts. To receive so many took all his attention; even had they not been incommunicable he would have had no desire to impart them to Daisy. It was as if his mind withdrew to a remote, dark corner of his being. Then it would come out into the light again, and he would find himself actually believing that he sat having dinner at a small table in a quiet room while a woman lay in bed nearby eating the same food from a tray.

«You’re awfully untalkative,» Daisy said presently. «I’d never have given the majoun to you if I’d known it was going to make a statue out of you».

Her words made him uncomfortable. «Oh,» he said. And what seemed to him a long time later: «I’m all right».

«Yes, I daresay you are. But you make a God-damned unsatisfactory dinner partner».

Now he became fully present, began to stammer apologies more florid than the occasion warranted. «I couldn’t feel worse,» he said finally, «if I’d kicked you. I don’t know what was the matter with me. It must be that stuff that did something crazy to me».

«It’s all my fault. Don’t give it another thought, poor darling».

He would not have it that way. «No, no, no,» he said. «There’s no excuse». And in an excess of contrition he rose and sat down heavily on the bed beside her. The tray tipped perilously.

«Be careful, darling!» she exclaimed. «I shall have peas and wine all over me in another moment». But he had already seized her hand and was covering it with quick kisses. He was floating in the air, impelled by a hot, dry wind which enveloped him, voluptuously caressed him. For the space of two long breaths she was silent, and he heard his own breathing, and confused it with the sound of the wind that was blowing him along, above the vast, bare, sunlit valley. The skin of her arm was smooth, the flesh was soft. He pulled her further toward him, over the balancing tray.

«Be careful!» she cried again in alarm, as the tray tilted in his direction. «No, no!»

The wine glass went over first; the icy stain on his thigh made him jump convulsively. Then, very slowly it seemed to him, plates slid and tumbled toward him as the tray overturned and buried the lower part of his body in a confusion of china, glassware and warm food. «Oh!» she cried. But he held her more tightly with one arm, sweeping the tray and some of the dishes onto the floor with the other. And he scrambled up to be completely near her, so that there were only a few thicknesses of wet cloth, a fork and a spoon or two between them, and presently, after a short struggle with pieces of clinging clothing, nothing but a few creamed mushrooms.

«For God’s sake, no! Not like this!» she was on the point of shouting, but as if she sensed how tenuous was the impulse that moved him, she thought: «At this very moment you’re hoping desperately that nothing will happen to stop this. So you did want it to happen. Why wouldn’t you admit it? Why can’t you be frank? You wanted it; let it happen, even this way. Even this way». And so she said nothing, reaching out and turning off the light beside the bed. A word, she told herself, could have broken the thread by which he hung suspended from the sky; he would have fallen with a crash into the room, a furiously embarrassed young man with no excuse for his behavior, no escape from his predicament, no balm for his injured pride. «He’s very sweet. And a little mad. So compact. Not at all like Luis. But could I really love any man I don’t respect? I don’t respect him at all. How can one respect an impersonal thing? He’s scarcely human. He’s not conscious of me as me. As another natural force, perhaps, yes. But that’s not enough. I could never love him. But he’s sweet. God knows, he’s sweet».

The soft endless earth spread out beneath him, glowing with sunlight, untouched by time, uninhabited, belonging wholly to him. How far below it lay, he could not have said, gliding soundlessly through the pure luminous air that admitted no possibility of distance or dimension. Yet he could touch its smooth resilient contours, smell its odor of sun, and even taste the salt left in its pores by the sea in some unremembered age. And this flight — he had always known it was to be made, and that he would make it. This was a corner of existence he had known was there, but until now had not been able to reach; at present, having discovered it, he also knew he would be able to find his way back another time. Something was being completed; there would be less room for fear. The thought filled him with an ineffable happiness. «Ah, God,» he murmured aloud, not knowing that he did so.

Beyond the windows the rising wind blew through the cypresses, bringing with it occasionally the deeper sound of the sea below. Regularly the drawn white curtains on one side of the room glowed white as the lighthouse’s beam flashed across it. Daisy coughed.

«You’re a slut,» she said to herself. «How could you ever have allowed this to happen? But it’s ghastly! The door’s not locked. One of the servants may knock at any minute. Just collect yourself and do something. Do something!»

She coughed again.

«Darling, this is dreadful,» she said softly, smiling in the dark, trying to keep her voice free of reproach. He did not answer; he might have been dead. «Darling,» she said again hesitantly. Still he gave no sign of having heard her. For a moment she drifted back into her thoughts. If one could only let go, even for a few seconds, if only one could cease caring about everything, but really everything, what a wonderful thing it would be. But that would probably be death. Life means caring, is one long struggle to keep from going to pieces. If you let yourself have a really good time, your health goes to pieces, and if your health goes, your looks go. The awful part is that in the end, no matter what you have done, no matter how careful you may have been, everything falls apart anyway. The disintegration merely comes sooner, or later, depending on you. Going to pieces is inevitable, and you haven’t even any pieces to show when you’re finished. «Why should that be a depressing thought?» she wondered. «It’s the most obvious and fundamental one there is. Mann muss nur sterben . But that means something quite different. That means we are supposed to have free will».

Far in the distance, out over the Atlantic, she heard the faint hum of a plane as the dark mountain and the Villa Hesperides were included briefly within the radius of its sound. Northward to Lisbon, southward to Casablanca. In another hour Luis might be hearing that same motor as it circled above the airport.

«Darling, please !» She struggled a little to free herself from his embrace. Since he still held her, she squirmed violently and managed to sit up, bathed in sweat, wine and grease. The air of the room suddenly seemed bitter cold. She ran her hand tentatively over her stomach and drew it back, disgusted. Quickly she jumped out of bed, locked the door into the corridor, drew her peignoir around her, and disappeared into the bathroom without turning on any light.