Пол Боулз - Let it come down

She stayed in the shower rather longer than was necessary, hoping that by the time she came out he would have got up, dressed, and perhaps cleared away some of the mess around the bed. Then she could ring, say: «I’ve had a little accident,» and have coffee served. When she opened the bathroom door the room was still in darkness. She went over to the night table and switched on the light. He lay asleep, partially covered by the sheet.

«But this is the end !» she told herself. And with an edge of annoyance in her voice: «Darling, I’m sorry. You absolutely must get dressed immediately». He did not stir; she seized his shoulder and shook it with impatience. «Come along! Up with you! This little orgy has gone on long enough…»

He heard her words with perfect clarity, and he understood what they meant, but they were like a design painted on a wall, utterly without relation to him. He lay still. The most important thing in the world was to prolong the moment of soothing emptiness in the midst of which he was living.

Taking hold of the sheet, she jerked it back over the foot of the bed. Then she bent over and shouted in his ear: «You’re stark naked!» Immediately he sat upright, fumbling ineffectively around his feet for the missing cover. She turned and went back into the bathroom, calling over her shoulder: «Get dressed immediately, darling». Looking into the mirror, arranging her hair, she said to herself: «Well, are you pleased or displeased with the episode?» and she found herself unable to answer, dwelling rather on the miraculous fact that Hugo had not walked in on them; the possibility of his having done so seemed now more dreadful each minute. «I must have been quite out of my senses». She closed her eyes for an instant and shuddered.

Dyar had pulled on his clothing mechanically, without being fully conscious of what he was doing. However, by the time he came to putting on his tie, his mind was functioning. He too stood before a mirror, smiling a little triumphantly as he made the staccato gestures with the strip of silk. He combed his hair and knelt by the bed, where he began to scrape up bits of food from the floor and put them on the tray. Daisy came out of the bathroom. «You’re an angel!» she cried. «I was just going to ask if you’d mind trying to make a little order out of this chaos». She lay down on a chaise longue in the center of the room and pulled a fur coverlet around her, and she was about to say: «I’m sorry there was no opportunity for you to have a shower, too,» when she thought: «Above all, I must not embarrass him». She decided to make no reference to what had occurred. «Be a darling and ring the bell, will you, and we’ll have coffee. I’m exhausted».

But apparently he was in no way ill at ease; he did as she suggested, and then went to sit cross-legged on the floor at her side. «I’ve got to get going,» he said to himself, and he was not even preoccupied with the idea of how he would broach the subject of his departure; after the coffee he would simply get up, say good-bye, and leave. It had been an adventure, but Daisy had had very little to do with it, beyond being the detonating factor; almost all of it had taken place inside him. Still, since the fact remained that he had had his way with her, he was bound to behave in a manner which was a little more intimate, a shade on the side of condescension.

«You warm enough?» He touched her arm.

«No. It’s glacial in this room. Glacial. God! I can’t think why I didn’t have a fireplace installed when they were building the house».

Hugo knocked on the door. For ten minutes or so the room was full of activity: Inez and another girl changing the sheets, Mario cleaning up the food from the floor, Paco removing grease spots from the rug beside the bed, Hugo serving coffee. Daisy sat studying Dyar’s face as she sipped her coffee, noting with a certain slight resentment that, far from being embarrassed, on the contrary he showed signs of feeling more at ease with her than earlier in the evening. «But what do I expect?» she thought, whereupon she had to admit to herself that she would have liked him to be a little more impressed by what had passed between them. He had come through untouched; she had the uneasy impression that even his passion had been objectless, automatic.

«What goes on in your head?» he said when the servants had all gone out and the room had fallen back into its quiet.

Even that annoyed her. She considered the question insolent. It assumed an intimacy which ought to have existed between them, but which for some reason did not. «But why not?» she wondered, looking closely at his satisfied, serious expression. The answer came up ready-made and absurd from her subconscious; it sounded like doggerel. «It doesn’t exist because he doesn’t exist». This was ridiculous, certainly, but it struck a chord somewhere in the vicinity of the truth. «Unreal. What does it mean for a person to be unreal? And why should I feel he is unreal?» Then she laughed and said: «My God! Of course! You want to feel you’re alive!»

He set his cup and saucer on the floor, saying: «Huh?»

«Isn’t that what you said to me the first night you came here, when I asked what you wanted most in life?»

«Did I?»

«You most assuredly did. You said those very words. And of course, you know, you’re so right. Because you’re not really alive, in some strange way. You’re dead». With the last two words, it seemed to her she heard her voice turning a shade bitter.

He glanced at her swiftly; she thought he looked hurt.

«Why am I trying to bait the poor man?» she thought. «He’s done no harm». It was reasonless, idiotic, yet the desire was there, very strong.

«Why dead?» His voice was even; she imagined its inflection was hostile.

«Oh, not dead!» she said impatiently. «Just not alive. Not really. But we’re all like that, these days, I suppose. Not quite so blatantly as you, perhaps, but still».

«Ah». He was thinking: «I’ve got to get out of here. I’ve got to get going».

«We’re all monsters,» said Daisy with enthusiasm. «It’s the Age of Monsters. Why is the story of the woman and the wolves so terrible? You know the story, where she has a sled full of children, crossing the tundra, and the wolves are following her, and she tosses out one child after another to placate the beasts. Everyone thought it ghastly a hundred years ago. But today it’s much more terrible. Much. Because then it was remote and unlikely, and now it’s entered into the realm of the possible. It’s a terrible story not because the woman is a monster. Not at all. But because what she did to save herself is exactly what we’d all do. It’s terrible because it’s so desperately true. I’d do it, you’d do it, everyone we know would do it. Isn’t that so?»

Across the shining stretches of floor, at the bottom of a well of yellow light, he saw his brief case waiting. The sight of it lying there reinforced his urge to be gone. But it was imperative that the leave taking be casual. If he mentioned it vaguely now, the suggestion would be easier to act upon in another five minutes. By then it would be eleven-thirty.

«Well,» he began, breathing in deeply and stretching, as if to rise.

«Do you know anyone who wouldn’t?» He suddenly realized that she was serious about whatever it was she was saying. There was something wrong with her; she ought to have been lying there contentedly, perhaps holding his hand or ruffling his hair and saying a quiet word now and then. Instead she was tense and restless, talking anxiously about wolves and monsters, seeking either to put something into his mind or to take something out of it; he did not know which.

«Do you?» she insisted, the words a despairing challenge. It was as if, had he been able to answer «Yes,» the sound of the word might have given her a little peace. He might have said: «Yes, I do know someone,» or even: «Yes, such a person exists,» and she would perhaps have been comforted. The world, that faraway place, would have become inhabitable and possible once again. But he said nothing. Now she took his hand, turned her face down to him coquettishly.