Пол Боулз - Let it come down

«You get here, you float away again, you come to that crazy place! Oh, my God !» He was talking very fast, and he went into a little spasm of laughter, then checked himself. « I’ve got nothing to laugh about. It’s not funny». With a whoop he rolled over onto the floor and abandoned himself to a long fit of merriment. Thami listened without moving.

After a long time the laughter stopped as suddenly as it had begun; he lay quite still. The other’s little voice crept out again: « Ijbed selkha men rasou ». and went on and on. From time to time the fire stirred, as an ember shifted its position. Every small sound was razor-sharp, but inside there was a solid silence. He was trying not to breathe, he wanted to be absolutely motionless, because he felt that the air which fitted so perfectly around him was a gelatinous substance which had been moulded to match with infinite exactitude every contour of his person. If he moved ever so slightly he would feel it pushing against him, and that would be unbearable. The monstrous swelling and deflating of himself which each breath occasioned was a real peril. But that wave broke, receded, and he was left stranded for a moment in a landscape of liquid glassy light, greengold and shimmering. Burnished, rich and oily, then swift like flaming water. Look at it! Look at it! Drink it with your eyes. It’s the only water you’ll ever see. Another wave would roll up soon; they were coming more often.

Ya, Leïla, lia . For a moment he was quite in his senses. He lay there comfortably and listened to the long, melancholy melodic line of the song, thinking: «How long ago was it that I was laughing?» Perhaps the whole night had gone by, and the effect had already worn off.

«Thami?» he said. Then he realized it had been almost impossible to get the word out, because his mouth was of cardboard. He gasped a little, and thought of moving. (I must remember to tell myself to move my left hand so I can raise myself onto my elbow. It must move back further before I can begin to pull my knees up. But I don’t want to move my knees. Only my hand. So I can raise myself onto my elbow. If I move my knees I can sit up.)

He was sitting up.

(I’m sitting up.) Is this what I wanted? Why did I want to sit up ?

He waited.

(I didn’t. I only wanted to raise myself onto my elbow.) Why ? (I wanted to lie facing the other way. It’s going to be more comfortable that way.)

He was lying down.

(. from the gulf of the infinite, Allah looks across with an eye of gold.) Alef leïlat ou leïla, ya leïla, lia !

Before the wind had arrived, he heard it coming, stirring stealthily around the sharp pinnacles of rock up there, rolling down through the ravines, whispering as it moved along the surface of the cliffs, coming to wrap itself around the house. He lay a year, dead, listening to it coming.

There was an explosion in the room. Thami had thrown another log onto the fire. «That gave me designs. Red, purple,» said Dyar without speaking, sitting up again. The room was a red grotto, a theatre, a vast stable with a balcony that hung in the shadows. Up there was a city of little rooms, a city inside a pocket of darkness, but there were windows in the walls you could not see, and beyond these the sun shone down on an outer city built of ice.

«My God, Thami, water!» he cried thickly. Thami was standing above him.

«Good-bye,» said Thami. Heavily he sat down and rolled over onto his side, sang no more.

«Water,» he tried to say again in a very soft voice, and tremblingly he made a supreme effort to get to his feet. «My God, I’ve got to have water,» he whispered to himself; it was easier to whisper. Because he was looking down at his feet from ten thousand feet up, he had to take exquisite care in walking, but he stepped over Thami and got out into the patio to the pail. Sighing with the effort of kneeling down, he put his face into the fire of the cold water and drew it into his throat.

When it was finished he rose, threw his head up, and looked at the moon. The wind had come, but it had been here before. Now it was necessary to get back into the room, to get all the way across the room to the door. But he must not breathe so heavily. To open the door and go out. Out there the wind would be cold, but he must go anyway.

The expedition through the magic room was hazardous. There was a fragile silence there which must not be shattered. The fire, shedding its redness on Thami’s masklike face, must not know he was stealing past. At each step he lifted his feet far off the floor into the air, like someone walking through a field of high wet grass. He saw the door ahead of him, but suddenly between him and it a tortuous corridor made of pure time interposed itself. It was going to take endless hours to get down to the end. And a host of invisible people was lined up along its walls, but on the other side of the walls, mutely waiting for him to go by — an impassive chorus, silent and without pity. «Waiting for me,» he thought. The sides of his mind, indistinguishable from the walls of the corridor, were lined with messages in Arabic script. All the time, directly before his eyes was the knobless door sending out its ominous message. It was not sure, it could not be trusted. If it opened when he did not want it to open, by itself, all the horror of existence could crowd in upon him. He stretched his hand out and touched the large cold key. The key explained the heaviness in his overcoat pocket. He put his left hand into the pocket and felt the hammer, and the head and point of the nail. That was work to be done, but later, when he came in. He turned the key, pulled open the door, felt the bewildered wind touch his face. «Keep away from the cliff,» he whispered as he stepped outside. Around him stretched the night’s formless smile. The moon was far out over the empty regions now. Relieving himself against the wall of the house, he heard the wind up here trying to cover the long single note of the water down in the valley. Inside, by the fire, time was slowly dissolving, falling to pieces. But even at the end of the night there would still be an ember of time left, of a subtle, bitter flavor, soft to the touch, glowing from its recess of ashes, before it paled and died, and the heart of the ancient night stopped beating.

He turned toward the door, his steps short and halting like those of an old man. It was going to require a tremendous effort to get back to the mat, but because the only thing he could conceive of at this instant was to sink down on it and lie out flat by the fire, he felt certain he could make the effort. As he shut the door behind him he murmured to it: «You know I’m here, don’t you?» The idea was hateful to him, but there was something he could do about it. What that thing was he could not recall, yet he knew the situation was not hopeless; he could remedy it later.

Thami had not stirred. As he looked down from his remote height at the relaxed body, a familiar uneasiness stole over him, only he could connect it with no cause. Partly he knew that what he saw before him was Thami, Thami’s head, trunk, arms and legs. Partly he knew it was an unidentifiable object lying there, immeasurably heavy with its own meaningless-ness, a vast imponderable weight that nothing could lighten. As he stood lost in static contemplation of the thing, the wind pushed the door feebly, making a faint rattling. But could nothing lighten it? If the air were let in, the weight might escape of its own accord, into the shadows of the room and the darkness of the night. He looked slowly behind him. The door was silent, staring, baleful. «You know I’m here, all right,» he thought, «but you won’t know long». He had willed the hammer and nail into existence, and they were there in his pocket. Thinking of their heaviness, he felt his body lean to one side. He had to shift the position of his foot to retain his balance, to keep from being pulled down by their weight. The rattle came again, a series of slight knockings, knowing and insinuating. But now, did they come from the mat below him? «If it opens,» he thought, looking at the solid, inert mass in front of him in the fire’s dying light, his eyes staring, gathering fear from within him. «If it opens». There was that thing he had to do, he must do it, and he knew what it was but he could not think what it was.