Eric McCormack - Cloud

She’d caught my interest now and wanted to make the situation quite clear.

“The way he behaved wasn’t entirely his fault,” she said. “It was one of those cultural things neither of us had been aware of when he took the position. In much of the Basio region there’s no such concept as fidelity in marriage. Everything’s communal. Property belongs to the people as a whole and all children are raised communally. Aside from those specific occasions when husband and wife get together for the purposes of propagation, sexual activities are communal too, based on what the Basio regard as the quite normal desire of a husband or wife for a variety of partners.

“The fact that my husband was a handsome man, as well as a stranger from another race and a guest in their territory, made him very much in demand. If he’d refused the advances of their women, not only would it have been a huge insult to the Basio culture, it would have made his work as Education Officer quite impossible. So he didn’t refuse.

“When he eventually confessed to me, I understood his predicament on an intellectual level, and I didn’t really blame him. He insisted he still loved me and had loved me all along— that his activities with the Basio women had nothing whatsoever to do with love. But inwardly I was very disappointed in him.”

It was so silent in the room now that we could hear the cicadas in the flower beds outside. Clara sipped her tea, choosing her words carefully.

“The fact was, after he confessed, I just couldn’t find it in myself to love him anymore,” she said. “Still, we made a decision never to raise the subject of his extramarital activities again. During his final months — of course, we didn’t know that’s what they were — whenever he came back from one of his trips, we’d pretend nothing questionable had gone on while he was on the road.”

I thought that must have been a very hard act to keep up.

“You’re right,” she said. “The time came when I couldn’t bear it anymore and I’d made up my mind to leave him and go back to England. But before I could tell him my decision, news came that he’d died of a heart attack in one of the villages he was visiting. After his death, I wanted to get away from the Basio region as quickly as possible and applied for the position here.”

I nodded sympathetically and she again sipped her tea.

“I was sure I’d had quite enough of men,” she said. “Then Charles appeared. Funnily enough, he reminded me of my husband in some ways — certainly with his adventurous spirit. Probably these are always the kinds of men who’re willing to come to such dangerous, out-of-the-way places. A woman can fall in love with them but she can’t fully trust them, as I’ve learned from experience. I’m sure Charles isn’t faithful either, but somehow that’s not as important to me as it once was. Which tells me something about myself I hadn’t quite understood before.”

She could see I looked puzzled.

“You see, the main thing is I love him, and he loves me, too,” she said. “He’d never lie to me about that. It’s what counts most of all between a man and a woman.” She nodded her head in satisfaction at the idea.

I was beginning to feel unwell again, but I wanted to ask her how she could be so sure her conclusion was valid. Before I could ask her anything, however, she returned to my own love problem.

“From what I gather,” she said, “you fled from Scotland before you really had a chance to find out why that girl rejected you.”

Again, I didn’t like to hear someone else use the word “fled” to describe my action, no matter how accurate it might be. Also, I was feeling really unwell.

Clara hadn’t noticed and kept talking.

“You don’t really know what was going through the girl’s mind,” she said. “Maybe she had very sound reasons for what she did. But, of course, you’re still at the stage in life when you think that if the world lets down a good person like you, you can never trust it again. When you get older, you’ll see that’s not the way it is.”

My head was so befuddled by that stage, I wasn’t really sure what she meant.

JUST THEN THERE was a knock at the door, followed by the entrance of the nurse who’d brought me to the dining room. She was carrying a newly born baby wrapped in a little shawl. She didn’t say anything, but looked worried. Clara put her glasses on again, got up, and took the baby from her. She opened the top of the shawl and looked inside for a moment.

“How’s the mother?” she said.

“She’s not wide awake yet,” the nurse said.

“Did she see it?”

“No, I kept it away from her.”

“That’s good,” Clara said. She looked over at me.

“This is the kind of thing that can happen because of malnutrition, or genetics, or any number of causes,” she said.

I was feeling really dreadful, but she wasn’t to know that and brought the baby over. She opened the shawl a little more so that I could see clearly.

The baby, if it could be called a baby, had no head, only shoulders and a neck. From a plateau on top of the neck a little pink tongue protruded through a narrow opening, and two little brown eyes stared up at me alertly.

I was now sweating heavily and feeling so queasy I thought I was going to vomit.

“I have to go,” I said, and quickly made my way back to my room.

I’D BEEN IN BED no more than five minutes when there was a brief knocking at the door and someone came in. I’d left the bedside light on and saw Clara through the mosquito net.

She came over to the bed and looked down at me.

“I’m sorry I showed you the baby,” she said. “I didn’t realize you were feeling so sick.”

I wished she would just go away and let me sleep.

She reached under the net and put a cool hand on my brow.

“Your fever’s ready to break,” she said. She then picked up my scattered clothes from the floor and put them on the chair. “Never leave clothes or shoes on the floor,” she said. “Scorpions and other creepy-crawlies can get into them during the night.”

Through the veil of the mosquito net I saw she had begun to undress. She put each piece of clothing, then her shoes, on the chair on top of mine.

My heart was beating very fast, both from the fever and from the sight of her through the net. Her brown, wizened face didn’t seem to belong to her body. Its startling white smoothness took my breath quite away.

She now put her glasses on the bedside cabinet, switched off the lamp, lifted the mosquito net, and slid in beside me. Very deliberately, she leaned into me and put her arms around me. The coolness of her against me was a wonderful sensation. In spite of my fever, I became aroused.

She moved my hand away gently.

“I’m here for medicinal purposes only — this is a local custom to help cool down a fever, and it’s generally quite effective,” she said, pressing her body once more against me. “Now try and sleep.”

AND I MUST have slept deeply, for when I opened my eyes again it was morning. Clara and her clothes were gone. I was feeling much better and was very hungry, so I got myself ready and went along to the nurses’ dining room for breakfast. On the way, I passed the nurse who’d brought in the little headless baby the night before.

I now wondered if the whole incident, together with Clara’s visit to my bed, hadn’t been figments of my delirious imagination. But I asked tentatively about the baby.

The nurse shook her head sadly.

“It was a little girl,” she said. “She died during the night. It was the best thing for all concerned.”

I couldn’t help but agree with that.

Clara was leaving the dining room as I came in. The owl eyes blinked at the sight of me and she reached her hand out to mine.