"That bastard crosses there every
night," the man said. "Every night
for two weeks."
"He's the one makes the noise at
night. I don't mind it. They're a
filthy animal though."
Drinking together, with no pain
now except the discomfort of lying
in the one position, the boys
lighting a fire, its shadow jumping
on the tents, he could feel the
return of acquiescence in this life
of pleasant surrender. She was
very good to him. He had been
cruel and unjust in the afternoon.
She was a fine woman, marvellous
really. And just then it occurred to
him that he was going to die.
It came with a rush; not as a rush
of water nor of wind; but of a
sudden, evil-smelling emptiness
and the odd thing was that the
hyena slipped lightly along the
edge of it.
"What is it, Harry?" she asked him.
"Nothing," he said. "You had better
move over to the other side. To
windward."
"Did Molo change the dressing?"
"Yes. I'm just using the boric now."
"How do you feel?"
"A little wobbly."
"I'm going in to bathe," she said. "I'll
be right out. I'll eat with you and
then we'll put the cot in."
So, he said to himself, we did well
to stop the quarrelling. He had
never quarrelled much with this
woman, while with the women that
he loved he had quarrelled so
much they had finally, always, with
the corrosion of the quarrelling,
killed what they had together. He
had loved too much, demanded too
much, and he wore it all out.
He thought about alone in
Constantinople that time, having
quarrelled in Paris before he had
gone out. He had whored the whole
time and then, when that was over,
and he had failed to kill his
loneliness, but only made it worse, he
had written her, the first one, the one
who left him, a letter telling her how
he had never been able to kill it ...
How when he thought he saw her
outside the Regence one time it made
him go all faint and sick inside, and
that he would follow a woman who
looked like her in some way, along
the Boulevard, afraid to see it was not
she, afraid to lose the feeling it gave
him. How every one he had slept with
had only made him miss her more.
How what she had done could never
matter since he knew he could not
cure himself of loving her. He wrote
this letter at the Club, cold sober, and
mailed it to New York asking her to
write him at the of fice in Paris. That
seemed safe. And that night missing
her so much it made him feel hollow
sick inside, he wandered up past
Maxim's, picked a girl up and took
her out to supper. He had gone to a
place to dance with her afterward,
she danced badly, and left her for a
hot Armenian slut, that swung her
belly against him so it almost
scalded. He took her away from a
British gunner subaltern after a row.
The gunner asked him outside and
they fought in the street on the
cobbles in the dark. He'd hit him
twice, hard, on the side of the jaw and
when he didn't go down he knew he
was in for a fight. The gunner hit him
in the body, then beside his eye. He
swung with his left again and landed
and the gunner fell on him and
grabbed his coat and tore the sleeve
off and he clubbed him twice behind
the ear and then smashed him with
his right as he pushed him away.
When the gunner went down his head
hit first and he ran with the girl
because they heard the M.P. 's
coming. They got into a taxi and
drove out to Rimmily Hissa along the
Bosphorus, and around, and back in
the cool night and went to bed and
she felt as over-ripe as she looked
but smooth, rose-petal, syrupy,
smooth-bellied, big-breasted and
needed no pillow under her buttocks,
and he left her before she was awake
looking blousy enough in the first
daylight and turned up at the Pera
Palace with a black eye, carrying his
coat because one sleeve was
missing.
Title : Snows of kilimanjaro (4)
Description : "That bastard crosses there every night," the man said. "Every night for two weeks." "He's the one makes the...