The Wind Cannot Read

by Richard Mason

  “It’s all right,” she said. “You can go in now.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She didn’t say anything, except with her eyes.”

  “And her eyes?”

  “I think she wanted you to come,” the Sister said.

  We began to walk down long corridors. The Sister went in front, with soft shoes, her white skirts rustling. Then I saw a figure squatting outside a door. It was Bahadur. He rose with his back against the wall, with a slow smile lighting up his face. There was a lot of sadness in his eyes.

  “Bahadur,” I said.

  “Michael Sahib.”

  “I thought you’d be here.”

  “She is waiting for you,” he said.

  I lifted up the bamboo screen over the doorway and went in. Sabby was lying on her back with only a sheet over her. All the top of her head was in bandages. Her face looked very small and pale on the pillow.

  I went over and sat on the side of the bed. I could not say anything at all, because there was a lump blocking my throat. I watched her and saw enormous tears coming into her eyes. They swam all over her large, brown eyes and ran down the side of her face. Her throat was quivering. Her lips were smiling, and her eyes were smiling too beneath their mist. Then she began to sob. She sobbed gently, still smiling, and the tears covered her face. I dropped down and buried my face in hers, and I did not know whose the tears were any more. I ran my lips all over her wet face, and I could feel her hands clutching my back. After a while I began to bite her tiny ears, and her nose, and she sobbed again, and when I sat up I saw more happiness in her face than I had ever seen before, glistening in the tears themselves.

  “Darling, I can’t see you,” she said.

  I felt for a handkerchief and had not got one, and so I wiped her face with the sheet, dabbing the water out of her eyes, and then I did the same thing to my own.

  “Darling Sabby,” I said. “My poor sweet Sabby, what have they done to you? You’ve got a turban like an Indian.”

  “And something has happened to you,” she said. “Something has gone wrong with arm.”

  “It’s only a little wound,” I said. “It’s all right now.”

  “You’ve been hurt, darling.”

  “The only thing that hurt was worrying about you. And you knew this was going to happen. You knew, didn’t you—all along?”

  “Yes, darling, I knew.”

  “You ought to have told me.”

  “I didn’t want anything to spoil happiness. It was just selfishness, you see, wanting all the time to keep happiness. I didn’t want to think of end. I ought to have told you about end.”

  “There isn’t an end,” I said.

  “Yes, there has to be end. Please don’t mind, darling, because it has been beautiful, and I loved you so much.”

  “Why didn’t you get Margaret and Jennifer?” I said. “They’d have looked after you. They promised me that they would.”

  “Darling, I didn’t want to give nice young people sadness. I didn’t want to give you sadness, either; but now you are here, I am terribly glad. Everything is all right now, so long as there is no hurt in arm.”

  “There’s no hurt,” I said.

  “Could you please lean to kiss, then.”

  “I’m awfully dirty.”

  “I like you when you are dirty and have funny clothes. Why do you wear funny clothes, darling?”

  “My others got torn in the jungle.”

  “Poor darling, you have been in jungle again. Did it give you nasty sores?”

  “No more sores,” I said. “And I’m not in the jungle any more. I’m with Sabby, and I’m going to kiss her and make her well.”

  I put my left arm underneath her shoulders, and felt her small body against me. Her face warm and soft under my lips. She closed her eyes and I kissed the white lids, and then I lay sideways on the plaster cast of my arm and put my face against the side of hers.

  “You’re just the same, darling,” I said. “You have the same soft womanly smell. In the jungle I used to think about how you smelt.’’

  “I am different Sabby,” she said. “There is no hair under turban. Do you hate Sabby without hair?”

  “I don’t mind. I wouldn’t have liked it if they’d taken off your nose. But your hair will grow again, and the second time it’s always more beautiful.”

  “Darling, wouldn’t it be good thing to lose nose?”

  “It would be a catastrophe.”

  “You always said it was comic nose.”

  “It’s the only one that would suit you.”

  “Then Sabby has comic face to match?”

  “Not really. It’s rather a nice face.”

  “You didn’t love me just for face? Once I heard you say that is why somebody loved, just for face.”

  “I love you for your hands, too.”

  “Is that all, just hands and face?”

  “No, darling, for everything else too. You’re the only person I’ve ever loved for everything about them.”

  “Won’t you love somebody again for everything?”

  “No—no one but you.”

  “Please will you love somebody else and be happy. I won’t mind.”

  “Darling, when we’re married . . .”

  “No, please don’t say that,” she said. “You promised you would not talk about that. We’re not going to get married.”

  “Didn’t you want to marry me?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, darling, that is what I wanted with all my heart.”

  (2)

  After half an hour the doctor made me leave, and all Sabby’s protests were of no avail. But he said that I could come back in an hour if I wanted to say another good night.

  Outside in the corridor I spoke to him.

  “She’s all right, isn’t she?” I said. “She’s got plenty of strength to pull through?”

  “You thought so?” he said.

  “She can’t be dying. There’s too much life in her.”

  “It was a brain operation,” the doctor said. “It’s not always successful.”

  “But it was ten days ago already.’’

  “You never can tell,” he said. “You’ve got to be brave and wait. She’s a very brave woman, and you’ll do well to emulate her.”

  “I know,” I said. “She’s much braver than I am.”

  “She’s not been expecting to live. It was a slow growth that took two years.”

  “Why didn’t she have an operation earlier?”

  “She might not have had those two years. She’d have regretted that.”

  “And she’s been in pain?”

  “In the last year she must have had a great deal of pain.”

  “And I didn’t know!” I said. “I was just being happy, and all the time she was suffering and dying. . . .”

  “There was nothing you could have done.”

  “There’d have been some way I could have helped her.”

  “You can help her now by being strong,” the doctor said.

  “All right, when I’m with her I’ll be strong.”

  “That’s no use, she’ll know at once if it’s only when you’re with her. You’ve got to be strong always.”

  “Yes, of course, you’re right,” I said. “I’ll try to be strong always, like her.”

  I couldn’t bear to pass the time in the waiting-room, so I walked out of the hospital. There was a moon coming up—yellow with the dust that had blown off the plain. It was the first moon of this size that had risen since our night at the Taj. That was only a month ago, then. Not quite a month—twenty-five days. But it was impossible to count a time like that by the calendar. Time is a personal matter. Once Peter had quoted to me from Wilde: ‘Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by s
easons. . . .’ That was it—one very long moment. . . . Had it been like that for Sabby, an endless moment?

  I went down the drive and on to the road. My tonga was still waiting by the gate. As I walked past it the driver called out after me.

  “I don’t want it yet,” I said.

  He thought I was trying to get away without paying and brought the tonga after me.

  “Four rupees,” he said.

  “Presently.”

  “No more waiting. Four rupees.”

  “I’m coming back,” I said.

  “Pay now.”

  “I haven’t got it now.”

  I walked on down the pavement, and he kept the tonga alongside, the horse’s bell tinkling. He was calling at me all the time, demanding his money. I ignored him consciously, and soon I forgot about him altogether, thinking of Sabby. I went on for about a quarter of an hour, and then I turned round, and he was still on the road near me, muttering in Hindustani. He turned the tonga round, too, but I didn’t get into it because I wanted to pass the hour walking, although the air was insufferably hot and my arm angrily painful with so much jolting during the day.

  At ten o’clock I returned to Sabby’s room. She was lying still, with the table-lamp by her bedside casting a soft light on to her face. She smiled at me with a slow smile, but most of the smile was in her eyes. Her eyes looked more than ever beautiful in this soft light, deep and brown and generous and terribly loving. When I saw her eyes my own love for her welled up, and if I had not resolved to be strong I could have cried again with the intense joy of loving and the sadness within it all. I sat down on the edge of her bed, and found her hand under the sheet and took it in mine and pressed it against my body.

  “Was I horrid just now?” she said in a small, soft voice.

  “Why should you have been horrid, darling?”

  “Saying not to talk about marriage.”

  ‘Of course you weren’t. We won’t talk about it now. We’ll talk about it some other time.”

  “Darling, please talk now.”

  “What shall we say about it?”

  “After war, what is our house like, darling?”

  “It all depends whether we live in London or the country.”

  “Let’s live in country. Sometimes we can make spree to London.”

  “Then it will be a very old house in Gloucestershire. It will probably only be a cottage, because we shan’t have any money, but it’ll have fine old beams and a good smell, and in winter we’ll sit in front of a huge log fire.”

  “What will happen in summer?”

  “In summer the garden will be full of gorgeous flowers, and you’ll spend all your time walking amongst them and arranging them in bowls in the house.”

  “How will Michael spend time?”

  “I shall spend my time being an old bore telling people about India and the war, and a strange night we once spent in a hospital in Delhi.”

  “Won’t you work a little bit?”

  “That is why we shall live in a cottage, so that I don’t have to do much work. Perhaps I’ll run a little stall on the roadside, and sell plums and apples and very lurid coloured drinks.”

  “Can I help, too, please?”

  “You can give teas in the garden, darling. Everybody will always stop at our cottage, just to see you.”

  “Because I am curiosity?”

  “No, because you’re beautiful like the flowers. And you’ll have a flower in your hair like you did when we were in the Himalayas.”

  “Can we have little ponies, too, like Himalayas?”

  “We’ll try to afford ponies. We’ll grow red currants, which make a lot of money, so that we can keep ponies.”

  “Do you think Bahadur will also come?’’

  “Bahadur’s got a family in India, and I don’t think he’ll want to come to England.”

  “Let’s pretend that Bahadur is there.”

  “All right,” I said.

  “We can pretend.”

  “Shall we go away for holidays?”

  “If you get tired of the cottage we can go away.”

  “No, darling, I shall not ever be tired of cottage, but it is fun to go away.”

  “Very well, we’ll go to Wales and I’ll make you climb mountains.”

  “You will have to pull Sabby up, darling.”

  “I shan’t do anything of the kind.”

  “That will be very mean.”

  “Darling, you’re crying. Is that because I’m mean and am going to make you walk up by yourself?”

  “No, it’s only a little escaped tear.”

  “There is no need for tears any more now.”

  “It is a happy tear. It is because I am very happy.”

  “Honestly?”

  “Yes, darling, honestly.”

  “You said it right this time—you said ‘honestly.’ You’re getting very clever.”

  “Once you said you would rather I said honestry.”

  “I don’t mind which you say, so long as you’re really happy.”

  “Don’t I look happy, darling?”

  “Yes, you look happy.”

  “I would like you to lie close, and then I should be more happy still.”

  I lay down on my left side and put my head next to hers on the pillow. She moved her body closer to mine, and I could feel it trembling through the sheet. I pressed myself against her, and gradually the trembling stopped and she lay quite still and peaceful.

  “I shall get into trouble for lying on your sheets with dirty clothes,” I said.

  “Please don’t go, darling. I don’t mind dirty clothes.”

  “The nurse will make me go soon.”

  “Don’t let’s think of future,” she said. “Let’s think what has happened in past. I would like to think about mosquito-net.”

  “We’ll have to have a mosquito-net in England to remind us.”

  “Darling, you looked so nice under mosquito-net. I am sure nobody has ever looked half so nice.”

  “O-seiji,” I said. “Do you remember where you first said that to me?”

  “In ghari when you took me to bazaar. You said complimentary things to me.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “You didn’t mean them?”

  “Yes, I did, darling.”

  “It’s your tum to remember something now.’’

  “I remember you when you were a school mistress, hanging up the duster by the side of the blackboard where there wasn’t a hook, and then wondering why it had fallen on to the floor.”

  “You are nasty tease.”

  “And I can remember you saying, ‘When it’s at home, what’s a Bombay duck?’ because you had heard the expression, and you wanted to show me you could speak good idiomatic English.”

  “It was good, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, darling, only it sounded so quaint I didn’t know what you meant.”

  “I think you are horrid to me.”

  “I loved you for those things as much as for your eyes. But I said much funnier things in Japanese.”

  “I loved you for that, too.”

  “Do you think it’s been a good thing to be in love?”

  “Darling, I hope it has been a good thing for you?”

  “It’s been the most beautiful and heavenly thing that ever happened,” I said. “But what about you?”

  “Darling, it has been like going gently to sleep and having lovely dreams. It has not been like living at all.”

  “I think it’s been like living,” I said. “And everything else is like being dead.”

  (3)

  When the nurse came in she said:

  “If only you could see what you look like! One of you with your head bandaged and the other with an arm in plas
ter. You might have been throwing each other down the stairs.”

  She looked at her watch and then sternly at me, and I knew I would have to go, because Sabby was tired and drowsy. I remembered I had nowhere to sleep, and no pyjamas or washing things. I forgot all about Sabby’s room at her hotel until she suggested it herself, and then I thought I would like more than anywhere else to be there. Bahadur had the key and I could take him back with me in the tonga.

  But that meant not seeing Sabby again all night. She was ill and I wanted to be with her all night; I wanted to sleep at her side. Being in her bed would not be like sleeping at her side, and if she woke with her head paining her I would not be there to try to draw away the pain with soft kisses.

  “I’d like to stay,” I said to the Sister.

  “I’m sorry, that would be impossible.”

  “But I’ll sleep in the chair,” I said. “I won’t disturb her.”

  “The doctor has said she must be left alone.”

  “Then let me come back once more. I’ll go away for an hour, and then come back just for five minutes to say good night.”

  “It won’t have to be more than five minutes next time.”

  “All right,” I said. “I promise it won’t be longer than that.”

  Bahadur was still waiting outside. He had been waiting outside all evening, like a watchdog. He had slept two nights by Sabby’s door, and he was going to sleep there again. But I told him that in an hour I would take him back to the hotel, and we would return together in the morning. He still had the sad, troubled look in his eyes, and he nodded with a kind of dumb comprehension.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “Everything’s going to be all right. She’s going to get well now.”

  A smile came into his face but his eyes were the same, and their hopelessness frightened me, so I turned and went down the corridors and out of the building again, and there was the tonga-man waiting for me on the steps.

  “Go now?” he said.

  “I’m sorry,’’ I said. “You will have to wait longer.”

  “Pay money.”

  “I’m coming back,” I said.

  He came after me angrily, a huge, untidy turban balanced on his brown forehead. I felt sorry for him; he was afraid he was being swindled. But I had no money. I would have given him my watch, but the Japs had that and there was nothing else on me of value. I would get some money for him: I would get it from Sabby, or borrow it from the nurse, or get the hotel to pay him.