“No. Not now.”
“How do you feel?”
“Fine.”
“No. Really.”
“I don’t know. Better, I think. I’m fairly comfortable.”
“I’m glad.”
He slept a time and the fever came back and it was dark and he drank broth. He did not know if it was Linda or Eve giving it to him. With each heartbeat his head ached. The women hadn’t cried, but had watched the mine shaft for two days with a kind of sullen hostility, their faces butter colored in the sunlight, but not sad; their eyes expressionless, but watchful, as though they had been put there to look for something that was neither interesting, nor good, nor bad, nor particularly imminent. It was Christmas then and they put the fifty-six dead miners in the town community house that had been hung with tinsel and holly and red bunting, pushing back the tree with the toys and the candles and the stars and the silver snow to make room for the unpainted wooden coffins. Gas had exploded in the mine and the dead did not seem dead in any ordinary sense of being dead. Their faces were so badly burned the undertakers had to coat them with warm paraffin, and this glazed drippingly so each face seemed to sweat in agony under a fish-white mask. The gas death turned their hands and feet blue and affected the internal organs so the stomachs of the men swelled under the white sheets until the corpses had the appearance of pale balloons waiting for the starting gum of a race And Tony, the Star’s photographer, had not been able to get the picture of a weeping woman the city desk wanted. “These dumb Polacks” he said. “They don’t feel anything” But for five dollars the waitress at the Commercial House wept for the camera, and threw in a lay for Tony, and everything turned out all right.
“Oh, Linda, stay with me.”
“I’m here.”
“Please don’t go away.”
“Go to sleep, Jay.”
CHAPTER 29
SOMETIME DURING THE NIGHT the fever broke and he woke in the morning with his head clear. The ache was gone and it was good to lie on his back and look at the sky. He could see smoke rising from the fire. He was hungry and he hoped that there was food left. He wondered how long he had been ill. It did not really matter; he was going to be well now. He closed his eyes and listened to the crackle of the fire and the wind in the trees. He heard Eve put wood on the fire and he opened his eyes and she was looking down at him. Her skin was fresh. She looked beautiful.
“Hello,” he said.
“Oh, Jay, you’re better!”
“I’m well.”
“I’m so glad.” She touched his face with her fingers. “I’ve been so worried.”
“Have we anything to eat?”
“Of course. Lots.”
She brought him crackers and condensed milk mixed with water and some salmon. She sat by him while he ate, smiling, her eyes on his face.
“Have you eaten?” he asked.
“Oh, yes.”
“When?”
“When I got up.”
“You haven’t. Now tell the truth.”
“Really I have.”
“We both have to eat, Eve. We’ve got a lot of walking to do.”
He made her eat some of the crackers and salmon. He ate with her. The food made him feel stronger.
“Where’d you go this morning?” he asked. “I heard the fire, but I couldn’t hear you.”
“I bathed.”
“That’s why you look so nice.”
“Do I?”
“You’re lovely.”
“I actually bathed all over.”
“Weren’t you afraid of crocodiles?”
“Yes. But I couldn’t bear to be dirty.”
“You should have called me,” he said. “I’d have watched for you.”
“You’d have probably watched me.”
“Yes.”
“Men are so lecherous,” she said, smiling.
“I am.”
“Do you remember making me lie beside you?”
“I remember wondering what you were doing there.”
“You made me. You thought I was someone else.”
“Linda?”
“Yes. I had to keep you quiet.”
“I didn’t …?”
“Oh, no. You were very good.”
“Thank you for being so nice.”
She smiled again. “You’re welcome.”
“The trouble is you’re so lovely, Eve,” he said. “I want to kiss you now.”
“All right.” She bent and kissed him. “I’m so glad you’re better, Jay.”
Late in the afternoon he went down to the river. He was very weak, but he could walk. He found a sand bar going out into the water. It seemed fairly safe from crocodiles. He took off his clothes and went out on the bar. The warm water came to his knees. He used sand to clean himself, rubbing the sand on his skin. The places where the leopard had torn him were healing well. The permanganate crystals had prevented any infection. He did not try to take the bandage off his arm. He thought of Bill lying buried in the sand. It was no good thinking of things like that. He took his clothes and soaked them in the water and then spread them in the sun. He would live in the present. He lay in the sand on his stomach, away from the river so a crocodile could not creep up on him.
After a time Eve came from the camp and called down to him. “Are you all right?”
“I’m coming.”
His clothes were dry. He put them on and went to the shelter. “I was afraid something had happened,” Eve said.
“I feel much stronger.”
“Wasn’t the water nice?”
“It was swell,” he said. “This wouldn’t be a bad place for a camp if you knew you could get out.”
“If only we can get out, Jay.”
“We can. You’ll see.”
They opened a can of beef for supper. There were only two tins of crackers and Jay rationed out six crackers. He drank the rest of the condensed milk.
“I’ll shoot something tomorrow,” he said.
“You’ll have to.”
“Fresh meat will taste good.”
“Don’t be too optimistic.”
“There has to be something I can shoot,” he said.
“Yes.”
She had been sleeping quite close to his bed, but that night she moved away. She helped him bank the fire for the night and then went over to her bed of leaves.
“I’m so glad you’re better,” she said.
“So am I.”
“You know, being alone this way, cut off from the rest of the world, makes me feel as though we were a family.”
“We are, in a way.”
“It’s almost as if you were my man.”
“Almost.”
“Only there’s Lucien.”
“Yes, there’s Lucien.”
“Good night.”
“Good night.”
He could hear her lying down on her bed. The leaves made a rustling noise.
In the morning he was stronger and after a breakfast of crackers and salmon they decided to leave the camp. He put the crackers and a bar of chocolate and the cognac bottle and the tins of salmon in the knapsack and filled the canteen.
“All packed,” he said.
“I’ll carry the canteen,” Eve said.
“All right.”
She looked at the shelter and the two piles of leaves where they had slept and then at the river.
“Good-by, home,” she said.
“Be it ever so humble, as Bill said.”
“Please,” she said. “Let’s don’t ever talk about Bill.”
“No.”
“Which way shall we go?”
“East. If we go far enough east we’ll reach the road.”
“Then we can hitchhike home.”
“On elephants,” he said.
It was easy to tell which way was east from the morning sun, but there were no paths to the east. They left the clearing on a faint trail that went northeast, walked along it for nearly an hour and then to
ok the eastern branch when it forked. But in half an hour they found they were going almost due west.
“Should we go back?” Jay asked.
“I hate to.”
“Maybe this will fork.”
“Or turn east,” Eve said.
The path wound through the forest, sometimes making loops that carried them back on a path parallel to the one they had just come over. They heard animals, but Jay did not see any to shoot. A new path crossed theirs. He turned onto the new one because it went more nearly east, but in a few minutes they were walking due south. He decided that he would always take the eastern branches anyway. Possibly they would ultimately find a trail that actually did go east. They did not eat lunch in order to conserve their food, but continued walking, always turning east when they could. They did not find the straight path, however, and later clouds hid the sun and it was difficult to tell which way was east. The air in the forest became hot and oppressive and it was hard to breathe. They found a wide trail that must have been made by elephants, but it wound so they began to lose hope of it going anywhere.
“Could we rest a moment?” Eve asked.
“Let’s find a clearing. Then we can stop for the night.”
“All right.”
“Unless you want to rest now?”
“No. Not if we’re to stop soon.”
Far away there was thunder. The path led them into a marsh and there were buffalo tracks in the mud. The sucking noise of the mud on their feet and the distant thunder were the only sounds. Jay felt nervous about the silence. There was a feeling of being watched. He had an impression they were being watched from the dark parts of the forest. The forest people and the animals were watching them in the silence. His ears and eyes were alert, but he could see and hear nothing. There was only that feeling of nervous tension. Why was the forest so still?
“Jay!”
“Yes.”
“I can’t keep up.”
“Was I going fast?”
“You were almost running.”
“I’m sorry.”
The rumble of thunder grew louder. The sky was slate gray and the forest was dark. The trees deadened the sound of the thunder. The path came out of the marsh and ahead Jay saw a small clearing. Big trees spread their branches over the clearing so that it was almost like a room, but overhead he saw a patch of the slate-gray sky. Tall grass and creepers and bushes grew in the clearing, and in back of it was marshland.
“Will this do?” Jay asked.
“It’s lovely.”
He put the knapsack on a bare place. “I’ll get some wood.”
“I’ll go with you,” Eve said.
“No. You rest.”
“I’d rather go along. This place frightens me. I’m afraid to be alone.”
“We can move on.”
“I don’t mean this particular place,” she said. “I mean the whole forest. It’s so strange. It’s so different. It feels as though it were haunted.”
“It’s just the storm.”
“I know,” she said. “But, please, can’t I go with you?”
Across the clearing they found a tree that had fallen into a mass of vines. The wood was rotten, but Jay thought it would burn. He found some small branches and gave them to Eve. A large limb had been broken in the fall and he pulled this out of the vines. The thunder was much louder. “We’d better hurry,” Eve said.
He took dry leaves and twigs and made a pile of them against the big log. He scratched a match with his thumbnail and lit the leaves. The twigs were damp and he had to put more leaves under them before they would catch. Eve watched him, her eyes large and concerned. He knelt by the fire and blew on the leaves to make a draft. The smoke was white and heavy and it stayed close to the ground. Eve got him more leaves. Finally the twigs were burning well and he put on some small branches. These caught quickly, the yellow flames rising over the crackling wood. He put on larger branches and stood up.
“Darling, I thought it wasn’t going to light,” Eve said.
“The twigs were green.”
“I couldn’t have stood it if it hadn’t.”
“It was just the green twigs.”
Her voice was shaky. “Fire is all we have.”
“We’ve the Springfield.”
“That’s no good at night. I’d die if we didn’t have fire. Darling, what if it hadn’t lit?”
“It did, though.”
“Yes, but what if it hadn’t?”
“I’d have scratched another match.”
A wind, like a quick, cold breath, moved the forest for a second. Then they could hear the wind going away and there was silence except for the muffled thunder. Now lightning moved across the patch of gray sky. The silence in the forest was strange. Eve put more wood on the fire. It was burning well now. All the wood had caught. Even the log was burning.
“How many matches have we left?” she asked.
He looked at the box. “Quite a few.”
“How many?”
There were six in the box. “Seventeen,” he said.
“Seventeen days,” she said. “That’s fine. We’ll be dead long before they give out.”
“Oh, Eve.”
“I shouldn’t have said that,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m being a very bad sport. Could we have supper now?”
He took the crackers from the knapsack and opened one of the three remaining tins of salmon with the attached key. He spread half the fish on four crackers. He opened the canteen, gave it and one of the crackers to Eve.
“Try the capon,” he said.
She smiled. “I’m through being a baby. You don’t have to humor me. It was just this silence.”
“That’s because a storm is coming up.”
“Will it put our fire out?”
“No.”
After they had eaten the crackers with the salmon he gave her a quarter of the chocolate bar and ate a quarter himself. He did not know if he was making a correct division of their food, but it seemed wise to eat enough to keep up their strength. They were somewhere in the tabu forest and it was unlikely they could sit and be found. Search parties were dependent upon natives, and natives would not go into the tabu forest. They would have to find a way out, and to do that they would need their strength. If only he could shoot something.
“What’s that noise?” Eve asked.
The thunder was close and there were flashes of lightning in the sky. A deep roaring noise was coming from the forest. A cold wind moved through the trees around the clearing, putting thousands of leaves in motion, but its noise was less than the distant roar.
“It must be the rain,” Jay said.
The roar was strange. It grew louder as the storm came closer; it was like the noise of trucks passing over bridges made of loose boards. The clearing was very dark and they could see the lightning clearly. The roar of the approaching rain unsettled Jay’s stomach. He would have liked to have hidden himself from it. The noise seemed to penetrate every part of his body. He got up and put more wood on the fire.
“It sounds like a cavalry charge,” Eve said.
“You’d better get under a bush.”
“Jay, are you sure the fire will burn?”
“I’ll fix it.”
He dug a hole in the earth under the log and with a branch pushed the coals and the burning wood of the fire into it. Then he took five pieces of wood and laid them across the hole with their ends resting against the log. They would protect the fire from the rain until the log caught. Then he dug another hole near the fire. He dug hurriedly, feeling in his stomach the approach of the rain, and buried a dozen pieces of wood in the hole and then ran to the bush Eve had selected. She was twining leaves and branches in it, fastening each broad leaf with a piece of vine. He helped her with the shelter. It was dark in the clearing and the lightning showed up the moving shapes of clouds. The roaring noise hurt their ears.
“Hurry,” she said. “Hurry! Hurry!”
The shelter was half don
e when the storm broke. The rain came in a solid white sheet, soaking them before they could crawl under the bush. They were deafened by noise. The wind and the rain fluttered leaves and broke branches and shook their bush. A tree fell in the forest back of them. The thunder sounded directly overhead. An animal brushed against their bush, a dark middle-sized snorting shape, and fled before Jay could lift the Springfield. The rain died for a moment and then came again, still heavy and white. Water began to leak through the bush. The air was cold.
“I’m frightened, Jay.”
“Don’t be.”
“We’re so terribly alone.”
He put his arms around her. Being close seemed to shut out the noise of the storm and the cold and the wet. He held her in his arms and when she put her face to his he kissed her lips. Her mouth was cool and sweet and her hair had the clean smell of something freshly washed in soap. The bush shook in the wind and the cloud-reflected lightning lit the ground in flashes. He could feel her breasts against his chest.
“My sweet,” he said.
He had the good feeling of need and desire and strength. It had been a long time. A year. He had not remembered how fine it was. It was like a fire in him. He opened her shirt and cupped her breast in his hand. The nipple tickled his palm. He could feel her tremble.
“Jay.”
“Yes.”
“Don’t let me go.”
He moved, holding her tight against him. His left arm hurt but he did not care.
“Oh, my darling!” she said.
The rain stopped and the wind ceased to blow, but the sky was hidden by moving gray clouds, so low their fringes touched the trees. The sound of thunder and the flashes of lightning were everywhere. Several storms were moving over the forest. Jay got up and went to the fire. Under the log were coals and small pieces of burning wood. He dug up the wood he had buried. It was dry, and he put it on the fire, kneeling by it until the flames rose. Then he went back to the bush.
“Is it going to burn, darling?” Eve asked.
“It’s fine.”
He lay beside her.
“Jay, I’m so sorry,” she said.
“Don’t be.”
“It was my fault.”
“No.”
“You’re not sorry?”
“I wanted it to happen.”
“I did, too,” she said. “So much, darling.”
Dark Memory Page 26
