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came through its opening and up to his table. Now, in the strong sunlight from
the windows, he could see that her dress was grey, but her hair was as black
as ever.
 What would you like? she said.
Now that the question was asked, he found that no more than on the preceding
evening had he any desire for food. But he was committed to the ritual of
eating breakfast by his demands of yesterday; and moreover, he wanted to
prolong his contact with this girl.
 What s your name? he asked, smiling up at her.
 Dineen, she said without change of expression.  What would you like?
As she stood there, attendant and silent, her perfect passivity touched sudden
flame from the heat within him, like spontaneous combustion in a compost heap.
So sharp was the chemical change that he felt his face cool with the shock;
and to cover it up, spoke quickly.
 Bacon and eggs. Anything.
She turned and went out, the click of her footsteps fading away behind the
door. He sank back into the smouldering of his lethargy.
It was some minutes later when she returned; and he looked at the platter in
her hands, startled to remember what he had been waiting for. Picking up his
fork, he felt a slight twinge of revulsion from the food. She turned to go.
 Dineen, he said.
She turned, calm and unsurprised. He searched for the color of her eyes; but
even in the light from the window, this escaped him.
 Yes? she said.
 I don t know this town of yours, he said with his lips, still watching her.
 How do I get out into the woods?
 Take any road, she said.
 Any road?
 Yes. She waited a second further, but the sound of her voice went flying
away and away into nothingness in his head, as if it would echo into eternity;
and he did not say anything more. When he recovered from the sound of it, she
had gone.
He sat, wrung with a desire to follow her that was countered by a feverish
inertia like that of the weakly sick. After a little while he turned to his
plate and ate automatically, not tasting the food, but feeling it soft
and slab-like upon his tongue. It was nothing, but it woke him up. He finished
his cold coffee and got up.
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He went out; down the dark passageway, through the front door and out into the
sunlight. Its glare seized him, blinding and baffling him, and he realized
with a start that the morning was already gone. It was high noon. He walked
off through the streets at random&
He stood in the hills surrounding the town and looked down on the hot gleam of
its rooftops. The air was motionless and under the glare of light, the dancing
heatwaves seemed to cause the whole conglomeration of buildings to seethe and
boil. The forest about it stood like a protecting rampart. Its coolness held
him.
It smelled cleanly of natural scents, like his Ellen. And he was reminded of
her again and he felt the urge to give up the notion of work here, to pack and
drive, and so slip back into the protection of the outside world.
But the impulse was like the distant twinge of a nerve, the prick of a
dentist s needle in an area where the novocain has already gone to work. For,
superimposed on Ellen s image came the face of his cameo, the face of Dineen.
And the wish to break through the invisible barrier of reticence he felt in
the girl, returned to him again and again, like the pounding of a drum, until
he could feel the feverish thump and plunge of his heart, beating in unison
with it.
It was the town, he thought. The town guarded her. The unanimity of its
conclave of dusty streets, through which he had walked on his way just now to
these hills, its solitary figures, just out of hailing distance, its still
houses with their blank and eyeless windows, these walled him off from Dineen.
He had felt the alien spirit of this place from the first. He had recognized
it at the hotel desk and when she had spoken in the hotel dining room. He had
felt it on his way to here, passing the houses. Whole and alive, they had
stood, lining either side of his way, their windows unbroken and the
half-glimpsed hint of a limp curtain here and there behind a glassy edge. But
silent, silent in tenanted silence. He had tried vainly to see women and
children peeping from those dead glass eyes.
It was the town, he thought, climbing higher on a little knoll for a better
view. It was not Dineen that held him at a distance, but the town. Once within
its walls of suspicion and distrust they were small-town, country people and
they undoubtedly knew how the rest of the countryside spoke of them he would
find himself the stronger of the two of them. He could break through to her
core, inside.
He struck his right fist suddenly into the palm of his left hand. Of course!
The town distrusted him because he was an outsider. They thought he had come
in an evening, and would leave in a morning. As long as they believed this,
their reticence would hold. But undermine that and the wall of their defenses
would come tumbling down. He would be one of them, not one against many, but
one against the one that was Dineen; and in that contest he felt sure he would
be superior. That was the answer, to announce that he was staying, that he
would be among them henceforward and that there was no point in their standing
aloof, for he was in their midst and of them.
So, thinking this, the old emotion of the cameo came upon him, and in the
still glow of the sun and the silent wood a haze seemed to form about him so
that he felt himself a dream moving in a world of dreams; and near and far
off, past, present and future, were all no more than things and shadows of his
mind. And, turning, he went back down the slope and once more into the
village.
The streets closed once again about him. He drifted on down their dusty
sidewalks, past the soundless houses and dead stores. They seemed not so
remote now. The figures of townspeople swam in and out of his sight, half a
block and a block away. He wandered at random, half-expecting at any moment to
come upon Dineen; until, turning around a corner no different from the rest,
he came suddenly upon a small blind alley, at the far end of which a tiny old
woman, bent and wrinkled, hunched and spat at the sight of him.
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 Go away! she screamed in a cracked voice that struck distantly upon his
ears.  Get away from here!
He looked at her dreamily as she crouched against the wall of the alley s far
end. He thought of the answer that should reassure her.
 No, no, he said.  I m a new neighbor. Just moved in. You should get to know
me.
He stepped forward and reached out his hand to her; but she cowered away from
him still, and went on screaming,  Get away! Get away! in her thin, ancient
voice.
 Is that any way to treat the citizens? he said, smiling at her.  A fellow
citizen?
 Get away! she cried. 
Help
!
 But I m settling down here, he said, walking toward her.  I ll buy a
house pay taxes, you know? I ll be settling down with one of your local girls. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]