The Sheltering Sky

“Port, for heaven’s sake, sit up,” she said nervously. She began to tug at his head, hoping to rouse him enough to start him into making some effort himself.

“Oh, God!” he said, and he slowly wormed his way backward up onto the seat. “Oh, God!” he repeated when he was sitting up finally. Now that his head was near her, she realized that his teeth were chattering.

“You’ve got a chill!” she said furiously, although she was furious with herself rather than with him. “I told you to cover up, and you just sat there like an idiot!”

He made no reply, merely sat quite still, his head bent forward and bouncing up and down against his chest with the pitching of the bus. She reached over and pulled at his coat, managing little by little to extricate it from under him where he had thrown it on the seat. Then she spread it over him, tucking it down at the sides with a few petulant gestures. On the surface of her mind, in words, she was thinking: “Typical of him, to be dead to the world, when I’m wide awake and bored.” But the formation of the words was a screen to hide the fear beneath—the fear that he might be really ill. She looked out at the windswept emptiness. The new moon had slipped behind the earth’s sharp edge. Here in the desert, even more than at sea, she had the impression that she was on the top of a great table, that the horizon was the brink of space. She imagined a cubeshaped planet somewhere above the earth, between it and the moon, to which somehow they had been transported. The light would be hard and unreal as it was here, the air would be of the same taut dryness, the contours of the landscape would lack the comforting terrestrial curves, just as they did all through this vast region. And the silence would be of the ultimate degree, leaving room only for the sound of the air as it moved past. She touched the windowpane; it was ice cold. The bus bumped and swayed as it continued upward across the plateau.

XXI

It was a long night. They came to a bordj built into the side of a cliff. The overhead light was turned on. The young Arab just in front of Kit, turning around and smiling at her as he lowered the hood of his burnous, pointed at the earth several times and said: “Hassi Inifel!”

“Merci,” she said, and smiled back. She felt like getting out, and turned to Port. Fie was doubled up under his coat; his face looked flushed.

“Port,” she began, and was surprised to hear him answer immediately. “Yes?” His voice sounded wide awake.

“Let’s get out and have something hot. You’ve slept for hours.”

Slowly he sat up. “I haven’t slept at all, if you want to know.”

She did not believe him. “I see,” she said. “Well, do you want to go inside? I’m going.”

“If I can. I feel terrible. I think I have grippe or something.”

“Oh, nonsense! How could you? You probably have indigestion from eating dinner so fast.”

“You go on in. I’ll feel better not moving.”

She climbed out and stood a moment on the rocks in the wind, taking deep breaths. Dawn was nowhere in sight.

In one of the rooms near the entrance of the bordj there were men singing together and clapping their hands quickly in complex rhythm. She found coffee in a smaller room nearby, and sat down on the floor, warming her hands over the clay vessel of coals. “He can’t get sick here,” she thought. “Neither of us can.” There was nothing to do but refuse to be sick, once one was this far away from the world. She went back out and looked through the windows of the bus. Most of the passengers had remained asleep, wrapped in their burnouses. She found Port, and tapped on the glass. “Port!” she called. “Hot coffee!” He did not stir.

“Damn him!” she thought. “He’s trying to get attention. He wants to be sick!” She climbed aboard and worked her way back to his seat, where he lay inert.

“Port! Please come and have some coffee. As a favor to me.” She cocked her head and looked at his face. Smoothing his hair she asked: “Do you feel sick?”

He spoke into his coat. “I don’t want anything. Please. I don’t want to move.”

She disliked to humor him; perhaps by waiting on him she would be playing right into his hands. But in the event he had been chilled he should drink something hot. She determined to get the coffee into him somehow. So she said: “Will you drink it if I bring it to you?”

His reply was a long time in coming, but he finally said: “Yes.”

The driver, an Arab who wore a visored cap instead of a turban, was already on his way out of the bordj as she rushed in. “Wait!” she said to him. He stood still and turned around, looking her up and down speculatively. He had no one to whom he could make any remarks about her, since there were no Europeans present, and the other Arabs were not from the city, and would have failed completely to understand his obscene comments.

Port sat up and drank the coffee, sighing between swallows.

“Finished? I’ve got to give the glass back.”