Chapter 21
The next day Kalus felt a little better. The small portion of meat he had been able to push past his swollen throat had calmed his delirium, and seemed to help his body generate a little warmth of its own. But he was still very sick, and any attempt to get up and move about was met with failure and a stern rebuke from the girl. She didn't realize, and possibly shouldn't have, that to Kalus being helpless was the equivalent of being dead. This attempt at the least physical exertion, walking, was his way of rejecting fear and trying, impossible as the task seemed, to turn away from the inner darkness that told him his life was over.
Because Kalus, too, had great heart. No matter how many times he was broken, he had always been able to rally somehow and go on. The problem now was that he had lost sight of that faith and hope, the belief that no matter what happened, he would always find a way to survive, and keep the spirit alive inside him. His confidence in himself, at best of times uncertain because of the severity of the roads which led to manhood, was all but extinguished.
There had been so little margin for error in his life, and worse had come to worst so many times, that he could not help but wonder if he possessed some terrible flaw, some shortcoming which made failure inevitable. But when he looked at this more closely, he knew in his heart that he had always done his best: that he had taken the only paths open to him, that he had never quit, or expected anything to be easy or free.
What was it then that defeated him? To this he had no answer, only frustrated rage that having no release, turned inward upon itself. The bitter maze of his emotions had joined together into a tightly knotted and irremovable clot, blocking out all light and making life, even the simplest continuance, seem utterly impossible.
And yet another element had been thrown into the balance. He had discovered, almost suddenly, the depths of his love for Sylviana. And while this might have comforted him and been a source or quiet strength, two nagging fears had risen alongside it, which in his present state seemed undeniable. First, though he knew she cared for him, and in her way even loved him, that was now, when her need was greatest and there was no one else to choose from. What if someday there were others? And secondly, of more immediate concern, he felt he could not take care of her, or give her the things she needed to live. His every attempt had ended in failure and near disaster, and he clearly saw the price it cost her. He felt for this reason, and others like it, that he had no right to think of her as his own, a belief which galled his animal self to no end.
*
As all of this passed inside him, Sylviana continued to work quietly away, doing everything she could think of to stabilize the temperature of the enclosure. First she took pine branches they had used as a blind outside the barrier, and placed them in a careful thatching pattern inside the shaft, here at the bottom where it was narrowest. This still allowed the smoke to pass up through it, if more slowly, but also kept out much of the wind, especially the sudden gusts which seemed to trouble him so.
Then she made a canopy of the projecting altar above his bed, stitching together a patchwork of smaller skins to hang down from it. She also heated stones beside the fire, and placed them by his side when he slept.
But perhaps the wisest and most beneficial thing she did for him in those days, beside not giving up herself, was to read to him. It occurred to her that one of the things that made his life so difficult was the fact that his deepest thoughts remained isolated: he didn't know that other men felt the same emptiness, and confronted the same unspoken fears. So she dug into the long, enclosed bookshelf that lay half buried in a corner of the treasure room, until she found works of fiction and philosophy which seemed appropriate. She then read to him fragments of each, asking which he preferred.
He was cold to the idea at first, not understanding, and expressed no preference. But she noticed that his eyes became puzzled and alert at the first chapter of 'For Whom the Bell Tolls,' and that he seemed to want to ask questions, but did not.
So she read him several chapters each day, until at last he began to open up, and to ask her. Had men really lived that way? Why did Robert Jordan not take the woman he loved far away from the war? And was it really possible to feel the earth move beneath them when they made love?
And slowly, as always, quietly, the profound pain and beauty of true literature began to work its haunting and healing magic upon him. His thought no longer bounded by the physical reality around him, he found in books a way to escape and look beyond himself, into worlds he had never dreamed of, and to empathize with struggles and disillusioning he had imagined did not exist outside himself. Simply put, he became connected to the souls, singular and collective, of humanity.
And to know the woman held all these things in her mind and in her heart, put him almost in awe of her. And in truth, she herself received more from the living pages than she had ever done before. Now that her own life had become so real, she discovered (probably something she knew, deep down) that the truly great writers did not exaggerate the intensity of human drama, or the power of their own emotions, but only spoke honestly and without dilution of the worlds that they had known. Dickens especially she loved, because he made her feel the joys and terrors of children, who from the outset of life had experienced sorrow and loss, when her own childhood had been so safe and full, the death of her mother notwithstanding. And she, too, began to see Kalus differently, and to understand some measure of the invisible pain he felt.
At times it was almost too much, for both of them, to look at life so closely in the midst of danger, and he would ask her to stop, or she would set down the book she read silently to herself. Such was the power of those days. With the intensity of Nature's relentless backdrop, emotions were tested like ship's rigging in a gale. And both knew, despite the woman's stubborn optimism, that it would take more than all their courage for the ship to still float brokenly at the morning of calm sea's return.
Invaluable time was passing, and Kalus' illness refused to heal. His body had been pushed beyond its limits, and a virus for which he had no defense (for it was carried by the girl) had entrenched itself in his lungs and intestines, spreading pain and chill weakness throughout. An unfair battle had been joined inside him, one in which will alone was not enough.
The man-child's hand was forced, and all power to choose taken from him. He must learn patience in the face of starvation.