Slowly, fighting the undertow, he made his way back to solid ground. OR AS SOLID AS I'M LIKELY TO FIND, he thought bitterly. Emerging truly exhausted, he fell to his knees, then sorrowfully held and reassured his unspeaking friend.
He lay down in the sand like an animal. And slept.
Chapter 42
That night, wrapped in the tragicomedy of human pride and affection, none of the three found peace.
For Sylviana the evening seemed endless, trying to drag conversation from the tired and otherwise absorbed company. And when hard night fell at last she found she could not sleep. Instead she restlessly mulled over the situation' with Kalus, as she called it: the doctor's explanation for his actions, and his relayed message that, 'There could never be anyone else.'
But this only made her angry with herself for having been so obvious in front of the others. What did it matter to her what he said or did? He had given her her freedom', and seemed intent on exercising his own, no matter what his words might say. So she tried again to make herself interested in the young botanist, Smith, who had already asked her a number of leading questions, under the pretense (she assumed) of scientific inquiry.
But the bed was still empty, and her thoughts still vague and rootless, without Kalus there beside her. She felt again the primal urge to go to him, just go to him, and renew their bond through physical love. But remembering the pain of her last submission to it, she stubbornly refused. Or tried to. Until it was too late.
Kalus lay on his back on the ground, the sleeping bag giving him warmth, but little else. He put his hands behind his head and looked to the sky, while the cub nestled at his feet.
How far away the stars looked, how indifferent and utterly unreachable. Thinking yet again of his love, he felt the loneliness and broken longing that every unfulfilled man must know: that of useless labors, and barren seed. The worry-sickness of caring for one who no longer returned that love, had slowly eaten away at the warmth and loyalty he felt for her, leaving him hard and cold and indifferent. Or so it seemed to him then. He rolled over onto his side, muttering, and perhaps an hour later fell at last into a restless, brooding sleep.
But Kataya could no more sleep than bring back the dead, stung to the very heart by intolerable memories of the love she had lost forever. And this pain which lay at the heart of all others, aggravated that very day by the departure of Ishmael and the poor, doomed Children, tormented her every thought, until even the simplest feeling could not be accomplished without a pain that was almost physical.