The sun was setting again. It was always setting now. It set in the mornings as well. The red thong of light was on the wall again. Blood red! He rocked to and fro shaking with laughter.
The doctor and a warder came in. It was just like them. They were always coming in when they were not wanted.
He pointed at the bar of light, stumbled to it, and tried to tear it from the wall. It had been there long enough. Too long. And as he tore at it with hands dyed crimson, something that was pressing upon him lightened suddenly, and the blood gushed forth from his mouth, flooding the sun-stained wall.
"I have put out that damned sunset at last," he said to himself as he fell.
CHAPTER XVI
|
So we must keep apart, You there, I here, With just the door ajar That oceans are, And prayer, And that pale sustenance Despair! |
—Emily Dickenson.
It was a little after Christmas when Michael first began to take notice of his surroundings once more. There was no love or tenderness that Wentworth could have shown him which the grave young Italian doctor did not lavish on him.
Little by little the mist in which Michael lay shifted and cleared, and closed in on him again. But the times when it cleared became nearer together. He felt that the great lethargy in which he lay would shift when the mist shifted. Dimly, as if through innumerable veils, he was aware that something indefinable but terrible crouched behind it. Days passed. Blank days and blank nights. He had forgotten everything.