AT LAST THE RAIN HAS STOPPED. THE SILENCE IS NOT PLEASANT; I KNOW THEY
are still out there; but at least the terrible drumming on the tin roof has ended. My nerves can only stand so much. The rain has cleaned their filthy bodies and filthy rags. Their hair falls in strings down their foreheads and their eyes peering through are horrible. If I go to a window I will see them; but if they saw me, again, the wailing and chanting would begin once more, and I am afraid I would collapse. I am not very strong; the days and sleepless nights have taken their toll; in this desolate land the weak do not live. The sun is out again, and my tin house will begin to bake, I can look forward to a warm night full of their muttering and whispering. Like insects they rattle and rustle.
I have imagined a beautiful woman sitting in the corner. She says:
"What will we do?"
"We must be strong."
"I'm so frightened!"
For her I feel a certain affection, and also disgust. I look disdainfully at her when she crawls off into a corner and covers her eyes with her hands. She cowers away from the shadows. She trembles at the noises. When the savages come in they will find me a shadow on the floor, and the woman in the corner will come up with her delicate hands and say piteously: "Wont you help me? I am innocent of his crimes. Please dont hurt me, I will do anything you want." The savages will step over me and take her in their taloned hands. They will ravish her and leave her a pale torn bundle. Her long blonde hair will be streaked with blood. Her terror will not save her.
Yet she was not always so terrified. I can remember her tall and proud and stalwart, standing at open doors to ward off the chill blackness. Even now I can summon up a picture of her in my mind, that lean and leonine body, the way she pranced across the room, her legs thrusting forward, those long and silken limbs that wrapped around my face in moments of ecstasy. Shadows fell from her to the floor. White arms lifted high above me. Seen from below her eyes had the pale and implacable expression of the sphinx: the golden orbs of a hunting cat, veiled and drawn with mysteries. Always removed, and always there. Wounded, I crawled towards her, I can remember lunging at her ankles, my fingers pressing deeply into her calves, climbing towards her perfumed vulva. My being was splintered with passion, bits and pieces of myself fell away. I choked and gasped, unable to breathe. Blood rushed to my face, I was engorged with blood, I rose on my hind legs and licked and lapped with unrestrained fury at the liquids coursing from those splendid lips. I hear the moan now: part grunt, part cry, squeezed through a constricted throat. And yet, in spite of myself, nauseas fumes rise from my memory. Not altogether hidden are those shapeless clothes, coarse as burlap, over sagging haunches, buttocks as pendulous as old and tired breasts, thin wisps of gray escaping from a bun of hair, a downy face soft as mush. Her skin grew warted and moled, papery flakes scaled off and drifted to the floor. I found piles of skin in the corners, growing into new monsters. I destroyed them with magical incantations. They burned with a yellow light. If a man breathed that smoke, he would die....