Up Above The World by Paul Bowles

Author:Paul Bowles
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-07-17T16:00:00+00:00

19

* * *

Even on the small sheltered terrace it was too cool; she stepped inside. Luchita was sprawled on a pile of cushions, busy with cigarette papers. There was a feline-scented herbal smoke in the air.

“It’s chilly outside,” she announced.

Luchita looked up. “What’s your name?” she said, as one small child to another.

Mrs. Slade stood still. “Why—”

“I mean, I heard the doctor call you Day. I wondered what it really was.”

She was uncomfortable. “Well, it was—I mean it still is—” She laughed. “—Désirée. Dr. Slade never liked it, so he began calling me Day. You know. Anyway, I hate Désirée.”

She felt that she had been clumsy in her explanation, for the girl did not appear to have understood. “You ought to make him call you Désirée,” she said, looking straight ahead.

“He never would,” Mrs. Slade said listlessly. He had told her that Day suited her; it was he who had to use the name. Suddenly she felt a physical dread, something pulling downward on each side of her body, and it seemed to her that the floor moved slightly. She stood very still, her heart beating fast.

“Do you have earthquakes here?” she asked presently, thinking of the emptiness beyond the balcony outside.

Luchita was more direct. “I didn’t feel anything,” she said, huddling with her knees up, wrapping her arms around her legs. “Did you?”

“I don’t know.” She stood in the middle of the room, irresolute, aware of an approaching wave of anguish. Luchita eyed her carefully. “You must be tired,” she said. “Why don’t you relax?”

Obediently she stretched out on the chinchilla spread. It might be possible to drive off the feeling of nausea. “I’m rather tense,” she explained from where she lay.

“Relax,” Luchita advised. Then she got up and turned down the lighting.

A while later Mrs. Slade spoke again. “I really don’t feel very well. I don’t think I’m going to be sick, though.”

A gaseous blue light was beginning to glow somewhere behind her vision, and she had the impression that there was a never-ending music, a music that was silent, yet present; it was like the wheezing, low notes of a harmonium. If she cleared her throat, she merely heard the sound of that over the music.

“You did too much today. You went too many places. You’re not used to being up so high. It’s awful. I hate it,” Luchita was saying. She poured the chopped leaves into the machine and rolled out a new cigarette.

Presently Mrs. Slade sat up and stared across the room. “Malaria. Do you think I could have malaria? I really feel miserable. Terrible.” The dread had seized her again, was twisting through her bowels.

“Malaria’s nothing,” Luchita said impassively. “You take a couple of pills.”

Mrs. Slade lay down again. “It’s so strong,” she heard herself say as she shut her eyes. Then she fell back almost voluptuously into a world of undifferentiated flapping things where words were silent and colors became textures. There were blossomings and explosions. From where she had floated far down the coastline of her consciousness, she called out.

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