Author: Aldous Huxley
Category: Literature
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Touched, Anthony smiled back and, to reassure him, tried to make a joke about the hardness of the wooden saddles on which they were riding.
Mark laughed. ‘If we get through intact,’ he said, ‘we’ll dedicate a pair of silver buttocks to St James of Compostella.’
He jerked the reins and gave his mule the spur. The animal started up the slope; then, in a slither of rolling stones, stumbled and fell forward on its knees.
Anthony had shut his eyes to rest them a moment from the glare. At the noise he opened them again and saw Mark lying face downwards on the ground and the mule heaving itself, in a series of violent spasms of movement, to its feet. The landscape snapped back into solidity, the moving images fell still. Forgetting the pain in his back and legs, Anthony swung himself down from the saddle and ran up the path. As he approached, Mark rolled over and raised himself to a sitting position.
‘Hurt?’ Anthony asked.
The other shook his head, but did not speak.
‘You’re bleeding.’
The breeches were torn at the left knee, and a red stain was creeping down the leg. Anthony shouted to the mozo to come back with the baggage-mule; then, kneeling down, opened his penknife, slid the blade into the rent and sawed a long jagged slit in the tough material.
‘You’re spoiling my bags,’ Mark said, speaking for the first time.
Anthony did not answer, only tore away a wide panel of the stuff.
The whole knee-cap and the upper part of the skin were skinless red flesh, grey, where the blood was not oozing, with dust and grit. On the inner side of the knee was a deep cut that bled profusely.
Anthony frowned, and, as though the pain were his own, caught his lower lip between his teeth. A pang of physical disgust mingled with his horrified sympathy. He shuddered.
Mark had leaned forward to look at the damaged knee. ‘Messy,’ was his comment.
Anthony nodded without speaking, unscrewed the stopper of his water-bottle, and, wetting his handkerchief, began to wash the dirt out of the wounds. His emotion disappeared; he was wholly absorbed in his immediate task. Nothing was important any more except to wash this grit away without hurting Mark in the process.
By this time, the mozo had come back with the baggage-mule and was standing beside them in silence, looking down with expressionless black eyes on what was happening.
‘I expect he thinks we’re making an unnecessary fuss,’ said Mark, and made an attempt to smile.
Anthony rose to his feet, ordered the mozo to untie the mule’s load, and, from one of the canvas bundles, pulled out the medicine-chest.
Under the sting of the disinfectant Mark gave vent to an explosive burst of laughter. ‘No humanitarian nonsense about iodine,’ he said. ‘The good old-fashioned idea of hurting you for your own good. Like Jehovah. Christ!’ He laughed again as Anthony swabbed another patch of raw flesh. Then, when the knee was bandaged, ‘Give me a hand,’ he went on. Anthony helped him to his feet, and he took a few steps up the path and back again. ‘Seems all right.’ He bent down to look at the forelegs of his mule. They were hardly scratched. ‘Nothing to prevent us pushing on at once,’ he concluded.
They helped him to mount, and, spurring with his uninjured leg, he set off at a brisk pace up the hill. For the rest of the way he was, for Anthony, mostly a straight and rigid back, but sometimes also, at the zigzags of the path, a profile, marbly in its fixed pallor — the statue of a stoic, flayed, but still alive and silently supporting his agony.
In less than the appointed hour — for Mark had chosen to keep up a pace that set the mules blowing and sweating in the afternoon heat — they rode into San Cristobal el Alto. The thirty or forty Indian ranchos of which the village consisted were built on a narrow ridge between plunging gulfs, beyond which, on either side, the mountains stretched away chaotically, range after range, into the haze.
Seeing distinguished travellers, the village shopkeeper hurried out on to the plaza to offer them accommodation for the night. Mark listened to him, nodded and made a movement to dismount; then, wincing, let himself fall back into the saddle.
Without turning his head, ‘You’ll have to get me off this blasted mule,’ he called in a loud, angry voice.
Anthony and the mozo helped him down; but, once on the ground, he refused any further assistance.
‘I can walk by myself,’ he said curtly, frowning while he spoke, as though, in offering an arm, Anthony had meant to insult him.
Their quarters for the night turned out to be a wooden shed, half-full of coffee bags and hides. After inspecting the place, Mark limped out again to look at the thatched lean-to, where the mules were to be stabled; then suggested a walk round the village, ‘to see the sights,’ he explained.
Walking, it was evident, hurt him so much that he could not trust himself to speak. It was in silence that they crossed the little plaza, in silence that they visited the church, the school, the cabildo, the village prison. In silence, and one behind the other. For if they walked abreast, Anthony had reflected, he would be able to see Mark’s face, and Mark would feel that he was being spied upon. Whereas if he walked in front it would be an insult, a challenge to Mark to quicken his pace. Deliberately, Anthony lagged behind, silent, like an Indian wife trailing through the dust after her husband.
It was nearly half an hour before Mark felt that he had tortured himself sufficiently.
‘So much for the sights,’ he said grimly. ‘Let’s go and have something to eat.’
The night was piercingly cold, the bed merely a board of wood. It was from a restless and unrefreshing sleep that Anthony was roused next morning.
‘Wake!’ Mark was shouting to him. ‘Wake!’
Anthony sat up, startled, and saw Mark, in the other wooden bed, propped on his elbow and looking across at him with angry eyes.
‘Time to get away,’ the harsh voice continued. ‘It’s after six.’
Suddenly remembering yesterday’s accident, ‘How’s the knee?’ Anthony asked.
‘Just the same.’
‘Did you sleep?’
‘No, of course not,’ Mark answered irritably. Then looking away. ‘I can’t manage to get out of bed,’ he added. ‘The thing’s gone stiff on me.’
Anthony pulled on his boots and, having opened the door of the shed to admit the light, came and sat down on the edge of Mark’s bed.
‘We’d better put on a clean dressing,’ he said, and began to untie the bandage.
The lint had stuck to the raw flesh. Anthony pulled it cautiously, then let it go. ‘I’ll see if they can give me some warm water at the shop,’ he said.
Mark uttered a snort of laughter, and taking a corner of the lint between his thumb and forefinger, gave a violent jerk. The square of pink fabric came away in his hand.
‘Don’t!’ Anthony had cried out, wincing as though the pain were his. The other only smiled at him contemptuously. ‘You’ve made it bleed again,’ he added, in another tone, finding a medical justification for his outburst. But in point of fact, that trickle of fresh blood was not the thing that disturbed him most when he bent down to look at what Mark had uncovered. The whole knee was horribly swollen and almost black with bruises, and round the edges of the newly opened wound the flesh was yellow with pus.
‘You can’t possibly go with your knee in this state,’ he said.
‘That’s for me to decide,’ Mark answered, and added, after a moment. ‘After all, you did it the day before yesterday.’
The words implied a contemptuous disparagement. ‘If a poor creature like you can overcome pain, then surely I . . .’ That was what they meant to say. But the insult, Anthony realized, was unintended. It sprang from the depths of an arrogance that was almost childlike in its single-minded intensity. There was something touching and absurd about such ingenuousness. Besides, there was the poor fellow’s knee. This was not the time to resent insults.
‘I was practically well,’ he argued in a conciliatory tone. ‘You’ve got a leg that’s
ready to go septic at any moment.’
Mark frowned. ‘Once I’m on my mule I shall be all right,’ he insisted. ‘It’s just a bit stiff and bruised; that’s all. Besides,’ he added, in contradiction of what he had said before, ‘there’ll be a doctor at Miajutla. The quicker I get this thing into his hands, the better.’
‘You’ll make it ten times worse on the way. If you waited here a day or two . . .’
‘Don Jorge would think I was leaving him in the lurch.’
‘Damn Don Jorge! Send him a telegram.’
‘The line doesn’t go through this place. I asked.’
‘Send the mozo, then.’
Mark shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t trust him.’
‘Why not?’
‘He’ll get drunk at the first opportunity.’
‘In other words, you don’t want to send him.’
‘Besides, it would be too late,’ Mark went on. ‘Don Jorge will be moving in a day or two.’
‘And do you imagine you’ll be able to move with him?’
‘I mean to be there,’ said Mark.
‘You can’t.’
‘I tell you, I mean to be there. I’m not going to let him down.’ His voice was cold and harsh with restrained anger. ‘And now help me up,’ he commanded.
‘I won’t.’
The two men looked at one another in silence. Then, making an effort to control himself, Mark shrugged his shoulders.
‘All right, then,’ he said, ‘I’ll call the mozo. And if you’re afraid of going on to Miajutla,’ he continued in a tone of savage contempt, ‘you can ride back to Tapatlan. I’ll go on by myself.’ Then, turning towards the open door, ‘Juan,’ he shouted. ‘Juan!’
Anthony surrendered. ‘Have it your own way. If you really want to be mad . . .’ He left the sentence unfinished. ‘But I take no responsibility.’
‘You weren’t asked to,’ Mark answered. Anthony got up and went to fetch the medicine-chest. He swabbed the wounds and applied the new dressing in silence; then, while he was trying to bandage, ‘Suppose we stopped quarrelling,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t that make things easier?’
For a few seconds Mark remained hostile and averted; then looked up and twisted his face into a reconciliatory smile of friendliness. ‘Peace,’ he said, nodding affirmatively. ‘We’ll make peace.’
But he had reckoned without the pain. It began, agonizingly, when he addressed himself to the task of getting out of bed. For it turned out to be impossible for him, even with Anthony’s assistance, to get out of bed without bending his wounded knee; and to bend it was torture. When at last he was on his feet beside the bed, he was pale and the expression of his face hardened to a kind of ferocity.
‘All right?’ Anthony questioned.
Mark nodded and, as though the other had become his worst enemy, limped out of the shed without giving him a glance.
The torture began again when the time came for mounting, and was renewed with every step the mule advanced. As on the previous day, Mark took the lead. At the head of the cavalcade, he proved his superiority and at the same time put himself out of range of inquisitive eyes. The air was still cold; but from time to time, Anthony noticed, he took out his handkerchief and wiped his face, as if he were sweating. Each time he put the handkerchief away again, he would give the mule a particularly savage dig with his one available spur.
The track descended, climbed again, descended through pine woods, descended, descended. An hour passed, two hours, three; the sun was high in the sky, it was oppressively hot. Three hours, three and a half; and now there were clearings in the woods, steep fields, the stubble of Indian corn, a group of huts, and an old woman carrying water, brown children silently playing in the dust. They were on the outskirts of another village.
‘What about stopping here for some food?’ Anthony called, and spurred his animal to a trot. ‘We might get some fresh eggs,’ he continued as he drew up with the other mule.
The face Mark turned towards him was as white as paper, and, as he parted his clenched teeth to speak, the lower jaw trembled uncontrollably. ‘I think we’d better push on,’ he began in an almost inaudible voice. ‘We’ve still got a long way . . .’ Then the lids fluttered over his eyes, his head dropped, his body seemed to collapse upon itself; he fell forward on to the neck of his mule, slid to one side, and would have pitched to the ground if Anthony had not caught him by the arm and held him up.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT. July 23rd 1914
ANTHONY HAD DOZED off again after being called, and was late for breakfast. As he entered the little living-room, Brian looked up with startled eyes and, as though guiltily, folded away the letter he had been reading into his pocket, but not before Anthony had recognized from across the room the unmistakable characteristics of Joan’s rather heavy and elaborately looped writing. Putting a specially casual note of cheeriness into his good morning, he sat down and proceeded to busy himself elaborately, as though it were a complicated scientific process requiring the whole of his attention, with the pouring out of his coffee.
‘Should I tell him?’ he was wondering. ‘Yes, I ought to tell him. It ought to come from me, even though he does know it already. Bloody girl! Why couldn’t she keep her promise?’ He felt righteously indignant with Joan. Breaking her word! And what the devil has she told Brian? What would happen if his own story was different from hers? And anyhow, what a fool he would look, confessing now, when it was too late. She had robbed him of the opportunity, the very possibility of telling Brian what had happened. The woman had queered his pitch; and as his anger modulated into self-pity, he perceived himself as a man full of good intentions, maliciously prevented, at the eleventh hour, from putting them into practice. She had stopped his mouth just as he was about to speak the words that would have explained and made amends for everything; and by doing so, she had made his situation absolutely intolerable. How the devil did she expect him to behave towards Brian, now that Brian knew? He answered the question, so far, at any rate, as the next few moments were concerned, by retiring behind the Manchester Guardian. Hidden, he pretended, while he ate his scrambled eggs, to be taking a passionate interest in all this stuff about Russia and Austria and Germany. But the silence, as it lengthened out, became at lost intolerable.
‘This war business looks rather bad,’ he said at last, without lowering his barricade.
From the other end of the table Brian made a faint murmur of assent. Seconds passed. Then there was a noise of a chair being pushed back. Anthony sat there, a man so deeply preoccupied with the Russian mobilization that he wasn’t aware of what was going on in his immediate neighbourhood. It was only when Brian had actually opened the door that he started ostentatiously into consciousness.
‘Off already?’ he questioned, half turning, but not so far that he could see the other’s face.
‘I d-don’t think I shall g-go out this m-morning.’
Anthony nodded approvingly, like a family doctor. ‘That’s good,’ he said, and added that he himself proposed to hire a bicycle in the village and nip down to Ambleside. There were some things he had to buy. ‘See you at lunch-time,’ he concluded.
Brian said nothing. The door closed behind him.
By a quarter to one Anthony had returned his borrowed bicycle and was walking up the hill to the cottage. This time it was settled, definitely, once and for all. He would tell Brian everything — almost everything, the very moment he came in.
‘Brian!’ he called from the doorstep.
There was no answer.
‘Brian!’
The kitchen door opened, and old Mrs Benson, who did their cooking and cleaning, stepped out into the narrow hall. Mr Foxe, she explained, had started for a walk about half an hour before; wouldn’t be back for lunch, he had said, but had wanted (would you believe it?) to set off without anything to eat; she had made him take some sandwiches and a hard-boiled egg.
It was with a sense of inner discomfort that Anthony sat down to his solitary lunch. Brian h
ad deliberately avoided him; therefore must be angry — or worse, it occurred to him, was hurt — too deeply to be able to bear his presence. The thought made him wince; to hurt people was so horrible, so hurting even to the hurter. And if Brian came back from his walk magnanimously forgiving — and, knowing him, Anthony felt convinced that he would — what then? It was also painful to be forgiven; particularly painful in the case of an offence one had not oneself confessed. ‘If only I could have told him,’ he kept repeating to himself, ‘if only I could have told him’; and almost contrived to persuade himself that he had been prevented.
After lunch he walked up into the wild country behind the cottage, hoping (for it was now so urgently necessary to speak), and at the same time (since the speaking would be such an agonizing process) profoundly fearing, to meet Brian. But he met nobody. Resting on the crest of the hill, he managed for a little while to forget his troubles in sarcasms at the expense of the view. So typically and discreditably English, he reflected, wishing that Mary were there to listen to his comments. Mountains, valleys, lakes, but on the pettiest scale. Miserably small and hole-and-cornery, like English cottage architecture — all ingle-nooks and charming features; nothing fine or grandiose. No hint of thirteenth-century megalomania or baroque gesticulation. A snug, smug little sublimity. It was almost in high spirits that he started his descent.
No, said old Mrs Benson, Mr Foxe hadn’t yet come back.
He had his tea alone, then sat on a deck-chair on the lawn and read de Gourmont on style. At six, Mrs Benson came out, and after elaborately explaining that she had the table and that the cold mutton was in the larder, wished him good evening and walked away down the road towards her own cottage.
Soon afterwards the midges began to bite and he went indoors. The little bird in the Swiss clock opened its door, cuckooed seven times and retired again into silence. Anthony continued to read about style. Half an hour later the bird popped out for a single cry. It was supper-time. Anthony rose and walked to the back door. Behind the cottage the hill was bright with an almost supernatural radiance. There was no sign of Brian. He returned to the sitting-room, and for a change read some Santayana. The cuckoo uttered eight shrill hiccups. Above the orange stain of sunset the evening planet was already visible. He lit the lamp and drew the curtains. Then, sitting down again, he tried to go on reading Santayana; but those carefully smoothed pebbles of wisdom rolled over the surface of his mind without making the smallest impression. He shut the book at last. The cuckoo announced that it was half past eight.