THE MARVELLOUS THING IS THAT IT’S painless," he said. "That's how you know when it

starts."

"Is it really?"

"Absolutely. I'm awfully sorry about the odor though. That must bother you."

"Don't! Please don't."

"Look at them," he said. "Now is it sight or is it scent that brings them like that?"

The cot the man lay on was in the wide shade of a mimosa tree and as he looked out past the shade

onto the glare of the plain there were three of the big birds squatted obscenely, while in the sky a

dozen more sailed, making quick-moving shadows as they passed.

"They've been there since the day the truck broke down," he said. "Today's the first time any have lit

on the ground. I watched the way they sailed very carefully at first in case I ever wanted to use them

in a story. That's funny now." "I wish you wouldn't," she said.

"I'm only talking," he said. "It's much easier if I talk. But I don't want to bother you."

"You know it doesn't bother me," she said. "It's that I've gotten so very nervous not being able to

do anything. I think we might make it as easy as we can until the plane comes."

"Or until the plane doesn't come."

"Please tell me what I can do. There must be something I can do.

"You can take the leg off and that might stop it, though I doubt it. Or you can shoot me. You're a

good shot now. I taught you to shoot, didn't I?"

"Please don't talk that way. Couldn't I read to you?"

"Read what?"

"Anything in the book that we haven't read."

"I can't listen to it," he said." Talking is the easiest. We quarrel and that makes the time pass."

"I don't quarrel. I never want to quarrel. Let's not quarrel any more. No matter how nervous we get.

Maybe they will be back with another truck today. Maybe the plane will come."

"I don't want to move," the man said. "There is no sense in moving now except to make it easier for

you."

"That's cowardly."

"Can't you let a man die as comfortably as he can without calling him names? What's the use of

clanging me?"

"You're not going to die."

"Don't be silly. I'm dying now. Ask those bastards." He looked over to where the huge, filthy birds

sat, their ***** heads sunk in the hunched feathers. A fourth planed down, to run quick-legged and

then waddle slowly toward the others.

"They are around every camp. You never notice them. You can't die if you don't give up."

"Where did you read that? You're such a bloody fool."

"You might think about some one else."

"For Christ's sake," he said, "that's been my trade."

He lay then and was quiet for a while and looked across the heat shimmer of the plain to the edge of

the bush. There were a few Tommies that showed minute and white against the yellow and, far off,

he saw a herd of zebra, white against the green of the bush. This was a pleasant camp under big trees

against a hill, with good water, and close by, a nearly dry water hole where sand grouse flighted in

the mornings.

"Wouldn't you like me to read?" she asked. She was sitting on a canvas chair beside his cot. "There's

a breeze coming up.

"No thanks."

"Maybe the truck will come."

"I don't give a damn about the truck."

"I do."

"You give a damn about so many things that I don't."

"Not so many, Harry."

"What about a drink?"

"It's supposed to be bad for you. It said in Black's to avoid all alcohol.

You shouldn't drink."

"Molo!" he shouted.

"Yes Bwana."

"Bring whiskey-soda."

"Yes Bwana."

"You shouldn't," she said. "That's what I mean by giving up. It says it's bad for you. I know it's bad

for you."

"No," he said. "It's good for me."

So now it was all over, he thought. So now he would never have a chance to finish it. So this was the

way it ended, in a bickering over a drink. Since the gangrene started in his right leg he had no pain

and with the pain the horror had gone and all he felt now was a great tiredness and anger that this

was the end of it. For this, that now was coming, he had very little curiosity.

For years it had obsessed him; but now it meant nothing in itself. It was strange how easy being tired

enough made it.

Now he would never write the things that he had saved to write until he knew enough to write them

well. Well, he would not have to fail at trying to write them either. Maybe you could never write

them, and that was why you put them off and delayed the starting. Well he would never know, now.

"I wish we'd never come," the woman said. She was looking at him holding the glass and biting her

lip. "You never would have gotten anything like this in Paris. You always said you loved Paris. We

could have stayed in Paris or gone anywhere. I'd have gone anywhere. I said I'd go anywhere you

wanted. If you wanted to shoot we could have gone shooting in Hungary and been comfortable."

"Your bloody money," he said.

"That's not fair," she said. "It was always yours as much as mine. I left everything and I went

wherever you wanted to go and I've done what you wanted to do But I wish we'd never come here."

"You said you loved it."

"I did when you were all right. But now I hate it. I don't see why that had to happen to your leg.

What have we done to have that happen to us?"

"I suppose what I did was to forget to put iodine on it when I first scratched it. Then I didn't pay

any attention to it because I never infect. Then, later, when it got bad, it was probably using that

weak carbolic solution when the other antiseptics ran out that paralyzed the minute blood vessels

and started the gangrene." He looked at her, "What else'"

"I don't mean that."

"If we would have hired a good mechanic instead of a half-baked Kikuyu driver, he would have

checked the oil and never burned out that bearing in the truck."

"I don't mean that."

"If you hadn't left your own people, your goddamned Old Westbury Saratoga, Palm Beach people to

take me on " *'Why, I loved you. That's not fair. I love you now. I'll always love you. Don't you love

me?"

"No," said the man. "I don't think so. I never have."

"Harry, what are you saying? You're out of your head."

"No. I haven't any head to go out of."

"Don't drink that," she said. "Darling, please don't drink that. We have to do everything we can."

"You do it," he said. "I'm tired."

Now in his mind he saw a railway station at Karagatch and he was standing with his pack and that was the

headlight of the Simplon-Offent cutting the dark now and he was leaving Thrace then after the retreat. That was one

of the things he had saved to write, with, in the morning at breakfast, looking out the window and seeing snow on the

mountains in Bulgaffa and Nansen's Secretary asking the old man if it were snow and the old man looking at it and

saying, No, that's not snow. It's too early for snow. And the Secretary repeating to the other girls, No, you see. It's not

snow and them all saying, It's not snow we were mistaken. But it was the snow all right and he sent them on into it

when he evolved exchange of populations. And it was snow they tramped along in until they died that winter.

It was snow too that fell all Christmas week that year up in the Gauertal, that year they lived in the woodcutter's

house with the big square porcelain stove that filled half the room, and they slept on mattresses filled with beech leaves,

the time the deserter came with his feet bloody in the snow. He said the police were right behind him and they gave him

woolen socks and held the gendarmes talking until the tracks had drifted over.

In Schrunz, on Christmas day, the snow was so bright it hurt your eyes when you looked out from the Weinstube

and saw every one coming home from church. That was where they walked up the sleigh-smoothed urine-yellowed road

along the river with the steep pine hills, skis heavy on the shoulder, and where they ran down the glacier above the

Madlenerhaus, the snow as smooth to see as cake frosting and as light as powder and he remembered the noiseless rush

the speed made as you dropped down like a bird.

They were snow-bound a week in the Madlenerhaus that time in the blizzard playing cards in the smoke by the

lantern light and the stakes were higher all the time as Herr Lent lost more. Finally he lost it all. Everything, the

Skischule money and all the season's profit and then his capital. He could see him with his long nose, picking up the

cards and then opening, "Sans Voir." There was always gambling then. When there was no snow you gambled and

when there was too much you gambled. He thought of all the time in his life he had spent gambling.