Episode 2

"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'"

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