“Why dont you go back to India then?” Bland said.
“Ah,” the subadar said. “I am like him; I too will not be baron.”
“So you clear out and let foreigners who will treat the people like oxen or rabbits come in and take it.”
“By removing myself I undid in one day what it took two thousand years to do. Is not that something?”
We shook with the cold. Now the cold was the band, the shouting, murmuring with cold hands to the skeleton, not the ears.
“Well,” Bland said, “I suppose the English government is doing more to free your people than you could.”
The subadar touched Bland on the chest, lightly. “You are wise, my friend. Let England be glad that all Englishmen are not so wise.”
“So you will be an exile for the rest of your days, eh?”
The subadar jerked his short, thick arm toward the empty arch where Comyn and the German and Monaghan had disappeared. “Did you not hear what he said? This life is nothing.”
“You can think so,” Bland said. “But, by God, I’d hate to think that what I saved out of the last three years is nothing.”
“You saved a dead man,” the subadar said serenely. “You will see.”
“I saved my destiny,” Bland said. “You nor nobody else knows what that will be.”
“What is your destiny except to be dead? It is unfortunate that your generation had to be the one. It is unfortunate that for the better part of your days you will walk the earth a spirit. But that was your destiny.”
From far away came the shouting, on that sustained note, feminine and childlike all at once, and then the band again, brassy, thudding, like the voices, forlornly gay, hysteric, but most of all forlorn. The arch in the cold glow of the light yawned empty, profound, silent, like the gate to another city, another world.
Suddenly Sartoris left us. He walked steadily to the wall and leaned against it on his propped arms, vomiting.
“Hell,” Bland said. “I want a drink.” He turned to me. “Where’s your bottle?”
“It’s gone.”
“Gone where? You had two.”
“I haven’t got one now, though. Drink water.”
“Water?” he said. “Who the hell drinks water?”
Then the hot hard ball came into my stomach again, pleasant, unbearable, real; again that instant when you say Now. Now I can dump everything. “You will, you goddamn son,” I said.
Bland was not looking at me. “Twice,” he said in a quiet, detached tone.
“Twice in an hour. How’s that for high?” He turned and went toward the fountain. Sartoris came back, walking steadily erect. The band blent with the cold along the bones.
“What time is it?” I said.
Sartoris peered at his wrist. “Twelfth.”
“It’s later than midnight,” I said. “It must be.”
“I said it was the twelfth,” Sartoris said.
Bland was stooping at the fountain. There was a little light there. As we reached him he stood up, mopping at his face. The light was on his face and I thought for some time that he must have had his whole head under to be mopping that high up his face before I saw that he was crying. He stood there, mopping at his face, crying hard but quiet.
“My poor little wife,” he said. “My poor little wife.”
The end
