The Sheltering Sky

“She’s off!” cried Tunner. The din of a street car and its bell passing across the terrace outside, drowned the music for a moment. Beneath the awning they had a glimpse of the open vehicle in the sunshine as it rocked past. It was crowded with people in tattered clothes.

Port said: “I had a strange dream yesterday. I’ve been trying to remember it, and just this minute I did.”

“No!” cried Kit with force. “Dreams are so dull! Please!”

“You don’t want to hear it!” he laughed. “But I’m going to tell it to you anyway.” The last was said with a certain ferocity which on the surface appeared feigned, but as Kit looked at him she felt that on the contrary he actually was dissimulating the violence he felt. She did not say the withering things that were on the tip of her tongue.

“I’ll be quick about it,” he smiled. “I know you’re doing me a favor by listening, but I can’t remember it just thinking about it. It was daytime and I was on a train that kept putting on speed. I thought to myself. ‘We’re going to plough into a big bed with the sheets all in mountains.’”

Tunner said archly: “Consult Madame La Hiff’s Gypsy Dream Dictionary.”

“Shut up. And I was thinking that if I wanted to, I could live over again—start at the beginning and come right on up to the present, having exactly the same life, down to the smallest detail.”

Kit closed her eyes unhappily.

“What’s the matter?” he demanded.

“I think it’s extremely thoughtless and egotistical of you to insist this way when you know how boring it is for us.”

“But I’m enjoying it so much.” He beamed. “And I’ll bet Tunner wants to hear it, anyway. Don’t you?”

Tunner smiled. “Dreams are my cup of tea. I know my La Hiff by heart.”

Kit opened one eye and looked at him. The drinks arrived.

“So I said to myself, ‘No! No!’ I couldn’t face the idea of all those God—awful fears and pains again, in detail. And then for no reason I looked out the window at the trees and heard myself say: ‘Yes!’ Because I knew I’d be willing to go through the whole thing again just to smell the spring the way it used to smell when I was a kid. But then I realized it was too late, because while I’d been thinking ‘No!’ I’d reached up and snapped off my incisors as if they’d been made of plaster. The train had stopped and I held my teeth in my hand, and I started to sob. You know those terrible dream sobs that shake you like an earthquake?”

Clumsily Kit rose from the table and walked to a door marked Dames. She was crying.

“Let her go,” said Port to Tunner, whose face showed concern. “She’s worn out. The heat gets her down.”

III

He sat up in bed reading, wearing only a pair of shorts. The door between their two rooms was open, and so were the windows. Over the town and harbor a lighthouse played its beam in a wide, slow circle, and above the desultory traffic an insistent electric bell shrilled without respite.

“Is that the movie next door?” called Kit.

“Must be,” he said absently, still reading.

“I wonder what they’re showing.”

“What?” He laid down his book. “Don’t tell me you’re interested in going!”

“No.” She sounded doubtful. “I just wondered.”

“I’ll tell you what it is. It’s a film in Arabic called Fiancee for Rent. That’s what it says under the title.”

“It’s unbelievable.”

“I know.”

She wandered into the room, thoughtfully smoking a cigarette, and walked about in a circle for a minute or so. He looked up.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Nothing.” She paused. “I’m just a little upset. I don’t think you should have told that dream in front of Tunner.”

He did not dare say: “Is that why you cried?” But he said: “In front of him! I told it to him, as much as to you. What’s a dream? Good God, don’t take everything so seriously! And why shouldn’t he hear it? What’s wrong with Tunner? We’ve known him for five years.”

“He’s such a gossip. You know that. I don’t trust him. He always makes a good story.”

“But who’s he going to gossip with here?” said Port, exasperated.

Kit in turn was annoyed.

“Oh, not here!” she snapped. “You seem to forget we’ll be back in New York some day.”

“I know, I know. It’s hard to believe, but I suppose we will. All right. What’s so awful if he remembers every detail and tells it to everybody we know?”

“It’s such a humiliating dream. Can’t you see?”

“Oh, crap!”

There was a silence.

“Humiliating to whom? You or me?”

She did not answer. He pursued: “What do you mean, you don’t trust Tunner? In what way?”

“Oh, I trust him, I suppose. But I’ve never felt completely at ease with him. I’ve never felt he was a close friend.”

“That’s nice, now that we’re here with him!”

“Oh, it’s all right. I like him very much. Don’t misunderstand.”

“But you must mean something.”

“Of course I mean something. But it’s not important.” She went back into her own room. He remained a moment, looking at the ceiling, a puzzled expression on his face.

He started to read again, and stopped.

“Sure you don’t want to see Fiancee for Rent?”

“I certainly don’t.”