at all pleased. “Is this a time to come visiting?” she said irritably.
“Then when should I come?” Farid said. “With that slob sitting here all afternoon.”
She continued to lie there under her veil of moonlight. Her eyes were open and looking at him. It wasn’t so different from when she used to wake up at night in the other half of their double bed in London and regard him silently and speculatively in the dark. “Move over,” he said suddenly now. Didn’t he have the right? Wasn’t he still her husband? She didn’t argue but made room for him, so that he could nestle beside her. She no longer used the scent, Jolie Madame, she had in London but smelled of something else. Maybe it wasn’t a scent at all but only a fragrance rising from within her. It was somehow strengthened and given body by the racy smell of the deerskin.
“Let’s go away,” he whispered to her.
“We are going away,” she pointed out. “We’re going to London. I’m booked in the Royal Albert Hall in October.”
“Not like that. Not with all these people. Just you and me.” Chastely he kissed her cool neck.
“Where were you thinking of going?” she murmured.
“Away. Up there,” he said, gesturing toward a mountain peak glimmering with moon and snow.
“There’s nothing up there.”
“Yes there is. You said so. You’ve been there. You said there’s a cave.”
“Oh, my goodness,” she said. “That old story. You’d better go to bed and get some sleep. You’re dreaming with your eyes open.”
His reply was to move closer to her; he put his arm across her. After a long silence, during which both of them lay quite still, she said, “I don’t want to go up. I want to go down—go back. This time, it’ll work out. You’ll see.”
How often he had heard that from her—each time she had started some new scheme. She seemed to remember this herself, for she went on: “Sunil will help us. He’ll look after all that—you know, the business side you and I could never manage.”
“Sunil!” he said scornfully. “All he knows is buying and selling.”
“No one can live without buying and selling,” she said.
He was shocked. He sat up and stared at her in the moonlight. She looked back at him defiantly; and again he was reminded of how it had been between them all the years in London. Was she still the same? Hadn’t she changed after all?
She knew at once what he was thinking, of course. “It’s you who haven’t changed!” she cried. “You still think you can lie around with your mouth open, waiting for sweets to drop in. Well, that’s not my style at all, and this time you’re not going to drag me down with you.”
“But I told you, I don’t want to go down,” he said. “I want to go up—up to where that cave is.”
She snorted loudly—a sound of impatient anger that he knew very well. “And go away now,” she said, and when he didn’t move she gave him a little push. “Go on, before anyone sees us.”
“So what?” he said. “We’re married, aren’t we?”
A shipment of boxes arrived from London—the men in Daks slacks had arranged it all. The boxes contained new uniforms for the handmaidens and a white robe of Italian silk for Farida, along with a string of prayer beads set by a famous Italian designer, and a new deerskin, which must have been synthetic, for it had no smell at all. Everyone had gathered around for the unpacking—everyone, that is, except for Farid, who kept himself completely aloof from the excitement. By the time he next came to visit the tree, the handmaidens had changed into their new permanent-press robes and were gliding up and down in them like ethereal airline stewardesses. Farida appeared tremendously pleased with herself in her new white robe and Italian beads. She looked at Farid as if she expected a compliment, which he refused to pay. Sunil was there, surveying the scene with the satisfaction of an impresario. He stared at Farid, and Farida said at once, “Yes, he’ll need a new outfit, too.”
Farid shrugged contemptuously and went away. But when night came and everyone was asleep he got up and went to her again. She was awake and seemed to be expecting him. When he lay down next to her, she ran her finger over his frayed collar and said, “We’ll get you a new shirt and new shoes and ties and everything. We’ll start again.” She stroked what was left of his hair. “It’ll all be different this time,” she said. But when he groaned and said, “Oh, no,” she pulled back from him. “That’s all I’ve ever heard from you!” she shouted. “Whatever I wanted you to do, your only contribution was ‘Oh, no.’ I’m sick of it! I’m tired of it and I’m tired of you.”
Though she spoke in anger, Farid saw the tears trickling from her eyes.
“Who did I ever do anything for but you?” she said. “All those businesses I started—who was all that for? And even now, who is it all for?” Her voice broke. Her tears fell in perfect drops like pearls.
“Never mind,” he said. “Don’t say any more.” He lay beside her and held her hand, and remembered the time when he had had to rescue her and flushed her cooking oil away.
The next day, he invited Sunil to go for a walk with him. Sunil, who was in no condition to walk uphill, didn’t want to go, but Farid used his old tactics—taunting him about his ungainly figure, his breathlessness, his age—until Sunil gave in. Farid walked ahead, jaunty with his hat and stick, sometimes stopping on the steep path to look back at his friend panting behind him. When he reached his destination, which was his usual overlook, he sat comfortably on a stone and watched Sunil slowly coming up and, beyond him, the mountainside that spiraled away below.
Sunil arrived flushed and angry. “You want to kill me, making me climb up here?” he said.
“Calm down,” Farid said. “Take it easy. I only want to tell you something. Farida and I are leaving.”
“Oh, my God, is that all?” Sunil said, standing above him. “I know you’re leaving. So am I. Everyone is. Is that all you have to tell me?”
“We’re not going with you,” Farid said calmly. “We’re going up, not down. I just wanted you to know there’s been a change of plan.”
“Oh, sure, sure. A change of plan. I make the arrangements, spend a few hundred thousand, and he changes the plan.”
Farid remained serene. He pointed toward the mountaintop far above them, where its peak disappeared into mist. “That’s where we’re going, Farida and I,” he said.
“Listen, Farid,” Sunil said. He took a deep breath to keep his patience. “I don’t know what’s on your mind, but please try to get this straight. We’re going to London. Everything’s booked. Everything’s arranged. There’s a whole public waiting for us out there. There’s money to be made, and we’re going to make it.”
Farid, still seated on his stone, looked up at his friend. It was so easy. One push in the right direction and Sunil would go rolling off the
