Turning Back the Sun(45)

He was sick with himself. He had momentarily forgotten about the disease, her secret rash. He”d persuaded himself that the epidemic was transient. But he couldn”t know. He wanted to touch her, but guessed she would wrench away, so he went on sitting in front of his half-eaten meal, which suddenly looked gluttonous. He said, “Leszek will be all right. He has two younger doctors wanting to join the practice.”

But Zo?”s back had hunched as if against a sandstorm, and in its thickened bulwark it seemed to hold all her dashed pride and growing resentment. Her anger was seeking a conduit, but had not found it. Not the town, no, nor Leszek. It was not them that he was so violently deserting. She said in a brimming voice, “Did you always know you”d leave me?”

“Yes.” The moment he said this he realized that it wasn”t quite true, but it seemed better not to tell her now.

“That must have been strange.”

Yes, he thought, strange and terrible. Yet while you were living the relationship, even with the prospect of eventual betrayal, it seemed natural. But he could not explain to her this waiting to return, this knowledge that completeness lay somewhere else. Zo? did not understand that kind of thing. He said, “You knew I”d go back to the capital. I always said so.”

She turned round now. Her face was gaunt. “I didn”t believe you”d go on preferring a place to a person.”

“It”s not just a place.” He despaired of explaining to her. He himself was beginning not to understand. When he asked himself, Why? Why? he was answered only by an immense, irrational yearning. He said, “It”s like being … whole again.” But her face was an angry blank. “It”s my past. I felt natural there.”

“Aren”t you natural with me?” she cried. “But I suppose the girls are better there, with their swanky clothes and accents.” She hovered above him trapped between fury and sadness. “I don”t understand you! When you”re with me, I feel you”re mine. But when you”re on your own, God knows what happens to you. I think you just forget. Do you? What happens?” Then her anger overflowed. “I think you just go cold, like a snake back in water! You accuse this town of materialism, but why are you leaving it? Because you want a new job! And a grander house and a suitable girl!”

“I”m just going where I”ll feel committed. It”s a finer place than here.”

She said stubbornly, “I don”t remember that.”

“I do,” he said, “and if I could get you back there, I would.”

She almost shouted, “I don”t want the fucking capital! I want you!” Then, as if she too despaired of being understood, she turned cynical. He”d never heard her like this before. “That charming city! When I was last there they threw out all the prostitutes and dancers”—she executed an obscene pirouette in front of him—probably all the artists too, anybody who”d suffered anything, so they were left with the most beautiful city, full of children, I expect, with a few angels and mutes. You”ll love it …”

Rayner said cruelly, “You mock it because it rejected you—or you rejected it.”

“Oh yes. I wasn”t good enough for it. I had to be got rid of, like a germ. Now that I”ve been gone ten years, it must be ever so pure.”

But when he looked up at her expression, Rayner saw a familiar desperation: her ferocity against herself, the conviction of her inner worthlessness. And in this moment of disclosure he realized that she did, in some part of her, want to return, but could not, and he was racked by guilt and sadness. He was abandoning her, diseased, to a failing job in a fear-ridden community.

“But Zo? …” He wanted to tell her he did love her, but the words shook on his lips and would not come out. He had no right to tell her anything.

She glared at him and cried, “Don”t you bloody pity me!”

Then he reached out, pulling her against him, and kissed her mouth. She twisted it away from him, but he kissed her cheeks and hair, as if this was all that was left to him, and she slowly relaxed in his arms. Eventually she murmured, “I”m all right, I”m all right,” but her voice strayed into trembling, then she sat on the floor and the tears coursed down her cheeks. He knelt beside her, rocking her, while she buried her face on his chest. He found himself repeating like a prayer, “If only you could join me,” but she simply answered, “What would I do there?”

For several minutes they sat together without talking, exhausted. The cat came and curled itself round them. Zo? said, “When will you go?”

He steeled himself. “In a couple of days. I”ll be back in two weeks … to clear things up.”

“So quick.” She ran her fingers over the cat”s fur with a little broken laugh.

Then her head returned to his chest and he could sense, rather than hear, the renewal of her weeping, like a deep, sighing storm, which shook her body with regular convulsions, whose epicenter lay far inside. It was as if she were crying not only for him but for her broken past, her lost parents, her dead child. He had no way left to comfort her. He was numbed by the depth of her grief.

She whispered, “Damn you.” He cradled her against him. Sometimes she might have been asleep but for the clenching and unclenching of her fingers in his shirt. He wondered how soon she would resurrect, but as he did so she became two women in his mind. The vibrant, dancing Zo?, he thought, would revive tomorrow. But the one in his arms, whose face had been thinned away by tears, the one without self-belief, she might not exactly recover at all, but store him away in the pantheon of her failures, as proof of her valuelessness. When he tried to see her future, he could not. It even crossed his mind that she might return to Ivar. And he could not predict how much—over how long a span—he would yearn for her.