Small jewel-like Indian rugs lay on the brown carpet, before hearth and doorway and windows.
And the long flaming skin of his Bengal tiger lay sprawled in the very center of the room, its head carefully preserved, with glass eyes and those immense fangs which I had seen with such horrid vividness in my dream.
It was to this last trophy that David gave his full attention suddenly, and then taking his eyes off it with difficulty, went back to writing again. I tried to scan him. Nothing. Why had I bothered Not even a glimmer of the mangrove forests where such a beast might have been slain. But once again he looked at the tiger, and then, forgetting his pen, sank deep into his thoughts.
Of course it comforted me merely to watch him, as it had always done. I glimpsed many framed photographs in the shadows-pictures of David when he'd been young, and many obviously taken of him in India before a lovely bungalow with deep porches and a high roof. Pictures of his mother and father.
Pictures of him with the animals he'd killed. Did this explain my dream
I ignored the snow falling all around me, covering my hair and my shoulders and even my loosely folded arms. Finally I stirred. There was only an hour before dawn.
I moved around the house, found a back door, commanded the latch to slide back, and entered the warm little low-ceilinged hall. Old wood in this place, soaked through and through with lacquers or oil. I laid my hands on the beams of the door and saw in a shimmer a great oak woodland full of sunlight, and then only the shadows surrounded me. I smelled the aroma of the distant fire.
I realized David was standing at the far end of the hallway, beckoning for me to come near. But something in my appearance alarmed him. Ah, well, I was covered with snow and a thin layer of ice.
We went into the library together and I took the chair opposite his. He left me for a moment during which time I was merely staring at the fire and feeling it melt the sleet that covered me. I was thinking of why I had come and how I would put it into words. My hands were as white as the snow was white.
When he appeared again, he had a large warm towel for me, and I took this and wiped my face and my hair and then my hands. How good it felt.
Thank you, I said.
You looked a statue, he said.
'Yes, I do look that way, now, don't I I'm going on.
What do you mean? He sat down across from me. Explain.
I'm going to a desert place. I've figured a way to end it, I think. This is not a simple matter at all.
Why do you want to do that?
Don't want to be alive anymore. That part is simple enough. I don't look forward to death the way you do. It isn't that. Tonight I- I stopped. I saw the old woman in her neat bed, in her flowered robe, against the quilted nylon. Then I saw that strange brown-haired man watching me, the one who had come to me on the beach and given me the story which I still had, crammed inside my coat.
Meaningless. You come too late, whoever you are.
Why bother to explain
I saw Claudia suddenly as if she were standing there in some other realm, staring at me, waiting for me to see her. How clever that our minds can invoke an image so seemingly real. She might as well have been right there by David's desk in the shadows. Claudia, who had forced her long knife through my chest. I'll put you in your coffin forever, Father. But then I saw Claudia ail the time now, didn't I I saw Claudia in dream after dream . . .
Don't do this, David said.
It's tune, David, I whispered, thinking in a vague and distant way how disappointed Marius would be.
Had David heard me Perhaps my voice had been too soft. Some small crackling sound came from the fire, a bit of kindling collapsing perhaps or sap still moist and sizzling within the huge log. I saw that cold bedchamber in my boyhood home again, and suddenly, I had my arm around one of those big dogs, those lazy loving dogs. To see a wolf slay a dog is monstrous!
I should have died that day. Not even the best of hunters should be