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42
PARTISAN REVIEW
that she wept, saying "Poor Mark; poor Mark ..." and patting the
coverlet continuously, in a kind of trance. Her free right hand lay
in her lap, clenched, bitter, and her eyes had the blurred bottomless
look of a cheated child. Then the dark began to crawl through the
room treacherously, like a thief, and suddenly she was frightened to
be alone there with
him.
She went back to the kitchen where David
had been walking all afternoon. "Now will you get a job?" He said
nothing, back to her, hands in his pockets. She rattled the pans . in
the sink. "All you want is to drink and ... " "Christ!" He turned–
dishevelled, the loose white lips twisting- but in a moment the anger
and energy had drained away, leaving him stooped, flabby, a trifle
hurt. "I guess you're right," he said, and went out.
On the other side of the road Joan sat among the unused furni–
ture and the packages, trying to remember. Mark! Stay with me! I
have no other life than you. She heard the buzz and rumble of a
truck passing and crickets singing beneath their lilac tree. Now he is
coming, look, in the corner, out of the shadow, rising: he was only
asleep. Love, this is my true self, my arms, my voice. Be silent, listen
to my voice, believe in me. This is our own country, here. Here!
Reaches his deep-shadowed arms, rising, singing of crickets in the
June night, and now blood, look! streams down the sky.
We have
been betrayed.
But in the morning she awoke to new sounds, rose and
went out from their home, slowly, into the sun.
