PARTISAN REVIEW
illness would disgust
him
and he might forsake her completely. She
would steal out of bed so cautiously that it would take her five or
ten minutes to disengage herself from the covers and creep to the
chair in the comer, and if she lit the prayer-candle, she would crouch
over it with cupped hands to conceal the flame.
It
was evident to
Kamrowski that the infection in her body, whatever it was, was now
passing from a chronic into an acute stage. He would have been more
concerned if he had not just then started to work on another novel.
The girl Amada began to exist for him on the other side of a center
which was his writing. Everything outside of that existed in a penum–
bra as shadowy forms on the further side of a flame. Days and events
were uncertain. The ringing of the door bell and the telephone was
ignored. Eating became irregular. He slept with his clothes on, some–
times in the chair where he worked. His hair ·grew long as a hermit's.
He grew a beard and mustache. A lunatic brightness appeared in
his
eyes while his ordinarily smooth face acquired hollows and promon–
tories and his hands shook. He had fits of coughing and palpitations
of the heart which sometimes made him think he was dying and
greatly speeded up
his
already furious tempo of composition.
Afterwards he could not remember clearly how things had been
between himself and Amada during this feverish time. He ceased to
make love to her, he ceased that altogether, and he was only dimly
aware of her presence in the apartment. He gave her commands as if
she were a servant and she obeyed them quickly and wordlessly with
an air of fright. Get me coffee! he would suddenly yell at her.
Play that record again, he would say, with a jerk of his thumb
at the victrola. But he was not conscious of her except as a creature
to carry out such commissions.
During this interval she had quit stealing his money. Most of
the day she would sit at the opposite end of the wide front room
in which he was working. As long as she stayed at that end of the
room her presence did not distract him from his work, but if she
entered unbidden his half of the room or if she asked
him
some
question, he would yell at her furiously or even hurl a book at her.
She became very quiet. When she went to the kitchen or bathroom,
she would move one foot at a time, slowly and stealthily, gazing back
at him to make sure he had no objection. Her face had changed, too,
in the same way that his had changed. The long equine face had
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