THE WOMAN WHO HAD TWO NAVELS
473
shot at the night club), one hand clutching his belly, the other hand
clapped to his mouth-and her own bloody mouth smiled twistedly:
she had won after all.
He staggered away and snatched his coat and ran out of the room
and down to the street, past her car that waited at the curb, down
white empty street after white empty street, fleeing faster and faster–
for the eyes had followed, the eyes were everywhere; there was no
escaping them in this evil city where rich and poor alike huddled in
terror behind their beasts and their guns, where the crowds fled self–
pursued and the teeming streets might any moment become stark
deserts as the latest victim danced upon his blood: where ghosts were
reported and signs appeared upon doors and black headlines swarmed
in the air and apparitions waved warnings and a young girl whispered
that she had two navels . . .
But what was this horrible thing he had done? I've been dragging
her all along with me, he gasped, and shuddered. I've been dragging
her by the hair, he cried, and felt her hair in his hands. But when he
stopped, horrified, and peered down at his hands he saw that it was
his coat he clutched. It's only your coat, you bloody fool, he shouted,
laughing, and began to kiss the coat in relief. And noticing the ocean
coolness around him, he realized that he was standing on the seaside.
He was alone, he had escaped; and as he faced his fever to the cold
wind he knew a moment of sobbing relief. But looking up and seeing
the mountains, his heart stopped, his eyes started out of his head,
his throat screamed soundlessly. He had not escaped, he had not fled
at all-for there she still was, stretched out under the sky; the sly look
in her eyes and the bloody smile on her lips, and her breasts and
shoulders naked. He wheeled around to flee, but his legs had liquefied
and, as he flailed the air with his arms, the ground suddenly seesawed
and slammed against his face; the moonlight blacked out: stars blazed;
sand swelled in his mouth and waters roared in his ears-but the next
moment there were no more stars, no more sand, no more waters, only
a total stillness, a total void . . .
Two days later he was on a ship, sailing back to Hong Kong.
"I left without seeing either of them again," said Paco Texeira,
lying on the grass in King's Park, Pepe Monson sitting beside him,
and the winter night settling like soup in the bowl-shaped park. All
around the bowl's brim, where twilight still glimmered, Pepe Monson
saw the international clubhouses, each one packaged in fog, waiting
in locked-up loneliness for Sunday's exiles.
