We'll let him sleep He needs the rest.

————

An oud throbs seductively, weaving a soft aural trance.

Radwan Hussainy continued his whispering exhortation, “Boredom is a sin against Allah, all of life has beauty and taste… although the bitterness of an evil soul will pollute the most appetizing taste… In the crevices of disasters, happiness lies like a diamond in a mine… Hussainy droned on… I could hear the gurgle of the waterpipes. The smoke of hashish floated like a gauzy white veil hiding the faces of Radwan’s audience. Were they listening as they lay silent on their couches? I couldn’t tell. The night was still. The night was eternal in Kirsha’s café. What year was it? How could I know. Midaq Alley had no time. Maybe it never existed. Maybe it was only something I read. Maybe it was a dream ago…

The sound of the oud fades – rudely replaced by the sound of TV chatter at low volume.

When I opened my eyes swift clouds were racing across a bleak colorless sky. Anne switched the channel. “I hate it when they speed-up the film like that. It scares me”. “Does it make you think of a nightmare”? “I don’t know. I just don’t like it. Let’s find something better to watch”. She switched through the channels to a nature documentary in bright color. “That’s better. I hope none of the animals get killed”. I took her hand. It was trembling. The TV flickers hypnotically…

The TV sound changes to electrical static. Thunder rumbles in the distance.

The rain woke me. I could hear the lions grumbling. They hadn’t made a kill. They were hungry. I could feel their roars vibrate through my bones. I climbed the acacia high enough to be beyond any lion’s reach. I shivered on my perch until their roars faded in the distance. As I climbed down something grabbed my arm and shook me. The beast spoke...

A summer breeze gently bangs an unfastened screen door.

“Wake up… C’mon, wake up… You gotta get up. Sheriff Chummy’s on his way here right now. Linn phoned me from the Town and country. The sheriff had his deputy with him. Linn figured they were they were up to somethin’. She listened while she poured their refills. You gotta get out of here right now. Amy peeled off twenties from the fistful in her hand, ”There’s a hundred, I’m keeping the rest. You owe me. Don’t look at me like that. You know dammed straight you owe me! Better cut ‘cross country ‘till you get past the County line. Stay off the roads, don’t stop for nuthin’. It was hot. As I wiped the sweat from my face I realized how tired I was. Don’t know how many miles I walked. Too many. I had to set for a while… Just close my eyes for a while, just a little while… The sun is so bright… It can see it through my eyelids…

Blazing yellow sun shifts to cold blue xenon halogen.

A face appears in front of the bright light. A pretty face, a nurse. She’s talking to someone beside her. “He’s coming ‘round… I couldn’t hear the rest. The pain that shot through my body shut out everything. “He’s not ready yet”. I felt the needle, and then something like a wind blowing the pain away…

A chill wind swirls restlessly.

Monsieur Aurol said the wind came this way sometimes. It was not a true mistral, the season guaranteed that, but it would probably blow for three days. If anyone kept track of it they would know it had not been normal since the war. I said I had not kept track of it. I had been travelling, and nothing is the same since the war. We left it at that. I glanced at the Miroir des Sports that lay unread on the table, and thought about Catherine. She was often thoughtful about things I didn’t expect her to be thoughtful about. She knew I enjoyed the books of W. H. Hudson. As a present to me, she had sent to Galignani’s in Paris for a Dent edition of Far Away and Long Ago. I will begin reading her gift this afternoon at a sunny table on the terrace away from the wind. Catherine would soon be down for breakfast. I order for both of us; oeuf au jambon, brioche, and red raspberry jam, and - café au lait for me. Catherine prefers her coffee black We left our baggage at the hotel in Avignon and drove to Pont du Gard. The mistral wind, that wasn’t a true mistral wind, was blowing fiercely. It followed us to Nimes, and then on to Aigues Mortes, then to Grau du Roi. The rain clanged on the roof of the Bugatti like tattoo needles trying to pierce the metal…

Click, click, click - mad relentless clicking.

The instrument of execution was a bizarre two-story high mechanical killer of many moving parts. The officer in charge of the machine is zealously proud of his role in maintaining and operating this complicated machine. He sadly confides to me the increasing difficulty of getting proper replacement parts shipped to the island. The officer is infatuated with the engineering beauty of the machine. I ask how the machine performs the execution. “Ah! exclaims the officer, There is the exquisite perfection of it all. The condemned man is laid face down, bound hand and foot, and a rack of tattooing needles is positioned inches from his back. Then this rack called the Harrow, is lowered to the point of tickling contact. Then slowly, incrementally, the needles push deeper, tattooing the sentence of the condemned man upon his back. The process doesn’t stop until the body has been completely pierced. The prisoner is usually dead within six hours” . . .

Smells and echoes of Hospital fill the air.

“How Is he”? “Well his breathing is even. He’s been talking. Some of it sounded like he was speaking French, something about Catherine and mistral winds. Does any of that make sense to you”? Anne said, no, “He doesn’t speak French, I never heard him talk about mistral winds, and we don’t have any friends named Catherine. She might be a girlfriend from before we were married. I don’t know”. “Some of what he said sounded crazy, something about a torture machine with tattooing needles”. “Mmm, that may not be as crazy as it seems.

I remember a horrible story I read in college; something by Kafka. I can’t remember the title but I’m sure that’s a Kafka story. His brain must be churning through all he’s read, or dreamed”. “We’ll Let him sleep. His body needs the rest. I think he might wake naturally after the cycling of his reverie is exhausted. We’ll call if anything changes”. Anne thanks them and leaves for home…

Rubber wheels hum on asphalt, accompanied by mournful pedal-steel guitar.

It was pitch-black except for the high-beams that lit the asphalt ahead. Merle Haggard was singing White Line Fever on the radio. I turned it up. Should be in Albuquerque by dawn. Been hauling loads all over the southwest for two years now. It’s a good job. A lot of truckers don’t like this much lonesome road. I don’t mind. The desert makes me think of old Harney and his wild frontier stories. Harney told me he’d been captured by Victorio as a young boy. He said, “I was an Apache till I was fifteen. Learned to be an Apache, ride, shoot, steal, live on nothing, trust nobody and keep on ridin’ – keep ridin’, south of the border, north of the border, it was all the same. Apache’s! We wasn’t Apache’s. We was a way of life”. Harney’s said his life as an Apache ended when Victorio took him to a ridgetop overlooking a small town. Sitting side by side on their ponies, They could see people in the streets below and smoke from the chimneys. “We watched it like animals must watch people – sharp, wild, ready to vanish at the least sign of danger”. Victorio said soft and low, “Those are your people, do you remember? Those are your people. Go down to them”. Harney was confused. He said, “I don’t know, all the people I know are Apache, I am Apache”. “Those are your people. You are not one of us”. With that Victorio turned aside his pony and slipped silently away…

The high-desert breeze descends to stuffy hospital stillness.

Anne sat by her husband’s side and tried to understand what had happened to him. Was it because they had fallen asleep on the couch while the TV flickered all night? Did the flicker hypnotize him? The doctor said, no. “The flickering might have set-off the coma-like reaction, but it couldn’t have caused it. Something else must be going on. Some condition different from coma. People in comas don’t talk”. Anne stayed with him that night at the hospital. She listened and tried to understand what was going on in his head. She could make out a few words and fragments of sentences. Sometimes he would say something whole. He seemed to be in another time and place.

One thing he said sounded like an elegy…

Whispered gossip amid perfunctory sobbing.

Mother Cuxom’s words after Mrs. Hanchard’s death summed-up all that needed saying, “Well, poor soul, she’s helpless to hinder that, or anything now. And all her shining keys will be took from her, and her cupboards opened; and little things a’ didn’t wish seen, anybody will see; and her wishes and ways will be as nothing”...

Archaically phrased chatter interrupted by the clatter of hospital’s morning shift.

Anne fell asleep during the night She woke to a warm and stuffy room. She went to open a window. When she turned around her husband’s eyes were open. “Where are we? It looks like a hospital”. “it is a hospital. You’ve been unconscious for three days and one night”.

“What happened”? “I don’t know. The doctor doesn’t know. I’m glad to see you back”.

The breeze felt good, and fresh. It did seem like I was back from a really long trip. I was hungry. I asked Anne to call for room service. The nurse hesitated, saying it was between breakfast and lunch; she called anyway. “What would you like”?

Anne was surprised the hospital served bacon. She took a dainty bite of the bacon and a sip of the coffee while I used the toast to mop-up the rest. “Did I talk in my sleep”? “Yes you did, you certainly did, but nobody knew what you were talking about. “last night you said something about Mother Cuxom and Mrs. Hanchard. “Ah, from The Mayor of Casterbridge”. “Was that a Thomas Hardy novel”? “Of course, Thomas Hardy”. “I thought you were probably dreaming books you’ve read - only this time, living them?.

The doctor came in from the hall. “Nurse told me you were awake. How are you feeling”? “Good, refreshed, I think”. “Well, I couldn’t find anything wrong with you, except your strange trance of reverie”. “Don’t know what caused it. May never know. I want you to stay overnight just in case. If you still feel alright in the morning we’ll let you go”.

When I got home Far Away and Long Ago was just where I left it. I opened it at the bookmark and picked-up where I left off. I think it might be W. H. Hudson’s finest novel.

Anne smiled, saying, “It’s nice to have you home”.

Adding, “Who’s Catherine”?

By K. L. Shipley