Chapter 22

Two weeks passed, following much the same pattern: Kalus trying to fight back against sickness and despair, his inner fire burning ever lower, a continuing downward spiral. And the girl, trying to hold on to hope enough for both of them. But despite the books and her new-found courage, she too began to feel numbed by the incessant howling of Winter, that raged like a mindless brute outside their doors, reaching in with deadly fingers at the slightest opportunity. She was puzzled also by Kalus’ inability to recover from what seemed to her a simple, if severe, virus.

But if she was puzzled, Kalus was devastated. His entire existence, from youngest boyhood, had been based around hardihood and the ability to overcome wound, sickness and depravation. In his world those who could not do so perished. All the hard lessons he had learned, centered around one simple and unalterable necessity: self-reliance. And here he was, flat on his back, unable to fight or recover, unable to support even himself, let alone those he cared for. He was less than useless, a drain on their efforts, on their need to reject him and go on. Never had he known such helplessness.

But here the words run out. It was not a single catastrophic event, nor a succession of smaller devastations, which led him to his moment of destruction, but a lifetime of endless conflict, broken dreams and dark, twisted, hopeless roads. There was nothing left to say or feel. He simply could not go on. As Sylviana read to him the last chapter of Hemingway, the futility of life congealed into a single, inescapable blade that no longer hovered at a distance, but stood poised like a needle above his heart. All was black, and like Kamela before him the very throbbing of his heart, with its surges of love and hope was the final, crushing despair.

He waited until the girl was asleep, then put her knife into the soft flesh beneath his ear and began to cut downward, a sinister, sweeping smile.

But the pain was greater than he imagined, and something yet stronger stayed his hand. It wasn’t that he lacked the courage. But if felt so very, very wrong. After all the battles he had fought and the hardships endured, all the times that death had been beaten back ... to be his own undoing ... The instinct to survive had been too deeply ingrained. He dropped weeping and bleeding on his face, writhing in unquenchable anguish.

He still might have bled to death, but for the constant miracle that lived on unnoticed in their midst: the blind desire and yearning of youth, embodied in the new and emerging life of the pup. His elbow landed hard on one of its paws as it slept, and knowing nothing of hopelessness and death, it simply did what its senses told it to. It cried out.

Roused by the sound the girl came closer, lifted aside the canopy, and after a moment of helpless terror, turned Kalus onto his back and with shaking hands worked to stop the bleeding.

But the damage had been done. With that last paroxysm of emotion, all feeling left him. He was not only resigned to death, he believed the process had already begun. As the girl watched helplessly, he became like a critically abused child, neither eating nor speaking, without expression or sorrow or movement. His spirit was already dead, and waited only for the body to follow. The girl wept openly on his chest, but the seeds of his heart refused to grow. His tale was over, a tragedy.

On the third day he asked for a sip of water, told the girl that he loved her, and asked her to forgive him. She said nothing and he went to sleep, expecting never to be wakened in this world again.

But just as the spirit is not slave to the body, neither does the body cease to function simply because the will commands it. Though he had given up on life, life had not yet given up on him. Death, if he truly desired it, wasn’t going to be that easy.