Chapter 42

That night, wrapped in the tragicomedy of human pride and affection, none of the three found peace.

For Sylviana the evening seemed endless, trying to drag conversation from the tired and otherwise absorbed company. And when hard night fell at last she found she could not sleep. Instead she restlessly mulled over the ‘situation’ with Kalus, as she called it: the doctor’s explanation for his actions, and his relayed message that, ‘There could never be anyone else.’

But this only made her angry with herself for having been so obvious in front of the others. What did it matter to her what he said or did? He had given her her ‘freedom’, and seemed intent on exercising his own, no matter what his words might say. So she tried again to make herself interested in the young botanist, Smith, who had already asked her a number of leading questions, under the pretense (she assumed) of scientific inquiry.

But the bed was still empty, and her thoughts still vague and rootless, without Kalus there beside her. She felt again the primal urge to go to him, just go to him, and renew their bond through physical love. But remembering the pain of her last submission to it, she stubbornly refused. Or tried to. Until it was too late.

Kalus lay on his back on the ground, the sleeping bag giving him warmth, but little else. He put his hands behind his head and looked to the sky, while the cub nestled at his feet.

How far away the stars looked, how indifferent and utterly unreachable. Thinking yet again of his love, he felt the loneliness and broken longing that every unfulfilled man must know: that of useless labors, and barren seed. The worry-sickness of caring for one who no longer returned that love, had slowly eaten away at the warmth and loyalty he felt for her, leaving him hard and cold and indifferent. Or so it seemed to him then. He rolled over onto his side, muttering, and perhaps an hour later fell at last into a restless, brooding sleep.

But Kataya could no more sleep than bring back the dead, stung to the very heart by intolerable memories of the love she had lost forever. And this pain which lay at the heart of all others, aggravated that very day by the departure of Ishmael and the poor, doomed Children, tormented her every thought, until even the simplest feeling could not be accomplished without a pain that was almost physical.

And while she considered herself superior to Sylviana, and even in a way to Kalus himself, the lashings of emptiness at the hollow discipline of denial were no less acute for it. She remembered the words of Sinclair Lewis, from the book she was then translating.

‘Not individuals but institutions are the enemies, And THEY MOST AFFLICT THE DISCIPLES WHO MOST GENEROUSLY SERVE THEM.’ A more apt description of her own religious and cultural servitude she could not imagine.

But these self-recriminations were meaningless, and she knew it. What lay at the root of her agitation was her forlorn desire for Kalus. Beyond the strong and undeniable physical attraction, his innocence, like Ishmael’s, of the brutal travesty which had killed both her husband and the unborn child she carried unknowingly onto the Virgo...

‘Enough! Leave me alone!’

But there was no escaping herself. Tragedy, desire, and longing for a new life that she could truly call her own, all drew her toward him as irresistibly as childbirth. Added to this was the knowledge, confirmed by the vaginal thermometer, that this night, this very hour, her body was as ready to conceive as it had ever been since the long sleep, as it might ever be again. All her pain and frustration now focused upon this singular and uncorrupted man as a well-spring of life and relief, pure water to one dying of thirst. If he rejected her, the agony and shame would be unbearable. But dear, sweet holy Buddha, how could any pain be worse than this?

It was not greater wisdom that sent her to him in the end, but an agitation of sorrow and loneliness that were longer, and more inescapable. While Sylviana forced herself to stay, Kataya shed a single, honest tear, and surrendered.

Kalus stirred, feeling silken fingers touch his breast, bare legs against his own. He let out a despairing sigh as soft lips caressed him---his mouth, his neck, his chest---all in deepest passion, and solemn entreaty.

It was not his true love, but he could not deny her this. Nor, as he held her close, did he have any wish to, all else falling away in the unconscious amnesia of male passion. He threw open the sleeping bag, longingly kissed her cheek, her neck, the lovely space above her breasts.

‘Kataya,’ he whispered passionately, and there was nothing else in his world, no other salve for the endless pain and frustration. There was only her, here and now, her face wet with tears, vulnerable, compelling. He released the knotted loincloth, as their most sensitive reaches drew nearer. Her breasts rubbed gently across his. Then he slid down, yielding to that most primal longing: to suckle at the breast, fountain of all life.

‘Yes,’ she whispered fervently. ‘Yes, Kalus. TAKE me.’ He raised himself on his arms, opening her legs with his own, and with the sighing aid of her hand, was inside her. He did not love her, but he longed for her, making the physical release and abandon perhaps the greater for it. He was not gentle, nor did she ask him to be. For in that moment she was not a woman, but all women, and his anger would not be abated.

But as he approached climax, too soon, his gentler nature returned, and he not only remembered, but yearned for the soul inside her. She felt him withdraw. And though she experienced a moment of bitter disappointment, that all was yet in vain, he only moved to kneel over her, kissing her lips, her eyes, her neck and then her breasts. And all the while his right hand encircled her deepest temple, caressing, kneading, softly stroking and then penetrating its moist readiness. In rapture she threw back her head, breathed deeply and surrendered to orgasm. Then gently, now quieter, he put himself inside her once more, moving his penis in slow, beautiful patterns that she thought would break her heart with loving pleasure. And in time as his own breathing became deeper, and his thrusts more urgent, she felt the throbbing wetness come again, as together they forgot all else in the throes of that blessed, animal release. Plaintive, moaning sounds split the night.