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"However, I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t enjoy it, and you’d be a liar if you claimed you didn’t. So, why gash yourself with the knives of conscience?"
"I’m not a beast like you! I’m a good Christian God-fearing virtuous woman!"
"No doubt," Burton said dryly. "However, let me stress again one thing. I doubt if you would have done what you did if you had not wished in your heart to do so. The drug suppressed your inhibitions, but it certainly did not put in your mind the idea of what to do. The idea was already there. Any actions that resulted from taking the drug came from you, from what you wanted to do."
"I know that!" she screamed. "Do you think I’m some stupid simple serving girls I have a brain! I know what I did and why! It’s just that I never dreamed that I could be such … such a person! But I must have been! Must be!"
Burton tried to console her, to show her that everyone had certain unwished-for elements in their nature. He pointed out that the dogma of original sin surely covered this; she wan human; therefore, she had dark desires in her. And so forth. The more he tried to make her feel better, the worse she felt Then, shivering with cold, and tired of the useless arguments, he gave up. He crawled in between Monat and Razz and took the little girl in his arms. The warmth of the three bodies arid the cover of the grass pile and the feel of the naked bodies soothed him. He went to sleep with Alice’s weeping coming to him faintly through the grass cover.
9
When he awoke, he was in the gray light of the false dawn, which the Arabs called the wolfs tail. Monat, Kazz, and the child were still sleeping. He scratched for a while at the itchy spots caused by the, rough-edged grass and then crawled out. The fire was out; water drops hung from the leaves of the trees end the tips of the grass blades. He shivered with the cold. But he did not feel tired nor have any ill effects from the drug, as he had expected. He found a pile of comparatively dry bamboo under some grass beneath a tree. He rebuilt the fire with this and in a short time was comfortable. Then he saw the bamboo containers, and he drank water from one. Alice was sitting up in a mound of grass and staring sullenly at him. Her skin was ridged with goosebumps.
"Come and get warm!" he said.
She crawled out, stood up, walked over to the bamboo bucket, beat down, scooped up water, and splashed it over her face. Then she squatted down by the fire, warming her hands over a small flame. If everybody is naked, how quickly even the most modest lose their modesty, he thought.
A moment later, Burton heard the rustle of grass to the east. A naked head, Peter Frigate’s, appeared. He strode from the grass, and was followed by the naked head of a woman. Emerging from the grass, she revealed a wet but beautiful body. Her eyes were large and a dark green, and her lips were a little too thick for beauty. But her other features were exquisite.
Frigate was smiling broadly. He turned and pulled her into the warmth of the fire with his hand.
"You look like the cat who ate the canary," Burton said. "What happened to your hand?" Peter Frigate looked at the knuckles of his right hand. They were swelled, and there were scratches on the back of the hand.
"I got into a fight," he said. He pointed a finger at the woman, who was squatting near Alice and warming herself. "It was a madhouse down by the river last night. That gum must contain a drug of some sort. You wouldn’t believe what people were doing. Or would you? After all, you’re Richard Francis Burton. Anyway, all women, including the ugly ones, were occupied, one way or another. I "got scared at what was going on and than I got mad. I hit two men with my grail, knocked them out They were attacking a ten-year-old girl. I may have killed them; I hope I did. I tried to get the girl to come with me, but she ran away into the night.’
"I decided to come back here. I was begi
Then we woke up with the rain and lightning and thunder coming down like the wrath of God. I thought that maybe, don’t laugh, that it was judgment Day, that God had given us free rein for a day so He could let us judge ourselves. And now we were going to be cast into the pit." He laughed tightly and said, "I’ve been an agnostic since I was fourteen years old, and I died one at the age of ninety, although I was thinking about calling in a priest then. But the little child that’s scared of the Old Father God and Hellfire and Damnation, he’s still down there, even in the old man. Or in the young man raised from the dead."
"What happened?" Burton said. "Did the world end in a crack of thunder and a stroke of lightning? You’re still here, I see, and you’ve not renounced the delights of sin in the person of this woman."
"We found a grailstone near the mountains. About a mile west of here. We got lost, wandered-around, cold, wet, jumping every time the lightning struck nearby. Then we found the grailstone. It was jammed with people, but they were exceptionally friendly, end there were so many bodies it was very warm, even if some rain did leak down through the grass. We finally went to sleep, long after the rain quit. When I woke up, I searched through the grass until I found Loghu. She got lost during the night, somehow. She seemed pleased to see me, though, add I like her. There’s an affinity between us. Maybe I’ll find out why when she learns to speak English. I tried that and French and German and tags of Russian, Lithuanian, Gaelic, all the Scandinavian tongues, including Fi
"You must be quite a linguist," Burton said.
"I’m not fluent in any of those," Frigate said. "I can read most of them but can speak only everyday phrases. Unlike you, I am not master of thirty-nine languages — including pornography."
"The fellow seemed to know much about himself, Burton thought. He would find out just how much at a later time.
"I’ll be frank with you, Peter," Burton said. "Your account of your aggressiveness amazed me. I had not thought you capable of attacking and beating that many men. Your queasiness…"
"It was the gum, of course. It opened the door of the cage." Frigate squatted down by Loghu and rubbed his shoulder against hers. She looked at him out of slightly slanted eyes. The woman would be beautiful once her hair grew out.
Frigate continued, "I’m so timorous and queasy because I am afraid of the anger, the desire to do violence, that lies not too deeply within me. I fear violence because I am violent. I fear what will happen if I am not afraid. Hell, I’ve known that for forty years. Much good the knowledge has done me!" He looked at Alice and said, "Good morning!" Alice replied cheerily enough, and she even smiled at Loghu when she was introduced. She would look at Burton, and she would answer his direct questions. But she would not chat with him or give him anything but a stern face.