Argosy, September 1955 — page 57: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

SUMMER IN SALANDAR 55 he was being lifted in. It was rather difficult lifting him in because of his leg and because only one end of the pole could be held up. The other was in the ground, leaving one man free to lift him and set him down. It was stupid about the leg. As they took him down from the mule he could not feel it at all. Its pain had become self-numbed like the pain of a tooth at a dentist’s threshold. All his pain was between his eyes, brightening his vision; the little flowers of the hammock pattern sprang at him, dancing pink and blue with fire. “What about you?” he said. ‘‘ You push on. You've got to go. Anyway, the plane is on Saturdays.” ‘That can wait,” she said. ‘‘ The important thing is to get you down. We ought to have done it before.”’ “You'd got it all so clear,”’ he said. The pole straightened. He was lying parallel with the sky. She wiped his face several times with a handkerchief. ‘“* How now?.”’ she said. “‘ Do you feel fit to go? ” “ Fit,’ he said. ‘ Absolutely.” And then in a moment of brightness, ‘“‘ Don’t forget the handbag.” ‘““T very nearly would have done.” His impression was that she was crying. He was not sure. She kissed him gently on ss mouth and said, “‘ Take it easy. Easy does it.’ ‘* Easy,” he said. **’That’s what you said before.” A few moments later the trilby hats began to carry him slowly, in the hammock, down the path. Easy, he thought, that was it. How easy it had been. A ship, a handbag on a bed, a hotel, a leste burning through the town, a rest-house, a track to the top of the sky. Easy: that was her word. “* How do you feel ?”’ she said. ‘‘ Do you want them to go slower ?”’ *“No,” he said. ‘“‘ Aren’t you really going now? ” “No,” she said. ‘‘ Not yet. Not now.” Half in delirium, a moment of joy shot through him in an upward arc that burst like a splintering rocket through the top of his head. It exploded a moment later in stars of pain. There was a smell of camphor from the hammock sheet, anaesthetic, making him gasp for breath, and then, unexpectedly, he was aware of a strange impression. He stared up at the sky. In the centre of it he could have sworn that he saw a shadow, huge and descending, in the shape of the buzzard, holding the sky in its claws. ‘“* Easy,” she said, and “ Easy,” his mind echoed, remembering the shape of her mouth in the sun. The next moment he began fighting. ‘“‘ I won’t go!” he said. *“T won’t go! I won’t let it happen to me!’ But she did not hear him. The trilby hats did not hear him either, and with calm slowness they carried him forward through the valley, down under the scorning brilliance of noon, towards the sea. * * * The plural of spouse is spice. CHRISTOPHER MORLEY comiclbooks.conn