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XXVIII
We entered a doubtful clarity which seemed void of earth or sky, among tattered spirals of sand, an empty, abstracted world where objects had been dissolved, where the air was almost solid, harsh, burning, painful. I walked bent, as if I sought an invisible tunnel in which to ford the storm, tiptoeing, with half-closed eyes, trying not to lose my colleague.
 I thought -- yes, too late! -- that it would have been prudent to have tied ourselves together, like mountain climbers, to make the crossing of this shifting and rising profundity of sand.
By means of a rapid synthesis, I divined -- any type of reasoning was, at that point, impracticable -- that I found myself in an unknown and contrary medium, facing problems and dangers unforeseen by my education, and that I could, without wavering, surrender myself blindly to my companion's initiative. My laborious preoccupation was to follow him; I did not ask myself where we headed. I applied myself to overcoming the immediate impediments, forgetting all notion of time or intention. My fate, as I imagined it then, was to walk through an indeterminate world. I did not even fear that we might lose ourselves; I feared separation from Atwell.
"Wait. I'll return in a moment," Atwell cried to me.
I stiffened. I was next to a section of white wall. Atwell had disappeared.
The limitations of my sight and a perplexity influenced by memories of L'Atlantide and of having dreamed analogous experiences created from those white planes an excessive and labyrinthine architecture. I looked with more deliberation. There were cement stairs, a green door. I recognized the Hotel New East End.
Why had Atwell not wanted me to go in with him? Asking me to await him inside would not have been too much courtesy. I had an irrestible impulse: to climb the stairs two at a time; to knock at the door. I did not move. I had assumed the dangerous attitude of one who swears off his responsibilities, of one who delivers himself to the will of another. I did not dare to disobey Atwell's orders.
Until then I had felt peripheral sensations: the sand against my skin, my clothing molded by the wind. Now, from the center of my breast, irradiated the fervent fire of humiliation and rancor.
I continued to wait. At last Atwell returned.
"Why did you leave me outside?" I asked sharply.
"What did you say?"
As nothing could exempt me now from the disdain I had already suffered, repeating the question exasperated me.
"I was looking for the revolver," Atwell replied.
This was not the explanation I asked for. Did the wind oblige him to respond so to me? Or was there some secret preoccupation. . .?
I must have already walked some fifty meters on Atwell's heels when I understood the import of his words. The possibility -- the sole possibility which I could imagine -- of involving ourselves in a gun battle with Manning did not please me.
We went on dragging ourselves through the sand, fighting the wind, until we reached an area where there were dark clumps of feather grass, where the consistency of the soil had changed -- it was more earthy, muddier -- where the torrent was less turbid, less abrasive. We stopped. Tatters of two scents met us: one, immediate, of humidity, of mud; the other, airier, which seemed to originate from an enormous putrefaction. Atwell put one foot forward, testing the firmness of the ground.
"We have to go around the feather grass," he said.
He advanced cautiously. I followed him. I remembered the story, which Esteban had told us, of the apothecary's horse.
I did not think that I could lose Atwell, nor that Manning, unknown and criminal, could launch himself from behind a bush. Being swallowed up in the quicksand was the danger that obsessed me. We continued walking. At no point did I ask myself in which direction we were headed, in which direction the hotel lay: all that was incumbent upon my companion.
I had the impression I saw a spider in the sand. Then others; then swarms. They were crabs. I thought that if I were to fall, I would throw myself face down, like someone swimming. But I would then have my face in the mud and the crabs would be moving at the level of my eyes. Perhaps it would be better to go down on my back. Then I imagined the dread of knowing myself besieged by the timid, stubborn, relentless feet of unseen crustaceans.
We circled around the final thickets of feather grass; we heard, confounded with the crying of the wind, the furious and distant sea, and then saw before us the most horrid and desperate vision: a beach crawling with crabs, black, viscous, interminable. "The bad thing about seeing a spectacle like this," I thought, "is that one has to encounter it again in his own hell."
I tried to make out the sea on the horizon. I saw a mound in the crab-grounds, something that looked to me like a boat the current had caught.
"What is that?" I asked.
"A whale," he cried.
I smelt the odor of decay. I pictured that enormous cetacean cadaver, overrun and eaten by crabs.
"Let's go. We have to continue the search."
We entered the dark labyrinth of grass. Atwell proceeded with too much celerity. Two or three times I had to ask him to wait for me. I stopped continually, testing the surface. I did not want to die in that desolation.
With repressed pleasure I saw that Atwell awaited me. I came up to him.
"Have you heard?" he asked.
Something in the timbre of his voice startled me.
"I've heard nothing," I answered sincerely.
"He must have come this way." He took a black revolver from his pocket. "Let's go."
"I will wait for you," I said.
I could not follow him. A mysterious tumescence was invading my arms and legs. Atwell circled a bush and disappeared. I wanted to cry out. Then I realized that my shout would put Manning on his guard. Or had I simply found myself without voice? I shouted. I knew immediately that they would not answer me. They did not. I ran without considering the unresistent danger on all sides. I circled that growth of feather grass. I reached the place where I ought to find Atwell. He wasn't there.
There was a strange calm. I did not know when it had begun. I wondered if it was the end of the storm or a mere lull. The light was greenish and, at times, soft purple. It belonged to no hour of the day.
I cried out again. No one answered. I tried to retrace my steps, to return to the place where Atwell had left me. I could not tell if the place was the same. All of the bushes looked alike. I sat down in the dirt.
I do not know how much time had passed, but Atwell's disappearance was too sudden. I wondered if he had hidden.
Then I posed a more important question to myself. Why had I, who have adopted as a fundamental principle of conduct never to expose myself; I who have never signed a manifesto against any governing administration; I who have preferred the simulation of order to order itself if violence were a necessary recourse to imposing order; I who have tolerated the trampling of my ideals rather than defending them; why had I, who only aspire to be an individual citizen and who in the richness and veneration of my intimacy find the "hidden path" and the refuge from dangers both external and my own, why had I -- I exclaimed again -- involved myself in this insane lie and followed Atwell's senseless orders? In order to suborn fate, I swore that if I returned alive to the hotel I would take advantage of this lesson and would never permit vanity, servile behavior or pride to force me to act without premeditation.
If I wanted Atwell to find me, I must not move. But did I want Atwell to find me? Why had he disappeared? Why had he hidden himself? That outcrop of feather grass was, perhaps, exactly what I had wanted to find; that was the fixed place; the place where my enemies knew they would find me; where, without risk, they could kill me.
I wanted to flee. I stayed. Every movement was dangerous. At the moment I was not very far from the sand, from the hotel. But drifting from one shrub to another I might place myself beyond rescue in that dreadful dedalus of plant life and mud.
Subjecting my fear, I considered the possibility of passing the night in the crab-grounds. I thought of the animals that roamed through them: cats, agile and perverse; herds of wild hogs; and -- when the wind stopped -- birds of prey which might, confusing me for carrion, peck at me. I imagined my body lying in the mud, asleep, on a moonless night. That mud was a mobile tapestry of crabs' feet.
I had to guard myself against the capricious constructions of imagination. I had to wait calmly. But how long had I already waited? I felt too impatient to look at my watch. I walked without clear direction, without sufficient care in avoiding the shrubs, bent over because the torrent was intensifying. Suddenly I thought I felt the sand in my face again. I began to run, I lost my footing, I fell into the mud. When I rose, wet and trembling, the wind that struck me in the face carried no sand.
I knew that I was on the verge of losing control of my nerves. I am a doctor. I am not ignorant of the symptons. I appealed to the thermos, to the cut cane.
In my next memory of that atrocious afternoon I was walking, without knowing where, tired, falling continually, already accustomed to the touch of the crabs, led by a minimum of consciousness. I believed that I saw in the distance, through an opening in the thicket of feather grass, the open sand. When I came at last to the final shrub, I found myself on the beach of the crabs, with the rumor of the sea at the horizon and the corpse of the whale. This was the place where I had parted from Atwell. I had followed the fatal circle which disoriented men trace toward the left and animals toward the right (or vice versa: I do not remember.)
I believe that I wept. I believe there was a suspension in my awareness, as if beyond desperation I had found dream or annihilation. Then I felt a tenuous heat. I opened my eyes. My hand seemed to be glowing with a purple halo. I looked at the sky. My indifferent eyes contemplated a diminished and remote sun.
Feeling tossed in a tumult, I consulted my watch. It was 4:35 p.m. I looked at the sun; I looked at the sea. With renewed hope I turned to the north.
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