It seemed to him that the wind outside was rising a little, or else a window had opened a minute ago to let the sound in. He turned his head; the drawn curtains did not move. «What are you looking at?» she asked. He did not answer. At the same time he had a senseless desire to turn his head in the other direction and look at the other wall, because he thought he had seen a slight movement on that side of the room. Instead, he pulled out a pack of cigarettes and offered her one.
«No thanks, darling. I couldn’t. You have a house. You see?»
«What?» He stared at her.
«I’m explaining, darling, or at least trying to. You have a house. In the middle of some modest grounds, where you’re used to walking about». She waited, apparently to be certain he was following her argument. Since he said nothing, she went on. «You can always see the house. At least, from most parts of the property, but in any case, you know it’s there. It’s the center of your domain. Call it your objective idea about yourself».
He toyed with the pack of cigarettes, extracted one and lighted it, frowning.
«Say it’s the idea of yourself by which you measure what’s real. You have to keep it straight in your mind, keep it in working order. Like a compass».
He was making an effort to go along with the sense of what she was saying, but all he could follow was the words. «Like a compass,» he repeated, as if he thought that might help.
«And so. You know every path, every plant, every stone on the grounds. But one day while you’re out walking you suddenly catch sight of what looks like a path in a spot where you’ve never noticed, nor even suspected one before». Slowly her voice was taking on dramatic fervor. «The entrance is perhaps half hidden by a bush. You go over and look, and find there actually is a path there. You pull the bush aside, take a few steps down the path, and see ahead of you a grove of trees you never before knew existed. You’re dumfounded! You go through the grove touching the tree trunks to be sure they’re really there, because you can’t believe it…»
This time he jerked his head quickly to the left, to catch whatever was over there by the windows, staring at the blank expanse of unmoving white curtain with disbelief. «Just relax,» he said to himself, as he turned back to see if she had noticed him; she seemed not to have. «Relax, and be careful. Be careful». Why he was adding the second admonition he did not know, save that he was conscious of an overwhelming sense of uneasiness, as if a gigantic hostile figure towered above him, leaning over his shoulder, and he believed the only way to combat the feeling was to remain quite calm so that he could control his movements.
«…Then through the trees you see that the path leads up a hill. „But there is no hill!“ you exclaim, probably aloud by this time, you’re so excited and muddled. So you hurry on, climb the hill, which is rather high, and when you get to the top you see the countryside, perfectly familiar on all sides. You can identify every detail. And there’s your house below, just where it should be. Nothing is wrong. It’s not a dream and you’ve not gone mad. If you hadn’t seen the house, of course, you’d know you’d gone mad. But it’s there. Everything is all right». She sighed deeply, as if in relief. «It’s just upsetting to find that grove of trees and that strange hill in the middle of your land. Because it can’t be there, and yet it is. You’re forced to accept it. But it’s how you think once you’ve accepted it that makes what I call the forbidden way of thought. Forbidden, of course, by your own mind, until the moment you accept the fact of the hill. That’s majoun for you. You find absolutely new places inside yourself, places you feel simply couldn’t be a part of you, and yet there they are. Does what I said mean anything at all to you, or have I been ranting like a maniac?»
«Oh, no. Not at all». All his effort was going to giving a sincere ring to the words. An intense silence followed, which he felt he was also making, as he had uttered the words, only it went on for an endless length of time, like telegraph wires across miles of waste land. A pole, a pole, a pole, a pole, the wires strung between, the flat horizon lying beyond the eyes’ reach. Then someone said: «Not at all» again, and it was he who had said it.
«What the hell is this?» he asked himself in a sudden rage. He had promised himself not to get drunk; it was the most important thing to remember while he was at the Villa Hesperides this evening. «I’m not drunk,» he thought triumphantly, and he found himself on his feet, stretching. «It’s stuffy in here,» he remarked, wondering if she would think he was being rude.
She laughed. «Come, now, darling. Admit you’re feeling the majoun at last».
«Why? Because I say it’s stuffy? Nope. I’m damned if I feel anything». He was not being obstinate; already he had forgotten the little side-trip his mind had made a moment ago. Now that he was standing up the air in the room did not seem close. He walked over to a window, pulled the heavy curtain aside, and peered out into the dark.
«You don’t mind being alone here at night?» he said.
«Sometimes,» she answered vaguely, wondering if his question would be followed by others. «Stop thinking like that,» she told herself with annoyance.
He still stood by the window. «You’re pretty high up here».
«About six hundred feet».
«Have you ever been down to the bottom?»
«Over those rocks? God, no! Do you think I’m a chamois?»
He began to walk around the room slowly, his hands behind him, stepping from one zebra skin to the next as if they were rocks in a stream. There was no doubt that he felt strange, but it was not any way he had expected to feel, and so he laid it to his own perturbation. The evening was going to be agonizingly long. «I’d like to be saying good night right now,» he thought. Everything he took the trouble to look at carefully seemed to be bristling with an intense but undecipherable meaning: Daisy’s face with its halo of white pillows, the light pouring over the array of bottles on the table, the glistening black floor and the irregular black and white stripes on the skins at his feet, the darker and more distant parts of the room by the windows where the motionless curtains almost touched the floor. Each thing was uttering a wordless but vital message which was a key, a symbol, but which there was no hope of seizing or understanding. And inside himself, now that he became conscious of it, in his chest more than anywhere else, there was a tremendous trembling pressure, as though he were about to explode. He breathed in various ways to see if he could change it, and then he realized that his heart was beating too fast. «Ah, hell,» he said aloud, because he was suddenly frightened.
«Come and sit down, darling. What’s the matter with you? You’re as restless as a cat. Are you hungry? Or has the majoun got you?»
«No,» he said shortly. «Nothing’s got me». He thought that sounded absurd. «If I go and sit down,» he thought, «I’ll get up again, and she’ll know something’s the matter». He felt he must make every effort to prevent Daisy from knowing what was going on inside him. The objects in the room, its walls and furniture, the air around his head, the idea that he was in the room, that he was going to eat dinner, that the cliffs and the sea were below, all these things were playing a huge, inaudible music that was rising each second toward a climax which he knew would be unbearable when it was reached. «It’s going to get worse».
He swallowed with difficulty. «Something’s got to happen in a minute. Something’s got to happen». He reached the chair and stood behind it, his hands on the back. Daisy looked at him distraughtly. She was thinking: «Why have I never dared tell Luis about majoun?» She knew he would disapprove, if only because it was a native concoction. But that was not why she had kept silent. She had never told anyone about it; the taking of it was a supremely private ritual. The experience was such a personal one that she had never wanted to share it with another. And here she was, undergoing it with someone she scarcely knew. All at once she wanted to tell him, so that he might know he was the first to be invited into this inner chamber of her life. She took a deep breath, and instead, said petulantly: «For God’s sake, sit down. You look like a Calvinist rector telling his flock about Hell».