Cold Turkey 229
two people here. I, myself, am the Woman clothed
with the Sun, writing down my experiences. The
other is Lou Pendragon, an animal dying in agony
from thirst.
I said the last word aloud, and Peter caught it up.
He crawled away from the grate towards me croaking
out :—
“Not the thirst benign
That calls the worker to wine;
Not the bodily thirst
(Though that be frenzy accurst)
When the mouth is full of sand,
And the eyes are gummed up, and the ears
Trick the soul till it hears
Water, water at hand,
When a man will dig his nails
In his breast, and drink the blood
Already that clots. and. stales
Ere his tongue can tip its flood.”
His mind had gone back to infancy. He thought
that I was his mother, and came to me to be nursed.
But when he came near, he recognised me and crawled
away again, hurriedly, like a wounded animal trying
to escape from the hunter... .
Most of the time, when we have energy to talk at all,
we discuss how to get more H. and C. The C. has been
fmished long ago. It’s no good without the H. We
could go to Germany and get it; or even to London,
but something keeps us from decision.
I, of course, know what it is. It is necessary for me
to undergo these torments that I may be purified
completely from the flesh.
But Peter doesn’t understand at all. He blames me
bitterly. We go over the whole thing again and again.
Every incident since we met is taken in turn as the
cause of our misery
Sometimes his brutal lust revives in his mind. He
thinks I am a vampire sent from Hell to destroy him ;