decision for him. He knew also that Debra as a lovely, blind, best
selling authoress would have been a sensation, and a tour would have
launched her into the superstar category.
This made his own procrastination even more corrosive. He tried to
re-think and rationalize his delay in posting the letter to Dr. Edelman.
He told himself that the light-sensitivity did not mean that Debra could
ever regain her vision; that she was happy now, had adjusted and found
her place and that it would be cruel to disrupt all this and offer her
false hope and probably brutal surgery.
In all his theorizing tried to make Debra's need take priority, but it
was deception and he knew it. It was special pleading, by David Morgan,
for David Morgan for if Debra ever regained her sight, the delicately
hal anced structure of his own happiness would collapse in ruin.
One morning he drove the Land-Rover alone to the farthest limits of
Jabulani and parked in a hidden place amongst camel Thorn trees. He
switched off the engine and, still sitting in the driving-seat, he
adjusted the driving-mirror and stared at his own face. For nearly an
hour he studied that ravage expanse of inhuman flesh, trying to find
some redeeming feature in it, apart from the eyes, and at the end he
knew that no sighted woman would ever be able to live close to that,
would ever be able to smile at it, kiss and touch it, to reach up and
caress it in the critical moments of love.
He drove home slowly, and Debra was waiting for him on the shady cool
stoop and she laughed and ran down the steps into the sunlight when she
heard the Land-Rover. She wore faded denims and a bright pink blouse,
and when he came to her she lifted her face and groped blindly but
joyously with her lips for his.
Debra had arranged a barbecue for that evening, and although they sat
close about the open fire under the trees and listened to the night
sounds, the night was cool. Debra wore a cashmere sweater over her
shoulders, and David had thrown on his flying jacket.
The letter lay against his heart, and it seemed to burn into his flesh.
He unbuttoned the leather flap and took it out. While Debra chatted
happily beside him, spreading her hands to the crackling leaping flames,
David examined the envelope turning it slowly over and over in his
hands.
Then suddenly, as though it were. a live scorpion, he threw it from him
and watched it blacken and curl and crumple to ash in the flames of the
fire.
It was not so easily done, however, and that night as he lay awake, the
words of the letter marched in solemn procession through his brain,
meticulously preserved and perfectly remembered. They gave him no
respite, and though his eyes were gravelly and his head ached with
fatigue, he could not sleep.
During the days that followed he was silent and edgy.
Debra sensed it, despite all his efforts to conceal it and she was
seriously alarmed, believing that he was angry with her. She was
anxiously loving, distracted from all else but the need to find and cure
the cause of David's ills.
