The Man Who Died Read Online Free PDF

the old nausea came back on him.
For there was no contact without a subtle attempt to inflict a
compulsion. And already he had been compelled even into death. The nausea
of the old wound broke out afresh, and he looked again on the world with
repulsion, dreading its mean contacts.

II
    The wind came cold and strong from inland, from the invisible snows of
Lebanon. But the temple, facing south and west, towards Egypt, faced the
splendid sun of winter as he curved down towards the sea, the warmth and
radiance flooded in between the pillars of painted wood. But the sea was
invisible, because of the trees, though its dashing sounded among the hum
of pines. The air was turning golden to afternoon. The woman who served
Isis stood in her yellow robe, and looked up at the steep slopes coming
down to the sea, where the olive trees silvered under the wind like water
splashing. She was alone save for the goddess. And in the winter
afternoon the light stood erect and magnificent off the invisible sea,
filling the hills of the coast. She went towards the sun, through the
grove of Mediterranean pine trees and evergreen oaks, in the midst of
which the temple stood, on a little, tree–covered tongue of land between
two bays.
    It was only a very little way, and then she stood among the dry trunks of
the outermost pines, on the rocks under which the sea smote and sucked,
facing the open where the bright sun gloried in winter. The sea was dark,
almost indigo, running away from the land, and crested with white. The
hand of the wind brushed it strangely with shadow, as it brushed the
olives of the slopes with silver. And there was no boat out.
    The three boats were drawn high up on the steep shingle of the little
bay, by the small grey tower. Along the edge of the shingle ran a high
wall, inside which was a garden occupying the brief flat of the bay,
then rising in terraces up the steep slope of the coast. And there, some
little way up, within another wall, stood the low white villa, white and
alone as the coast, overlooking the sea. But higher, much higher up,
where the olives had given way to pine trees again, ran the coast road,
keeping to the height to be above the gullies that came down to the bays.
    Upon it all poured the royal sunshine of the January afternoon. Or
rather, all was part of the great sun, glow and substance and immaculate
loneliness of the sea, and pure brightness.
    Crouching in the rocks above the dark water, which only swung up and
down, two slaves, half naked, were dressing pigeons for the evening meal.
They pierced the throat of a blue, live bird, and let the drops of blood
fall into the heaving sea, with curious concentration. They were
performing some sacrifice, or working some incantation. The woman of the
temple, yellow and white and alone like a winter narcissus stood between
the pines of the small, humped peninsula where the temple secretly hid,
and watched.
    A black–and–white pigeon, vividly white, like a ghost escaped over the
low dark sea, sped out, caught the wind, tilted, rode, soared and swept
over the pine trees, and wheeled away, a speck, inland. It had escaped.
The priestess heard the cry of the boy slave, a garden slave of about
seventeen. He raised his arms to heaven in anger as the pigeon wheeled
away, naked and angry and young he held out his arms. Then he turned and
seized the girl in an access of rage, and beat her with his fist that was
stained with pigeon's blood. And she lay down with her face hidden,
passive and quivering. The woman who owned them watched. And as she
watched, she saw another onlooker, a stranger, in a low, broad hat, and a
cloak of grey homespun, a dark bearded man standing on the little
causeway of a rock that was the neck of her temple peninsula. By the
blowing of his dark–grey cloak she saw him. And he saw her, on the rocks
like a white–and–yellow narcissus, because of the flutter of her white
linen tunic, below the yellow mantle of wool. And both of them watched
the