Free Stranger At Home by George Sanders

down and saw that it covered him like water, so that he could see only a warped and veiled reflection of his body. He was glad of the veil. He did not want to see himself. He ran his hands over his flesh. It was well-fed and strong, shaped into smooth beauty. He could feel it, and he thought, This is good . But he did not want to see. He walked on, gliding through the thick blue air. There was a window, tall like the window of a church. White curtains fluttered from it. There was no glass in the window, and beyond it there was darkness. Vickers knew that he must go to the window. There was something outside that he must look at. He stopped. If I go , he thought, I shall be destroyed. I will not go .
    The window came to him. It moved quite easily, and it did not seem to be angry, only inevitable, like the next tick of a clock. He put his hands on the broad sill and looked out.
    There was a street. It was narrow and crooked. It had no lights and no paving. There were little mud-walled houses. There was garbage and the odor of it, heavy and rank, and filth, and a dead rat lying in the dust, and a subtle breath of heat. Vickers drew back. He was afraid. He willed his feet to move, to go away, but the floor slid under them like a running stream. He cried out, loud enough for God to hear, and all that came from his mouth was a whisper: Angie! Angie!
    There was someone behind him, and he knew that there was no escape.
    From a great distance a voice said, Turn around, Vickers. Turn around, Vickers . It came closer. Turn around Vickers Turn around Vickers Turn around Vickers . He turned. His lovely room was gone and there was only darkness as unstable as a cloud blown by the wind. There was someone hidden in it. He smelled of hate. That was all that betrayed him, the voice and the dark red smell of hate. Vickers waited.
    The blow fell.
    The window cracked and fell in tinted shards of sound. The darkness rolled away like thunder. A huge brazen sun clanged like a bell-clapper against a sky of sheet copper. Vickers’ head was on fire. He could feel the flames rise and shoot out through the crevice in his skull. His throat was filled with hot sand. It ran out of his mouth and trickled down his chest. He watched it. He could see his body now. It was gaunt and pinch-bellied, and there were marks on it. The long ribbon-shaped weals of the belt. The red-tinged blossoms of the fist. The spreading mark of the boot, like spilled ink. He thought, That’s what I didn’t want to see . He dropped onto his hands and knees.
    Voices yelled at him. They yelled in Spanish and Portuguese and Dutch and German, but they all said Work! Faces swept past him, faces he knew but was too tired to name. Dark faces, oiled with sweat, cursing him. There was just one face that held steady. It was behind them, a long way off, and he couldn’t see it clearly, but he knew that it was a good face and that it would help him and that he wanted it very much. He began to crawl toward it.
    People beat and kicked and shouted at him. Green hides as stiff as iron were in his way, and torrents of coffee beans and mountains of burlap, and the choking stink of tanneries and guano and dirt and hot bilges and blood. The sun wrung him out and dropped him, so that he crept on his belly, but the face he wanted was still there, steady in the distance.
    He couldn’t seem to get any closer to it, but it grew clearer as the other things faded away. It was a woman’s face, framed in soft black hair, and it had eyes as golden as wine. He dragged himself on, and suddenly it was cold, very cold, and he was creeping along the floor of a room that was high and beautiful like a cathedral nave. White curtains fluttered from long windows. Ahead there was a bed, narrow and hard and without pillows. A man lay naked upon it as on a catafalque, his eyes closed, his arms crossed over his breast. The face was still there, beyond the bed, high against the wall, and it was only a