I'll pass over how I felt about it: they haven't made the
words--
Well, we stumbled down the trail and into the hut. At first I
thought it was empty, but after a minute I saw a very old man
crouched in a corner. As I looked at him he raised his bleared
eyes to me, his head swinging slowly from side to side as though
with a kind of palsy. He could not see me, that was evident, nor
hear me, but some instinct not yet decayed turned him toward a
new presence in the room. In my wild desire for water I found
room to think that here was a man even worse off than myself.
A vessel of water was in the corner. I drank it. It was more
than I could hold, but I drank even after I was filled, and the
waste ran from the corners of my mouth. I had forgotten
Schwartz. The excess made me a little sick, but I held down what
I had swallowed, and I really believe it soaked into my system as
it does into the desert earth after a drought.
In a moment or so I took the vessel and filled it and gave it to
Schwartz. Then it seemed to me that my responsibility had ended.
A sudden great dreamy lassitude came over me. I knew I needed
food, but I had no wish for it, and no ambition to search it out.
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