Fritz Leiber - Horrible Imaginings

“Of course. But the warnings haven’t come yet and the rain seems to be tapering off. Oh, I guess Cassius is pretty much like the other residents in spots like this. Won’t hear a word against their homes, they’re safe as Gibraltar, anyone who says different is an alarmist from the city or the East or LA, an earthquake nut, but when the rains and warnings come, everything’s different, no matter how quick they forget about it afterwards. Believe me, Terri, I could feel that myself when I drove back this afternoon and rushed up this soggy hill with Tom.” He paused. “So what’s the other stuff?”

She started to pace again, biting her lip, then stopped and eyed him defiantly. “Wolf,” she said, “this is one of those things I can’t talk about without cigarettes. And if you don’t like it, too bad!”

“Go ahead and smoke,” he directed her.

As she dug out a pack, ripped off its top, and lit up, she confessed, “I started smoking Tilly’s when she was telling me things at her place, and when she drove me back here, I picked up a couple of packs on the way; I knew I’d be needing them.

“Well, look, Wolf, before Loni left she told me, after I’d agreed not to tell you, that one of the reasons she was leaving early was that your father had been… well… bothering her.”

“You know, that doesn’t altogether surprise me either,” Wolf responded. “Depending, of course, on how far his bothering went and how she behaved.” And he told Terri about seeing Loni sunbathing yesterday morning and how Cassius could have as easily seen her too, and probably did, finishing with “And, Terri, it was really a most stimulating sight: sweet black-masked nubility sprawled wide open to the wild winds and all that.”

“The little fool!” Terri hissed, quickly supplementing that with, “Though why a woman in this day and age shouldn’t be able to sunbathe where and whenever she wants to, I don’t know. But Loni didn’t, wouldn’t, tell me exactly how far your father tried to go, though I got the impression there was something that really shook her. But she and I have never been terribly close, as I think you know. That’s one reason why it became important what Tilly had to tell me on the subject.”

“Which was?” Wolf prompted.

Lighting another cigarette and puffing furiously, Terri said, “When we got to talking over lunch at her place, the conversation somehow got around to your father and sex—I guess maybe I hinted at what Loni told me—and she came right out with (remember how rough she often talks), ‘Cassius? He’s an indefatigable old lecher!’ and when I tactfully asked her if he’d made advances toward her, she whooped and said, ‘Me? My dear, I’m much too ancient for him. Cassius, I’ll have you know, is only turned on by the college freshman and especially high-school junior types.’“

Wolf scowled despondently. Somehow he’d not expected his own lather to be so ordinary, so humdrum, in his psychology. You’d think a recovered alcoholic would have gained some mellowness, some dignity. He shrugged.

Terri went on, “Of course I asked for more. It turned out that Tilly knew a local girl in the latter (I mean, high-school) category. A tough, outspoken girl rather like she’d once been herself, I gather. Well, it seems Cassius’ advances were an old story to this girl and to another of her female classmates too—they’d compared notes. She made a sort of joke out of the old man’s attempts at ‘romance,’ as she called them, though they sounded like more. She told Tilly, ‘Mr. Kruger? First he reads poetry to you and talks about nature and tells you how beautiful and young and fresh you are, maybe offers you a drink. Then he carries on about his dead wife and how terribly lonely he is, life over for him and all that. Then if you’re still listening he begins to hint about how he’s been completely impotent for years and years, and how dreadful that is, but you’re so wonderful and if you’d only deign to touch him, if you’d just be a little bit kind, it would only take the tiniest touch, that’s all an old man needs—a tiny touch below the belt— ell, if you fall for that and begin thinking, “A good deed. Why not?” why, then you’ll find him telling you he has to touch you just the tiniest bit to balance things out, to make them right, at the same time he’s clamping down on you with kisses, cutting off your breath, and before you know it he’s got one hand down your blouse… Now I won’t say that all happened to me, Ms. Hoyt, but it’s sure what Mr. Kruger has in mind when he gets romantic and recites poetry and begs for the slightest touch of your beeyootiful fingers.’“

“Oh God,” Wolf sighed, drawing it out. “To see ourselves as others see us.” He shook his head from side to side. “What else? What next? There is something more?”

“There is,” she confirmed, “and it’s the most important part. But I want to get my mind straightened about it first, and that performance wore me out.” And she did look a bit frazzled. “Oh hell,” she said, stubbing out her cigarette and wetting her lips dry with talking, “Let’s screw.”

They did.

Considerably later she sat up in bed, seemed to think for a while, then with a dissatisfied sigh got up, slipped on her robe, lit another cigarette, and came back and sat on the side of the bed smiling at Wolf. The sound of the rain had sunk to a barely audible patter and the wind seemed to have died.

“You know,” she said, “that should have made it easier for me to tell you the rest, but somehow it hasn’t exactly.

“The thing was,” she went on, her voice picking up as she began to reconstruct, “that I’d suddenly realized that repeating to you those things that girl told Tilly that Cassius did to her, or tried to do, was getting me excited, which made me ask myself how much of my indignation at your father was honest. That’s what I wanted to straighten out in my mind, especially when Tilly (and the girl too apparently) seemed to treat it half as a joke, or one quarter at any rate, one of the grotesque indecencies you expect from practically all men, or at least all old men.

“Well, it’s not too clear in my mind yet, the real reasons for my indignation, or at least my being upset. I’ll try to keep it simple. It seems to boil down to two things, and one of them has nothing to do with sex at all. It’s this, I just can’t get out of my mind two or three of the horrible stories your father told in Tommy’s presence. He made them so vivid, he seemed to gloat on them so, as if he were trying to infect that child—and all of us!—with dreads and superstitions. And the way he watched Tommy while he told them. That horrible dream of the burnt-to-ashes Esteban. And especially the way he described your mother’s face coming off the painting and ghosting around the room as a cloud of green paint flakes. I’m sure Tommy’s been thinking about that ever since.”

“You know, that’s true,” Wolf said, sitting up, his face serious. And he told Terri the questions Tommy had asked him at the park about clouds being alive.

“You see,” she said, nodding, as he finished, ‘Tommy’s got flakes on his mind, that horrible vibrating cloud-face of pinky-green flakes. Ugh!” She shivered her revulsion.

“The other thing,” she went on, “is about sex, or at least starts with sex. Now after Tilly told me about that girl, I naturally asked her how soon after your mother’s death Cassius had started to hunt high-school girls, or younger women at any rate. She whooped a little again and told me he’d always been that way, that it sometimes got obvious at those big parties your mother gave, and that she thought Cassius had been attracted to your mother in the first place because she was such a small, slight woman and always stayed somewhat girlish looking. ‘Helen knew about Cassius’ chasing, of course,’ Tilly said. ‘It was one of the things we used to drink about. At first we had both our husbands to rake over the coals. I was the most outspoken, but Helen was more bitter. Then Pat died and there was only Cassius for us to gripe at, mostly for his drunken pawings at parties, his dumb little infatuations with whatever young Muff happened to be handy.’ Wolf, I don’t like to ask you about this, but does that fit at all with your memories of your father’s behavior then?”