Damon Knight - Orbit 21

(it started with a touch, but it became a hand, resting quietly upon a windowsill. the rest was blurred, except that sometimes she could see stars shining through the window.)

Harris lived in a women’s building near the factory. She had lived in a nursery five years, in school ten years, and in this building seven years. She remembered nothing else.

(except in dreams.)

Her building was a warehouse that had been converted to rooms. It had bay windows on the upper stories, but all the rooms inside were windowless. The bay windows had been walled off to reduce the loss of heat. Day and night, the seven years she had lived there, Harris’s room had been lighted only by a bare bulb in the ceiling and the glow from TV.

(the glow, day and night. It would invade the dreams if it could, she buried her dreams deep.)

At the door of her building she paused to straighten her coat and tuck her hair under the scarf. As she was about to step into the view of TV-at-the-door, a small, catlike cry stopped her. She looked around but saw nothing. She composed her features, stepped in front of the screen and said her number.

“Woman ... or witch?” TV asked.

“Woman,” she answered. She heard a noise at her feet. The screen remained white, and in a moment the door clicked open. She hurried in.

After the door closed she looked around to see if a cat had slipped in with her. She had not dared to look before; TV might have noted her inattention and begun questioning. On her way home one night, a man had taken her by the wrist and pulled her close to him, roughly opened her blouse and begun fondling her breasts. She remembered his eyes gazing impassively down the street. There had been a blemish on his lip. She had been unable to move, unaware of any feeling other than the fear that he might kiss her with his blemished lip. Other people had walked by without looking. At last he had shoved her into the street. Her legs shaking, she had buttoned her blouse and walked to her building. TV had noticed that her top blouse button was missing. It had asked questions, the screen changing color at her answers from angry reds to cold browns and blues. Women had lined up behind her, muttering.

(the cruel colors, if only the eyes could be closed, but don’t close them, make the mind blank, safe, nothing happened, nothing happened, face the screen, don’t move, don’t think, and the colors fade, the door opens.)

She did not find a cat inside the door. A rank smell of cooking floated down to her. At each landing the smell of the communal bathrooms combined with the smell of food. She turned down the hall to her room near the front of the building. She unlocked her door and switched on the light.

(first came the touch, then the hand, then movement—movement like the movement of thoughts in the back of the mind, she could hear it when the wind blew—soft, furtive sounds—behind the wall where the window was.)

Harris left her overcoat on while she made dinner. After a while the room warmed from the cooking, and she took the coat off. On the coldest nights she would pull the overcoat over the single blanket on her bed. She had had two blankets, but one had been stolen. Blankets were scarce; she would not get a replacement. Whatever her discomfort, she dared not complain. The war against physical illness had been won. Only the last and greatest war remained: the war against mind-sickness.

Harris remembered times in her childhood when all the energies of the city had been turned to eradicating the witches and the madness. Bonfires had burned night and day, graying the sky and forcing down the snow from the clouds in a sooty blizzard. Many witches had been burned, along with the cats that spread the contagion. The authorities did not really approve of such messy solutions. But they had benevolently allowed the people to vent their anger upon the mad ones.

(from the sounds and the movement grew a form, back between the wall and the window, away from the TV light. She could not see it clearly, there was a face and mad eyes . . . and a gentle hand . . . and the stars, behind the glass.)

After eating, Harris put on her housecoat and sat on the bed. She listened to the noises of the building, the creak of her neighbor’s floor, and the wind sounds that came from the walled-off window. She sat on the bed, and the glow from TV surrounded her, reaching into her mind.

(but the glow did not reach past the wall, there was darkness behind the wall, there were stars beyond the glass, and there was a person.)

She was cold in the thin housecoat, but she did not put on her pajamas. She had not worn them since a night when the building manager had come into her room. It had not been the first night. For a time he had only come in and put his cot on the floor. He would lie there grinning and watching her in the cold light from TV. The other women had looked at her knowingly—it had happened to them. One night he didn’t bring his cot, but simply got into bed with her. After a while he pushed her legs apart and tore her pajamas. He did something that had never been done to her before, something that hurt.

(in the space between the wall and the window, she could see the person, the person was a woman.)

The rest of the night she lay under him, breathing his stale breath. While she lay there, afraid to move, two cats met in the night and howled. Not knowing what that meant, she imagined them dying in pain at the hands of the men who walked the streets after dark, looking for witches, for cats. She never wore her pajamas again.

Room-TV came on. She faced the screen, but looked at the bare wall above it and tried to recapture the silence that had been in her mind before. But soon she was watching the screen. It showed a woman. TV was questioning her. “Woman or witch?” it asked. She said, “Woman.” They always said woman; they always meant witch. TV knew. The woman panicked. How coarse she looked when she was frightened; how guilty.

The treatment began. With each question the woman screamed in pain, or sobbed. With each question, the colors changed.

Harris watched. She found she could make a mist before her eyes by not blinking. She let the mist grow between her eyes and the screen. She shut out TV until she could hear nothing but the creaking of her neighbor’s floor and the tiny sounds from the walled-off window, the reassuring sounds. When it was very late, the pictures faded and the voices receded into a soft hiss. She prepared for bed, hanging the housecoat on a hook. For a moment she stood naked in the faint glow from TV. The light searched into the crevices of her body as unrelentingly as the low hiss penetrated her head. She lay down under the single coarse blanket. The mattress buttons hurt her back. She tried not to think. It was so quiet that TV might hear. She shut her eyes.

There was a scratching sound. It was not a sound that she had heard before. It came again—from the walled-off window. Quietly she sat up and pried loose a board. She saw a dim shape between the walls. It moved, and shining eyes turned toward her. It was the cat she’d heard come in with her at the door. It stood at the far end of the narrow space, by the wall that closed off the window.

Harris replaced the board to prevent the cat from getting into her room. Then she lay on the bed, trembling.

(the woman sat down and the cat jumped into her lap. they sat in the narrow space between window and wall, and the window was like another wall, a wall of stars.)

After midnight the manager came in, slamming the door behind him. He was rougher than usual.

(behind the wall the woman stroked the cat. her hands were gentle, her hands were strong.)

Once, when the manager hurt her, Harris raised her fist over his head. Then her hand, not knowing its purpose, sank again to the mattress.