Дэймон Найт - Orbit 9

“Please tell me.”

“And the truth shall make you free? No deal.”

—and, well, he came back again—

Puffiness around Jeanie’s eyes, Joanie’s black hair graying. Cyrus, bedridden, just nodded his head hello, never said a word. Timmie bugged him unmercifully, saying look at me do this and look at me do that. The kid was homely enough to be his.

Nobody locked the door. That bothered him.

This year, poised, he asked few questions and she seemed bored.

—and again—

She came through the door, unslinking, unmysterious. She went through the bed motions like a high priestess at her thousandth sacrifice.

“I’ve had ten women besides you this year,” he said.

“So?”

“I just wanted you to know that I’m compensating, that’s all.”

—and again—

“Move over.”

“Not tonight. I’m bushed.”

“New strategy?”

“No strategy. I’m just tired.”

“Okay.”

—and again—

Three years in the army as a middle-aged private and corporal had depleted the curve of his belly. He almost felt jaunty as he approached the farmhouse. With some delight he noted that the house had been painted a dull yellow in the intervening years, as if it too had been rejuvenated by the war.

The kid—how old was he now, six, seven?—played on a swing. His homeliness was not enhanced by the mean expression of his face.

“You again?” Joanie said, looking up briefly from a bowl of string beans she was stripping. Gray locks now balancing the black in her hair, she had also put on weight. What the hell, though, it was still a good build.

“In the war, huh?” Jeanie said, coming out on the porch. It was not an especially perceptive observation, since he still wore his uniform.

The years had ravaged both twins about equally. The sheen of Jeanie’s hair had faded, she was pudgy but also, like Joanie, in fairly attractive places.

Yet there was a difference. Some of the liveliness had gone out of Jeanie’s eyes. No longer as pretty as Joanie, she also seemed more careless in appearance.

“I’d like to say hello to your dad,” he said.

“Cemetery’s four miles down the road,” Jeanie said.

“Oh—I’m sorry.”

“Sure.”

The girls worked at chores until suppertime. They served him a fine meal, but responded indifferently to his compliments. They would not even tell him which one had prepared the dressing for the roast pork.

The door to his room was not only not locked, it was left open. Light plunged in from the hallway. He settled into the bed, noting the lack of resiliency in the springs. Around midnight she came to him. She entered the room in a businesslike sweep, unmindful of the light which outlined her. He could not recognize her; her face and hair were too much in shadow.

“Move over.”

As he shifted quickly to the wall side of the bed, he realized how much he’d been longing for her; how much the memory of her had nagged at his brain while on troop ships, in foxholes, standing around the stage door of the canteen; how much he’d been disappointed by liberated whores whose too-clear faces had mocked him or remained indifferent with vacant looks in their wasted eyes.

Happily they enacted the ritual of returning warrior and girl left behind, their lovemaking more intense than at any time since the first years. Afterward they lay silent, with nothing to say and no questions that required asking, each comfortable in the repetition of myth.

“It’s been a long time,” she finally said.

“I love you, Jeanie or Joanie as the case may be.”

“That’s nice.”

“And you still won’t tell me who you are.”

“I’d like to, but I won’t.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. I guess it’s just decreed, that’s all.”

“But that’s silly.”

“Is it? Tell me, after tonight will you stay here?”

“I’d like to, but I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Well—uh—I’ve got to get back to the road. To my job.”

“Is that the real reason?”

“Of course.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“How do you know it isn’t?”

“I just know.”

“How?”

“That’s my secret.”

In the morning they both kissed him good-bye. Each kiss was polite, but with an extra touch—or slight push—of buried affection. He could not tell from the kiss which pair of lips belonged to his yearly bedmate. He tried to pat Timmie’s head, but the kid squirmed away and ran to the sink where he played listlessly with a sponge.

Jeanie and Joanie had tears in their eyes as he left. He assumed that, if he could weigh their tears, the scale would be evenly balanced. Damn them anyway. Damn both of them, the one he loved and the one who posed as lover.

—and, you know, years went by—

The house tilting to the east. Yellow paint peeling, replaced by new yellow coat, which fades to off-white. A new porch with uneven latticework, bits of which break off from time to time as the porch ages and cracks under the strain. Furniture comes and goes, and gradually the newest furniture is indiscernible from the oldest.

Timmie growing up with little strain, cultivating indifference to everyone: Going off at sixteen to join some mythical military service, polishing off a few Myrmidons and settling down in a southern port with a chubby girl whose face in photographs has little resolution.

Jeanie and Joanie adding weight and puffiness by degrees. Joanie’s hair becoming gray starkly, Jeanie’s fading to gray subtly. A gradual advance of eyelids downward, so the visible portion of each eye decreases until the two women look out at the world through narrow slits. Which causes them to tilt their heads backward when making an important look-them-in-the-eye statement.

Leonard losing weight, but becoming emaciated rather than slim. Piling up further nervous tics, an ulcer, and a recurring case of athlete’s foot. Skin hardening, stretched like artist’s canvas from bone to bone. In his face deep lines which gradually link, through tributaries, into an intricate network.

—and finally, now get this—

A fluffed-out pillow shelling peas. a bent and dented pipe cleaner watching the painfully slow movements of the pillow’s shelling.

—uh, he comes up to her and says—

“Where’s your sister?”

She took the bowl out of her lap and placed it beside her on the stair. She tilted her head backward. He felt uncomfortable under the stare of eyes he could not see.

“She died. Months ago. Been a long time since your last visit.”

It took awhile for him to understand her words.

“Dead?” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“Sure.”

She held position, rigid, a trace of breathing in her amplified bosom.

—uh, he looks her right in the eye and says—

“Which one of you is dead?”

She might have laughed. Or the sudden sound that echoed around him might have been a cackle of disdain. “That’s my secret, old man.”

He very much wanted to sit down, but she sprawled over most of the steps and the ground was too far away.

—-uh, then he, then he, uh, goddamn it!—

“Of course you won’t tell me who you are,” he said.

“Can’t you tell?”

He looked for a clue, searched his memory for some feature that had differentiated the two. A difference in the depth of shadow beneath the eyes, a contrast in the shade of gray that had invaded the girls’ hair.

—uh, this is stupid, I can’t think, damn it—

“Are you coming to my room tonight?”

“Yes.”

He felt relieved. At least she was still alive, it was the other one who’d died. He might not know whether or not she was Jeanie or Joanie, but by this time how important was the name anyhow? He anticipated the night with some pleasure.