Дэймон Найт - Orbit 9

She has small breasts. When she lies down they hardly exist. Her hips are wide and solid, her thighs large, full, the whole lower half of her body out of proportion to the upper—the breasts, the slender torso, the fragile arms. Her legs are short. Her feet small, delicate. She is nude in the photograph, I can’t remember what clothes she wore.

Someone has written a collection of short stories and published them under my name; they have even put my photograph on the back cover. I received a copy in the morning post. Anonymous, no return address, postmarked Grnd Cntrl Stn. The stories reveal my deepest secrets. The most intense and intimate movements, relations of my life. Only one person could have written them. Or had reason to. My attorney is investigating the possibility of a lawsuit against the publisher but, as the work was copyrighted in my own name, there seems little we can do. The publisher expressed to my attorney his desire to meet the author, his admiration for the book. He relayed an invitation to a party at his home last night. Which is how I met this girl.

He follows me everywhere. Perhaps I am looking for associations where there are none. Perhaps he is nothing more than a hired assassin. Plotting my rotation around the events of the day. The occasions of the moment. Then, certain, he will strike. Perhaps he has nothing to do with what I am doing.

She was standing in a group and she said You’re here, You finally came, and took my arm. She was in the park by the fountain and we watched the pigeons dive for pennies then silently, without words, walked away together. We were afraid of words. It was a clear blue day. The water was silver. It would never rain again. She was in the library. We had requested the same book and sat side by side at one of the long tables in the Special Collections room reading it. She was working at a restaurant, to show me the way to the table where I never arrived. I ate, instead, on the bed in my single room. With her beside me. In the Village. She was sitting beside me on the plane from London and we never got off. She was sitting on the fire escape, crying softly, and I opened the window.

They are moving the city again and I am occasionally lost somewhere between her house and mine. It was at one of these times, coming up out of the subway into what I thought to be midtown Manhattan, and finding myself in the open space of Queens, that I first approached my pursuer. He turned and threw himself onto the back of a truck which was just then pulling away, carrying off the skating rink from Rockefeller Plaza.

Her face is fine and precise as an etching. No part of it could ever be changed. It was drawn with a crow-quill pen and always grins. Her eyes are astonished. Her hair is a different length and colour each time I see her. Her neck is a perfect curve, the wing of a sparrow. Her shoulders are narrow. Her hands are soft. And strong. Her eyes are astonished. They move slowly, as though sliding through oil. When they touch you, you smile.

Ice is crashing off the roof and onto the ground outside. There are pigeons frozen alive inside it. She is gone. He has taken away the photograph. He has gone away himself. And I am sitting here saying-------------. Her name. And it all makes sense.

It does, it does.

I am waiting for a train. To take me a little farther away. Here at Paddington Station. Out of the taxi with my single bag. Ducking. Halfcrown tip, smile, Ta. Now I’m larger. On the pavement walking away from the cab. Before that was a coach from Brighton, whatever I was doing in Brighton and an 82 bus. Now I’m smaller. Inside the station. Waiting for a train etc. I’d like a ticket please. Certainly your destination sir. Anywhere. Ailleurs. Just a little farther away. I see and would that be return fare. No. God no never. I see sir that there is a departure from Gate D at eight o five that would be a halfhour from now sir the train arrives I forget where he said at ten twelve if that would be satisfactory sir. Yes. That would be two pounds eight sir. Stamp rubber ink. Thank you have a pleasant journey sir I hope you enjoy wherever he said. Politeness, that much politeness. A weapon. Now down through Gate D and onto a coach and tea and to look out at the backs of all these houses. And to take me a little farther away. To wonder how much further can I go. To check do I have my passport. To realise the train is going to Paris. To be more careful what I say from now on.

I am French. I was born in a large house off the rue de Tournon, in the 6th arrondissement. Of a Polish mother who died before she saw what I was. Of a father born in Paris, 32 and he’d spent a total of three of them there. Of a father who belonged too much to France to stay there. He read to me, peering over the slats of my petit berceau, Cendrars’ Prose du transsibérien et de la petite Jeanne de France and Les Pâques à New York, and when I was 6 it was to New York that, bundled up, with my French abécédaires and my grammaires anglaises, I was sent pour faire de l’éducation. To that place that could never exist. That was something created in Cendrars’ poems. That about to acquire a History possessed already its ruins. From which I would never return. Or wish to.

Are you still sitting on the beach with your book and the tiny glass of green tea. You’ll never finish the book you know. With the old people all around you. The people from Hove who come to stare at the sea and wait to die. That strange beach without sand. Rocks. Where I told you one day Your ears are like shells and you turned back to me in the sun and your copper sweater and you smiled. And looked in the water. And it took your face away, to Greece and Istanbul. Where we watched a weary father lift an arm and point to the water and say to his two little girls France is just over there. Both of us smiling at that, we could no more believe him than could the children. To an American France can never be just over there. France is thousands of miles away. A hundred years away. Ten hours by plane. We find it hard enough to believe France exists at all. Do you still believe, you said it once, that I’m “always returning.” And each morning do you still set a place for me and make the tea very strong because I might come. With my eyes blurred, I’ve worked all night. With my hands trembling. Do you still keep cigarettes in the flat for me. And do you go down to the London trains each weekend, still. Because. I might come.

None of you could ever understand, perhaps even believe, my impotence while writing. You always ... go away. You said. I didn’t want to hurt you. But you always had to come too close. And incredible, the unerring instinct by which you’d know whenever I set to work. Get randy and turn up at my flat. Compete, demand attention, you probably wanted to tear up the pages. Crawl under the desk and fondle me as I wrote. And to say again and again I have only so much energy. Not enough for it all. Not enough—even as it drained into you on the studio bed and stained the coverings. And that little shout of yours to tell me I was empty again.

I am English. Turning over my passport. At the Embassy. Impossible to say is this an American or Briton smiling at me now, I trust you’ve given this matter serious consideration young man it is of grave import, I cannot stress strongly enough the profound significance and implications of your action I can only hope that you are yourself fully aware of it. And. And of what you are doing. Yes sir I’m quite aware thank you. And you wish to carry on. Most assuredly. I see. Well I should think yes everything seems to be in order. The girl is. French. O yes of course French. And both. Yes both of us. Quite, well then as I say everything is in order, You should be receiving the new passport within the fortnight. Through the other Embassy of course. They should I suppose be requiring new photographs. Yes sir I’m off to that now the little shop just up the way on Oxford. That would be the one across from Heals. Yes. Splendid. Best of luck young man. And to go down the steps now. Cold.