Дэймон Найт - Orbit 9

“You are shivering,” said Tom who is observant.

“Y-y-yes,” I said and made no further rejoinder although I am observant too, I have swiveling eyes that stand up above the water. David was cold also, he had followed me into the fountains, but either he had not got so extremely soaking wet as I or Africa still warmed his blood. Both. Both.

The sun has gone, great banks of late October cloud obscure him, a wind whips up the rose petals and lawn trimmings, if I go outside I will get motes of dust in my eyes and that will spoil the shine of the ice. Refrigerated amber beads with dust on them, could anything be more sad?

Had I whole strings of such beads I would wear them around my neck and go and live in a corner of Washington Square, and watch the hippos splash. Or I would trade them with the tribes of East Africa, tell them of the magic properties of frozen human eyes, make with the eyes at the lovely inhabitants of my mind and bare my sparse bosom to the burning sun.

As winter approaches I think more and more of hibernation. I store salt peanuts under the rather hard mattress and I have cunningly replaced the stuffing of one of my pillows with little cubes of nourishing vitaminized fudge more normally used to take away the appetites of fat people. I stay in bed later every morning and go to bed earlier every night. I am Ursa the female bear, and I am not pregnant with cub either, I shall not have to wake in January to give birth or anything sordid like that. It is very pleasant to curl the paws around the ears and draw up the haunches, hear the prairie winds like a mistral fade into the distance with its popping of corks and murmur of friendly waiters and flap of white linen and oh such lively talk. Big Bear pulls on cowboy boots and crunches over New York snows, twenty below and a girl in every taxi. He never went to Africa, he went to Paris and caught dysentery, came to England huge and shivering and used our bathroom facilities about thirty-nine times although I was not counting, just marveling that anyone could be so brought down and yet have such verbal energy, and worrying also in case we should run out of toilet tissue before he departed depleted. Oh Ursus but I could have comforted you by snuggling into your massive back just where it aches and taking over the task of stroking your mustaches for a while, so that you could sweat in peace in that brightly colored nursery room where we put you to sleep, and put out the light in your eyes and I would have shared my store of peanuts with you, we could have stayed there all winter and slept all through our dormant sexuality, snuffling our way to the bathroom at increasingly infrequent intervals and I could have offered you a square of the vitamin fudge, growling:

THIS REMOVES THE APPETITE AND KEEPS THE HEAD STRAIGHT

Snuffle snuffle growl pad.

“Mummy there’s a bear in my bed.”

“Good heavens, dear, are you sure. Come with mummy and we shall frighten him away.”

Great Ursus, named Marc, left us a bottle of pink champagne. We had meant to drink it all together but what with the dysentery and his desire for icewater and what with Colin’s ulcer trouble I wasn’t going to drink it all myself was I? It lay in the fridge until Saturday when we opened it and gave some to the children who sneezed and giggled and went straight off into strange dreams and Colin swore it didn’t affect him at all and I felt instantly drunk.

MY HEAD WAS FAR FROM STRAIGHT

I wept into the bubbles and said some horrible things and went to bed by myself and curled up, first checking on the winter food supplies and that was when my temperature started to drop even lower. Hence the sharp pangs of Rhinestones and the banging about in the night when Colin came to bed.

“Someone’s been eating peanuts in bed.”

“Don’t be silly, I never touch them, you know nuts give me the wind.”

Well maybe we are going to go and live in Africa. Yes, we’ll definitely have to have an African safari.

“Bearer, have you got my portable bath, my portable handbasin and my portable toilet?”

“Yassuh mam.”

“Have you got my portable electric typewriter, my portable vacuum cleaner and my portable dining-room table?”

“Yassuh mam.”

“Have you got my portable Washington Square fountains, my portable food-blender and my portable central-heating system?”

“Yessuh mam.”

“Have you got my portable television set, my portable lawnmower and my portable double bed?”

“Yassuh mam.”

“Jesus Christ, you must be so tired. Put down the bed and get into it alongside me.”

“Mam, you know you got Rhinestones in your bed?”

“Yes, I’m saving them for the winter.”

“You should meet my cousin, he works down in Kimberley.”

Goodness gracious me, how loudly these tribesmen snore!

It will be cool this evening so I shall light a fire. But such a dangerous occupation for one so deeply frozen, what if part of me thaws, I shall drip onto the carpet and besides, I should not be so active with my low blood pressure, I might damage my brain cells and then:

MY HEAD WILL NOT BE STRAIGHT

At a party in New York there was a lady who had written a book on how to grow avocado pits. I have an avocado plant eight feet tall as it happens so I had no use for her book but I noticed how apt it was when some gallant commented on her appearance.

“Like a young Karen Blixen.”

“Oh she wrote so exquisitely about Africa,” said both David and Tom in the air-conditioned bar, and outside in the New York sun they spoke of her writings and I said I had admired her too but it had been many years before. I could visualize the coffee plantations in flower and knew that I wanted to travel to Africa and, God help me, write about it afterwards!

Well, I got the fire lighted, the coals caught up and reflections of hot light glimmer in my brass and copper, could anything be more English? We had trouble with the fire the night Marc stayed, he was very interested in the small flame I managed to induce from the bucketful of nutty slack, damn the coalman for delaying delivery. Marc knelt down and peered into the tiny fire as if he might see his future there, I recalled an uncle on a hearthrug long ago growling for me to ride on the bear.

“Again uncle bear, again, let’s do it again.”

“Not just now dear, I seem to have caught the dysentery.”

And like all well-trained good little girls I did not cry and howl selfishly, throw myself on the rug in a tantrum or bite his leg but went into the kitchen and chipped off some crystals of ice that had formed round my eyes, dropped them into a glass tumbler and decorated it with a slice of fresh lemon and returned with it to Marc who thought that he would never see a real glass of icewater in England. Oh but it is a country full of marvels that Americans would never expect.

The conversation just then was about Tarzan and the myth of the free wildman and all that crap. I said to Colin:

“Well why are you so damned keen on living in Africa and swinging in trees in municipal parks whenever you get the chance if you aren’t still sold on Tarzan?” I was sorry I’d said it the moment I realized I had said it, I had hurt his dream of Africa. But not half so much as he will hurt mine.

And my temperature is going down still, everything is getting slower and slightly distorted, time has less and less influence on me, only yesterday I had the dinner ready at four in the afternoon being under the misapprehension that it was well after six and time the children were fed.

“But mummy we’ve only just had lunch.”

“Have you dear, I didn’t notice, I was asleep in bed.”

Marc is asleep in bed when Tom rings him in the middle of the night. By a certain tone of voice Marc can tell that he is in for a long conversation. I wonder what kind of a problem it is that could keep Tom talking for an hour or more in the middle of the night? If I lived in New York would he call me up with his problems? It does not seem too likely, all the signs indicate that Tom and I will never have a really intimate friendship, the passkey to that requires something more than mere admiration of his work and a personal attraction, and whatever it is, I do not think I have it. One thing I do have of Tom’s is an old cap. But maybe the things he discusses with Marc are not so much personal problems. Maybe he wants advice on how to get a secondhand double bed into his apartment, he has been obliged to sleep downstairs in the vestibule these last two nights, it won’t even go into the lift. If someone rings him in the middle of the night he cannot hear the phone.