Дэймон Найт - Orbit 9

“The reason he was interested in me, particularly, at least in the beginning,” she said haltingly, “was that I had been in and out of institutions for years.” She didn’t look up and her words were almost too low to catch. “He had developed the theory that the same mechanism that produces sight also produces images that are entirely mental constructs, and that the end results are the same. In fact, he believed and worked out the theory that all vision, whether or not there is an external object, is a construct. Vision doesn’t copy anything in the real world, but instead involves the construction of a schematic, and so does visual imagination, or hallucination.”

I refilled our glasses and added a log to the fire, and she talked on and on. Rudeman didn’t believe in a psychological cause to explain schizophrenia, but believed it was a chemical imbalance with an organic cause that produced aberrated perception. This before the current wave of research that seemed to indicate that he had been right. His interest in Christine had started because she could furnish information on image projection, and because in some areas she had an eidetic memory, and this, too, was a theory that he was intensely interested in. Eidetikers had been discounted for almost a century in the serious literature, and he had reestablished the authenticity of the phenomena.

“During the year,” she said, “he found out that there were certain anomalies in my vision that made my value to him questionable. Gradually he had to phase me out, but he became so fascinated in those other areas that he couldn’t stand not starting another line of research immediately, using me extensively. That was to be his last year at Northwestern. He had an offer from Harvard, and he was eager to go there. Anyway, late in April that year I… I guess I flipped out. And he picked up the pieces and wouldn’t let me go to a psychiatrist, but insisted on caring for me himself. Three months later we were married.”

Janet’s hand found mine, and we listened to Christine like that, hand in hand.

“He was very kind to me,” Christine said slowly sometime during that long night. “I don’t know if he loved me, but I think I would have died without him. I think—or thought—that he cured me. I was well and happy, and busy. I wanted to take up photography and he encouraged it and made it possible. All those years he pursued a line of research that he never explained to me, that he hadn’t published up to the time of his death. I’m going through his work now, trying to decode it, separating personal material from the professional data.”

She was leaving out most of it, I believed. Everything interesting, or pertinent, or less than nattering to her she was skipping over. Janet’s hand squeezed mine; take it easy, she seemed to be saying. Christine was obviously exhausted, her enormous eyes were shadowed, and she was very pale. But, damn it, I argued with myself, why had she screamed and fainted? How had her husband died?

“Okay,” Janet said then, cheerfully, and too briskly. “Time’s up for now. We’ll talk again tomorrow, or the next day, or whenever you’re ready to, Christine. Let me show you your room.” She was right, of course. We were all dead tired, and it was nearly three, but I resented stopping it then. How had her husband died?

She and Janet left and I kicked at the feeble fire and finished my last drink, gathered up glasses and emptied ashtrays. It was half an hour before Janet came back. She looked at the clock and groaned.

“Anything else?”

She went past me toward the bedroom, not speaking until we were behind the closed door. “It must have been gruesome,” she said then, starting to undress. “Victor and Eugenia moved in with her. Karl’s daughter and son-in-law. And Karl’s parents live there, too. And right away Victor began to press for Karl’s papers. They worked together at the university. Then he began to make passes, and that was too much. She packed up and left.”

I had finished undressing first, and sat on the side of the bed watching her. The scattering of freckles across her shoulders was fading now, her deep red tan was turning softly golden. I especially loved the way her hip bones showed when she moved, and the taut skin over her ribs when she raised her arms to pull her jersey over her head. She caught my look and glanced at her watch pointedly. I sighed. “What happened to her tonight?”

“She said that before she finally had to leave the farm up in Connecticut, the last night there, Victor came into her third-floor room and began to make advances—her word, by the way. She backed away from him, across the room and out onto a balcony. She has acrophobia, and never usually goes out on that balcony. But she kept backing up, thinking of the scandal if she screamed. Her stepdaughter’s husband, after all. In the house were Karl’s mother and father, Eugenia… Victor knew she would avoid a scene if possible. Then suddenly she was against the rail and he forced her backward, leaning out over it, and when she twisted away from him, she looked straight down, and then fainted. She said that tonight she somehow got that same feeling, she thinks that that memory flooded back in and that she lived that scene over again, although she can’t remember anything except the feeling of looking down and falling. She screamed and fainted, just like that other night.” Janet slipped into bed. “I think I reassured her a little bit anyway. If that’s what happened, it certainly doesn’t mean she’s heading for another break. That’s the sort of thing that can happen to anyone at any time, especially where one of those very strong phobias is concerned.”

I turned off the light, and we lay together, her cheek on my shoulder, her left arm across my chest, her left leg over my leg. And I thought of Christine in the other room under the same roof. And I knew that I was afraid of her.

The next morning was worse than usual. Thank God it’s Friday, we both said a number of times. I had no desire to see Christine that morning, and was relieved that she seemed to be sleeping late. I told Janet I’d leave a note and ask her to go out by the side door, which would latch after her. But when the kids left to catch their bus, she came out.

“I wasn’t sure if you’d told them that I was here. I thought it would complicate things to put in an appearance before they were gone,” she said apologetically. “I’ll go home now. Thanks for last night. More than I can say.”

“Coffee?”

She shook her head, but I was pouring it already and she sat down at the kitchen table and waited. “I must look like hell,” she said. She hadn’t brought her purse with her, her long hair was tangled, she had no makeup on, and her eyes were deeply shadowed with violet. I realized that she was prettier than I had thought at first. It was the appeal of a little girl, however, not the attraction of a grown woman.

She sipped the coffee and then put the cup down and said again, “I’ll go home now. Thanks again.”

“Want a lift to your house? I have to leave too.”

“Oh, no. That would be silly. I’ll just go back through the woods.”

I watched her as far as I could make out the small figure, and then I turned off lights and unplugged the coffee pot and left. But I kept seeing that slight unkempt figure walking from me, toward the woods, tangled black hair, a knit shirt that was too big, jeans that clung to her buttocks like skin. Her buttocks were rounded, and moved ever so slightly when she walked, almost like a boy, but not quite; there was a telltale sway. And suddenly I wondered how she would be. Eager, actively seeking the contact, the thrust? Passive? I swerved the car, and tried to put the image out of mind, but by the time I had parked and greeted Lenny, I was in a foul mood.