Альфред Бестер - Star of Stars [Anthology]

"Why don't you shut up?"

"Hello Martha. Feeling better today?"

"Say, how long are you going to hang around here?"

"Oh, Martha, I want to stay as long as necessary. I want to help you.... I've finished Will's book. Do you like it, Martha?"

"I hate it. And I hate Will. I hate both of you. Oh, don't go! Please don't go away."

Martha wept, fitfully and fearfully. Her face on her arm on the red polished hospital table. Her back shaking. Tears clogging her nose and choking her throat. The world, coming to an end with each long pressed sob, vanished trembling behind the wall of tears. The void closed in, tightening on her deluged temples, her squeezed lungs. She wept on Phil's hand stretched to stroke soothingly her jerking shoulders. "Poor girl," he said. "I know it. I know it all. Cry it out. Cry it all out of your system."

She stroked his face, blindly, gratefully.

"The scar," she said, and had suddenly stopped weep­ing. "The scar on your cheek, on your right cheek." She looked at him in new horror.

"Nothing. An accident. A crash. Three months ago. It's all healed now."

Martha: Good morning Phil. How nice of you to come so early.

Phil: Had a good rest?

Martha: Just fine. Thanks. And you?

Phil: I got up early and took a walk in the city.

Martha: It's a wonderful city.

Phil: People sitting outdoors in the caf6s.

Martha: In Via Veneto.

Phil: In December. In Chicago it's blizzards.

Martha: And here the light is lambent on the red stones.

Phil: You just walk for hours, just walk and get lost.

Martha: One discovery opening into another.

Phil: Don't you love it?

Martha: I loved it.

Phil: How long have you been living here, Martha?

Martha: Seven, almost eight years. It's almost eight years.

Phil: Met Will in Rome?

Martha: At Dermott McDermott's.

Phil: You know Dermott?

Martha. Of course I do. I was staying with him, and you know Freddy.

Phil: Freddy? It's years and years.

Martha: He pays him ninety dollars a month.

Phil: Just for the fun of sleeping with him.

Martha: Freddy is a terrible mess.

Phil: I don't see what Dermott finds in him.

Martha: Sometimes he won't speak to Dermott all day.

Phil: I think he hates Dermott. I think he will kill Dermott some day.

Martha: When Dermott wants to dress up and go to the show, Freddy won't shave and he'll hang around in dirty jeans, and he'll go out into the street and talk to the whores.

Phil: Like and like keep good company.

Martha: He won't do a thing at home. The bathroom, always messy. He'd use up the last piece of soap.

Phil: The last piece of toilet paper.

Martha: But he'd never dream of replacing it.

Phil: Never. You had to do it all.

Martha: What are you smiling at? Am I boring you? I guess I am boring you.

Phil: Not in the least, Martha.

Martha: Will smiled, just before that gun went off.

Phil: Smiled, just like that.

Martha: I sometimes think: You. Simply you. You almost did it. You died. You scared me. Don't do it again. I must be more careful. That must never happen again. Phil, I am so scared.

Phil: How did Will and Dermott get along?

Martha: At first, famously. That is, Will adored Dermott.

Phil: And Dermott just loves being adored.

Martha: For Will, Dermott was a real writer, and artist.

Dermott had to check every comma Will wrote.

Phil: Poor Will. And he himself wasn't a real writer?

Martha: Just thrillers, you know. And he said he did not know any language at all.

Phil: He must have known Hindi, as a child.

Martha: He forgot it, and English he never learned. Just picked it up from the boys in the Navy.

Phil: And read a lot, I guess.

Martha: But it was not his language. And lately he started getting mixed up with Italian.

Phil: He had no language.

Martha: It does something to your mind, he said.

Phil: Huprooted. Kicked around in world and creeds and systems. So huprooted. All of us.

Martha: And did he show off in front of Dermott, spend­ing silly amounts of money, you know, and telling him how many copies of his latest book had been sold and in how many languages it had been translated.

Phil: Dermott couldn't care less.

Martha: And he said it read best in Persian, although there were a few minor mistakes in the trans­lation.

Phil: That's sheer snobbism.

Martha: I don't know why he picked up with me in the first place; whether it was because he cared for me or whether he thought it would hurt Dermott. You know, he was jealous of Dermott, at the same time.

Phil: And you?

Martha: I don't know. I really don't know. He said he was going to get me a part in his new television play. A part written just for me. He was wonder-fully like you. Don't die any more, please don't.

Phil: It is late, Martha, and I must go. They are getting your lunch ready. Halfway decent? What shall I bring you tomorrow? Okay, Martha, it will be marrons glares. So long, Martha.

She is not a bad girl after all. Simple, forthright, cordial, rather generous by nature, underneath. Out of place in this career. Slithered into it God knows why. What made her act so horridly with Will?

My Martha was different. Wicked right from the outset. A go-getter. At first she seemed nice enough, though, and active. Pretty tall blond she was.

Dead. Destroyed. Kaputt. Won't work no more. Slipped out of my impotent hands. And left a hard hole, hard white hole, superimposing its Martha shape, planing into its contours whoever wants to float up through.

The other girls at the office didn't like her, though. Fawning on the boss and bossy on the fawns. (That's a good one. Must tell Martha. Which Martha?) She cer­tainly knew what she wanted. Spun her web round me in no time. And then the allergies. Never seemed to bother her till she had me. But then! Endless trouble and troubled end.

Phil: Listen, Martha, what I made up yesterday on my way home: "Fawning on the boss and bossy on the fawns." Isn't that a good one?

Martha: Who? What?

Phil: Any one. I mean, I was thinking of my wife, when she was still working at the office. Can you imagine. She wasn't a bit like you: all cold and calculating.

Martha: Just the name.

Phil: That does not create any bond.

Martha: Maybe it does.

Phil: There are many Marthas.

Martha: And one proto-Martha.

Phil: What difference does it make?

Martha: There's something damned about all Marthas.

Phil: Perhaps.

Martha: Parents ought to be more careful.

Phil: It's their way, their luck, they impress with that chosen name.

Martha: I wish my name was—I can't think of a suitable name for myself; but imagine if my name was—, everything would have been different. There's something damned about all Marthas.

Phil: About mine there was, by Jove. Hell of a life. Martha: What did she do to you?

Phil: The allergies. The air-conditioned rooms and the oxygen tents. The fumes and the moves and the fired nurses.

Martha: if she was sick?

Phil: I couldn't accept any invitations for dinner