Stanisław Lem - Solaris

It wasn’t working. The terrible thoughts moving through my mind were growing more and more distinct. I’d stopped saying “this is a dream,” I’d long stopped believing it. Now I was thinking, “I have to protect myself.” I glanced at her back, where it turned into the curve of her hips beneath the white fabric. Her bare feet dangled above the floor. I reached toward them, gently took hold of her pink heel and moved my fingers across the sole.

It was soft as the skin of a new-born baby.

By now I pretty much knew it wasn’t Harey; and I was almost certain she herself didn’t know it.

The bare foot twisted in my hand, and Harey’s dark lips filled with laughter without making a sound.

“Stop it,” she whispered.

I eased my hand away and stood up. I was still naked. As I dressed hurriedly I saw her sit on the bunk. She was watching me.

“Where are your things?” I asked, and regretted it immediately.

“My things?”

“You mean you only have that dress?”

By this stage I was just putting on an act. I deliberately tried to sound casual, ordinary, as if we’d just parted the day before or, rather, as if we’d never parted at all. She stood up and with the light but firm gesture I knew so well she brushed her dress to straighten it out. My words had intrigued her, though she didn’t say anything. For the first time she took a long hard look at her surroundings, then she looked back at me, visibly surprised.

“I don’t know…,” she said helplessly. “Maybe in the locker?” she added and opened the door.

“No, there’s nothing but overalls in there,” I replied. I found an electric razor by the washbasin and began shaving. As I did so I tried not to stand with my back to the girl, whoever she was.

She walked around the cabin, peering into every corner, looking out of the window; in the end she came up to me and said:

“Kris, I have the feeling that something has happened?”

She broke off. I waited, the turned-off razor in my hand.

“It’s as if I’d forgotten something… As if I’d forgotten a great deal. I know… I only remember you… and… and nothing else.”

I listened, trying to control the look on my face.

“Was I… sick?”

“Well… you could put it like that. Yes, for a while you were a bit sick.”

“Oh. Then that’s probably what it is.”

She was already in better spirits. I can’t express what I was going through. As she stood there silently, walked around, sat, smiled, the feeling that this was Harey in front of me was stronger than my churning fear; then at other moments, like the present one, it seemed as if this was a simplified version of Harey, reduced to a few distinctive expressions, gestures, movements. She came close, rested her fists on my chest by my neck and asked:

“How are things between us? Good or bad?”

“They couldn’t be better,” I replied.

She gave a half-smile.

“When you say that, it usually means they’re bad.”

“Not at all. Harey darling, I have to go now,” I said hurriedly. “Wait for me here, OK? Or maybe… are you hungry?” I asked, because I myself suddenly felt a growing hunger.

“Hungry? No.”

She shook her head so hard it made her hair wave back and forth.

“Should I wait here for you? Will you be long?”

“An hour tops,” I began, but she interrupted:

“I’ll go with you.”

“You can’t go with me. I have work to get done.”

“I’ll go with you.”

This was a completely different Harey — the old one didn’t intrude. Ever.

“It isn’t possible, kid…”

She looked up at me, then all at once took me by the hand. I ran my fingers up her forearm; the upper arm was full and warm. I hadn’t meant it but it was almost a caress. My body was acknowledging her, wanting her, drawing me to her beyond reason, beyond argumentation and fear.

Trying to remain calm come what may, I repeated:

“Harey, it isn’t possible. You have to stay here.”

“No.”

How strange it sounded!

“Why?”

“I d… I don’t know.”

She looked around and raised her eyes to me again.

“I can’t,” she said as quiet as could be.

“But why?!”

“I don’t know. I can’t. I have the feeling that… the feeling that…”

She was evidently searching for the answer inside herself, and when she found it, it was a discovery for her.

“I have the feeling that I always have to… be able to see you.”

Her matter-of-fact tone prevented the words from being an expression of emotion; this was something quite different. It suddenly altered the way I was holding her — though on the outside there was no change, I still had my arms around her. As I looked into her eyes I began to push her arms backwards. This movement, not entirely decisive to begin with, was already leading somewhere — it had found its purpose. I cast around with my eyes for something to tie her up with.

Her elbows, twisted back, knocked lightly against each other and at the same moment flexed with a strength that rendered my hold ineffective. I struggled for perhaps one second. Not even a wrestler would have been able to get free if he’d been bent over backwards as Harey was, feet barely touching the floor; but she broke my grip, straightened up and lowered her arms, while her face took no part in any of this, bearing nothing but a faint, uncertain smile.

Her eyes observed me with the same calm interest as at the very beginning, when I woke up, as if she was unaware of my desperate exertions from a moment ago, brought on by an attack of anxiety. She’d become passive and seemed to be waiting for something — simultaneously indifferent, intent, and a little take aback by it all.

My arms dropped of their own accord. I left her in the middle of the room and went up to the shelf by the washbasin. I felt caught in an unimaginable trap, and I was looking for a way out, weighing ever more ruthless options. If someone had asked what was happening to me and what it all meant, I wouldn’t have been able to respond with a single word, but I was already becoming aware that what was happening to all of us on the Station constituted some kind of whole, as dire as it was incomprehensible. Yet this was not what I was thinking about at the present moment. Rather, I was looking for some sort of trick, a maneuver that would make it possible for me to escape. Without looking, I could feel Harey’s gaze on me. In a locker over the shelf there was a small first aid box. I flipped through its contents. I found a container of soluble sleeping tablets and put four of them — the maximum dose — in a glass. I didn’t even particularly conceal what I was doing from her. I don’t really know why. I didn’t think about it. I added hot water, waited till the tablets had dissolved, and went up to Harey, who was still standing in the middle of the room.

“Are you angry?” she asked in a low voice.

“No. Here, drink this.”

I don’t know why I’d assumed she would do what I said. But sure enough, she took the glass from me without a word and drank the whole thing in one gulp. I set the empty glass aside on the table and sat down in the corner between the locker and the bookshelves. Harey slowly came up to me and sat down on the floor by the armchair, the way she often used to, folding her legs under her, and with an equally familiar gesture she tossed her hair back. Though I no longer remotely believed it was her, every time I recognized her in these small quirks my throat tightened. It was beyond understanding and it was terrible, and the most terrible thing about it was that I myself had to dissemble, pretending that I took her for Harey; though after all, she took herself for Harey too, and in her own reasoning she was not being deceitful. I don’t know how I concluded that this was the case, but I was sure of it, insofar as anything could still be sure.