Stanisław Lem - Solaris

Her last words turned into a groan. She slumped to the floor, sobbing. What she had shouted had shattered something inside of me; in one long stride I reached her and seized her in my arms. She fought back, pushing me away, sobbing without tears, exclaiming:

“Let me go! Let me go! I disgust you! I know! I don’t want things this way! I don’t! You see it, you know you do, that it’s not me, not me, not me.”

“Quiet!” I cried, shaking her; we were both screaming, on our knees facing one another. Harey’s head was thrashing, knocking against my shoulder; I pulled her to myself with all my strength. All of a sudden we were still, breathing heavily. Water was dripping evenly from the faucet.

“Kris,” she mumbled, pressing her face into my arm. “Tell me what I need to do so I won’t be there anymore. Kris…”

“Stop it!” I yelled. She raised her face. Stared at me.

“What do you mean…? You don’t know either? There’s nothing can be done? Nothing?”

“Harey…. for pity’s sake…”

“I wanted to… you saw. No. No. Let me go, I don’t want you to touch me! I disgust you.”

“That’s not true!”

“You’re lying. I must disgust you. I… I disgust myself… as well. If I could. If I only could…”

“You’d kill yourself.”

“Yes.”

“But I don’t want that, you understand? I don’t want you to kill yourself. I want you to be here, with me, I don’t need anything else!”

Her huge gray eyes devoured me.

“If you’re lying…,” she said ever so softly.

I let go of her and stood up. She sat back on the floor.

“Tell me what I need to do to make you believe I’m saying what I think. That it’s the truth. That there’s no other.”

“You can’t say the truth. I’m not Harey.”

“Then who are you?”

She was silent for a long while. Her chin twitched over and over, till she lowered her head and whispered:

“Harey… but… but I know that isn’t true. It’s not me… that you loved back then, long ago…”

“Yes,” I said. “What was then is dead and gone. But you, here, I love. You understand?”

She shook her head.

“You’re good. Don’t think I don’t appreciate all that you’ve done. You did the best you could. But it can’t be helped. When I sat by your bed in the early morning three days ago, waiting for you to wake up, I didn’t know a thing. That seems such a very long time ago. I was acting like I wasn’t all there. It was like my head was filled with fog. I didn’t remember what had come earlier and what had come later, and nothing surprised me, it was like coming round after anesthetic, or recovering from a long illness. I even thought maybe I’d been sick, and it was just that you wouldn’t tell me. Then later, more and more things made me wonder. You know which things. I already had an inkling after the conversation you had in the library with that, what’s his name, Snaut. And since you wouldn’t say anything, I got up in the night and played the tape recorder. I only lied that one time, because I hid it afterwards, Kris. What was the name of the man who was talking on it?”

“Gibarian.”

“Right, Gibarian. At that moment I understood everything, though truth be told I still didn’t understand anything. There was one thing I didn’t know: that I couldn’t… that I wasn’t… that it would end… without an end. He didn’t say anything about that. Though maybe he did, but you woke up and I turned off the tape. Even so, I heard enough to find out that I’m not a person but an instrument.”

“What are you talking about?”

“That’s right. To test your reactions or something like that. Each of you has something like me. It’s based on memories or on the imagination; it’s suppressed. Something along those lines. Besides, you know all this better than I do. He said such terrible, inconceivable things, if it hadn’t all added up I don’t think I would have believed him!”

“What added up?”

“You know, that I don’t need sleep and I always have to be by you. Yesterday morning I still thought you hated me, and that made me sad. Good Lord, how stupid I was. But tell me, tell me yourself, could I have imagined this? I mean, he didn’t hate that woman of his at all, but the things he said about her! It was only then I understood that whatever I might do it made no difference, because whether I want it or not, it must be torture for you. Or actually even worse, because a torture implement is as lifeless and innocent as a rock that can fall and kill you. But an implement that could have good intentions and could love — this I couldn’t imagine. I’d like to tell you at least what went on inside me then, later, when I understood, when I listened to the tape. It might at least come in useful for you. I even tried to write it down…”

“Is that why you turned on the light?” I asked; I suddenly felt choked, I had difficulty speaking.

“Yes. But nothing came of it. Because I was searching inside myself, you know … for them —for that something else, I was completely mad, I can tell you! For a while I had the feeling that I didn’t have a body under my skin, that inside me there was something else, that I was only a surface. There to fool you. You follow?”

“I do.”

“When you lie for hours through the night like that, in your thoughts you can go very far, and in very strange directions, you know…”

“I know.”

“But I could feel my heart, and besides, I remembered that you’d tested my blood. What’s my blood like, tell me, tell me the truth. Surely you can now.”

“It’s the same as mine.”

“Really?”

“I swear.”

“What does that mean? You know, later it occurred to me that maybe it is hidden inside me, that it’s… I mean, it could be very small. But I didn’t know where. Now I think that at bottom I was dodging the issue, because I was terrified of what I planned to do, and I was looking for another way out. But Kris, if I have the same blood… if it’s the way you say, then… No, that’s not possible. I mean, I’d be dead already, wouldn’t I? That means there is something after all, but where is it? Maybe in my head? Yet my thoughts are completely ordinary… and I don’t know anything… If I were thinking through it , I ought to know everything right away, and not love you, just pretend, and know that I’m pretending… Kris, please, tell me all you know, maybe something can be done after all?”

“What could be done?”

She was silent.

“Do you want to die?”

“I think so.”

Once again there was silence. I stood above her as she sat there hunched over. I stared at the empty interior of the room, the white enameled surfaces of the apparatus, at the shining scattered implements, as if I were searching for something terribly necessary and I couldn’t find it.

“Harey, can I say something too?”

She waited.

“It’s true that you’re not entirely like me. But that doesn’t mean you’re worse. Quite the opposite. Well, you can think any way you like about it, but it’s thanks to that… that you survived.”

A kind of pathetic childlike smile appeared on her face.

“Is that supposed to mean I’m… immortal?”

“I don’t know. In any case you’re a lot less mortal than me.”

“How awful,” she whispered.

“Maybe not as much as you think.”

“But you don’t envy me…”

“Harey, it’s more a question of your… purpose, as I might call it. You know, here on the Station your purpose is essentially as mysterious as mine, as that of any of us. The other men are going to continue Gibarian’s experiment and anything could happen…”