Джоанн Гринберг - I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

After a while the camp accepted them as friends of each other and wrote them out of its anger and hard judgments. Deborah had known, of course, that Eugenia was different, alone, bitter, and unquiet, but she had tried to shield herself from the thought that Eugenia was a carrier of the poisoned nganon. One day Deborah had managed to slip away in order to be quietly in Yr on the Plains of Tai’a where she could fly if Yr allowed it. She had many hiding places at the camp where she could find an hour or so of peace before the world started to call and look for her. One of the best of these was the deserted shower-house, but when she went there on this day, she sensed that someone else was there. She began to sing to warn the one who could not see her. Too many times she herself had been intruded upon while laughing or speaking Yri aloud, and had had to bear the torments of the Censor for it. Now, there was a frantic scrambling in one of the stalls and the sound of Eugenia’s voice.

“Who is it?”

“Deborah.”

“Come here.”

Deborah went to the shower. Eugenia was standing naked in the stall of the dry shower. She was sweating heavily. As Deborah came toward her she held out a heavy leather belt. “Here,” she said. “Beat me.”

“What?”

“You know what I am. I don’t have to lie to you . Take it. Use it.”

“What for?” Something awful was coming.

“You’re running away, and pretending you don’t understand. You know what it’s for—it’s for me, and you have to—”

“No—” Deborah began to back away. “I can’t. I won’t.

” Eugenia’s need filled up the space between them. Sweat was running from her face and beading on her shoulders and arms. “Don’t forget what I know about you! I’m going to make you beat me with this belt, and you will … because … you … understand .”

“No—” Deborah moved farther away. It flashed through her mind that perhaps her nganon had reached Eugenia and combined with Eugenia’s own waiting virulence to bring this about. Deborah might be Ruin— Pernai shackled and shod in destruction—but it was for herself alone; she had never asked anyone else to partake of it. Then it suddenly came to her that Eugenia’s nganon might be more virulent than hers. Even so, to witness was to share; to share was to be responsible. Her nganon had called to Eugenia’s, thus opening, thus causing … Deborah went to Eugenia, took the belt, threw it down, and ran from the showers. She never looked at or spoke to Eugenia again.

“Then the one who is a friend—anyone who likes you or is attracted to you—is ruined, if not by you, then by closeness to you….”

“Yr puts it as a joke, but you say it more to the point. Yes, that is true.”

“Is it true of your mother and father and sister?”

“Men are not poisoned by female poison. I think that they are broken in some other way. I never thought of it before, but I see men here. They have whole wards of them, just like us.”

“Indeed so,” Furii said. “It is true for women though? You still have this fear of contaminating?”

“I have been slowly contaminating them for many years.”

“And the results of this?”

“I think that my sister will be insane.”

“You still think so?”

“Yes.”

The phone rang and the doctor rose and went to the desk to answer it. There were few hours when the phone didn’t ring at least once, and during one amazing session there had been five calls. Furii shrugged in a little helpless sign of apology and spoke for a few minutes. “Now …” she said, sitting down, “where were we?”

“In the bell-clanging world,” Deborah said acidly.

“Some of the calls I cannot stop—they are long distance or made specially from doctors who have no other time. I free us from as many of them as I can.” She looked at Deborah with a little grin. “I know how hard it is to succeed with a …great, famous doctor.’ There is always such a desire to even up the score a little even if it is with your own life, to keep her from an imaginary …perfect record.’ I tell you I have many failures, too— in spite of my being in such great demand. Will we work together?”

“We were talking about contaminating.”

“Ah, yes. I’m curious,” Furii said. “If this incident in the showers had happened to you now, would you be as frightened?”

“No,” and Deborah laughed because it seemed ridiculous.

“Well, why not?” “Well …” Deborah came into a sort of sunshine. “I’m crazy now. As soon as you admitted that I was sick—as soon as you admitted that I was so sick that I had to be in a hospital, you proved to me that I was saner than I had thought. You know, saner is stronger.”

“I don’t quite understand.”

“I had known all those years and years how sick I was, and nobody else would admit it.”

“You were asked to mistrust even the reality to which you were closest and which you could discern as clearly as daylight. Small wonder that mental patients have so low a tolerance for lies….”

“You look as though you are seeing this for the first time,” Deborah said, still in the light. “Is it true? Did I bring you something?”

Furii paused. “Yes, in a way you have, because though I knew other reasons why lying is bad for the mentally disturbed, I never saw it in this particular way.”

Deborah began to clap her hands, smiling.

“What is it?” Furii said, seeing that the smile was not bitter.

“Oh, well …”

“You are happy to give then, as well as to be given?”

“If I can teach you something, it may mean that I can count at least somewhere.”

“I weep,” Furii said. “I weep big crocodile tears for your Yri gods.” And she imitated the hypocritical down-pulled mouth of form-sorrow. “They are wasting the time of a real human being who will someday recognize it and break their houses down and send them away.”

“You make me see a pinnacled white cloud …” Deborah said, “but behind it is still the same Furii of the fire-touch and the lightning bolt,” and she trembled to think of having to endure without Yr.

Later, they began to explore the secret idea that Deborah shared with all the ill—that she had infinitely more power than the ordinary person and was at the same time also his inferior. The poisoning nganon had been such an idea for Deborah, but she saw into the intricacies of it coldly, with her reason and not as a truth of the spirit. One evening, as she sat in the hall waiting for the sedative call, she looked at Miss Coral, sitting like an ancient owl on one of the heavy chairs, and at Lee and at Helene, who had just come walking toward them.

“Can you read my thoughts?” she asked them.

“Are you talking to me?” Lee said.

“To all of you. Can you read my thoughts?”

“What are you trying to do—get me sent to seclusion?”

“Go to hell,” Helene said pleasantly.

“Don’t look at me,” Miss Coral said, with the genteel horror of a countess visiting an abattoir. “I can’t even read my own.”

Deborah looked around at the figures decorating the walls of the hall. They were always waiting, always seeming never to have moved or changed.

“If you’re seeking objective reality,” she muttered to herself, “this is one hell of a place to start.”

It was spring, the season of passion and impatience. The terrible vacuum caused by the rushing by of time made Jacob feel empty inside. He sat at the grammar-school graduation exercises of his younger daughter, heard the singing and the speeches, the prayers and the promises, and felt the emptiness deepen as if it would never end. He had told himself that this was Suzy’s day and that Deborah was to be no part of it. But against his conscience, his wishes, his promises to Esther and himself, he could not get the thought of Deborah out of his mind. Why wasn’t she here with them?