The Mobius Man
Page 18
“It’s all clear now,” I said.
Dr. Adams reached over to pat my shoulder. “You know, a lot of people have the wrong idea about this kind of thing. They’re ashamed.” He shook his head deprecatingly. “Yet, it could happen to any of us. A human being is a complex, durable, and yet in many respects, delicate, machine. The machine only can be expected to do certain things. If you push it too far …”
“It was just too much pressure,” I said, looking out the window at the fields below. They were barren and the sun was hot on them but it was comfortable in here. “Well, thank you, Doctor. If that’s all, then, I’ll just be on my way. I mean, it’s all clear now, I see what happened. If the hospital will send me a bill …”
He looked at the ceiling and laughed gently. “I can tell you’re better already. But, David, don’t you think you’d like to stay here with us for a while? I mean, just a little while, to complete your recovery?”
“How long?”
“Oh, a few days, a week or so. Enough time for us to have some more chats. Listen, you wouldn’t be doing yourself any favor by going right back out there immediately. Back to the same stresses without having had a chance to get a—well—a perspective on it. You have to be able to distance yourself. You need a supportive environment.”
“A little rest.”
“That’s exactly right.”
“I feel rested now.” I didn’t know why I was arguing. Maybe I just wanted to see what happened when you put their backs against the wall and what kind of tricks they’d use.
“Surely. But if you went right back, well … Look, David, I don’t want to see you back here. My favorite patients are the ones I never see again. Why don’t you talk it over with your wife?”
“My wife.” Somehow, in that moment, all doubt was removed and I knew. “Where is she?”
Adams rose. “Right outside.” I watched him walk to the door, his step springy. He opened it and stood aside, and Leah came in.
“Hello, Leah,” I said.
“Davey, Davey.” She was having trouble holding back tears and she dabbed at her nose with a handkerchief. She turned to the doctor. “He knows me. Thank God. I was so afraid, after all the time in the hospital. Davey, I don’t know what to say.”
The door closed and she and I were alone in the office. I looked at her face, where the makeup had been streaked by the tears, and at the cat eyes, wide and innocent now, and at the auburn hair.
I said, “I think I’m going to be sick.”
Because I knew, and there was no way to hold down my gorge. I knew beyond the breath of a doubt what had happened, and that she had won, after all. And I knew why.
“Oh, baby, is it the medicine they gave you?” She came forward and put her hand on my face. “You feel so cold.”
“It’s not the medicine,” I said. It was a man whose name I never learned. A man I had saved twice and, finally, the man I had killed.
“Can I get you a glass of water?”
“No, thank you.” Water wouldn’t do any good. Nothing would. It was my fault. If I had let him go …
“I don’t know, do you remember my coming to visit you in the hospital, I mean, right after they brought you back? You were all doped up, so maybe …”
“No.” I was busy remembering something else. The sound of the shot and the sparks from the barrel and the quick gasp of breath as it caught him in the chest. I looked up at her beautiful face, the face I hate, the face that was looking at me with love and sympathy. You bitch, you beautiful, hateful, scheming bitch. I could just reach the quartz paperweight on the desk and bring it down on her skull.
“Davey? What’s wrong? Why are you looking at me that way?”
“Nothing. Nothing, I’m sorry.” And then what? Who would take over then? Maybe it was all programmed? Maybe the paperweight’s made out of balsa. Who knows what they’ve done to my mind. No. Keep cool. Wait.
“Davey, I love you. I want you to know that. I’ll wait for you. I’m staying right down the road. Doctor Adams says you’ll be just fine, that he’s treated hundreds of cases. It was the pressure, darling, but don’t worry about it. We’ll work it all out.”
“I know.” She bent down and kissed me lightly on the lips. I called her before she reached the door. “Leah, what’s the name of this hospital?”
“The hospital? It’s part of the Sanger Foundation. Very highly recommended.”
The door opened. “Thank you, Doctor,” she said. “He looks good, but—well, I was prepared for it, but at times, it was like, well, he wasn’t … I know he’ll be all right, though.”
“Of course. Very common. Why don’t you come see him tomorrow?”
She shot an anxious glance in my direction, smiled nervously, and then the door closed again. Dr. Adams strode across the room and took his seat behind the desk.
“We’re all your friends here, David, you know that.”
“Yes.”
Especially you, Leah. I saved you. If I hadn’t killed him, then you’d have been faced with your experiment going awry. Kestering would have won. But not this way. This way I delivered it to you. On a platter. I stopped the defector cold. It was thanks to your prize pupil that he didn’t get away. The rest you could cover up. Nobody cares about anything else, anyway. All that mattered to Osborne was the results. And the results were one defector, dead, and no blowup, like Kestering hoped. Score one for you, and for Adrian Kestering, zero. No wonder you kissed me when you left …
“… agrees that you ought to stay a little while. Not long, of course, but just enough time to let you regroup your forces, so to speak.”
“What can I say?”
Just enough time for the electroshock machine to go to work on me and blot out my memory. Time for the pentothal treatments and the subliminal messages. Time for …
Adams smiled again, his pearly teeth shining. “David, I can guarantee: When you come out of here, you’ll feel like a new man.”
Epilogue
It was on the way to the shock ward when I broke loose. I made it through two corridors, stole a lab coat from a broom closet, and was in the parking lot before they saw me. I pulled a woman out of a car and drove through the big wire gate. From there the border was thirty miles. It wasn’t easy, coming home, but I made it.
Sometimes these days I wonder if it really happened after all. The memories grow dim, and like the wings of the butterflies, they fade. Many of my specimens are fading, and it is with regret that I open the cases, for each time, the days and seasons seem to have taken their toll. But there are always others.
I haven’t been able to get another Morpho theseus, though I have, of course, a wide selection from the genus. Soon, now, I’ll have to go back into the hills and see. But I put it off. It’s hard to leave Luisa Maria and the children. For a long time, in the part of my memories that I wish to fade especially quickly, I thought I’d never see her again. Palenque, Emiliano Zapata, Villahermosa.
And then one day, after I had asked the fiftieth person, I came into a house and she was washing clothes.
I can see her now, in the patio, humming to herself as she sweeps. I know the few other foreigners here think me strange. The Butterfly Man of Merida. What is a Canadian citizen of German origin doing so far from his home? I only smile. And they leave me alone.
Of course, it was difficult for her to leave the state of her birth. But she has adapted well. She has never asked about what happened after she left me at Crucero that day: she understands that there are certain things that a man must do. She says that Pedro Magana treated her well and for that I am grateful.
It was a strange thing, when we met again. She was not surprised to see me. She said she had been waiting, and for that reason had saved most of the money. I’ve never asked her in detail about her past. For some reason, I’m almost afraid. I think she has her secrets, and if so, they’re hers alone. It’s better that way.
My clientele is growing slowly. One person wrote recently and asked if I
had ever heard of another collector, in Tabasco, a man named Harold Bassett. I told him that I had not. Another suggested that a new species I described should be called after me, but I declined. I told him no one would ever spell my surname right: Möbius.
He wrote back asking if I were any kin to the mathematician. I told him it was certainly possible.
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Copyright © 1982 by Nordon Publications, Inc.
Cover design by Michel Vrana
ISBN: 978-1-4976-6327-5
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