Hostage To The Devil

by Неизвестный

  Then, even in the darkness, he began to notice details: the variant colors of rocks around him, different kinds of ruffles on the water, various shades to the trees, successive notes in the wind. And, in flashes of memory, was back in the past: on the edge of the woods in St. Joseph, listening to his sisters and his mother chatter and talk, watching his father dancing with his mother at a family celebration the previous winter, holding the hand of a high-school girlfriend as they walked home from the cinema.

  And, as that deep core of him melted, he heard his father's voice in a frequent phrase used to his sons, “Chin up, young man!” dying away into repulsive jumble, “We men must be strong. Chin up chin up young man chin man strong chin up man. . .”

  He felt his body shudder as if shaking off scales or armor. It did not go limp or cling to the ground. Rather, it was now a supple continuation of ground, light, the voice of the wind, the silver of the moon, the silence. His body seemed to hold the possibility of all natural things at once. He knew it was incredible. There was one last, clutching moment when something in him warned with a sharp voice.

  But, after an instant's inner pause, he appeared to himself to let go, willingly to accept, and to do so in almost poetic language: “I don't know you. I want what you are. I want to be in that mystery. I don't want a man's hardness and strength. I want your wholeness.” He actually spoke the words. They tumbled out half-whispered, incredulous—for his brain kept telling him he was alone at night on the mountainside. But something more powerful, not in his brain, kept enticing him. He responded: “I want to be a woman. . . yes. . . man woman.” He did not know the sense of what he was saying, but he kept saying it. And everything that night responded to him in turn—infallibly, it seemed to him—and said: “You will be. You can be. You will be. Secret. Strong. Mystery. Open. You will be. You can be. Woman. Man. Soft. Hard. All. You will be. You can be.”

  He lost track of time. He lit no fire. He did not budge from where he sat. The moon rose and set. The wind waxed and waned. There were occasional cries from night owls, and once or twice the scream of a bird surprised by some night killer. Richard's memory recorded all this indirectly. Filling those hours was something else: the voice or the sensation of a voice which soared and sank in a melody of notes.

  Richard now underlines two things in his memory of that song. It had no particular rhythm, no detectable beat. It seemed to be fully and completely, but only, melody. More significantly, it told him nothing new or shocking or awesomely strange—he seemed to himself to have had all its notes already recorded in him; but now they were evoked as echoes to the melody. And, as they resonated, they delineated a quality or condition in which he always was but had never realized, much less ever expressed it in his taste, walk, glance, in the corners of his words where meaning's shadow hid, or even in his perception of the world around him.

  But no longer now was knowledge a thrust outward to grasp an objective, to obtain an exact pinpointing with the lens of logic—“fixing the cross-hairs on it,” as his shooting-enthusiast father used to put it. In that melodized condition, all objectives were received within a delicate maze of sensibilities, emotions, reactions, intuitions. And, over all, a sense of sacrament, of pact with what made water and earth and air simultaneously strong and tender, soft and unyielding, masculine and feminine. For this sense of the possibilities of all natural things at once, in one condition, was an inner persuasion now. And he felt a light-footed, almost unstable touching on all things, with strength that was gentle, with firmness but no pride, with definitive choice but no violence.

  On and on that melody went throughout the night, until at sunrise his classmates and Captain Nicholas found him sitting on the slope, fresh-faced, smiling, a little dreamy, but fully awake.

  Only Captain Nicholas noticed the change in Richard: the peculiar haze at the back of his eyes and the way he turned his head to greet them as they approached him. After the first bantering, as they were all clambering down the slope toward the camp for breakfast, the captain drew abreast of Richard and said: “You okay, kid?” When Richard turned his head to the ranger, the haze Captain Nicholas had caught in his eyes before was gone, just as if Richard had pulled veils down closing off his inner state. His answer was normal: “I had a ball. Did I do okay?”

  A week later the vacation was over. The entire party left the mountains in the late afternoon, climbed down the slopes, and walked to the forest ranger's wayside post where they had left their station wagon. After an hour's ride, they arrived at the ranch house, where Captain Nicholas' wife and daughter, Moira, greeted them. They were all tired; and after dinner all went to bed.

  Richard, however, did not sleep very much. From the moment he met Moira, he had a renewal of his recent experience on the mountainside.

  Fresh from that experience and still full of the pact he had made with the air and the water and the earth—the ecstasy of it all was quite vividly present to him for weeks after—Moira seemed to Richard to be a walking, breathing embodiment of a secret figure he carried in his memory. She seemed an answer to his prayer uttered on the mountainside, and the model he had felt promised him in the shadow of that slope. He saw the unconscious gravity of her head, the light strength of her figure as the light strength of that figure he had felt beside him on the mountainside that memorable night; the gentle swaying of her walk as an expression of its freedom. And all the details of her appearance and person were a revelation of what he desired to have most: the husky tones of her voice together with the natural grace of her hand movements, the sense of privileged look her eyes carried, at least for him, and the soft bed of feeling that he knew cushioned her laughter and made it utterly different from the loud laughter of his companions.

  Some of the other boys had noticed his fascinated look on the evening of their arrival at the ranch, and he became the immediate butt of their banter. “Richard wants to make her! Richard has the hots! Richard wants to lay her!” He took it all in good part, even when one of them seriously offered to “fix him up” with Moira.

  Moira herself recalls being quite aware of the joke during that evening. At first, she had the usual reactions, half-amused, half-embarrassed. And she probably would never have been of any help to Richard if she had not taken the initiative. It was in the morning before their departure. Richard came down early to find Moira preparing for breakfast.

  From the beginning Moira quickly sensed that this was not just another young man flirting with her. Nor did he act shyly. Beyond a cheerful “Hi, good-mornin',” he said little in the beginning, but started automatically to help her in the breakfast preparations. But she had a strange conviction that she and he had an unconscious agreement or bond. The feeling was disturbing at first; then it became a surprising pleasure.

  As they worked she asked if he had any sisters.

  “Three.” His expression was blank, neither pleasured nor disdainful.

  They busied themselves setting the table. He glanced at her once or twice. Then: “The trip was fantastic. Ever been out there?” She shook her head, waiting for the usual litany of events, feats of male endurance and strength. But Richard continued: “I found what I want to be out there.”

  She asked if he wanted to be a forest ranger. “No! No!” Richard answered. He had found out, he explained, what sort of person he wanted to be. He looked up at her, his eyes shining. Moira braced herself for some protestation of eternal love and irresistible attraction. But Richard, eyes still shining, said only: “On the level, Moira, I want to be like you.”

  Moira's first impulse was to burst out laughing, make a wisecrack, and carry on. But something stirred within her cautioning her. She turned away quickly to the stove, disturbed, a little frightened. He worked on, talking all the while.

  He said he knew he sounded funny, but he meant what he was saying; it was hard to explain, but he wanted to tell her. She tried to interrupt, but his voice cut across hers hard, almost in reproach. She looked around at him. His eyes were filled with
tears. He still had the shining look, but a strange expression of an apologetic grimace touched his mouth fleetingly. “Sorry. Didn't mean to shout.”

  “You weren't shouting. I just opened my big mouth.” She followed his glance out the wide floor-to-ceiling windows of the kitchen. The mountains covered with forests crouched out there, their distance foreshortened in the morning haze; they looked as if the boy and girl in the kitchen could touch them with outstretched hands.

  “Whatever it was, Richard, it was very beautiful,” she said to break the tension of the silence. “I hope you get what you want. It must be very beautiful.”

  “You know, then. You know.” He was excited and boyish, still looking out. “I will get it. For sure, now.”

  Moira had no clear idea of what he was thinking. Since her early teenage she had been used to boys of various types for which she had her own names—the “brawns” (athletes, outdoor types), the “softies” (nice but weak), the “teddy bears” (effeminate), the “profs” (studious, serious). They all talked about themselves and nearly always in terms of achievement in school, in business, in sport, or with other girls. She was sure now that Richard fitted into none of her categories. The caution about him she had felt earlier in the conversation had given away now to a sensation of fragility in him matching her own. She felt that he knew—even if he did not possess the instinct for—that detailed intimacy so characteristically feminine and the real bond between all women as compared to and distinct from men.

  Richard talked on happily while they finished the breakfast preparations. He spoke of feelings and tastes, of touching trees, leaves, grass, flowers, of the smell in the air, of the wind, of the silence, and of his desire to be as “inside” himself as she was and as independent as his father was. It was a staccato speech, punctuated with pauses, over forks and spoons and glasses, running on pleasantly and softly. Just before the first pair of legs bounded down the stairs, he paused; and she, looking him straight in the eye, said: “Richard, shouldn't you ask someone. . .?”

  “No one of them will understand. You know that,” he answered immediately but not abruptly. “Don't worry. I have plenty of advice. From the right ones. When they're finished, I'll know how to feel things, to be really boy and girl. All in one.”

  Moira remembers protesting with all the earnestness she could convey and trying to tell Richard that his “plan” sounded like the hardest and maddest thing in the world.

  “No!” Once again his tone had changed to a rough note. She caught a glint at the back of his eyes which recalled her dim memory of an Alsatian baring his teeth and growling at her long ago when she was three. Now she was afraid. He told her abrasively: “Only a few can get it.” He was smiling, but she did not like the smile. “That's the name of the game,” he remarked some moments later.

  Moira thought that he was going to continue talking. But at that moment the kitchen was invaded by seven other young men, loud, laughing, joking, looking for breakfast, and loosening the spell of a situation that had become uncomfortable and eerie for her. Moira saw the veils closing over Richard's eyes. He became once more the easy, good-natured, smiling companion she had seen entering the house the day before.

  Back home in Detroit a few days later, and into the school year, Richard continued to live in the memories of his vacation. Without knowing it, he was probing deep into one of the most mysterious elements of human personality: gender. In retrospect we can see how the peculiarities of his personal makeup were responsible in some degree for his later development. They do not, however, explain in any way the onset of possession.

  After one more year in high school, Richard went on to college. During his first year there, both his older brothers got married. His three sisters had already left home and were married. Although he spent a lot of time comparing himself to them, Richard never really knew them. He never engaged in any deep conversations with his sisters, and he did not get any clear feeling for their points of view where they differed from his.

  He majored in mathematics, taking English literature and French as extra credits. He corresponded regularly with Moira in Colorado, and with time a deep friendship sprang up between them. Sometimes he spent vacations with her and her family; sometimes Moira came to Detroit and spent time with Richard's family. Moira was studying English literature and journalism at the University of Denver. She intended to enter the field of publishing.

  Toward the end of his second year, he had a conversation with his father, who was taken aback to find his son spouting what seemed to him to be very advanced and unorthodox ideas about sexuality. Richard had read all of D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf's Orlando, George Sand's Indiana, and a host of other books his father had never I heard of. He could quote anthropologists and social scientists in support of his views about matriarchy and woman's superior power and status.

  His father consulted the rabbi of the local synagogue. And, during the following Easter vacation, Richard and his father went to see the rabbi. The rabbi found Richard quite sensible and his views reasonable. He pointed out to Richard and his father that the original Hebrew in the Bible does not say God created Eve, the first woman, from a rib of Adam. The word used at this place in the Bible means “one of two matching panels.” He further pointed out that this Bible account is essentially androgynous. “So man and woman are equal halves of the same entity,” concluded the rabbi, “but woman is most like God because she has the womb of creation in her.” It was all very confusing for Richard's father. But Richard found in it a fresh impetus for his dreams of femaleness.

  Toward the end of his last year in college, Richard spoke to his father about a job in the insurance office. He had no particular desire to specialize in any subject. Medicine and law did not interest him. What Richard was really looking for was a situation in which he could achieve his dream.

  In early June 1961, at the age of twenty-one, Richard took up daily work at his father's insurance office. He proved a very willing apprentice. He was conscientious, took instructions, worked long hours, willingly gave up weekends to work on difficult claims, and studied law at night. His father was very proud of his decision and his performance. His mother loved having one son still at home.

  In his free time Richard continued reading. He spent long hours walking by himself. Since he was out of college and no longer forced to take part in group activities, he began to elaborate his ideal.

  He had one constantly recurring dream day and night. Once and for all, he fancied, everybody knew he was woman and man all in one. It was public knowledge, he dreamed, and accepted joyfully and admiringly by everyone. He wore either male or female clothes, according to the ebb and flow of his sexuality. His skin was either smooth or hard, his voice metallic and masculine or husky and deep, his hair long or short, his mind logical and rationalizing or intuitive and feeling, his breasts round and full with marked nipples or flat and formless, his genitals male or female. But he was chiefly female and feminine—with a very marked peculiarity.

  In his dream he had, as a man, attracted a beautiful woman who possessed his own female face and body. She was he in female form. When they made love together, he was not merely a male entering a female. He was a female taking a male into her secret mystery. He not only had the male sense of arrival and expansion. He had the female sense of falling through the velvet veils of that mystery where wreaths of creation and shaping forms of arcane worlds wove around him with soft murmurs of love.

  Sometimes in his dreams, all this took place at home in Detroit, sometimes at the lakeside in the Colorado mountains, sometimes in exotic lands. But most often the entire scene was played out in a small house surrounded by trees and standing on the edge of water. Wherever he traveled for the company, Richard began to keep his eyes open: perhaps, he would find a house similar to the one in his dreams.

  His relationship with Moira now became something more than close friendship. Moira, in Richard's eyes, was still the woman of his Colorado experience and he felt she could
be part of his continuing dream of perfect man-woman love. And Moira was in love with Richard. It seemed perfect—on the outside. Gradually it became a mutual assumption that they were engaged and that they would eventually get married. In Moira's mind this would take place when Richard got a promotion in his company. In Richard's mind it could only take place when he found his dream house.

  In mid-1963, Richard's company sent him to Tanglewood in eastern Illinois as a temporary substitute for a sick member of the local office. In Tanglewood, Richard found several advantages. His new boss liked him very much. It was a far cry from the urban ills of midtown Detroit. His new post was in effect a promotion. The Tanglewood office was just beginning to expand, and Richard could be in on the ground floor of the company's ambitious programs.

  Chiefly, however, Richard found what he knew was the nearest approach to the house of his dreams. It was called Lake House: single-storied, standing on three acres of land, with sliding glass panels in the back giving on to a large pond. The original owners, back in the late nineteenth century, had covered the three acres with trees, chestnut, sycamore, pine, elm, birch, oak. On his first visit to inspect it, Richard heard the wind in the trees by the water's edge. He knew this was his house. And it was for lease.

  By that autumn, he had moved into Lake House. With the recommendation of his new boss, he obtained a permanent transfer to Tanglewood. Then he wrote triumphantly to Moira asking her to marry him. She answered immediately by telegram.