"You monster . . ." the female said, staggering. Beneath us, the descents were toothed with jagged rock. Rather than fall, she clung to my arm—a gesture so trusting in its way as to melt the remains of my anger. I could remember only how vulnerable People were, the females in particular. At that instant, I would have fought a wild beast in order to preserve her unharmed.
As though sensing some abatement of my ferocity, she said in a natural tone, "I did not mean to startle you."
When I could not think how to answer this, unaccustomed as I was to conversing with People, she went on, "Do you speak English? I am just a tourist here on vacation."
Still I could not answer, from her scent and from the look of her. It was as if a little wild doe had come to me, all quivering with a half-mistrust. She was young. Her face was round and open, without scars from medical science. Her grey eyes were set in a brown skin smooth like the shell of a hen's egg. The hair I had watched from above had become disturbed when I lifted her, so that it shaded the line of her left cheek. She wore a T-shirt with the name of an American university printed on it, and denim shorts cut ragged round her plump thighs. Beneath the shirt I saw the outline of her breasts. That outline held so entrancing a meaning that I was further disarmed.
My difficulty in breathing was such that I clutched my throat.
She looked at me with what I took to be concern.
"Say, you okay? My friend's a doctor. Maybe I'll call her to come on up."
"Don't call," I said. I sat down in the long grass, puzzled to understand my weakness. In some elusive way, here before me was the representative of something, some enormous sphere of sensations and transcendent values such as I had only read about, something my Maker had withheld from me which I desperately needed. That I could put no name to it made it all the more tantalising, like a song when only the tune remains and the words are lost by time.
"My friend can help," said this astonishing young person. She turned as if to call but I growled at her again, "Don't call," in so urgent a voice that she desisted. When she looked up the mountainside, as if searching for help there, I realised that she still had fear of me, little knowing the true state of affairs, and felt herself like an animal in a trap.
"But you're ill," she said. "Or else in trouble with the law."
Her remark released my ability to speak to her. "My trouble is with the law of humanity, which rules against me. Law is invented to protect the rulers, not the ruled; the strong, not the weak. No court on Earth is concerned with justice, only the law. The weak can anticipate persecution, not justice."
"But you are not weak," she said.
Her grey eyes when she looked at me made me tremble. When the moon is high, I roam the mountainside much of the night. That dear silver dish in the sky is like an eye, guarding me. But in the grey eyes of this female I read only a kind of concealed hostility.
"Justice is only a name. Persecution and weakness are real enough. Those who for whatsoever reason have no roof over their heads are no better than deer to be hunted down."
My words appeared to make no impression on her. "In my country, there is Welfare to look after the homeless."
"You know nothing."
She did not dispute that, merely standing before me, head bowed, yet sneaking side glances at me and round about.
"Where do you live?" she asked, in a minute.
I jerked my head in the direction of the mountain above us.
"Alone?"
"With my wife. Are you ... a wife?"
She dismissed the question with a toss of her head.
I listened to the flies buzzing about me and the murmur of the bees in the clover as they tumbled at our feet. These small sounds were the building bricks of the silence that enfolded us.
She stuck out a small brown hand. "I'm not afraid any more. I'm sorry I startled you. Why don't you take me to visit with your wife? What's her name?"
At that, I was silent with mistrust a long time. Her scent reached me as I took the hand gently into mine and looked down at her.
Finally, I spoke the sacred name. "Elsbeth."
She too paused before responding. "Mine's Vicky." She did not ask my name, nor did I offer it.
There we stood on the perilous slope. This encounter had used much of my courage. I had caught her, yet still I feared her. While I contemplated her, she continued to look about with uneasy glances like a trapped animal, and I saw her breasts move with her breathing. Now those honest grey eyes, which I associated with the moon, were furtive and unkind.
"Well then," she said, with an uneasy laugh, "what's keeping us? Let's go"
Perhaps my Maker did not intend that my brain should function perfectly. This little thing whose hand I held could easily be crushed. There was no reason for me to fear it. Yet fear it I did, so greatly did the idea come to me that if I took her up to the cave to meet Elsbeth, she would somehow have trapped me instead of her.
Yet this notion was conquered by a stronger urge I could not deny.
If I led this tender scented female to the cave, she would then be far away from her friend and entirely within my power. We would be private to do that supreme thing, whether she wished for it or not. Elsbeth would understand if I overpowered her and had my way with her. Why should I not? Why else was this morsel, this Vicky, sent to me?
Even at the cost of revealing the whereabouts of the cave to one of the People I must take this specimen there—I must, so great was my urge, thundering in me like the breakers of an ocean. When I was finished with her, I would make sure she did not give our hiding place away. Elsbeth would approve of that. Then our secret life could continue as before, with only the small wild things knowing of our existence.
So thereupon I echoed her words. "Let's go."
The way was steep. She was puny. I kept good hold of her, part-dragging her after me. The afternoon sun blazed on us and her scent rose to me, together with her sobs.
The bushes became smaller, more scanty. I had come this way a hundred times, always varying my route so as to avoid making more of a track than a rabbit might do. We came to the Cleft, a shallow indentation, a fold in the flesh of the mountain. Here the infant waterfall played its tune, gushing with pure water which, several hundred feet down the valley, would become a tributary of the Lotschental river. Behind the fall, hidden by a dark-leaved shrub, was the entrance to the cave.
Here we had to pause. She claimed she must get her breath back. She bent double and stayed that way, and her brown hair hung down, and her little fingertips touched the ground.
Great white clouds rolled above us, tumbling over the mountain summit as if eager to find quieter air. Of a sudden, one of the police helicopters shot overhead, startling me with its enormous clatter, as if the thing were a flying tree, streaking out of sight behind the crisp crest of the Jungfrau. 1 had no time to hide before it was over and gone.
I grabbed the girl and pulled. "Into the cave with you."
She struggled. "What if Elsbeth doesn't want to see me? Shouldn't you warn her first? Why don't you call her out here?"
Not answering, I dragged her towards the cave. She seized at a bush but I beat her hand away.
"I don't want to see Elsbeth," she screamed. "Help! Help!"
Silencing her with a hand enveloping her face, I half-lifted her and so we entered the cave, the girl struggling furiously.
Elsbeth lay there in the shade, watching everything, saying nothing. I let the girl loose and pushed her towards my wife.
The girl went motionless, staring forward, one hand to her lips. There was no sound but the high buzz of flies. I waited for her to try to scream again, readying myself to leap upon her and bear her down. But when she spoke, it was softly, with her gaze on Elsbeth, not me.
"She's been dead a very long time, hasn't she?"
Some People can cry. I have no facility for tears. Yet as soon as this activity began in Vicky, a storm of weeping—as I judged the sensation— accumulated in my breast like a storm
over the Alps. In Elsbeth's eyes no movement showed. The maggots had done their work in those sockets and moved to other pastures.
As I raised my hands above my head and let out a howl, two male people rushed into the cave. They yelled as they came. The weeping girl, Vicky, threw herself out of danger into the recesses of the cave, where I stored the fruits of the autumn. The men flung a net over me.
Wildly though I struggled, using all my strength, the net was unbreakable. The male People drew it tight, as fishermen must have done when they hauled in a catch in olden times. They shackled my legs so that I could not run. Then they felled me, so that I lay by Elsbeth and was as helpless as she.
Those People treated me as if I were no better than an animal. I was dragged out of the cave, through the waterfall, to lie on my back gazing up at the fast-moving clouds in the blue sky, and I thought to myself, Those clouds are free, just as I was until now.
More male People arrived. I found out how they came there soon enough. One of their helicopters was standing on a level ledge of mountainside above my refuge. The female, Vicky, came to me and bent down so that I could look again into her grey eyes.
"I regret this," she said. "I had to act as decoy. We knew you were somewhere up on the Aletschhorn, but not exactly where. We've been combing this mountainside all week."
My faculty of speech was deserting me along with my other powers. I managed to say, "So you are just an accomplice of these other cruel beasts."
"I am working with the local police, yes. Don't blame me. . . ."
One of the male police nudged her. "Out of the way, miss. He's still dangerous. Stand back there." And she moved away.
I was lifted up and lashed to a stretcher. Her face disappeared from my sight. Still encased in the net, I was dropped on the ground as if I were an old plank. They shouted a great deal, and waved their arms. Only then did I realise they were going to transport me up the mountain. Five male People were there, one of them controlling the other four. They looked down on me. Again those expressions of disgust: I might have been a leopard trapped by big-game hunters, when mercy did not enter into their thoughts.
The male person who ordered the others around had a mouth full of small grey teeth. Staring down, he said, "We're not letting you escape this time, you freak of nature. We have a list of murders stretching back over the last two centuries for which you are responsible."
Though I read no sympathy in his face or mouth, I found a few words to offer. "Sir, I had never an intent to offend. It was my Maker who offended against me, acting so unfatherly against one who never asked to be born in any unnatural way. As for these murders, as you name them, the first one only, that of the child, was done in malice, when I had no knowledge of those states of being which you, not I, can enjoy—to wit, life and death. The rest of my offences were committed in self-defence, when I found the hands of all People were against me. Let me free, I pray. Let me live upon this blessed mountain, in the state of nature and innocence described by Rousseau."
His mouth thinned and elongated like an earthworm. "You shit," he said, turning away.
Another male appeared over the ragged skyline.
"Chopper's ready," he called.
They swung into action. I was lifted up. It took four of them to carry me. I could not see the female but, as I was raised to their shoulders, I caught a glimpse of my happy home, that cave where Elsbeth and I had been so content. Then it was gone, and they laboured up the slope with me, trussed and helpless.
As we approached the helicopter, a shower burst over us, one of those unheralded showers which sweep the Alps. I tasted the blessed rain on my lips, drinking it even while the People complained. I thought, this is the last time I taste of the benisons of nature. I am being taken to the realms of the People, who hate nature as much as they hate me, who am unnatural.
A chill sharpened the flavour of the water. It carried the taint of autumn, that melancholy transition time before winter. Summertime was nearly over, and my wife would lie alone and lonely in our cave, waiting for my return, looking with her sightless eyes for her lover, uttering never a word of complaint.
THE CREATURE ON THE COUCH
Michael Bishop
▼▼▼
" WOULD THAT you were blind, Dr. Zylstra." My patient glared at me with watery yellow eyes, out of a mask that accentuated the heavy shelf of his forehead.
"Why?" I knew, and he knew that I knew, but as committed as I am to racking honesty between patient and therapist, it would have been a misstep to confess aloud at our first meeting that his size and appearance terrified me.
"Do you not mock me, sir, with the transparent dissimulation of bewilderment." Despite its syntax, this remark was not a question, but an archaic variety of command.
"Mr. Goodloss—"
"And do you not interpose the barrier of my surname in a forum that I understand to require friendly self-revelation."
"I usually call my patients by their first names. It's just that it takes longer than thirty seconds to—"
"I am sick unto death of barriers, of the spurnings that have been my recurring, but undeserved, lot."
"Vyvyan," I said, using the odd first name that he had printed in bold block letters on his sign-in sheet:
VYVYAN FRANKLIN GOODLOSS.
"Vyvyan, it's my task—actually, it's our joint task—to examine minutely your feelings of—"
"Rejection. Abandonment. Expulsion. Am I perforce condemned to address you only by title and cognomen?"
"Patients may call me what they like, so long as it's civil. I wouldn't care to answer to, say, Scheisskopf or Dirty Jer."
"I am ignorant of the manner of address most favored by the main body of your clientele. Do you now banish my ignorance."
"Some patients call me Dr. Zylstra. Maybe their low self-esteem resists the idea of equality with a powerful authority figure. Some find ways not to call me anything at all."
Vyvyan, however, wanted to resolve the issue quickly. Waves of hostility piled up in ranks behind this effort, but the effort itself was encouraging: patients who take an active role in the therapeutic process are the most likely to bring about lasting improvement.
"By what name do your friends and intimates call you?"
"Jerrold. More rarely, Jerry. I like my full name better than the nickname."
"Because it erects a small wall of formality and so enables you to preserve a sense of your own dignity?"
"Possibly," I said. Who was treating whom here? Vyvyan, looming over me as he did, had imperceptibly reversed our roles, seizing the initiative of interpretation and relegating me to the dependent state of an emotionally impaired care seeker. Ouch.
Vyvyan nodded brusquely at a gold-plated placard on my desk, an object that had been part of my office decor ever since Barbara gave it to me for our fifth wedding anniversary nearly twenty years ago.
PATIENTHOOD IS UBIQUITOUS, reads the placard.
"Do you disclose to me now, Jerrold, the meaning of that cryptic apothegm."
Vyvyan had a gratingly archaic way of speaking, as if he'd just dropped in from a revival of Peregrine Pickle: The Play. And, yes, I felt something more than mild unease in his hulking presence.
"The placard means," I said, reading it for the twelve-millionth time, "that you have every right to call me Jerrold."
"Wherefore that right? From what logic does it spring?"
"Who gets the label 'patient' is often a cultural, educational, and economic thing, Vyvyan, not a clear reflection of the severity of that person's . . . existence pain. In some ways, in fact, I may be more 'ill' than those coming to me for therapy."
Vyvyan rolled his nicotine-colored eyes. "Oh! cursed employer, who sent me to this forthright charlatan!"
"If you have a problem—" How could anyone who looked and spoke like this huge burlesque of a human being not have a problem?—"my job isn't to wave a wand and make it go magically away."
"Am I, then, to remain wretched?"
&nbs
p; "Wait. Listen. My job is to use my skills to build between us a relationship that will prove therapeutic. It's the relationship that heals, Vyvyan. If you work with me, you'll face your existence pain in ways that counteract your . . . wretchedness."
"Excellent."
"Good," I said. "What do you want?"
▼▼▼
This was neither a casual nor a facetious question. With Vyvyan, it wasn't even a cloaked expression of the annoyance I felt at having to be in my office long after my posted hours—at eight o'clock on a late November evening when traffic on North Peachtree was sparse and the wind slicing down from the Great Smokies was audibly rattling my office building's polarized window glass.
What do you want? is my standard ice breaker. I ask it so that my patients will jettison all the nonessential garbage they've taken aboard and examine face-on the real conflicts poisoning their lives. Everyone wants something—something beyond a Mercedes-Benz, twenty uninterrupted years of fame, or great nonstop sex—and the honest identification of this want is the beginning of wisdom. It's also the beginning of a long climb toward health. Was I healthy enough to provide Vyvyan any meaningful help on his climb?
I ask because sitting in the same room with him underscored the hard truth of the legend of my placard: PATIENTHOOD IS UBIQUITOUS. Ordinarily, I'm not frightened of my patients. They may fascinate, repulse, exasperate, amuse, bore, worry, discombobulate, or charm me. (In the case of pneumatic females, as I've confessed to Barbara, they may even excite my libido.) But only once or twice in my career have I met with a patient who made me fear for my safety. Even the psychotics who came to me did so nonmenacingly, seeing me as a paid compassionator and a validating agent, not as a potentially vengeful judge. Thus, I escaped any hostile acting out of their psychoses.
But I was afraid of this Goodloss person.
The Ultimate Frankenstein Page 4