More Than Human

by Theodore Sturgeon

  He shut off the water and stepped out and took an oversized towel from the rack. He started one end of it on his scalp, worked it on his hair from one end to the other. He threw it on the floor, in the corner, and took another towel and rubbed himself pink. He threw that one down too and came out into the room. The robe lay over the arm of an easy chair by the door so he put it on.

  The girl was spooning fragrant bacon grease over and over three perfect eggs in a pan. When he sat down on the edge of the bed she slid the eggs deftly onto a plate, leaving all the grease behind in the pan. They were perfect, the whites completely firm, the yolks unbroken, liquid, faintly filmed over. There was bacon, four brief seconds less than crisp, paper dried and aromatic. There was toast, golden outside, soft and white inside, with butter melting quickly, running to find and fill the welcoming caves and crevices; two slices with butter, one with marmalade. And these lay in some sunlight, giving off a color possible only to marmalade and to stained glass.

  He ate and drank coffee; ate more and drank coffee and coffee. All the while she sat in the easy chair with his shirt in her lap and her hands like dancers, while the buttons grew back onto the material under their swift and delicate paces.

  He watched her and when she was finished he came to her and put out his hand for the shirt, but she shook her head and pointed. “A clean one.”

  He found a knitted pullover polo shirt. While he dressed she washed his dishes and the frying pan and straightened out the bed. He lay back in the easy chair and she knelt before him and worked the soggy dressing off his left hand, inspected the cuts and bound them up again. The bandage was firm and comforting. “You can do without the sling now,” she said, pleased. She got up and went to the bed. She sat there facing him, still again except for her eyes, except for her mouth.

  Outside an oriole made a long slender note, broke it, and let the fragments fall through the shining air. A stake-bed truck idled past, busily shaking the string of cowbells on its back, while one hoarse man and one with a viola voice flanked it afoot, chanting. In one window came a spherical sound with a fly at its heart and at the other appeared a white kitten. Out by the kitten went the fly and the kitten reared up and batted at it, twisted and sprang down out of sight as if it had meant all along to leave; only a fool would have thought it had lost its balance.

  And in the room was quiet and a watchfulness which was without demand, except perhaps a guarding against leaving anything unwatched. The girl sat with her hands aslumber and her eyes awake, while a pipe-cleaner man called Healing was born in all his cores, all his marrow, taking the pose of his relaxed body, resting and growing a little and resting again and growing.

  Later, she rose. Without consultation, but merely because it seemed time to do so, she picked up a small handbag and went to the door where she waited. He stirred, rose, went to her. They went out.

  They walked slowly to a place where there was smooth rolling land, mowed and tended. Down in the hollow some boys played softball. They stood for a while, watching. She studied his face and when she saw reflected in it only the moving figures and not the consecutive interest of the game itself, she touched his elbow and moved on. They found a pond where there were ducks and straight cinder paths with flower beds. She picked a primrose and put it in his lapel. They found a bench. A man pushed a bright clean wagon up to them. She bought a frankfurter and a bottle of soda and handed them to him. He ate and drank silently.

  It was a quiet time they had together.

  When it began to grow dark, she brought him back to the room. She left him alone for half an hour and returned to find him sitting just where she had left him. She opened packages and cooked chops and mixed a salad, and while he was eating, made more coffee. After dinner he yawned. She was on her feet immediately. “Good night,” she said, and was gone.

  He turned slowly and looked at the closed door. After a time he said, “Good night.” He undressed and got into bed and turned out the light.

  The next day was the day they rode on a bus and lunched in a restaurant.

  The day after that was the one they stayed out a little later to see a band concert

  Then there was the afternoon when it rained and they went to a movie which he watched wordlessly, not smiling, not frowning, not stirring to the musical parts.

  “Your coffee.” “Let’s get these to the laundry.” “Come.” “Good night.” These were the things she said to him. Otherwise she watched his face and, undemandingly, she waited.

  He awoke, and it was too dark. He did not know where he was. The face was there, wide-browed, sallow, with its thick lenses and its pointed chin. Wordlessly, he roared at it and it smiled at him. When he realized that the face was in his mind and not in the room, it disappeared … no; it was simply that he knew it was not there. He was filled with fury that it was not there; his brain was fairly melting with rage. Yes, but who is he? he asked, and answered, “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know …” and his voice became a moan, softer and softer and softer until it was gone. He inhaled deeply and then something inside him slipped and fell apart and he began to cry. Someone took his hand, took his other hand, held them together; it was the girl; she’d heard him, she’d come. He was not alone.

  Not alone … it made him cry harder, bitterly. He held her wrists as she bent over him, looked up through darkness at her face and her hair and he wept.

  She stayed with him until he was finished and for as long afterward as he held her hand. When he released it he was asleep, and she drew the blanket up to his chin and tiptoed out.

  In the morning he sat on the edge of the bed, watching the steam from his coffee spread and fade in the sunlight, and when she put the eggs before him he looked up at her. His mouth quivered. She stood before him, waiting.

  At last he said, “Have you had your breakfast yet?”

  Something was kindled in her eyes. She shook her head.

  He looked down at the plate, puzzling something out. Finally he pushed it away from him a fraction of an inch and stood up. “You have this,” he said. “I’ll fix some more.”

  He had seen her smile but he had not noticed it before. Now, it was as if the warmth of all of them was put together for this one. She sat down and ate. He fried his eggs, not as well as she had done, and they were cooked before he thought of toast and the toast burned while he was eating the eggs. She did not attempt to help him in any way, even when he stared blankly at the little table, frowned and scratched his jaw. In his own time he found what he was looking for—the other cup on top of the dresser. He poured fresh coffee for her and took the other which she had not touched, for himself, and she smiled again.

  “What’s your name?” he asked her, for the very first time.

  “Janie Gerard.”

  “Oh.”

  She considered him carefully, then stretched down to the foot-post of the bed where her handbag hung by its strap. She drew it toward her, opened it, and took out a short piece of metal. At first glance, it was a piece of aluminum tubing, perhaps eight inches long and oval in cross-section. But it was flexible—woven of tiny strands rather than extruded. She turned his right hand palm up, where it lay beside his coffee cup, and put the tubing into it.

  He must have seen it for he was staring down into the cup. He did not close his fingers on it. His expression did not change. At length he took a slice of toast. The piece of tubing fell, rolled over, hung on the edge of the table and dropped to the floor. He buttered his toast.

  After that first shared meal there was a difference. There were many differences. Never again did he undress before her or ignore the fact that she was not eating. He began to pay for little things—bus fares, lunches, and, later, to let her precede him through doorways, to take her elbow when they crossed streets. He went to the market with her and carried the packages.

  He remembered his name; he even remembered that the “Hip” was for “Hippocrates.” He was, however, unable to remember how he came by the name, or where he
had been born, or anything else about himself. She did not urge him, ask him. She simply spent her days with him, waiting. And she kept the piece of aluminum webbing in sight.

  It was beside his breakfast plate almost every morning. It would be in the bathroom, with the handle of his toothbrush thrust into it. Once he found it in his side jacket pocket where the small roll of bills appeared regularly; this one time the bills were tucked into the tubing. He pulled them out and absently let the tubing fall and Janie had to pick it up. She put it in his shoe once and when he tried to put the shoe on and could not, he tipped it out onto the floor and let it lie there. It was as if it were transparent or even invisible to him; when, as in the case of finding his money in it, he had to handle it, he did so clumsily, with inattention, rid himself of it and apparently forgot it. Janie never mentioned it. She just quietly put it in his path, time and time again, patient as a pendulum.

  His afternoons began to possess a morning and his days, a yesterday. He began to remember a bench they had used, a theater they had attended, and he would lead the way back. She relinquished her guidance as fast as he would take it up until it was he who planned their days.

  Since he had no memory to draw on except his time with her, they were days of discovery. They had picnics and rode learningly on buses. They found another theater and a place with swans as well as ducks.

  There was another kind of discovery too. One day he stood in the middle of the room and turned, looking at one wall after another, at the windows and the bed. “I was sick, wasn’t I?”

  And one day he stopped on the street, stared at the grim building on the other side. “I was in there.”

  And it was several days after that when he slowed, frowned, and stood gazing into a men’s furnishing shop. No—not into it At it. At the window.

  Beside him Janie waited, watching his face.

  He raised his left hand slowly, flexed it, looked down at the curled scar on the back of his hand, the two straight ones, one long, one short, on his wrist.

  “Here,” she said. She pressed the piece of tubing into his hand.

  Without looking at it he closed his fingers, made a fist. Surprise flickered across his features and then a flash of sheer terror and something like anger. He swayed on his feet.

  “It’s all right,” said Janie softly.

  He grunted questioningly, looked at her as if she were a stranger and seemed slowly to recognize her. He opened his hand and looked carefully at the piece of metal. He tossed it, caught it. “That’s mine,” he said.

  She nodded.

  He said, “I broke that window.” He looked at it, tossed the piece of metal again, and put it in his pocket and began to walk again. He was quiet for a long time and just as they mounted the steps of their house he said, “I broke the window and they put me in that jail. And you got me out and I was sick and you brought me here till I was well again.”

  He took out his keys and opened the door, stood back to let her pass in. “What did you want to do that for?”

  “Just wanted to,” she said.

  He was restless. He went to the closet and turned out the pockets of his two suit jackets and his sport coat. He crossed the room and pawed aimlessly at the dresser scarf and opened and shut drawers.

  “What is it?”

  “That thing,” he said vaguely. He wandered into and out of the bathroom. “You know, that piece of pipe, like.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  “I had it,” he muttered unhappily. He took another turn around the room and then shouldered past Janie where she sat on the bed, and reached to the night table. “Here it is!”

  He looked at it, flexed it, and sat down in the easy chair. “Hate to lose that,” he said relievedly. “Had it a long time.”

  “It was in the envelope they were holding for you while you were in jail,” Janie told him.

  “Yuh. Yuh.” He twisted it between his hands, then raised it and shook it at her like some bright, thick, admonishing forefinger. “This thing—”

  She waited.

  He shook his head. “Had it a long time,” he said again. He rose, paced, sat down again. “I was looking for a guy who … Ah!” he growled, “I can’t remember.”

  “It’s all right,” she said gently.

  He put his head in his hands. “Damn near almost found him too,” he said in a muffled voice. “Been looking for him a long time. I’ve always been looking for him.”

  “Always?”

  “Well, ever since … Janie, I can’t remember again.”

  “All right.”

  “All right, all right, it isn’t all right!” He straightened and looked at her. “I’m sorry, Janie. I didn’t mean to yell at you.”

  She smiled at him. He said, “Where was that cave?”

  “Cave?” she echoed.

  He waved his arms up, around. “Sort of a cave. Half cave, half log house. In the woods. Where was it?”

  “Was I there with you?”

  “No,” he said immediately. “That was before, I guess. I don’t remember.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I do worry about it!” he said excitedly. “I can worry about it, can’t I?” As soon as the words were out, he looked to her for forgiveness and found it. “You got to understand,” he said more quietly, “this is something I—I got to—Look,” he said, returning to exasperation, “can something be more important than anything else in the world, and you can’t even remember what it is?”

  “It happens.”

  “It’s happened to me,” he said glumly. “I don’t like it either.”

  “You’re getting yourself all worked up,” said Janie.

  “Well, sure!” he exploded. He looked around him, shook his head violently. “What is this? What am I doing here? Who are you, anyway, Janie? What are you getting out of this?”

  “I like seeing you get well.”

  “Yeah, get well,” he growled. “I should get well! I ought to be sick. Be sick and get sicker.”

  “Who told you that?” she rapped.

  “Thompson,” he barked and then slumped back, looking at her with stupid amazement on his face. In the high, cracking voice of an adolescent he whimpered, “Thompson? Who’s Thompson?”

  She shrugged and said, matter-of-factly, “The one who told you you ought to be sick, I suppose.”

  “Yeah,” he whispered, and again, in a soft-focused flood of enlightenment, “yeah-h-h-h …” He wagged the piece of mesh tubing at her. “I saw him. Thompson.” The tubing caught his eye then and he held it still, staring at it. He shook his head, closed his eyes. “I was looking for…” His voice trailed off.

  “Thompson?”

  “Nah!” he grunted. “I never wanted to see him! Yes I did,” he amended. “I wanted to beat his brains out.”

  “You did?”

  “Yeah. You see, he—he was—aw, what’s the matter with my head?” he cried.

  “Sh-h-h,” she soothed.

  “I can’t remember, I can’t,” he said brokenly. “It’s like … you see something rising up off the ground, you got to grab it, you jump so hard you can feel your kneebones crack, you stretch up and get your fingers on it, just the tips of your fingers….” His chest swelled and sank. “Hang there, like forever, your fingers on it, knowing you’ll never make it, never get a grip. And then you fall, and you watch it going up and up away from you, getting smaller and smaller, and you’ll never—” He leaned back and closed his eyes. He was panting. He breathed, barely audible, “And you’ll never…”

  He clenched his fists. One of them still held the tubing and again he went through the discovery, the wonder, the puzzlement. “Had this a long time,” he said, looking at it. “Crazy. This must sound crazy to you, Janie.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “You still think I’m crazy?”

  “No.”

  “I’m sick,” he whimpered.

  Startlingly, she laughed. She came to him and pulled him to his feet. She drew hi
m to the bathroom and reached in and switched on the light. She pushed him inside, against the washbasin, and rapped the mirror with her knuckles. “Who’s sick?”

  He looked at the firm-fleshed, well-boned face that stared out at him, at its glossy hair and clear eyes. He turned to Janie, genuinely astonished. “I haven’t looked this good in years! Not since I was in the… Janie, was I in the Army?”

  “Were you?”

  He looked into the mirror again. “Sure don’t look sick,” he said, as if to himself. He touched his cheek. “Who keeps telling me I’m sick?”

  He heard Janie’s footsteps receding. He switched off the light and joined her. “I’d like to break that Thompson’s back,” he said. “Throw him right through a—”

  “What is it?”

  “Funny thing,” he said, “was going to say, through a brick wall. I was thinking it so hard I could see it, me throwing him.”

  “Perhaps you did.”

  He shook his head. “It wasn’t a wall. It was a plate glass window. I know!” he shouted. “I saw him and I was going to hit him. I saw him standing right there on the street looking at me and I yelled and jumped him and … and …” He looked down at his scarred hand. He said, amazed, “I turned right around and hauled off and hit the window instead. God.”

  He sat down weakly. “That’s what the jail was for and it was all over. Just lie there in that rotten jail, sick. Don’t eat, don’t move, get sick and sicker and it’s all over.”

  “Well, it isn’t all over, is it?”

  He looked at her. “No. No, it isn’t. Thanks to you.” He looked at her eyes, her mouth. “What about you, Janie? What are you after, anyway?”

  She dropped her eyes.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. That must’ve sounded …” He put out a hand to her, dropped it without touching her. “I don’t know what’s gotten into me today. It’s just that … I don’t figure you, Janie. What did I ever do for you?”

  She smiled quickly. “Get better.”

  “It’s not enough,” he said devoutly. “Where do you live?”