Metamorphosis

by Sesh Heri

“Good night, Jack,” I said.

  “Mutual friend?” Charmian asked.

  “Just an acquaintance who said he might come up tonight. Bess,” Jack said with a nod.

  “Evening, Jack,” Bess said.

  Jack went around the table, patted Eliza on the shoulder and kissed Charmian on the cheek. Then he went to the door and went out, saying, “Good night, all.”

  “Jack is really serious about those thousand words,” I said.

  “It’s an obsession,” Eliza said, “but an obsession that pays the way for all the rest of us— me and Charmian, and Jack’s ex-wife and their two daughters, and Jack’s mother and his nephew— and all the hands here on the ranch— and a lot of other people, too. Jack writes because he has to write and we all know that he has to write. Everyday I say, ‘Thank God for those thousand words!’”

  I stood on the back porch, looking up at Sonoma Mountain. Kolman Czito still had not arrived, and I had come to believe that I wouldn’t see him after all. A thousand things could have gone wrong with Tesla’s attempt to construct a control switch for the Bell. No, Kolman Czito would not show tonight or perhaps not for many nights. By the time Mr. Tesla had created a switch, I would be far away from San Francisco, perhaps even far from California. Someone else would be sent down to the floor of the Pacific to deal with the Bell. And, I must confess, that possibility sat well with me.

  I kept looking up at Sonoma Mountain. The fog had poured down over its crest, filled the valley, and now was moving off to the south. The clouds were breaking up in the sky and the moon glowed brightly under their cotton covering, seeming to move to the north where a patch of starlit sky began to appear. Another illusion, I thought.

  Bess lay heavily asleep in her bed in the room of the cottage directly behind me. My bed had been untouched. Earlier, in the adjoining room, I had sat up trying to get drowsy, but the events of the day had left me with too much excitement. I also felt reluctant to sleep, for I thought of the fish-head that had recently been pushing its way into my dreams and turning them into nightmares. I sat up trying to read a book on agriculture. I thought surely that would put me to sleep, but I only became more restless.

  And so now I stood out on the back porch of the cottage, waiting for the moon to come out from behind the clouds.

  Then the back door opened silently. I could only tell that it had opened by a slight stirring in the air behind me— and a scent— Charmian’s perfume. I turned around. Charmian was standing behind me.

  “Evening,” I said.

  “So you can’t sleep either,” Charmian said.

  She stepped forward. The moon broke through the gauze of clouds over Sonoma Mountain and lit up the ground beyond the porch.

  “I don’t sleep much,” I said. “It wastes too much time.”

  “Oh,” Charmian said, “how I wish I could waste great spans of time— sleeping, dreaming— dreaming boo’ful dreams. I could sleep for days, weeks, months. If only I could.”

  “Insomniac,” I said.

  Charmian nodded, and then looked at me.

  “I call it ‘the white nights,’” she said.

  “I’ve heard it said that insomniacs are afraid of something,” I said.

  “No doubt,” Charmian said. “I’ve much to fear. How ‘bout you?”

  “Fear I can’t afford,” I said. “Not in my line.”

  “Oh,” Charmian said, “I think you fear.”

  “Oh really,” I said.

  “Oh really,” she said. She stood looking at me.

  “You won’t ask me what,” she said. “I know one thing you fear.”

  “What?” I asked.

  Charmian kept looking at me, the breeze blowing her hair across her face. She wouldn’t answer. Finally she reached up and pushed her hair back.

  “I’m going riding,” she said. “Up on the mountain.”

  She stepped off the porch and took another step away, but then stopped, stood there a moment, and then turned around to face me.

  “Want to come?” she asked.

  I looked at her, at her hair catching the breeze again. She pushed it back again, and asked, “Or do you want to run?”

  There are moments in our lives when we find ourselves not ourselves, find ourselves out of our selves, a stranger to ourselves. These moments of confusion are so rare that we never forget them. They usually come in a moment of crisis, perhaps during a war or a personal disaster. This moment came to me now, not in a crisis— I had already been in a crisis for nearly two days— no, this came to me in a moment of passion— a moment of unparalleled madness— a moment such as I had never experienced in my life before. I stood there looking at Charmian in the moonlight with the breeze blowing her hair about; her legs spread apart; her riding boots firmly planted on the ground. I looked at her and thought but one thing: opportunity. This is opportunity. It almost was not a thought, but a feeling of fire raging through my veins. And with the fire and the madness came guilt, a dark guilt that overshadowed the moonlight. In the dark guilt I thought I saw the faces of Bess and Jack. And then I realized I had only closed my eyes tightly, and I opened them again and Charmian was still standing there. Her hand went up to her hair again and pushed it back.

  Then she held her hand out to me.

  Then we were running across a meadow, hand in hand. That is all I recall in the blurred memory of my madness— my shoes trudging through grass and dirt toward the horse barn. And then we were inside the barn and I saw that Charmian already had two horses saddled, and the sight of the two saddled horses made me bristle with resentment. She had known me too well. She had known that I would ride with her, that I would go with her up to the mountain— to whatever fate awaited us up on the mountain. I looked at her, and saw a steely confidence, and wildness— an animal wildness I had never seen in her before. She took me by my hand and pulled me close to her, so that her breasts pressed against me.

  “I want to mount,” she whispered.

  I placed my hands around her slender waist and picked her up off the ground. Her foot found the stirrup of the horse’s saddle, and she pushed up on it, and swung her other leg over.

  I looked up at her on the horse. She looked down at me, her eyes unblinking, twinkling with she-devil fire.

  I jumped on to my horse, and he let out a whinny. Charmian threw her head toward the barn door and started her horse off through its opening, and on my horse I followed after her.

  Out of the barn we flew, and across the meadow, and down behind the cottage and barns behind it. And then we were on the main road, and flying around the meadow and through the woods, flying in the moonlight toward Sonoma Mountain.

  On the forest trail everything became silver and ebony. The trunks of redwoods were marble columns, and the slope of the mountain was only broken shadow and space. Charmian urged her horse up the trail and it took all I could do to keep up with her. She was a practiced horsewoman and I had almost never ridden. But I was also mad, mad in a way I had never been before in my life. I thought of nothing but the woman above me on the trail, how she moved in the saddle, how her roundness pounded the saddle, how her legs powerfully held tight to the sides of her horse, how she commanded the animal with her thighs alone. I thought of her thighs, and their command, and how I could master her command.

  Then liquid silver shimmered before us. It was the reflection of the moon on the lake, stirred by the wind. Charmian pulled her horse to a stop, and I came up on my horse beside her. I dismounted and came around my horse to face her. She looked down upon me. Then she held her hands out, and bent, and grasped my shoulders, and swung down off her horse and against and on to me in one motion, her legs sliding down along my hips, her breasts sliding down against me, her open mouth locking on to mine, her tongue darting, a flame.

  Her feet hit the ground, her legs spread around my own, her body pressed against my body, her hands clawing my back, her mouth twisting upon mine. She poured herself out upon me, a flow of mad wine.

  And then I sa
w her face. She had broken away from me to look me in the eyes.

  “The boathouse,” she said.

  I pulled away from her.

  “We’re married,” I said. “I’m married.”

  “And you’re here,” she said. “Now take what you want.”

  “What kind of woman are you?” I asked.

  “The kind you’ve never met before in you life,” she said, “a hungry animal who makes no pretense of being anything but a hungry animal, a hungry animal just like you. Now drop the righteous pose and take me up to the boathouse. There’s a bedroll up there.”

  “I can’t betray my wife,” I said.

  “’My wife!’” she groaned. “You can’t even say her name. How strange. Say it. Say her name.”

  “Bess,” I said. “I can’t betray Bess.”

  “Quit lying to yourself,” she said. “You’ve already betrayed her, but you can’t accept it. You can’t accept what you really are— what’s really happening. You’re just an animal. Just like me. Now quit playing the innocent little boy. Quit lying.”

  “I’m not lying,” I said. “I can’t do this. I can’t betray Bess. How can you betray Jack?”

  “How can Jack betray me?” she asked.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  “Never mind,” she said, and her lips were on me again. I pulled her away.

  “Answer me!” I said. “How can you— how can we do this to Jack?”

  “Like this,” she said, and her lips came back to mine. I pulled her head back with my hands.

  “No,” I said. “No— I can’t…I can’t do this. I can’t do this to Bess and Jack.”

  “You self righteous fraud!” she hissed. “You like to look but you’re too good to touch. Why do you care about Jack? Forget about Jack. Do you think he cares about you? He doesn’t.”

  “He’s my friend— your husband,” I said.

  “Your friend,” she said. “How could he be your friend? You just met him. You don’t even know him.”

  “I know him,” I said.

  “You think you do,” she said, “but you don’t. You don’t know him as he really is.”

  “Jack— “ I started to say.

  “Jack, Jack, Jack,” she sneered. “Jack hasn’t been Jack for a very long time. Don’t speak of Jack when you don’t know Jack.”

  “You’re not making sense,” I said.

  “That’s because you’re too foolish to understand,” she said. “You’ve been blinded by Jack’s myth. We’ve all been blinded by Jack’s myth. I’m sick of Jack’s myth. I’m sick of people who believe in Jack’s myth. I don’t believe in it anymore! I don’t believe in it!”

  Charmian pushed me away, but I grabbed her shoulders and spun her back around to face me.

  “Stop talking in riddles,” I said.

  “All right,” Charmian said, her eyes cold. The passion in her had suddenly turned to ice. “I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you a secret— the secret I was going to tell you in Oakland before your lovely wife entered our little scene. It’s a secret you can tell no one else. I know you can keep secrets, Magic Man.”

  “I can keep secrets,” I said. “Tell me.”

  Charmian bowed her head slowly. It was the motion of an executioner.

  “Jack’s dying,” she whispered.

  The wind hushed in the trees.

  “No,” I said.

  Charmian raised her head and looked me in the eyes. Her eyes were dry, but wide— frozen in their glance far beyond me on a distant image.

  “He’s dying,” she said, pronouncing the sentence upon him.

  “Why— how?” I asked. “How could he be dying? He’s in perfect health.”

  Charmian kept staring through me, then suddenly closed her eyes and shook her head.

  “What?” I asked. “What is it?”

  “His kidneys,” she said. “They’re failing.”

  “How do you know?” I asked. “How can you know it’s killing him? Perhaps it’s only a little— “

  “They’re failing!” Charmian screamed, and she tore herself away from me and ran across the edge of the lake. I ran after her, caught her, and pulled her back around to me. I saw her face and the tears streaming down her cheeks.

  “His doctors told me!” she cried. “He’s dying! He’s dying!”

  “When?” I asked. “When did they tell you?”

  “A month ago!” she cried. “A month ago I got it out of them, pried it out of them! I already knew the truth anyway! I’ve seen what’s happened to him— what he’s let no one else see!”

  “It takes years for kidneys to go bad,” I said.

  “Jack’s have been bad for years!” she said. “Two years ago he had surgery for appendicitis. When they opened him up, they discovered his condition. His kidneys were practically gone! But he ordered his doctors to silence— absolute silence! He especially didn’t want them to tell me— me his dear wife-mate! That’s what Jack thought of our marriage. And in those two years Jack went on, telling me nothing, acting as if everything was fine— while everything was not fine! Not fine at all! And meanwhile the sickness has taken its toll, and I believe it has even affected his mind. Some of his real friends have noticed that— people like George Sterling. George knows that Jack is not the man he used to be. Now he’s surly and sullen and moody and argues for the sake of arguing. He’s rude with ranch hands and workers. For several years we had a wonderful servant, Yoshimatsu Nakata, and he left our employ, and I suspect at least part of the reason was the way Jack started treating him. Did you notice how he speaks to Sekine like he’s a dog? His doctors say if Jack would watch his diet, quit drinking, he could— well. He’s not going to quit drinking. You saw how he was at the theatre— guzzling all that beer. But you didn’t see how sick he was this morning— and how he snapped at me to mind my own business when I saw how sick he was! My own business! As if his life is not my business! You saw none of that— but you did see how he was tonight, how he stuffed and guzzled and gorged tonight— all that duck that was hardly cooked! The very stuff the doctors say is poisoning his system!”

  “Rather ashes than dust,” I mumbled.

  “Oh,” Charmian said. “He’s given you ‘the Speech.’ What the great Jack London will and will not do! Yes, he’s not going to do what the doctors say! He’s going to live just the way he wants! Do exactly what he wants!”

  Charmian threw her arms around my neck and crushed herself against me, and said, “And I’m going to do exactly what I want.”

  “I see,” I said.

  I pushed Charmian away from me, turned, went to my horse, got on it, and reined it around.

  “You are afraid after all,” Charmian said, looking up at me, “afraid to take what you want.”

  “You’re afraid,” I said, “afraid that the man you love is dying. You can’t face it. You can’t face his death. You’re a coward. You’re the one that’s lying— lying to yourself. You’re trying to put on a blindfold. You’re trying to run away. And you want me to help you run. You want me to be your blindfold. But I’m not going to do it.”

  I pulled my horse about.

  “Don’t turn away from me!” she shouted. “Don’t you dare turn away from me!”

  I kicked my heels into the sides of my horse and he shot off toward a black curtain of trees. Then I was in the trees— then out of the trees again. I was in the other clearing, the long clearing that led to the steep trail down the mountain.

  My horse kept going— charging into the open, then suddenly pulled back to a stop, and came up on his hind legs, nearly throwing me to the ground. But I hung on, my right arm around the horse’s neck, my left hand grasping the pommel of the saddle. My horse kicked his legs into the air and let out a scream— a horse’s scream of terror. And just then I saw what had brought my horse up, kicking the air.

  It was a saber-toothed tiger, coming out of the stand of redwood trees on the far end of the clearing. He was stalking forward into the dry g
rass, preparing for the kill. My horse and I was the kill.

  And at that same moment, I heard the sound of hoof beats behind me and knew that Charmian was approaching on her horse. I heard the sound of her horse in the grass; I could tell that Charmian’s horse had come to a tearing halt and that Charmian was trying to gain control of her animal. But I did not turn around to look. My own horse was frenzied, shaking his head, dropping to the ground, and then turning around in a circle trying to escape, but in its terrified confusion there was no escape.

  A mere second or two had elapsed while all this happened, and yet it seemed that my effort to bring my horse under control went on for unbearable minutes. I fought with the reins and my legs to bring my horse around, to steer him back toward the trees and the lake, but he refused to go in that direction either. And as I brought my horse in a half turn I glimpsed Charmian astride her own horse as he kicked his forelegs in the air.

  Then I heard a rush in the grass, and I turned my head. The saber-toothed tiger had sprung into the meadow and was now charging directly toward Charmian and me.

  And then in the next instant, I heard a flutter, like a sound that might have been made by bird wings, only the sound was much louder, heavier, and slower. The sound came down from overhead in the sky. I did not have time to look up. The saber-toothed tiger was only fifty feet away.

  And at that exact instant, the fluttering sound became visible— it was the wings of the moth-man— and it fell upon the saber-toothed tiger, and the moth-man grasped with its long-talons the throat of the tiger and lifted the giant cat up off the ground. The tiger’s paws slashed out at the moth-man’s wings, shredding great tears into them, shredding them as if they were curtains of gauze. But the moth-man held his grip on the tiger, choking the life out of the beast. The big cat’s mouth opened wide coughing for air, and he went into a final fit of attack with his hind legs ripping into the moth-man’s chest. But still the moth-man clung to the tiger, and the moth-man’s eyes lit up in a glow of red, and then electrical bolts shot forth from the moth-man’s head and struck the tiger, and the tiger, still clutched in the talons of the moth-man, began to incinerate— burn to death before our very eyes. The tiger shook in a death spasm and let out a final ear-splitting howl, and then slumped in the moth-man’s grip becoming an inferno of flesh and fur. The fire was intense, lighting up the clearing with an unearthly glow, lighting the shredded moth-man that clung to the flaming animal torso, clung to it without moving, and then suddenly the fire went out. The clearing darkened instantly. My eyes adjusted again to the moonlight. The moth-man still stood holding the bones and burnt sinew of the tiger. The moth-man stood there in shreds, lit only by the moon. And then the carcass of the tiger disintegrated in the moth-man’s talons and fell crumbling in bits to the earth.