Had she deliberately withdrawn herself from Catherine? Had she been the superior, the virtuous maiden, condescending toward the betrayed sister, arrogantly protecting her wifely status against the viciousness of Maurice and the weakness of Catherine? But she hadn’t, she hadn’t, she assured herself. That was twisting everything around. Maurice had been a wicked man, a betrayer, a seducer, a lecher, a man of ungoverned desires. No matter what her impulse of self-condemnation for real or imagined shortcomings, natural enough when confronted by these visions of wickedness, no one on earth could say Catherine—yes, her own dear Catherine—was anything but weak, or that it was possible to excuse Maurice’s immorality.
Lila braked. “I’m sure as can be we not going right.”
“But Lila, there can’t be any right or wrong way of getting out. It’s all chance.”
“Maybe.” There was an obstinate quality in Lila’s voice. “But the Lord helps those that help theirselves—not just those who hope for the best.”
Hesione Hadstone, Hesione Mallest, Mrs. Paul Drummond, Cicely Waynefleet, Lady Macbeth, would have been reasonable, rational, firm. She said, “All right, Lila. If you’ve got a hunch, follow it.”
Lila wrenched the steering wheel hard over to the right and drove off the road into a field of hay. The right front tire hit a rock, and the car twisted sharply. Lila stepped on the gas, driving with a new, uncanny certainty. And then, as they hit another rock and the car wobbled on three wheels, they were in full daylight on ordinary concrete, not more than forty feet from a black and white marker, U.S. 60.
~ * ~
Still shaky, but heartened by her next series of telephone calls (“Mrs. Drummond, believe me, I’m not keeping anything from you. Your daughter is completely out of danger. I think it better you don’t speak to her on the phone; I’ll cancel my orders if it upsets you too much, but I hope you won’t insist.”) (“Honestly Hezzy, old Pletzel’s telling the truth. Maybe he’s a little nuts about the psychological angle, but I’ve seen Peggy and she’s all right. Doesn’t want to talk much; Pletzel thinks she may spill everything—if there’s anything to spill—when she sees you. But a day won’t make any difference, may even be better Pletzel says. So don’t wear yourself out; take it as easy as you can.”), Hesione stopped in Amarillo for a real bed, a real bath, a real meal. She recognized that she really enjoyed eating, that she thought about food, instead of merely accepting it. She didn’t believe she was a glutton (she preferred the word to the prettier gourmand), but unless she were to get fat—an unlikely possibility with her metabolism—it was the only passion without complications.
Falling asleep, she pondered over the second breaking through what Mr. Peterberry called the time-space continuum. She had gotten back, twice; why had none of the lost airplanes ever returned? Was the explanation purely material—no landing fields in the world of the past (but not all adventured into the remote past; she herself had gone, the first time, into a world where there were landing fields), no fuel if they ran out?—or was the answer more subtle? Something to do with what spiritualists called being earth-bound? It seemed silly. . . . Maybe a few could come back, but conditions had never been exactly right. . .?
But the vanishing airplanes were not her chief concern. Punishment (leaving aside the question for what) yes, but punishment—if it was punishment and not just senseless torment—should have a purpose. At least, if everything she had heard and read had validity. The scene she and Lila had witnessed ought to convey a lesson, bring its point home to her. But she had never been cruel to animals. Not unkind or indifferent even. Paul’s great Danes, though she did think them something of an affectation and an extravagance, she always accepted; in turn they bounded at her and cavorted for her in what seemed to be genuine pleasure. She remembered a story she had once read about a condemned criminal who had dreamed the wrong dream; was it possible she was being punished the wrong punishment?
Was it possible that in some unreasonable way—what had reason to do with any of this? Planes falling into nothing; people disappearing and reappearing; her own experience— the punishment was not connected with any wrong, but was simply an inevitably corollary to her life? Crudely, was she somehow paying for her success? Did the horrible scene represent some sort of compensation—No, it didn’t fit. Besides, she had already paid for her success in hard work and lots of other ways. This was some puritanical notion.
Besides, why should her punishment and Lila’s be identical? If they were. Lila hadn’t understood . . . There was no use going over that again. Lila had been able to find her way out; she had had to wait for fortune. Election, Calvinists called it, while Lila had Grace. . . . Maybe all that—shades of a multitude of earnest theologians—had nothing to do with it. . . . Troubled, she fell asleep and dreamed she was ten feet tall while Peggy and Catherine, Maurice, Paul and Lila were midgets who ran from her screaming in fear.
Next morning she dismissed—or almost dismissed—her speculations as morbid vapors. Only one plane had been lost the day before, and three times as many amnesiacs had returned as had vanished. “Maybe it’s coming to an end,” she said to Lila. “Maybe it’s nearly over. If the preacher was right the balance may have been restored, or nearly; Mr. Peterberry’s breaks in time and space may be closing up.”
As the day passed her confidence increased; the clear mountain air seemed too thin and pure to hold traps and pitfalls. They drove through New Mexico all day, pausing only for food and gasoline, and through Arizona all night, going faster now, excited not only by the comparatively long period of immunity, but at their nearness to the goal.
Then, after they crossed the river into Blythe, and Hesione bad gone looking for a phone for the last time, she once more walked into another world.
~ * ~
It was a strange world this time, a grotesque world bearing little resemblance to reality of any kind. No, reality was not the word; this was real enough, but it was somehow subjective. Not like a dream, but like her projection of a character in a play. That was it; now that the first dismaying shock to her conviction that it would not happen again had softened, she realized she was somehow in a theater. A theater she had never seen or heard of or conceived existing. Reinhardt, she thought; no, Dali—no, no; chaos, Hell ... I don’t know . . .
Somewhere in the vast distance there was a roll of thunder which echoed, dying away in explosive mutters. “Do you solemnly swear (or affirm)?” “Do you solemnly swear (or affirm)?” “Or affirm ... or affirm ... or affirm…”
From under her feet, or at least from some depths around her, a harsh feminine voice squeaked, “Oh yes, your honor, I seen him, I recognized him. He had a cap on; I seen him shooting with a gun as it went by; I’d know him out of a hunnerd; he was an Eyetalian or some other kind of a foreigner. Oh yes, sir, your honor.” And then the lightning was bayonets, hundreds and thousands and millions of bayonets all moving forward in even rows. The bayonets turned into wriggling snake-like creatures, and someone was shouting, “Fresh eels today; fresh eels today; I got fresh eels today.”
The thin voice of an old man slashed from the sky like sleet. “Motion denied. Objection overruled. Denied. Overruled. Denied. Overruled. Denied. . . .”
Now the voice of the eel caller, calm but passionate, speaking with a strong accent: “Everybody that knows these two arms knows very well that I did not need to go in between the street and kill a man to take the money-”
“Irrelevant . . . irrelevant. . . irrelevant …”
“This is what I say: I would not wish to a dog or to a snake, to the most low and misfortunate creature on the earth—I would not wish to any of them what I had to suffer for things that I am not guilty of. But my conviction is that I have suffered for things that I am guilty of.”
The old man’s voice came through again, chuckling like hail. “Did you see what I did to those two anarchist bastards today?” It was taken up and repeated, as by a quartet in close harmony, “Did you see what I did to those two anarchist bastard
s today?” And then as by a great polyphonic choir, reaching from horizon to horizon, but lost to all dignity and shrieking in a simian chatter, “Did you see what I did to those two anarchist bastards today?”
Soft and cottonlike came the whisper, “... a grave breach of decorum . . .”
Hesione put her hands to her head. She had been prepared, she had steeled herself, for some new scene of iniquity. Well, there was undoubtedly iniquity here, though she as yet had no clear notion of what it was all about, but the pervasive, over-riding impression she was getting was one of . . . What? Obstinacy rather than malevolence; refusal to understand; lack of comprehension; stupidity ... No, it was a lack—something missing—but a deeper lack than any of these ...
The accented voice, still calmer, spoke again. “If it had not been for these things, I might have lived out my life talking at street corners to scorning men. I might have die, unmarked, unknown, a failure. Now we are not a failure. Never in our full life could we hope to do so much work for tolerance, for joostice, for man’s understanding of man, as now we do by accident. Our words—our lives—our pain nothing! The taking of our lives—the lives of a good shoemaker and a poor fish peddler—all! That last moment belongs to us—that agony is our triumph!”
This part at least was from something she’s been in—when was it?—years and years ago. Patricia, sister of the female lead. The speech was a quotation from a man who had died in the electric chair—Vanzetti. What had Vanzetti to do with her?
The colossal stage on which she was standing began shrinking, and she became aware of the proscenium arch, drops, flies, wings. They drew in closer rapidly as they diminished in size, but she had no sense of peril, or that any wonder was happening. In fact she felt it quite natural for her to have gotten here, and that she could do as Lila had done— not on a hunch this time, but under direction—in finding her way out. When she was ready. Not yet.
She moved up toward the center of the stage, speaking as though compelled by an urgent excitement, yet in full command. “Go get some water, and wash this filthy witness from your hand. Why did you bring these daggers from the place? They must lie there: go carry them, and smear the sleepy grooms with blood.”
Somehow there was no necessity to play the rest of the scene; it was as though she had perfected her Lady Macbeth except for these lines she had to rehearse a final time before opening night. The footlights (somehow she had not noticed the footlights earlier, or they had been too far away) dimmed to a pale gray line which receded, and strangely suffused the eastern sky. She walked off, sure-footed despite the gloom, despite the unearthly quality of the surroundings, despite the terror which had run just below the surface of her mind till just a moment ago.
There was no backstage, no dressing rooms, no walls or doors, nothing but looming shapes and shadows which she stepped around. Instead of the firm boards, underfoot, she sank into packed sand; she was not surprised to find that the light on the horizon was dawn, or that the shapes around her were giant cacti, mesquite, thornbushes.
She walked sure-footed, despite the sand, knowing she was going in the right direction, undistributed by the strangest thing of all: that there was no barrier, no sharp translation, no jolting change from one world to another. She knew that in a matter of hours she would come to a highway. It was over; the holes in space and time were healing; either sealed already, or rapidly becoming so. In either case she knew she would come upon no more of them.
“Oh, Peggy,” she cried; “Oh Peggy dear.”
Her guilt did not make her wretched; the instant knowledge of it (instant? She had known it for years, lived with it daily. She had simply refused to see it) gave her, not absolution, but remoteness, as though it had long since been accounted for. Like a sentence commuted to time served. She had never played any role but Hesione Hadstone; she was a ham. How she had prided herself on the range between Lady Cicely and Lady Macbeth—what a foolish delusion. They were merely two facets of the ruthless, selfish, callous— Hesione.
Peggy, Catherine, Paul, Lila . . . Maurice.
“Oh God,” she said. “Maurice.”
For it was not Maurice who had been the monster. It was herself. The young Hesione, pretty and graceful (but not so pretty as Catherine), talented (everyone said so; even Catherine admitted it; what did talent matter to Catherine, so much more poised, attractive, and sensitive?), and envious. So envious of Catherine that jealousy burned into her bones. Sympathy did not mitigate her new clarity of judgment as she looked back on her youthful, untouched self (untouched? Was she today any different? It was not everyone else who was obsessed by sex, it was she; she was so aware of it that she saw it everywhere; not all the perfumes of Arabia could remove it from her consciousness; her aloofness and control were compulsive, like women who washed their hands a hundred times a day) tantalizing poor slow, stupid Maurice. Granted his wants were quick and brutish, still they represented love of a kind, perhaps the only kind he was capable of. (No; that wasn’t quite accurate, even as a supposition; a remnant of her self-righteousness dictated that thought; let it stand simply that Maurice’s lusts represented love of a kind.) What had her calculated chastity represented? If his panting pursuit had been so wicked, how was she to define her own part? Innocence compounding a felony? Or—what was the legal term?—practicing entrampment?
And Catherine? Oh, how superior, how smug she had felt toward Catherine. Poor, susceptible Catherine, who had recklessly yielded to Maurice’s importunities, and then been displaced and superseded, relegated to die abandoned role, who—in the face of all prudence—had been tempted again. Because she did not hoard herself with decent caution, but was vulnerable in a way Hesione never could be. Catherine had been incapable of judging Maurice; she could give or withhold, and she had chosen to give. Freely.
Why, marveled Hesione, not crushed but finally enlightened, I was the one who killed her. “Oh Catherine,” she said aloud. “How could you have been so patient?”
Filled with strange energy, she plodded on through the sand. “I never gave out love in my life,” she exclaimed, amazed. “Never.”
Maurice. Catherine. Peggy. Peggy . . .
Peggy had been such a cute baby. Such a declaration of independence from Maurice; from men, from sex. Such a justification of the higher, the nobler in her, to contrast with Maurice’s bestiality. And then Peggy had been merely cute; not beautiful, not brilliant, not talented. So she had been so tolerant, so understanding, so amused by Peggy. Forgive my inferior offspring, she had said in effect, my unremarkable daughter, my funny little child. Applaud my gentle wit as I substitute one vowel for another: Peggy—Puggy. When Maurice had proved useless (what had she done to make him useful, except to demonstrate her superiority to him?) she had worked to get things for the child: the clothes and the care. But she would have worked anyway; she had taken credit for self-sacrifice when she had offered up no self. No love.
It was the same for everyone; Paul, Lila, everyone. Paul was such a reasonable, understanding, undemanding husband—the antithesis of Maurice. Yet the two attitudes were only reactions to her own inviolability. She was untouched by Maurice’s demands; Paul made no demands because she was untouchable. She gave out no love because she had no love to give out.
The preacher had been right; the evil had become over-weighty, the world had turned over, ripping open the neat seams which had kept the present untouched by the past and one place distinct from another. And what was evil? Cruelty, self-righteousness, stupidity, insensitivity, yes—but in the end it was essentially lack of love. Her excursions had not been haphazard nor accidental; they were designed and pointed, induced for her particular benefit. The self-righteous persecution of Vanzetti, the playful savagery of the two musicians, the Nazi horrors, were of her making. The piles of children’s shoes were on her conscience.
For a moment she rebelled. Surely not? There were degrees, weren’t there, and didn’t infinite differences of degree produce a difference in kind?
Did
this absolve her? Was she about to introduce witnesses to her good character, or her excellent intentions, or her stupidity or ignorance? She accepted the guilt of the shoes.
And the other guilts. And all the other guilts.
One thing she had not understood fully till now; she had not been suffering punishment. You didn’t do, or fail to do, and then pay for it as casually as you put nickels in a parking meter. She had not been punished; she had been shown the protean face of evil and she had recognized it, because it was not strange to her.
The sun was up now; the desert would be blazing hot in an hour. It didn’t matter. The holes were closed for her and they were closing for everyone else as well. She guessed this meant no revolution in human nature, no substitution of the rule of love for the rule of greed. It only meant—she thought —that the balance had been momentarily righted, and good and evil stood, for an instant, level. It probably didn’t mean anyone would profit long or greatly, but perhaps all—even those who had not fallen through the holes—would be a little more aware, a little more tentative.
Walking through sand which seemed to have become firmer, she caught sight of cars on the highway ahead.
It wouldn’t take her more than fifteen or twenty minutes to reach it. She had no idea where she was. She might be a hundred or two hundred or five hundred miles from the hospital and Peggy and her chance, not to undo; what was done could not be undone, but to do anew and freshly. The distance didn’t matter; if she couldn’t begin today she would tomorrow. And there would be no faltering.
The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction Sixth Series Page 22