Bradbury, Ray - SSC 09 (10 page)

 
          
She
lay listening to her heart, critically.

 
          
Thud and a thud and a thud.
Pause.
Thu d
and a thud and a thud.
Pause.

 
          
What
if it should stop while she was listening?

 
          
There!

 
          
Silence
inside her.

 
          
“Joseph!”

 
          
She
leaped up. She grabbed at her breasts as if to squeeze, to pump to start the
silent heart again!

 
          
It
opened in her, closed, rattled and beat nervously, twenty rapid, shot-like
times!

 
          
She
sank on to the bed. What if it should stop again and not start? What would she
think? What would there be to do? She’d die of fright, that’s what. A joke; it
was very humorous. Die of fright if you heard your heart stop. She would have
to listen to it, keep it beating. She wanted to go home and see Lila and buy
the books and dance again and walk in
Central Park
and—listen—

 
          
Thud and a thud and a thud.
Pause.

 
          
Joseph
knocked on the door. Joseph knocked on the door and the car was not repaired
and there would be another night, and Joseph did not shave and each little hair
was perfect on his chin, and the magazine shops were closed and there were no
more magazines, and they ate supper, a little bit anyway for her, and he went
out in the evening to walk in the town.

 
          
She
sat once more in the chair and slow erections of hair rose as if a magnet were
passed over her neck. She was very weak and could not move from the chair, and
she had no body, she was only a heart-beat, a huge pulsation of warmth and ache
between four walls of the room. Her eyes were hot and pregnant, swollen with
child of terror behind the bellied, tautened lids.

 
          
Deeply
inside herself, she felt the first little cog slip. Another night, another
night, another night, she thought. And this will be longer than the last. The
first little cog slipped, the pendulum missed a stroke.
Followed
by the second and third interrelated cogs.
The cogs
interlocked,
a small with a little larger one, the little larger one with a bit larger one,
the bit larger one with a large one, the large one with a huge one, the huge
one with an immense one, the immense one with a titanic
one. . . .

 
          
A
red ganglion, no bigger than a scarlet thread, snapped and quivered; a nerve,
no greater than a red linen fiber twisted. Deep in her one little
mech
was gone and the entire machine, imbalanced, was about
to steadily shake itself to bits.

 
          
She
didn’t fight it. She let it quake and terrorize her and knock the sweat off her
brow and jolt down her spine and flood her mouth with horrible wine. She felt
as if a broken gyro tilted now this way, now that and blundered and trembled
and whined in her. The color fell from her face like light leaving a
clicked-off bulb, the crystal cheeks of the bulb vessel showing veins and
filaments all colorless. . . .

 
          
Joseph
was in the room, he had come in, but she didn’t even hear him. He was in the
room but it made no difference, he changed nothing with his coming. He was
getting ready for bed and said nothing as he moved about and she said nothing
but fell into the bed while he moved around in a smoke-filled space beyond her
and once he spoke but she didn’t hear him.

 
          
She
timed it. Every five minutes she looked at her watch and the watch shook and
time shook and the five fingers were fifteen moving, reassembling into five.
The shaking never stopped. She called for water. She turned and turned upon the
bed. The wind blew outside, cocking the lights and spilling bursts of
illumination that hit buildings glancing sidelong blows, causing windows to
glitter like opened eyes and shut swiftly as the light tilted in yet another
direction. Downstairs, all was quiet after the
dinner,
no sounds came up into their silent room. He handed her a water glass.

 
          
“I’m
cold, Joseph,” she said, lying deep in folds of cover.

 
          
“You’re
all right,” he said.

 
          
“No,
I’m not. I’m not well. I’m afraid.”

 
          
“There’s
nothing to be afraid of.”

 
          
“I
want to get on the train for the
United States
.”

 
          
“There’s
a train in Leon, but none here,” he said, lighting a new cigarette.

 
          
“Let’s
drive there.”

 
          
“In
these taxis, with these drivers, and leave our car here?”

 
          
“Yes.
I want to go.”

 
          
“You’ll
be all right in the morning.”

 
          
“I
know I won’t be. I’m not well.”

 
          
He
said, “It would cost hundreds of dollars to have the car shipped home.”

 
          
“I
don’t care. I have two hundred dollars in the bank home. I’ll pay for it. But,
please, let’s go home.”

 
          
“When
the sun shines tomorrow you’ll feel better, it’s just that the sun’s gone now.”

 
          
“Yes,
the
sun’s
gone and the wind’s blowing,” she whispered,
closing her eyes, turning her head, listening.
“Oh, what a
lonely wind.
Mexico
’s a strange land. All the jungles and
deserts and lonely stretches, and here and there a little town, like this, with
a few lights burning you could put out with a snap of your
fingers
.
 . .”

 
          
“It’s
a pretty big country,” he said.

 
          
“Don’t
these people ever get lonely?”

 
          
“They’re
used to it this way.”

 
          
“Don’t
they get afraid, then?”

 
          
“They
have a religion for that.”

 
          
“I
wish
I
had a religion.”

 
          
“The
minute you get a religion you stop thinking,” he said. “Believe in one thing
too much and you have no room for new ideas.”

 
          
“Tonight,”
she said, faintly. “I’d like nothing more than to have no more room for new
ideas, to stop thinking, to believe in one thing so much it leaves me no time
to be afraid.”

 
          
“You’re
not afraid,” he said.

 
          
“If
I had a religion,” she said, ignoring him, “I’d have a lever with which to lift
myself. But I haven’t a lever now and I don’t know how to lift myself.”

 
          
“Oh,
for God’s—” he mumbled to himself, sitting down.

 
          
“I
used to have a religion,” she said.

 
          
“Baptist.”

 
          
“No,
that was when I was twelve. I got over that. I mean—
later.
”

 
          
“You
never told me.”

 
          
“You
should have known,” she said.

 
          
“What
religion? Plaster saints in the sacristy? Any special
special
saint you liked to tell your beads to?”

 
          
“Yes.”

 
          
“And
did he answer your prayers?”

 
          
“For a little while.
Lately, no, never.
Never any more.
Not for years now. But I keep
praying.”

 
          
“Which
saint is this?”

 
          
“
Saint Joseph
.”

 
          
“
Saint Joseph
.” He got up and poured himself a glass of
water from the glass pitcher, and it was a lonely trickling sound in the room.
“My name.”

 
          
“Coincidence,”
she said.

 
          
They
looked at one another for a few moments.

 
          
He
looked away. “Plaster saints,” he said, drinking the water down.

 
          
After
a while she said, “Joseph?” He said, “Yes?” and she said, “Come hold my hand, will
you?” “Women,” he sighed. He came and held her hand. After a minute she drew
her hand away, hid it under the blanket, leaving his hand empty behind. With
her eyes closed she
trembled
the words, “Never mind.
It’s not as nice as I can imagine it. It’s really nice the way I can make you
hold my hand in my mind.” “Gods,” he said, and went into the bathroom. She
turned off the light. Only the small crack of light under the bathroom door
showed. She listened to her heart. It beat one hundred and fifty times a
minute, steadily, and the little whining tremor was still in her marrow, as if
each bone of her body had a blue-bottle fly imprisoned in it, hovering,
buzzing, shaking, quivering deep, deep, deep. Her eyes reversed into herself,
to watch the secret heart of herself pounding itself to pieces against the side
of her chest.

 
          
Water
ran in the bathroom. She heard him washing his teeth.

 
          
“Joseph!”

 
          
“Yes,”
he said, behind the shut door.

 
          
“Come
here.”

 
          
“What
do you want?”

 
          
“I
want you to promise me something, please, oh, please.”

 
          
“What
is it?”

 
          
“Open
the door, first.”

 
          
“What
is
it?” he demanded, behind the
closed door.

 
          
“Promise
me,” she said, and stopped.

 
          
“Promise
you what?” he asked, after a long pause.

 
          
“Promise
me,” she said, and couldn’t go on. She lay there. He said nothing. She heard
the watch and her heart pounding together. A lantern creaked on the hotel
exterior. “Promise me, if anything—happens,” she heard herself say, muffled and
paralyzed, as if she were on one of the surrounding hills talking at him from
the distance, “—if anything happens to me, you won’t let me be buried here in
the graveyard over those terrible catacombs!”

 
          
“Don’t
be foolish,” he said, behind the door.

 
          
“Promise
me?” she
said,
eyes wide in the dark.

 
          
“Of all the foolish things to talk about.”

 
          
“Promise,
please
promise?”

 
          
“You’ll
be all right in the morning,” he said.

 
          
“Promise
so I can sleep. I can sleep if only you’d say you wouldn’t let me be put there.
I don’t want to be put there.”