Текст книги "Woman on the Edge of Time"

Автор книги: Marge Piercy

Соавторы: Marge Piercy
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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

Nevertheless, gripping the counter she ordered the breakfast The waitress behind the counter gave her a quick disapproving glance, a once‑over of her hair and face and denim jacket.

“Where’s the bus station from here?” she asked, and the waitress mumbled an answer so quickly she could not follow and had to ask again.

“What’s the matter, you don’t speak English?”

But the woman with the white plastic purse took over. It was only ten or eleven blocks. The woman seemed shocked that she intended to walk, but patiently explained the directions.

The clock said eleven minutes after ten. The eggs arrived overcooked and the coffee bitter from sitting on the stove, but she ate everything, ate it slowly and gratefully. She ate everything one small bite at a time, down to the last crust of toast wiping up the last smear of egg on the platter, and even the little package that said it was grape jelly. Then she paid and ran out quickly, because she could not leave a tip.

She tried not to limp, nothing to call attention. She watched the street signs and counted the blocks. The bus station was obvious as soon as she saw it.

At the ticket counter she tried to figure out what to do. There were two different schedules for two different lines, and they didn’t have prices on them. Finally she had to ask questions. That was awkward, the young man behind the counter bored. She had to find out how far she could get toward New York as soon as possible on five dollars.

He was reading a book. She could not see the title. He wanted to get back to it and kept his finger stuck between pages while he talked to her. When he had to let go to get the schedules out, he was irritated. He stuck a pencil in. On the cover two naked women embraced while a man about eight feet tall dressed all in black leather cracked a whip around them. Why would anyone read a dirty book in a bus station, sitting behind the counter? Could he bring himself off back there? Would he go into the john? She felt embarrassed wondering such things as she looked into his blank young face, sallow under the fluorescent lights.

“Don’t you know where you want to go, lady?”

Finally she ended up with a ticket that would take her all the way to the Port Authority depot, on a bus leaving at twelve‑thirty. She sat down to wait. It was eleven‑eighteen. Someone had left a newspaper on a chair and she began to read it through, from the front page onward. Soon she would be in New York. Running up the street. Otis, first she’d try to reach Otis, Claud’s old friend. Then Dolly. She read on. She reached an article in the women’s section describing the regimen of Countess Rataouille, a beauty from a simple banking family of Park Avenue, Seal Harbor, Palm Beach, and Monterey, for remaining gorgeous forever, which involved performing isometric exercises, never taking hot baths above the waist, and rubbing fresh strawberries into the skin daily. As her mouth was watering with the thought of fresh strawberries, a shadow fell on her page and a grip took her arm.

“Could we see your identification, you.”

The young man whose dirty book she had interrupted had turned her in. By twelve‑thirty she was back in the hospital, on her ward.

THIRTEEN

“But you said I could room with Sybil!” Connie argued.

“That’s before you messed up,” Valente said firmly. “Listen, if the two of you had tried to pull that game on me, I’d have had you both in seclusion before you could yell Uncle. You wouldn’t fool me for five minutes, and don’t forget it.”

“How could you sign the permission?” Skip asked her as soon as Valente walked away. “They couldn’t make mesign!”

“You’re not twenty‑one. They didn’t need you to sign it.”

“They didn’t need you either. Your brother signed it. Why did you give in?”

Connie shrugged. “I was scared what they’d do to me at Rockover if I didn’t. I figured they had the permission anyhow. I want them to think I’ve given in.”

“Haven’t you?” Skip flounced away, down the wide hallway.

They had all been moved to the New York Neuro‑Psychiatric Institute in Washington Heights, to a ward on the eighth floor specially prepared for them by turning it into a secure locked ward. It was the roomiest and most amply furnished and outfitted ward she had ever been on. They shared double rooms–like the one she and Tina Ortiz had now, with a bed for each of them that even had a bedspread and their own window, although it wouldn’t open. Sybil was next door, with Miss Green. The men were on one side of the nursing station and the women on the other. In between was a big day room with a color television, card tables, even some easy chairs and a couple of sofas, with green carpeting on the floor. At the far end of the wing that held their ward, the doctors had their conference room and computer, their lab and offices. The patients fluttered around the first few days, exclaiming about their new quarters.

“This isn’t no jive loony bin,” Captain Cream said. “This is a Hilton!” Captain Cream was a light‑skinned numbers runner born in Trinidad, who believed he was a comic book hero. Even the doctors called him Captain. He was lean and fastidious and spoke with a lilt and grace that kept her from noticing much of the time that he was walleyed.

Sybil sniffed. “You can be sure it’s for their convenience and not ours! They’re important gentlemen! Even the laboratory mice must have nice clean cages.” Sybil had recovered some energy.

Captain Cream, Sybil, and Tina Ortiz stood gathered in the doorway with Connie to see what the new men’s attendant, Tony, was doing to Skip, bending over him with scissors. Skip’s fine brown ringlets were falling on white towels. “Alas, Delilah, you do me wrong!” Skip sang to Tony. Snip, snip. The hair tumbled. It looked as if he was being drafted. His big, curiously vulnerable‑looking skull showed gray. This too they would do to her in time, this too.

“And will I get a wig, Tony?”

“Only the women, punk,” Tony grunted. “Hold still, or I’ll cut your ear off.”

“Like Van Gogh. He was mad too. But he did it to himself. Why don’t you let me have a scissors so I can do it?” Skip made a half‑playful, half‑serious grab.

Tony clouted him in the chest, and Skip fell back coughing. “Stop trying to hold the doctors up.”

Snip, snip, past his left ear, coming around. Only one long cluster of curls clung to his cheek. Tony sliced through that and then swept up. When he returned with a razor, Skip stopped joking. He had been given no breakfast. Soon he would be taken away to a hospital near Columbia, where Redding and Morgan would drill a hole in his skull and insert their electrodes. Skip would return to them violated.

She stood with Tina and Alvin as he was carted out. His eyes were open but without expression. After the outer door had shut on him, the patients hung around, as if by staring at the door they might read something of what was happening.

“You like that kid, uh?” Tina asked her. Her new roommate was about her own age, with a long record of drug busts and commitments and disorderly conducts.

“He loaned me money to call mi sobrina, and he knew I couldn’t even pay him back.”

“He’s got it to loan. Easy to be nice if you can afford it, hey? But I guess he’s in plenty trouble now, like the rest of us.” Tina was Puerto Rican, born in the Bronx, skinny with only a little extra meat on her hips. She talked fast but her sentences often trailed away as if she did not expect to be listened to. She was scrappy and would not settle down to being a good patient. She never stopped hating the hospital. “Just one more way to get busted,” she said, glaring at their room. She was the first one on any newspaper that came into the ward, after the staff, although she would read only the first section, the news, muttering to herself, sneering as if she could not be fooled, “Crooks, big crooks!”

They went off together to visit Alice, who lay on her bed staring at the ceiling, as she did most of the time now. She looked ten years older, she looked her full age and then some, all the sass and vinegar bled from her long body.

“Hey, Alice, you know what them bums are trying to pull now?” Tina asked, trying to rouse her.

But Alice only shook her head. The black pageboy wig was stuck on her head crooked, and she did not straighten it. When it fell off, she did not replace it. When the attendant found it on the floor, she scolded Alice, telling her how ungrateful she was. Alice lay and blinked.

The only time Connie saw her look like her old self was when one of the doctors came to use her for a demonstration to an interested visitor. Then her eyes shone blood red and she sang long chains of bitter curses until the doctor pushed the button that shut her up. Now that Dr. Morgan had lost his fear of her, there was something ugly in his demonstrations. He particularly liked to stimulate the point that produced in Alice a sensual rush, until once she kissed his hand and told him he was good to her.

“I got to fool those wiseasses,” she told them, “or they going to stick more needles in. I just stringing them along.” But she did not sound as if she believed that. When she tried to fight back, the monitor turned off her rage and left her confused. Alice seemed closer to being mad than she ever had. She made up stories to account for what she did, because she literally did not know what she would do next. Yet she felt as if she were deciding. “You wait and see,” she said, winking blearily, “who come out on top in the end.”

“You ran away because you want to return to society,” Acker was saying to her, his square beard wagging on his chin. “But what you don’t understand is that’s exactly what we want to help you do!”

Ever since she had run away, she had been of particular interest to Acker. She had the feeling he was an uneasy fifth wheel to the project, the psychologist added for some kind of show. He made up reasons for what the others did in terms not exclusively medical. She did not understand more, but she saw his uneasiness, his slippery footing with the doctors. Even the junior partner, Morgan, tried to patronize him. Now Acker took an interest in her. He was proud he had got her to sign the permission forms, but he did not let up his pressure.

“What you don’t see, Connie, is that if it wasn’t for us, you’d face spending the rest of your life where we found you. Now, you don’t want that. Do you? He waited for an answer. He sat with his hands flexed on his spread knees.

As he seemed prepared to wait all day, she mumbled at last, “No, I don’t want to spend my life here. Do you?”

“I certainly wouldn’t. So, Connie, perhaps you can see we’re working for your benefit. After all, why should society care? You’ve proved you can’t live with others. They locked you away where you can’t harm others or yourself. Isn’t that so?”

“But I can be harmed here. Isn’t that so?” She tossed her head.

“You’re together enough to notice what happens to old patients, how they become acclimated to life in the hospital. After a while they can no longer function outside. It’s a secure life.”

“Maybe for you.”

“You know where your next meal is coming from. You have a bed, a roof over your head. All right, you say you don’t want that security. You want to go back to society.”

“I want to go back to my life!”

“This isn’t your life? This admission isn’t the first for you. I think this is likely to be your life for some years to come if we don’t help you. Instead of just warehousing you, we’re prepared to help you. This is the first time in your life you’ve ever had quality medical attention. The affluent hire psychiatrists, but you’ve never had real treatment. We want you to function again, but without risk of committing those out‑of‑control acts. Without danger of your attacking some child again, or some other person near and dear to you.”

Connie ground her teeth. “Any person not in a wheelchair can hurt somebody. Haven’t you ever hit anybody? Ever?”

“Connie, you’re resisting. You’re the patient. You know why you’re here. The more you resist, the more you punish yourself. Because when you fight us, we can’t help you.”

The orderlies brought Skip back from his two days off the ward. Acker scurried off to see the results, leaving her in peace for a while.

“Think of the stories of heroic prisoners who tried again and again to escape,” Luciente said, clapping her on the back heartily. “One defeat is nothing. You must keep on the lookout for other holes in their security.”

“If only I could get out for a weekend furlough! I know I could get away from Dolly easy. Even Luis would have to sleep sometimes.”

“Why not? But try! You’re important to us, we want you to survive and break out. One attempt, one failure–you have to take that for granted. What works the first time? Poof! If I’m stiffing on a task, I may fail twenty, thirty times to fix the proper gene balance. Each time I neglect some crucial factor. But finally it blossoms! So too you must work at escape. Now you’re stronger for the exercise and your feet will heal tougher.”

“But they’ve taken my money away. They watch me all the time. Every time I go near the door, they watch me.”

“They have a lot to do besides watch you. You have only to watch them. Keep up your courage.”

“Luciente, mercy! Easy. I’m flat on my back. You don’t understand. Never in your life have you been helpless–under somebody’s heel. You never lived where your enemies held power over you, power to run your life or wipe it out. You can’t understand. That’s how come you stand there feeding me empty slogans!”

Luciente bowed her head. “You crit me justly, Connie. Forgive me. I’ll try to see your situation more clearly and make less loud noises in your ears.”

When they came to play with Skip, the doctors were not satisfied. The violence‑triggering electrodes did not cause him to try to attack them, as Alice had. Instead he turned from them and drove his fist into the wall. He pounded his head on the wall and before the attendants could force him down, blood oozed from the bandage.

“That won’t do!” Dr. Argent frowned, passing his hand lightly over his silvery locks. “Don’t bring any visiting firemen in to inspect this one. Hmmmm.” Ever the administrator, whenever anything went wrong he withdrew from the other two, his shoulders, his back seeming to disdain them.

“Suicide attempts are what we started with. We could be playing into the hands of a masochist, eh?” Dr. Redding glanced sideways at Dr. Argent, trying to enlist him in his little joke. “Uh, we’ll discuss the case at staff today. Other procedures may be indicated.”

Dr. Argent linked his hands behind his back and rocked on the balls of his feet. “Not a bad idea. Won’t do to leave him around in this condition. The feds will be by next week for a tour. If we want our grant renewed, we’d better be tidy and shipshape.”

Dr. Morgan perked up. “Surgical procedures?”

Skip asked loudly, “You going to take these out?”

“If our tests prove that’s best for your condition, sonny, maybe so,” Dr. Redding said. “We’ll do what’s best.”

“Man, you must think I’m really crazy, to believe that.”

As they turned to leave, Connie fled from her post at the door to sit in the day room. As the doctors and Acker passed, they were arguing amiably among themselves.

“Lots of talent in your field are working to retrain sexual inversion with electroshock keyed to slides and films,” Redding was saying to Acker. “But the recidivism rate isn’t promising. If we could cure inversion surgically, we’d open up a whole new area.”

“Let’s not get too far off the track, gentlemen,” Dr. Argent said. “We can run some tests, but our major concern is violence. Our funding is specific. Within those perimeters, of course, we have some latitude to fool around.”

“Six to eight thousand for an operation as against hundreds of thousands to keep an invert under treatment or restraint for decades. You can’t tell me that’s not cost‑effective.” Dr. Redding risked touching Dr. Argent’s shoulder companionably. “Dear to the heart of taxpayers and public officials alike. If the crime‑in‑the‑streets money dries up, it’s something to keep in mind.”

Dr. Argent looked at the hand. “I want results on this one, Doctor”That formal address cut like a blade. “I’m an old man. It’s now or never. For your sake, it had better be now.”

Skip was taken to the other hospital again. When he was brought back, they had removed the electrodes but they had done something else. They had coagulated part of his limbic brain, whatever that was. Amygdalotomy was the word they used. The next day she went to see him. He looked terrible, his face sagging. His eyes were dull and bloodshot.

“Why do you want to know how I am? What’s it to you?”

“Don’t you remember me, Skip? I’m Connie. Your friend. You gave me money to call my niece.”

“Some give and some take. Some take everything.”

“Does it hurt? Your head?”

“They say if you lose a leg, if they cut it off–what they call a resection, they have names for everything–the leg goes on hurting.”

“At least they don’t play games with you, like they do with Alice.”

“Different games.”

“What are you scared they’ll do now?”

“Why should I be scared? Who says I’m scared? You’ll see.”

“I didn’t mean it in a bad way, Skip.” She touched his hand.

He jerked back as if she had burned it. “Don’t try to get around me. Now I know better. Give and take, and then it’s all taken.”

Jackrabbit was showing her a bunch of … what? Dream images? Sculptures in light? Shapes that reshaped themselves into other shapes? She felt nervous looking at them with the person who made them, the artist, right there making it happen. She was afraid she wouldn’t seem appreciative or wouldn’t say the right things or look the right way, and he’d think she was stupid. But there at her elbow was Luciente, eating white grapes from a woven basket and grunting rough enjoyment as if it were just a TV program. If she tried to think about what the images were supposed to mean, she felt miserable. But if she looked with her eyes open and let them happen to her, she could not help getting drawn in.

The holi he was showing now had no words, no story, unlike the one he’d done with Bolivar. It was all images having something to do with the ocean and with sex and with power–not power over people, but natural power, energy. Boundaries dissolving. The sea rising, smashing into the land. Under a clear cold blue sky a sea lashed itself into foam and sprang at the shore. Waves with teeth that glinted and hair that tangled and tossed roiled over itself. Wave breaking over wave showed dark bellies arching before they crashed down in froth and slid on the sand spent and hissed dribbling back.

Jackrabbit’s workshop stood near the mill, near enough to hear the wheel turning. There the river ground grains and corn and operated a series of pumps. Four times a day a tidal clock swung the wheel mechanism about so that it was always fixed correctly in the flow of waters. When Jackrabbit did not opaque the window and use only the sliding skylight, ripples danced on his high ceiling. Always, he told her, he could hear the mill wheel, the waves slapping the shore just underneath. The workshop was built out some feet over the river, and the side facing the water had a narrow porch.

“Jackrabbit already has two students,” Luciente said, leaning on the railing outside the open door while Connie looked through the drawings and prints Jackrabbit started to show her next.

“Deborah and Orion aren’t pleased I’m going on defense. They’ve been slinging about it all week,” Jackrabbit complained, knotting his hand in his curly hair.

“Rough!” Luciente said flatly. “They knew when they chose you you hadn’t fulfilled defense. They didn’t have to wait for you as teacher. Let them do service work for sixmonth.”

“Their slinging saddens me,” Jackrabbit said, idly trying to tickle Connie in the ribs as she turned over the stiff sheets. “Rhythm of my life crosscutting rhythms of theirs. They feel they’re growing and want to fly faster.”

“Can’t you work alone? You didn’t always study with a teacher.” Luciente kicked off her shoes and sat with her bare feet hanging off the porch, but she could not quite reach the water.

“Why do you have to go on defense?” Connie turned from the pages. “I can’t look anymore. I’m sorry–I just can’t take more in.”

“But I have to get defending out of the way before I start mothering. It’d be stupid to do it the other way, I grasp that.”

“Your society doesn’t think that much of art and artists and all that, do you?” Connie looked away from the radiant male nude that hung on the far wall, along with twenty other paintings, drawings, prints, whatever. A naked male body hung like that–doubly hung–embarrassed her. It did not seem like something she should stare at, yet the colors glowed, the flesh shone from within. She kept glancing at it, nervously, from the corner of her eye. It was beautiful when it should not have been–like Martin, her first husband. She could not imagine him permitting anyone to paint him that way, yet if someone with talent had, his flesh would have shone so. It was neither Jackrabbit nor Bolivar. Unless Bolivar seven years younger with a bushy beard?

Luciente turned, propped her back against a post of the railing. “Why do you say that, Connie love? The great majority of us pursue some art, and sometimes more than one.”

“But that’s like amateur stuff. I mean, real artists. Like Jackrabbit. I don’t know anything, but I can see it’s for real. Yet he still has to work in the fields and go to the army and cook and all that.”

Luciente grinned “But I myself am a real geneticist and I have to defend and dig potatoes and cook and all that. I also eat and make political choices and rely on those in arms to defend me–as does Jackrabbit. Zo?”

“I comprend,” Jackrabbit said with an airy wave. “In Connie’s time it was thought some people who were good at some things, like a couple of the arts and sciences, should do nothing else.”

“That must have made them a little stupid,” Luciente said. “A little simple–you grasp? And self‑important!”

“Such people tended to feel that other work demeaned their physics or sculpture or whatever. Isn’t that so, Connie?” He ran his fingers along her arm caressingly.

She pulled her arm away, embarrassed again. “Well, if a person can do something … important, why should they chop onions and pick caterpillars off tomato plants?”

“Eating isn’t important?” Luciente scowled with amazement.

“Connie, we think art isproduction. We think making a painting is as real as growing a peach or making diving gear. No more real, no less real. It’s useful and good on a different level, but it’s production. If that’s the work I want to do, I don’t have to pass a test or find a patron. But I still have family duties, political duties, social duties, like every other lug. How not?”

“Everybody? What about Bolivar? He’s always traveling.”

“Bolivar does it all in a couple of lumps. At spring planting, person does the year’s quota and then some! Does two solid weeks of preserving in August or September.”

“But going on defense–isn’t it dangerous?”

They both laughed together, that merry belly laughter. “How not?” Luciente asked. “The enemy is few but determined. Once they ran this whole world, they had power as no one, even the Roman emperors, and riches drained from everywhere. Now they have the power to exterminate us and we to exterminate them. They have such a limited base–the moon, Antarctica, the space platforms–for a population mostly of androids, robots, cybernauts, partially automated humans, that the war is one of attrition and small actions in the disputed areas, raids almost anyplace. We live with it. It’s the tag end. We fear them, but we’ve prevailed so far and we believe we’ll win … if history is not reversed. That is, the past is a disputed area.”

“I don’t understand! And it makes me dizzy! But if Jackrabbit goes in the army, he could get killed. Aren’t some people worth sparing?”

“Show me someone who isn’t,” Luciente said. “Who isn’t precious to self? How could we decide who to spend and who to save?”

“Risk, danger … we don’t find them evil,” Jackrabbit said slowly. “I don’t twitter to go. I fasure don’t want to give back. But I don’t want to be ignorant. The creature inside a shell is a soft slug, like a worm. Who should protect me? Bolivar? Luciente? Bee? Hawk? Who’ll stand between me and death, me and sickness, me and drowning? I must serve the talent that uses me, the energy that flows through me, but I mustn’t make others serve me. Don’t you see the difference?”

“Won’t you miss him? You must mind his going?” she asked Luciente.

“Mind? How not? I mind too we’re still at war. I mind that we can’t enjoy peace and push all energies into what people need and want. I’ll miss Jackrabbit fasure. And I think it grossly unfair that I should be missing first Bee and then Jackrabbit in one year … .” Luciente looked at Jackrabbit, her eyes liquid and somber. Then her face lightened. “But I’m excited about Jackrabbit mothering. I’m a kidbinder. I’ll mother away too … .” Luciente turned to stare at the rush of the waters. “Deborah and Orion must decide if they’re going to go on working here alone this sixmonth without you, or if we should close your workshop till you get back.”

“They have a week yet to decide.” Jackrabbit took Connie’s hand. “Why are you shy with me? What do I do that tightens you?”

“Nothing!” She glared at Luciente in appeal.

“Then why do you tug your hand away?”

“Why do you want to …hold it?”

Jackrabbit smiled. “When I come back from defense I’ll be running mature. Then you won’t be shy with me. Bee is nice, but I’m just as nice.” He made an exaggerated face of flirtation, batting his eyes. “Don’t you feel sorry for me, exiled for six‑month? Don’t you want to comfort me?”

“Don’t tease Connie so.” Luciente made a fist at him. “You promised not to tease Connie!”

“Don’t you like to be teased? At least a little?”

“When you’re a mother,” Connie said, laughing for the first time in days, “then you can tease me.”

“If you experienced a pain in your abdominal region, if it was diagnosed as appendicitis, you might be afraid of the operation, but you wouldn’t resist it. You wouldn’t attempt to leave the hospital, because you’d know that you were sick and needed help.” Acker had cornered her again in the day room, where she had been watching a serial about a lawyer. Behind Acker’s back, Tina made faces to Connie to give support. “Now, you can’t see your brain. But you can see the output from the EEG machine. You can’t read it, because you aren’t trained, but your doctors can. You can’t see your appendix either. But you accept the expert’s opinion in either case, or condemn yourself to getting sicker and sicker.”

“Except for not getting exercise and lousy food and those meds that knock me out, I’m fine. I walked twenty miles, didn’t I?”

“And came back with abscesses on your feet. You can see those. But you can’t see abscesses in your brain, so to speak. Connie, you’re going to thank us. Because thanks to modern medical science, you’re not condemned to spend your life in a psychiatric unit.”

“Look, I guess it’s cheaper to keep me on welfare than in here. But I’ll go home tomorrow. I’ll kill myself trying to get work. I promise! I’ll scrub floors. I don’t care anymore. I’d rather do housework for white ladies than be in here!”

“Of course. And we want you to be able to return to useful work, to return to society safely–safely for you and for others. But there’s the rub, Connie. No one can trust you. If you had typhoid fever, you wouldn’t expect us to let you march out the door untreated and go walking through the streets of Manhattan freely infecting others. Now would you?” Acker waited, beaming, his hands on his slightly spread knees. Behind him, Tina was miming a gruesome death.

“I don’t think I got TB or typhoid fever–”

“I was speaking by comparison.”

“I understand that!” How stupid he thought she was! “But I don’t believe I’m sick. Like you, I’ve done things I regret and things I don’t regret. Since I’m poor, I can’t hire lawyers to make things come out right for me when I get across the law.”

“Always bad luck. Always a hard‑luck story. You haven’t learned a thing, to listen to you. But I think you know better, Connie, and you’re simply resisting. When you look at your situation clearly, instead of through the eyes of irrational fear, you’ll see we’re your only real friends … . Look at Skip. I think he’s on the road to recovery. His attitude has changed since his operation. He’s trying, Connie. And that trying is going to pay off, you wait and see. He’ll be back in society soon, a productive individual, healed of his illnesses, ready to make a life for himself.”

Tina was playing a violin and dropped her hands quickly as he turned to leave.

Connie brooded over what he had said about Skip. It was true, Skip had changed. He parroted back whatever they said to him; he told them he was grateful. When they took him out and tested him with homosexual photographs, he had no what they called negative reactions. Meaning he didn’t get a hard‑on. He told her he felt dead inside. They were pleased with him; they were going to write him up for a medical journal.

Skip wanted to get out. They promised he would. She wondered. Would they really let him out of their clutches? His bandages were off now and his hair was beginning to grow back. He walked around the ward, helping the attendants. He was playing the game. It was still a game, she sensed that; there was a remnant of strong will gone cold at the core pushing him. She had tried to escape in her way, he was trying in his way, with something gutted in him. Something beautiful and quick was burned out. It hurt her to watch him. Because he was too beautiful and tempted them, they had fixed him. He moved differently: clumsily. It was as if he had finally agreed to imitate the doctors’ coarse, clumsy masculinity for a time, but it was mastery with them and humility with him. He moved like a robot not expertly welded. Yet he was no robot, whatever they thought they had done. She could feel the will burning in him, a will to burst free.