"In any case," I said, "I've felt for some time that until I see through My Ladyship I can't be sure I understand anyone, myself included. That's the only thing I believed last spring that I still believe."
"I see your point," Dr. Sear said. "I may question your definition of the term, but I certainly agree with the principle."
"If you'll excuse me, then…" I smiled. "I'm going to try to learn all there is to know about My Ladyship."
He opened and closed his hands and admitted he'd like nothing better than to watch us from the Observation Room, but acceded to Greene's veto of that idea. He could not refrain from pointing out, however, that the Treatment Room was soundproof; that if Anastasia had truly become her old obliging self again, one could do what one pleased with her; but that a closet near the couch was stocked with manacles, whips, and other instruments of sportive interrogation should I need or desire them.
"Now you quit that," Greene scolded. But he bade me anxiously to be careful for though he was sure I'd never step out of line, take-advantage-of-the-weaker-sexwise, we would be durned if a floozy like Lacey couldn't lead The Living Sakhyan Himself astray — look what she'd done to him behind the Old Chancellor's Mansion! I promised to keep both eyes open, reminded Dr. Sear that I sought merely illumination, not gratification of any appetite, normal or abnormal, and went into the Treatment Room, closing the door behind me.
Anastasia sat half-turned on the leathern couch, hiding her face in its arm and her own. I sat down to apologize for any hurt I'd done her feelings unintentionally; but as soon as I touched her hip in a conciliatory way, she flung herself upon me and wailed into my chest that she was the unhappiest woman on campus, and wished herself passed and gone.
I was freshly confounded. "Then you aren't angry at me for teasing you about being sterile? It was thoughtless."
She sniffled into my jail-coat that she knew I hadn't meant to be tactless, and that anyhow her infertility had been attested by Dr. Sear to be psychological rather than physiological, and thus perhaps not a permanent condition. She drew back to look at me, blushing and grave. "Human women don't have heats, You know, George — I remember Maurice telling You something silly about that at the Powerhouse — but we're supposed to have orgasms, and for some reason I don't. Kennard says there might be a connection between that and not having babies."
This seemed doubtful to me, since the fertilest and most amorous does in the herd, to my knowledge, were strangers to the phenomenon she described: wag their pretty tails they might to call for love, and hunch some seconds after service (maiden goatlings in particular) if the buck was strong; but of "transports" and "climaxes" they knew nothing, I was certain. Mary Appenzeller, to cite but one example, an infallible breeder, was inclined to munch hay calmly even when topped by Brickett Ranunculus himself! As for infertility, there had been few cases of it in the barns that could not be "cured" by two dessertspoonfuls of soda dissolved in a liter of warm water and administered vaginally prior to mating, to neutralize uterine acidity — and I would have told Anastasia so forthwith, but I had come to learn, not to teach.
"Why are you unhappy, then?" I asked her. "What do you want to be dead for? If there's nothing wrong with your organs you'll surely be in kid one of these terms, by somebody…"
"George…" She drew the name out protestingly, and seemed about to weep again. To forestall her I acknowledged the truth of what she'd charged earlier — that with regard to human ladies, at least, I understood nothing. I asked her to remedy my ignorance with plain statements.
"Is there anything you have to do this afternoon? Dr. Sear's closed the office."
She glanced apprehensively at the one-way mirror. I assured her that no one was watching, and wondered why she cared, since we were only talking.
"Your mother wants to be home when Uncle Reg arrives," she said. "But that won't be until dinnertime."
"Then I'm going to get to know you," I said. "Inside out, in every way. Even if it takes the rest of the afternoon."
Her eyes doubted. "I've told You my whole flunkèd past, George: all the terrible things I've done thinking they were right. You know as much about me as I do."
"I don't know why you wish you were dead," I observed. "Stoker isn't cruel to you any more. And he could inseminate you artificially if you can't conceive in the normal way. Out in the barns, we — "
She shook her head. "I don't want to have a baby! Not by him. George…" Her expression was awed. "There's something wrong with my marriage."
Recalling that Stoker had expressed a similar apprehension, I asked her what might be their trouble.
"I don't really love my husband!" she said, as if frightened by her own candor. And then all reticence left her; in a tearful rush she confessed herself more flunkèd than I supposed. Her lack of love for her husband, she declared, was not new, and had nothing to do with his pleasure in seeing her serviced by other men, not to mention women, dogs, inanimate objects, and Dr. Eierkopf's eggs, Grade-A Large; the truth was, she had never loved him; indeed, she feared she'd never loved anyone — - male, female, or whatever. Of all Bray's Certifications, she felt hers to be the falsest, for though she most certainly had sympathized with her classmates and done her utmost to gratify their needs, loved them she had never, she knew now. And the proof of it was that while she'd never said "no" (except since my spring-term directive), she'd never said "yes," either. With her sex, perhaps, but not with her heart of hearts.
"That's very interesting," I said. "I think I'm getting to know you better already." What she said fit nicely too with my recent advice to her, I pointed out: saying yes to her classmates was, in effect, what I meant by actively servicing rather than passively receiving them.
"You don't understand!" she wailed. "How can I say it? I'm not supposed to have to say it!"
I frowned. "Say what, Anastasia? If I don't understand, teach me."
She closed her eyes and pounded the couch-cushion with one fist. "Why do You think I see these things about myself now, and never did before?"
I admitted that I hadn't any idea, unless it was that my mistaken first counsel to her and Stoker had led her to see that his abuses had nothing to do with her want of feeling for him.
"No, You idiot!" She gasped at her outcry, then wept freely and pounded the cushion with both fists. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry! Oh, Founder, You of all people… I can't say any more…"
"Now listen here, Anastasia," I said; "I'm a little tired of all this mystery. I'm not the Grand Tutor, but — "
"You are, George!"
I shook my head firmly. "I'm not; that's almost certain. But either way, I want you to take my advice and assert yourself. If I'm not the Grand Tutor, then what I tell you now is right because it's the opposite of what I said before, when I thought I was; if I am (which I doubt), then it's right because I am. You must assert yourself."