‘I am his judgment,’ he said, wondering at the archaic sound of his words, gauging the distance between them.
Otille blinked, alert again, tipped her head to one side and said, ‘No, Donnell.’ Her left hand, which had been shielded behind her, flashed up and down so quickly that he did not realize she held a knife until he saw the hilt standing out from his chest. A gold hand was carved gripping it. The blade had struck his collarbone dead on, deflected upward, and stuck; she tried to pull it out and stab once more, but her fingers slipped off the hilt as he staggered back.
Angry at his carelessness, he plucked it out and threw it into a far corner. The wound was shallow, seeping blood. ‘That was your last chance,’ he said. ‘And I don’t even think you wanted to take it.’
She pressed against the wall, her head drooping onto her shoulder in a half swoon, her eyelids fluttering, helpless; but he could not lift his hand to strike. For the moment she seemed fragile, lovely, a creature deserving a merciful judgment, involved in this tortuous nightmare through no fault of her own. Seeing his hesitation, she hurled herself toward the door; he dove after her, clutching an ankle and dragging her down. He scrambled to his feet, still hesitant. His cold and calculating mood had fled, and he was not sure he could do it. One second she was a monster or a pitiful madwoman, the next a lady frail as alabaster or a little girl, as if she were inhabited by a legion of lost souls not all of whom merited death. And now she stared at him, another soul duly incarnated, this one displaying the sulky pout of adolescence, ignorant and sexuaclass="underline" a black-eyed child with pretty breasts and a dirt-smeared belly. A trickle of sweat crawled into the tuck of skin between her thigh and abdomen. He was bizarrely attracted, then disgusted; he stepped around her and opened the first door of the Replacement Room.
‘Go on in,’ he said. “This is the way out.’
Stupefied, she pushed herself up onto an elbow, gazing into the dimly lit passage, her head wobbling.
‘You can’t hush up what’s happened, Otille. Not this time. You’re too far gone to deal with it. And you know what they’ll do? They’ll lock you up somewhere a thousand miles from Maravillosa, in a room with iron bars on the windows and a bed with leather cuffs and leg straps, and a mirror that won’t break no matter how hard you hit it, and a blazing light bulb hung so high you can’t reach it even if you stand on a chair and jump. And all you’ll hear at night will be muffled screams and scurrying footsteps.’
There was no indication that she heard him. She continued to gaze into the room, her head swaying back and forth, lids drooping, as if the sight were making her very, very sleepy.
‘And in the day, maybe, if you don’t mess the floor or scream too much or spit out your medication, they’ll let you into a big sunlit room, the sun shafting down from high windows so bright the light seems to be buzzing inside your ears and melting the glass and glowing in the cracks. And there’ll be other women wearing the same starched gray shift as you, and their faces will be the same as yours, dulled and lined and depressed about something they just can’t get straight, gnawing their fingers, talking to the cockroaches, shrieking and having to be restrained. Sometimes they’ll wander silent as dust around the room, the loony housewives and the mad nuns and the witchy crone who eats cigarette butts and dribbles ash. And there you’ll be forever, Otille, because they’ll never turn you loose.’
Otille got to her feet, shrinking from the room but unable to tear her eyes off it.
‘They’ll stuff you with pills that turn the air to shadowy water, put larvae in your food that uncurl and breed in your guts, give you shots to make you crazier. Electro-shock. Maybe they’ll cut out part of your brain. Why not? No one will be using it, and nobody will care. The doctors and lawyers will grow gray-haired and fat spending your fortune, and you’ll just sit there under your light bulb trying to remember what you were thinking. And in the end, Otille, you’ll be old. Old and dim and sexless with one sodden black thought flapping around inside your skull like a sick bat.’
Without any fuss Otille took a stroll into the room. She ran her eye along the walls, her attention held briefly by something near the ceiling. The calmness of her inspection was horrifying, as if she were checking a gas chamber for leaks prior to consigning her mortality to it. Then she turned, her slack features firming to a look of fearful comprehension, and darted at him.
The attack caught him off guard. He tripped and landed on his back, and she was all over him. Kneeing, biting, scratching. She had the strength of madness, and he was hard put to throw her off and climb to his feet. As she circled, looking for an opening, it seemed to him a wild animal had become tangled in her robe. Her eyes were holes punched through onto a starless night; her breath was hoarse and creaky. Every nerve in her face was jumping, making it look as though she were shedding her skin. She rushed him again. Wary of her strength, he sidestepped and hit her in the ribs. The bones gave, and she reeled against the wall. He aimed a blow at her head, but she ducked; his fist impacted a carved trunk, and ebony splinters flew. Panting, she backed away. She stroked her broken ribs and hissed, appearing to derive pleasure from the wound. Then she let out a feral scream and threw herself at him. This time he drew her into a bear hug, and she accepted the embrace. Her hands locked in his hair, her legs wrapped around his thigh, and she sank her teeth into his shoulder, tearing at his tendon strings. He yanked her head back by the hair. Blood was smeared over her mouth, and she spat something -something that oozed down his cheek, something he realized was a scrap of his flesh - and tried to shake free. He took a couple of turns of her hair around his wrist, pried a leg loose, walked over to the door of the Replaceable Room and slammed her against the wall. She lay stunned and moaning, her hair splayed out beneath her head like a crushed spider.
‘Oh, God. Donnell,’ she said weakly. She reached out to him, and he squatted beside her, taking her hand.
He should finish her, he thought; it would be the kindest thing. But she had regained her humanity, her beauty, and he could not. From the angle of her hips, he judged her back was broken; she did not appear to be in pain, though - only disoriented. She whispered, and he bent close. Her lips grazed his ear. He couldn’t make out the words; they were a dust of sound, yet they had the ring of a term of endearment, a lover’s exhalation. He drew back, not far, and considered her face a few inches below. So delicate, all the ugly tensions withdrawn. He felt at a strange distance from her, as if he were a tiny bird soaring above the face of the universe, a floor of bone and ivory centered by a red plush mouth which lured him down, whirling him in a transparent column of breath. Half-formed phrases flittered through his thoughts, memories of sexual ritual, formal exchanges of energy and grace, and he found himself kissing her. Her lips were salty with his blood, and as if in reflex, her tongue probed feebly. He scrambled to his feet, repelled.
‘Donnell,’ she said, her voice rough-edged and full of hatred. And then she pushed up onto her arms and began dragging her broken lower half toward him. Dark blood brimmed between her lips.
He stepped back quickly and closed the door.
He went to the carpeted depression at the center of the room, knelt beside the control panel and began flicking the switches two and three at a time. As he engaged a switch on the middle row, her voice burst from the speaker, incoherent. A harsh babble with the rhythm and intensity of an incantation. He switched her off, continuing down the rows, and at last heard the grumble of machinery, the whine of the pumps. He waited beside the panel until the whine had ceased, until whatever was going to die had managed it.