Her eyelids weren’t twitching. She was looking at me intently. Was she winking? I couldn’t be sure. She pulled the blanket up; on her arm I saw a small triangular pink mark.
“Why are you staring like that?”
“Because you’re beautiful.”
She smiled. But it was only out of politeness, a thank-you for the compliment.
“Really? Because you’re looking at me as if you… as if I…”
“What?”
“As if you were searching for something.”
“Come off it!”
“No, it’s like you thought there was something wrong with me, or there was something I wasn’t telling you.”
“Not at all.”
“If you insist, then I’m sure that’s so. But as you wish.”
Outside the flaming windows a lifeless blue heat was coming into being. Shading my eyes with my hand, I looked around for my dark glasses. They were on the table. I knelt on the bed, put them on, and caught sight of her reflection in the window. She was waiting for something. When I lay back down beside her she smiled.
“What about for me?”
I suddenly understood.
“Sunglasses?”
I got up and started rummaging through the drawers of the table by the window. I found two pairs, both too big. I handed them to her. She tried each pair. They slipped half-way down her nose.
The window shades began to descend with their prolonged grinding sound. A moment later and it was night inside the Station, which had crawled into its shell like a turtle. Going by touch alone, I took her glasses off and put them with mine under the bunk.
“What are we going to do?” she asked.
“What people do at night — sleep.”
“Kris.”
“What?”
“Maybe I should make you a new dressing.”
“No, there’s no need. There’s no need… darling.”
As I said it, I didn’t know myself if I was pretending, but a moment later, without seeing I put my arms around her slender back and when I felt it tremble, I suddenly believed in her. Though I’m not sure. All at once I felt I was the one deceiving her, not the other way around, because she was only herself.
After that I drifted off to sleep several times and kept being woken from my doze by a cramp. My hammering heart gradually calmed down, I held her close, dead tired; she touched my face and forehead gingerly, checking to see if I didn’t have a fever. This was Harey. Another, truer one could not have existed.
After that thought something changed inside me. I stopped struggling. I fell asleep almost immediately.
I was woken by a gentle touch. There was a pleasant coolness on my forehead. My face was covered with something moist and soft that was slowly being lifted up. I saw Harey’s face leaning over me. With both hands she was squeezing out the excess fluid from the gauze into a porcelain bowl. Nearby stood a bottle of sunburn cream. She smiled at me.
“Boy, did you sleep,” she said, then as she laid the gauze back: “Does that hurt?”
“No.”
I moved the skin on my forehead. It was true, I couldn’t feel the burns now. Harey was sitting on the edge of the bunk, wrapped in an orange-and-white striped man’s bathrobe; her black hair lay spread over the collar. She’d rolled the sleeves all the way up to the elbows so they wouldn’t get in the way. I was feeling extraordinarily hungry — it must have been twenty hours since I’d last eaten. When Harey finished dressing my face I got up. I suddenly caught sight of the two completely identical white dresses with red buttons, which lay side by side. The first was the one I’d helped her take off by cutting the back; the second was the dress she’d come in the day before. This time she’d unpicked the seam herself with a small pair of scissors, saying the zipper must have gotten stuck.
The two identical dresses were the most terrible thing of all I’d experienced till now. Harey was busy tidying the medicine cabinet. I turned away from her surreptitiously and bit my fist till it bled. Still staring at the two dresses — or rather the same dress repeated two times — I began backing towards the door. Water was still noisily running from the faucet. I opened the door, slipped quietly out and closed it carefully. I could hear the faint murmur of the running water and the clatter of bottles. Then, suddenly, the sound stopped. The strip lighting from the ceiling illuminated the corridor; a hazy patch of reflected light lay on the door, by which I was waiting with clenched jaw. I held the handle, though I didn’t expect to be able to keep the door closed. A sudden tug almost wrenched it out of my hand, but the door didn’t open; it just shook and started creaking horribly. Stunned, I let go of the handle and took a step back. Something quite incredible was happening with the door — its smooth plastic surface was cratering inwards as if it was being pressed into the room from my side. The enamel began cracking off in small flakes, exposing the steel frame, which was straining ever more. I suddenly realized that instead of pushing the door, which opened towards the corridor, she was trying to open it by pulling it towards herself. The reflection of the light curved on the white surface like a concave mirror; there was a powerful crunching sound and the solid panel, bent to its limit, made a snapping noise. At the same time the handle was ripped from its mount and flew into the room. In the hole it left, there immediately appeared a pair of bloodied hands that kept on pulling, leaving red streaks on the enamel. The panel of the door broke in two, hung crookedly on its hinges, and an orange-and-white creature with a livid blue, lifeless face threw its arms around me sobbing.
If I hadn’t been paralyzed by what I’d seen I probably would have attempted to run. Harey was gasping for breath, knocking her head against my shoulder, her hair flying every which way. When I held her I could feel her slipping through my arms. I carried her back into the room, squeezing past the shattered door, and laid her on the bunk. Her fingernails were broken and covered with blood. When she turned her hand I saw the palm was chafed to raw flesh. I looked into her face; her wide-open eyes stared through me expressionless.
“Harey!”
She responded with an inarticulate grunt.
I moved my finger close to her eye. The lid closed. I went to the medicine cabinet. The bunk creaked. I turned around. She was sitting up straight, gazing at her bloodied hands in alarm.
“Kris,” she moaned, “I… I… What happened to me?”
“You hurt yourself breaking down the door,” I said impassively. There was a feeling in my lips, especially the lower one, as if ants were crawling all over it. I clamped it between my teeth.
Harey looked for a moment at the jagged pieces of plastic hanging loose from the frame and turned her eyes to me. Her chin trembled. I could see her struggling to master her alarm.
I cut a strip of gauze, took some powder for abrasions from the cabinet, and went back to the bunk. But all at once everything I was carrying slipped out of my hands; the glass jar with its gelatin seal broke, but I didn’t even pick it up. It was no longer needed.
I picked up her hand. There was a still a faint outline of blood around the fingernails, but the bruising had disappeared, and the palm was covered with fresh pink skin that was lighter than its surroundings, though the wound was fading almost as I watched.
I sat down, stroked her cheek and tried to smile at her, though I can’t say I succeeded.
“Why did you do it, Harey?”
“No. That was… me?”
She indicated the door with her eyes.
“Yes. Don’t you remember?”
“No. I mean, I saw you were gone, I got really scared, and…”
“And what?”
“I started looking for you. I thought maybe you were in the bathroom…”