I raised my eyebrows. I didn’t like this as an opener.
“Why would I lie?”
“You might have your reasons. Serious ones. But if you want there to be… you know… then don’t lie to me.”
I said nothing.
“I’ll tell you something and you’ll tell me something. OK? It’ll be the truth. Regardless of anything else.”
I wasn’t looking her in the eye. She sought my gaze, but I pretended not to notice.
“I already told you that I don’t know how I got here. But maybe you know. Wait, I haven’t finished. Maybe you don’t know. But if you know and it’s just that you’re not able to tell me now, then will you later, one day? That won’t be the worst thing. In any case you’ll give me a chance.”
I had the sensation of an icy current running through my entire body.
“What are you saying, kid? What chance…?” I mumbled.
“Kris, whoever I am, I’m for sure no kid. You promised. Tell me.”
That “whoever I am” gave me such a lump in my throat that all I could do was stare at her, shaking my head like an idiot, as if I were trying to prevent myself from hearing everything.
“I already said you don’t have to tell me. It’s enough for you to say you can’t.”
“I’m not hiding anything…,” I answered hoarsely.
“Very good then,” she replied, standing up. I wanted to say something. I sensed I shouldn’t leave her like that, but all the words stuck in my throat.
“Harey…”
She was by the window, her back to me. The empty dark blue ocean lay beneath a bare sky.
“Harey, if you think that… Harey, you know I love you…”
“You love me?”
I went up to her. I tried to put my arms around her. She freed herself, pushing my hand aside.
“You’re so good,” she said. “You love me? I’d rather you beat me!”
“Harey, darling!”
“No. No. Best just don’t say a thing.”
She went up to the table and began clearing away the plates. I stared into the dark blue emptiness. The sun was starting to set, and the great shadow of the Station moved evenly on the waves. A plate slipped out of Harey’s hands and fell on the floor. Water sounded in the sinks. At the edges of the horizon the ruddy color turned to a dirty reddish gold. If only I knew what to do. Oh, if only I knew. All at once things went quiet. Harey came and stood right by me.
“No. Don’t turn around,” she said, lowering her voice to a whisper. “None of this is your fault, Kris. I know it. Don’t worry.”
I reached out my hand towards her. She escaped to the other side of the cabin and, picking up a whole pile of plates, she said:
“Pity. If they could be broken, I’d smash them, I really would smash all of them!”
For a moment I thought she was actually going to fling them to the ground, but she threw me a keen glance and smiled.
“Don’t be scared, I’m not going to make a scene.”
I woke up in the middle of the night, instantly intent and watchful. I sat up in bed; the room was dark, though a faint light came from the corridor through the cracked-open door. There was a nasty hissing sound that was intensifying, and at the same time there were dull stifled thuds as if something large were thrashing about in the next room. A meteor! came a rapid thought. It’s broken through the armor plating. Someone’s there! There was a prolonged wheezing.
I finally regained my senses. It was the Station, not a rocket; and that awful noise…
I ran into the corridor. The door to the small lab was wide open and the light was on. I hurried inside.
I was struck by a wave of fearful cold. The cabin was filled with vapor that turned my breath to snow. A mass of white flakes were spinning over a body wrapped in a bathrobe that was lying on the floor and tossing weakly. I could barely see her through the icy cloud. I rushed up to her, picked her up. The robe burned my hands; she was rasping. I ran back into the corridor, past a series of doors. I no longer felt the cold, except that the breath coming out of her mouth in clouds of condensation scorched my neck like fire.
I laid her on the table, tore open the robe over her breasts. For a moment I looked at her drawn, trembling face; the blood had frozen on her open lips, covering them with a dark coating. Tiny ice crystals glittered on her tongue…
Liquid oxygen. There was liquid oxygen in the shop, in Dewar flasks. As I picked her up I’d felt broken glass underfoot. How much could she have swallowed? It made no difference. Her trachea was burned, and her throat and lungs; liquid oxygen is more caustic than any concentrated acid. Her breathing, raucous and dry as the sound of paper being torn, was growing shallower. Her eyes were closed. It was the death throes.
I looked at the large glass-paneled cabinets with instruments and medications. A tracheotomy? An intubation? Except she had no lungs! They were burned up. Medication? There were so many different kinds! The shelves were filled with colored bottles and packets. The wheezing sound filled the whole room; vapor was still coming from her open mouth.
Hot water bottles…
I started looking for them, but before I found any I darted across to the other cabinet and began rifling through boxes of ampoules. Now I found a needle, which I fumbled to put in the sterilizer, my fingers stiff with cold and clumsy. I hammered furiously on the lid of the sterilizer, but I couldn’t even feel it, the only sensation was a slight tingling. She made a louder wheezing sound. I hurried over to her. Her eyes were open.
“Harey!”
It wasn’t even a whisper. I couldn’t speak. Her face was alien, as if made of plaster; it brought me up sharp. Her ribs were twitching under her white skin; her hair, wet from melting snow, lay scattered around her head. She was looking at me.
“Harey!”
I was unable to say any more. I stood there like a lump of wood with those unwieldy foreign hands of mine. My feet, lips, eyelids were starting to sting ever more painfully, but I barely felt it. A droplet of blood that had melted in the heat ran down her cheek, leaving a diagonal mark. Her tongue quivered and disappeared; she was still rasping.
I took her wrist; she had no pulse. I pulled apart the lapels of the robe and placed my ear against the fearfully cold body right beneath her breast. Through a crackling roar like a fire I heard a pit-a-pat, a galloping sound too fast to count. I stood there leaning over her, my eyes closed, when something touched my head. She had dug her fingers into my hair. I looked into her eyes.
“Kris,” she croaked. I grasped her hand in mine; she squeezed it back, almost crushing it. Consciousness was ebbing from her horribly distorted face; the whites of her eyes flashed beneath her eyelids, there was a snort from her throat and her whole body was shaken by convulsions. I was barely able to hold onto her as she hung over the side of the table. She knocked her head against the side of a porcelain funnel. I pulled her up and pressed her to the table; with each new spasm she tugged away from me. I immediately became drenched in sweat, my legs felt like cotton wool. When the convulsions eased off I tried to lie her down again. She was making a squeaking sound as she gasped for air. All of a sudden, Harey’s eyes lit up in that terrible bloody face.
“Kris,” she gasped, “How much… how much longer, Kris?”
She began to choke; foam appeared on her lips and the convulsions began again. I held her down with all the strength I had left. She collapsed on her back so abruptly her teeth clattered; she was panting.
“No, no, no,” she exclaimed rapidly with each outbreath; each one seemed it would be the last. But the convulsions returned again and once more she writhed in my arms, in the short pauses drawing in air with such an effort her ribcage bulged. Finally her eyelids dropped half way over her open, unseeing eyes. She stopped moving. I thought it was the end. I didn’t even try to wipe the pink foam from her lips. I stood over her, leaning forward, hearing some great distant bell, and waited for her last breath so that after it I could crumple onto the floor; but she kept on breathing, only slightly wheezing, ever quieter, and the tip of her breast, which had almost stopped quivering, began to move to the quick rhythm of a working heart. I stood hunched over her, and her face began to regain color. I still didn’t understand a thing. The palms of both my hands grew moist, and I felt I was going deaf, that something soft and springy was filling my ears; I could still hear the ringing bell, which now sounded hollow, like with a broken heart.