What Jared called “beautiful” was in fact the most hideous object she had ever seen, a two-fingered instrument on a metal arm and coated with a rubbery surface the color of human flesh.
“Let me see how it works,” she countered.
“Show her,” Jared commanded.
The man, very young, to whom the instrument was attached somewhere under his shirt, obeyed. The two fingers moved, separately and together, like thumb and forefinger.
“Now take her hand,” Jared told him.
She controlled the instant desire to step back out of reach and instead let her hand be clasped gently by the two rubbery fingers.
“Can you feel her hand, how soft it is, how smooth?” Jared asked eagerly.
“Sure I can feel,” the man said, and let his right eyelid drop in a mischievous wink.
She laughed and instantly every man in the room was laughing and now she did not mind at all the touch of the rubbery fingers, the forefinger stroking the palm of her hand.
“That’s enough,” Jared said. “You needn’t carry even a good thing to an extreme.”
He was laughing, too, as he spoke, but she could see he was proud.
“You have every right to be proud,” she said, gently withdrawing her hand.
“Thanks — I’m happy, myself,” he replied. “This fellow — he lost his right arm in Danang, didn't you, Bill?”
“Danang it was, sir. I picked up what looked like a bunch of bananas and suddenly they went off — bang!”
Jared clapped his left shoulder.
“Well, what we’ve done together will help a lot of other men, too. Just remember that, will you?”
“Sure will,” the man said.
They moved away then, she and Jared, away from the wounded, and in the corridor she sighed, forgetting for the moment everything except the drawn face, the skeleton-thin body of the man with the hand,
“He’s so piteously young, Jared,” she said.
“Not yet twenty-one,” he agreed, “and I don’t know a greater joy in life than to see that substitute hand working.”
Absorbed in common joy, they forgot each other.
“How much does he really feel?” she asked, “and how much does his imagination supply?”
“Well, darling,” Jared said with a wry smile, “I daresay he’s felt many a soft hand in reality, and memory helps imagination, I’m sure — and eyesight, of course. Your hand looks soft, you know! But some of it’s real — the pressure of a pliant material against warm flesh. Ah, yes, a good deal of it is real, enough to convey pleasure, at any rate.”
What a loss, she thought, that the word of endearment he had seemed to use unconsciously had been so often carelessly used that now it was meaningless! Was it not meaningless? But he had never used it before. She stilled the sudden beat of her heart and spoke softly.
“I hope he will meet a girl someday very soon, who will be able to know what the hand you made for him can feel. Then she will think it is beautiful, too.”
“I hope so,” he said gravely.
He stopped at a door and took a key from his pocket and fitted it to the lock. “This is my laboratory. Remember I told you I wanted to work on the stethoscope? Well, I’m doing it.”
He opened the door and they went in. It was a fairly large room, crowded with machinery of a delicate sort, and at one end, under the windows stood a long worktable with a chromium top. Upon it was a complex piece of machinery.
“I don’t understand any of it,” she told him.
“It’s a method of testing stethoscopes,” he explained. “Very important, you know, that a stethoscope observes accurately and reports intelligibly. It must not have what it hears distorted by some sort of vibrating sound, for example. For this I’ve designed a monitory microphone — this thing here — but then the listening ear must hear properly, too. I’ve designed this artificial ear — doesn’t look much like an ear, does it? But it hears — that is, with a system like this — how much, actually, does the ear hear? How far? How clearly? But I had to check even this artificial ear with another one made of different material, and of course everything has to be checked again and again. I use recordings of the human chest wall — the heart, breathing, and so on—”
She listened, following knowledgeably enough now what he was saying, but while her brain comprehended, some other and more subtle part of her being was tensely aware of his physical nearness, his hands moving about the machinery as he demonstrated its functioning, his voice music to her ear, his profile, clear-cut against the gray walls, his whole dynamic being absorbed in what he was saying. A wave of joy swept through her being. She felt alive as she had never felt in her life before, even in her youth. They were together and bright hours lay ahead.
…Hours later she was in his arms. They were dancing between courses at their dinner in a famous restaurant, an after-theater place which would not be crowded until nearly midnight. They had come early, but the orchestra was already playing a slow waltz.
“I am glad,” she said. “I can’t do the new dances. I can’t dance alone.”
“And who wants to dance alone?” he retorted.
The owner-manager came up and greeted Jared by name.
“He’s my uncle’s friend,” Jared explained.
“I like your uncle,” she said.
Idle talk, but tonight she must speak only idly. They were too near the edge of something unknown, a further step toward each other, which she did not know that she wanted to take, or even whether she could stop if it began.
“Why do you tell me now that you like my uncle?” Jared demanded as they took their seats.
“I don’t know, I just remember him. Perhaps I feel sorry for him.”
“He’s quite happy,” Jared said.
He was restless, she perceived, and she did not tell him that she remembered his uncle because she pitied him, unable as he was to feel such joy as hers.
“Let’s dance,” Jared said restlessly.
He rose and led her to the dance floor. It had been a long time since she had danced, for Arnold had not enjoyed dancing and since his death she had not gone out. Now under Jared’s superb leading she responded with all her old delight enlivened by the pleasure of new love.
“You dance beautifully,” he said.
He laid his cheek gently against her hair and she yielded herself to him while she held back the words of love which waited, impatient to be spoken. Around them a few couples began to gather, but in the dim light she recognized no one and was not recognized, except that a man spoke in passing, a young blonde girl in his arms.
“Beautiful partner you have there, Jared.”
“Thank you, Tim,” he said coldly, and swept her away. “I wish you wouldn’t make older men envy me,” he grumbled in mock annoyance.
She laughed. “But he is with a very pretty girl.”
“Who wants just a pretty girl?” he retorted. “Besides, I didn’t see her. I see only you.”
The spell of the evening held. They sat down to a new course at the table and were silent except for a desultory few words and then he was on his feet again, inviting her, and together they returned to the communion of the dance, he pressing her to him, she yielding to his every movement. Dangerous, she told herself, dangerous but unutterably sweet. Let no word be spoken, let the communication be only this languorous delight of being close together, joined by the rhythm of music and movement. She grew afraid at last of herself, and of him. An inner wisdom restrained her. The spell must be broken now, before it was too late, now before, overcome by her own desire, she let herself be led away into some solitude when, alone with him, she could ho longer control her own longing. It was near midnight and the theater crowd began to fill the room.