6
Jennifer must have dozed off. It was ordinary sleep, however, not the delirium of the fantasy worlds that so frequently offered her escape. When she woke, she did not have to shake off clinging visions of emerald-diamond-sapphire temples or cheering audiences enthralled with her vocal virtuosity in a Carnegie Hall of the mind. She was sticky because of the humidity, with a sour taste in her mouth — stale orange juice and heavy sleep.
Rain was still falling. It drummed complicated rhythms on the roof of the hospital. Private sanitarium, actually. But not rhythms alone: chuckling-gurgling-burbling atonal melodies as well.
Sightless, Jennifer had no easy way to know with certainty the hour of the day or the season. However, blind for twenty years, she had developed a refined awareness of her circadian rhythms and was able to guess the time of year and day with surprising accuracy.
She knew that spring was drawing near. Perhaps it was March, the end of the rainy season in southern California. She knew not the day of the week, but she suspected it was early evening, between six and eight o’clock.
Perhaps she’d eaten dinner, though she did not remember it. Sometimes she was barely conscious enough to swallow when they spoon-fed her, but not sufficiently aware to enjoy what she ate. On other occasions, when in a deeper catatonic state, she received nutrients intravenously.
Although the room was cast in silence, she was aware of another presence, either because of some indefinable peculiarity of the air pressure or an odor only subconsciously perceived. She remained motionless, trying to breathe as if sound asleep, waiting for the unknown person to move or cough or sigh and, thereby, provide her, with a clue to identity.
Her companion did not oblige her. Gradually, Jennifer came to suspect that she was alone with him.
She knew that a pretense of sleep was safest.
She struggled to stay perfectly still.
Finally she could no longer tolerate continued ignorance. She said, “Margaret?”
No one responded.
She knew the silence was false. She strove to recall the name of the swing-shift nurse. “Angelina?”
No reply. Only the rain.
He was torturing her. It was psychological torture, but that was by far the most effective weapon that could be used against her. She had known so much physical and emotional pain that she had developed defenses against those forms of abuse.
“Who’s there?” she demanded.
“It’s me,” he said.
Bryan. Her Bryan.
His voice was soft and gentle, even musical, in no way threatening, yet it caused ice to form in her blood.
She said, “Where’s the nurse?”
“I asked her to leave us alone.”
“What do you want?”
“Just to be with you.”
“Why?”
“Because I love you.”
He sounded sincere, but she knew that he was not. He was congenitally incapable of sincerity.
“Go away,” she pleaded.
“Why do you hurt me?”
“I know what you are.”
“What am I?”
She did not respond.
He said, “How can you know what I am?”
“Who better to know?” she said harshly, consumed by bitterness, self-loathing, loathing, and despair.
Judging by the sound of his voice, he was standing near the window, closer to the plink and paradiddle of the rain than to the faint noises in the corridor. She was terrified that he would come to the bed, take her hand, touch her cheek or brow.
She said, “I want Angelina.”
“Not yet.”
“Please.”
“No.”
“Then go away.”
“Why do you hurt me?” he asked again. His voice remained as gentle as ever, melodic as that of a choirboy, untouched by anger or frustration, only sorrow. “I come twice a week. I sit with you. Without you, what would I be? Nothing. I’m aware of that.”
Jennifer bit her lip and did not reply.
Suddenly she sensed that he was moving. She could hear no footsteps, no rustle of garments. He could be quieter than a cat when he wished to be.
She knew he was approaching the bed.
Desperately she sought the oblivion of her delusions, either the bright fantasies or dark terrors within her damaged mind, she cared not which, anything other than the horror of reality in that too, too private sanitarium room. But she could not retreat at will into those interior realms; periodic involuntary consciousness was, perhaps, the greatest curse of her pathetic, debilitated condition.
She waited, trembling.
She listened.
He was ghost-silent.
The thunderous pummeling of rain on the roof was cut off from one second to the next, but she understood that the rain had not actually ceased to fall. Abruptly the world was clutched in the grip of an uncanny silence, stillness.
Jennifer brimmed with fear, even into the paralyzed extremities of her left side.
He took hold of her right hand.
She gasped and tried to pull away.
“No,” he said, and tightened his grip. He was strong.
She called for the nurse, knowing it was useless to do so.
He held her with one hand and caressed her fingers with the other. He tenderly massaged her wrist. He stroked the withered flesh of her forearm.
Blindly, she waited, trying not to speculate upon what cruelties would ensue.
He pinched her arm, and a wordless plea for mercy escaped her. He pinched harder, then again, but probably not hard enough to leave a bruise.
Enduring, Jennifer wondered what his face was like, whether ugly or plain or handsome. She intuited that it would not be a blessing to recover her sight if she were required, just once, to gaze into his hateful eyes.
He pushed one finger into her ear, and his nail seemed as long and pointed as a needle. He twisted it and scraped, pressed harder still, until the pressure-pain was unbearable.
She screamed, but no one responded.
He touched her pancake breasts, deflated from long years of supine existence and intravenous nourishment. Even in her sexless condition, her nipples were a source of pain, and he knew how to deliver agony.
However, it was not so much anything he did to her that mattered… but what he might think to do next. He was endlessly inventive. True terror lay in the anticipation of the unknown.
She screamed for someone, anyone, help, surcease. She begged God for death.
Her shrieks and cries for help fell into a void.
Finally she was silent and endured.
He released her, but she was acutely aware that he was still at her bedside.
“Love me,” Bryan said.
“Please go away.”
Softly: “Love me.”
If Jennifer had been capable of producing tears, she would have wept.
“Love me, and I won’t have any reason to hurt you again. All I want is for you to love me.”
She was no more capable of loving him than she was of producing tears from her ruined eyes. Easier to love a viper, a rock, or the cold indifferent blackness between the stars.
“I only need to be loved,” he insisted.
She knew that he was incapable of love. Indeed, he had no concept whatsoever of the meaning of the word. He wanted it only because he could not have it, could not feel it, because it was a mystery to him, a great unknown. Even if she were able to love him and convince him of her love, she would not be saved, for he would be unmoved by love when at last it was given to him, would deny its existence, and would continue to torture her out of habit.