“Safe.” The word was whispered. “You are not safe in this place. You are like a fly in a web, caught by forces you cannot control. For your own safety-”
The door opened.
“So she wakes,” said Kore gaily. “Ha-do I interrupt a tête-à-tête? Shall I return later?”
Keller leaned back in the chair. “I am telling her she must not leave us until she is ready to go back to her family,” he said calmly. “You have interrupted, Liebchen; I was about to offer, if she should need money-”
“Oh, no,” I said.
“But certainly.” Kore sauntered across the room. The woman had an incredible wardrobe; every time I saw her she was wearing a new outfit. This was a pant suit of mustard-colored raw silk. Not many women could have worn such a shrieking shade, but Kore carried it off superbly.
“As a loan,” she continued. “That is understood. But we hope you will not go soon. It is pleasure for me to have you. Another woman of my own kind, you understand. I am often lonely.”
It was a pretty picture; but I was unconvinced. No one could have looked less pathetic than Kore, with her jewels-she wore them with everything-and her Paris clothes and her arrogant, experienced face.
“So now you see,” she went on, when I didn’t answer. “You understand. Jürgen, you have examined the patient? You are ready to dress for dinner?”
The hand she placed on Keller’s arm suggested the grip of a warder rather than that of a lover. I couldn’t figure out whose side she was on. I couldn’t even figure out what the different sides were. He urged me to leave, she begged me to stay. I couldn’t accept his concern as meaningful. What danger could there be for me here?
However, I decided that I had better start getting myself back into shape. Kore’s motives for keeping me in bed might be entirely charitable, but inactivity would weaken me as much as loss of blood. I wasn’t worried or afraid. I just didn’t like the idea of being helpless.
As soon as they had left, I got out of bed. I was dizzy at first, but after I had walked a little, holding on to the edge of the bed, my wobbly legs felt stronger. I got back into the bed with a feeling of childish triumph, and when Kore came back I was innocently reading one of Keller’s books. It was a volume of Shakespeare.
Kore stayed with me most of the evening. She could be very entertaining, when she tried; her stories about people she had known, their weaknesses and foibles, were quite funny. I didn’t like it so well when she started fussing with me again, arranging my hair and polishing my nails. I was getting used to it, though. It didn’t bother me as much as it had the first time. In fact, there was something luxurious about being waited on.
“It seems a shame to waste all this,” I said lightly, after she had tied my hair up with pale-green ribbons. “I’m just going to bed, you know. Or are we going to a party?”
“No, no,” said Kore, tucking in a stray curl. “You must sleep. It is late; I have stayed too long. Here. Take your pill and sleep soundly.”
She couldn’t have anticipated my reaction. I hate pills. I won’t even take aspirin unless someone makes me. The little white ball looked harmless enough, on a plate with a glass of water beside it. But I had no intention of taking that pill-or of arguing with Kore about it.
I had had a lot of practice in handling unwanted medicine. I tongued the pill back into my cheek, holding Kore’s eyes with mine so she wouldn’t look at my mouth, and swallowed half a glass of water without even wetting the pill. I lay back and made sleepy noises. I said goodnight. I closed my eyes. And Kore sat there.
I could have killed her. I felt the damned pill beginning to dissolve. It wasn’t a capsule, just a plain pill like an aspirin tablet. Finally, after what seemed like a year, she tiptoed out, and I spat the fragments of the pill into my hand. But I knew I had swallowed some of the stuff, whatever it was.
The medicine was supposed to knock me out completely; I’m sure of that. Instead it knocked out everything except consciousness. My muscles felt as if they had been cut. I couldn’t move. I didn’t want to move. I lay in a state of utter relaxation, watching the shadows on the walls through half-closed eyes. Kore had left a lamp burning, and its yellow glow made a bright spot on the outer rim of my vision.
Things got hazy for a while-how long I never could determine. Maybe I slept, but I don’t think so. My eyes were almost closed; they must have looked completely closed, but I could see a little through the slitted opening. Then a woman’s face came into view.
It wasn’t Kore. It wasn’t the maid. It wasn’t anyone I had ever seen.
Some deep-down rational streak in my mind assured me that I must be dreaming. It was a peculiar dream, unlike any I had ever had, but what I was seeing could not be real. The woman’s face was the first of a series of faces, each gliding across my limited field of vision and vanishing, to be replaced by another. In the dim light they looked like the same face-olive-skinned, crowned by black hair, with aquiline features. I could hear a faint far-off sound, like the distant murmur of the sea-or like voices.
Another indeterminate period of drowsiness followed. Then something brought me wide awake. It might have been the sound of my door closing.
When I say I was wide awake, I mean only by comparison to my previous state. I was still awfully sleepy, but somehow I knew I had to move. Dad always said I was as stubborn as a mule. Maybe it was that rocklike stubbornness that got me moving.
I crawled back and forth across the bed for a while. I kept collapsing, flat on my face; it took an enormous effort of will to push myself up off the cradling softness. I slapped myself on the face. At first my slaps felt like the kinds of pats you give a tiny kitten, but gradually my strength increased until a left-handed smack brought tears to my eyes.
I slid down off the bed. I crawled quite a way before I was able to pull myself erect. My arm hurt, not so much that I couldn’t use it, but enough to keep me from falling asleep again. Staggering from one piece of furniture to the next, I finally reached the window.
It was closed. No wonder the room felt so stuffy and hot. My arms felt like cooked spaghetti; I didn’t think I would ever get that window open, and I craved fresh air the way a starving man craves food.
Well, I did it. Finally the casement gave, and I fell on my knees, with my head on the sill, gulping in the sweet night air. It smelled of thyme and of the sea; the scents blended into a perfume that was the essence of the island.
The cool air cleared my head. As I knelt there I saw that I was looking down into a stone-paved courtyard with a high wall on its far side. To the right, behind the wall, the dark bulk of the mountain cut off a segment of the night sky. There was no moon. I could make out shapes, but not details.
I had just about decided to attempt the return trip to my bed when I heard something below-the sound of a door opening. The faintest murmur of voices reached my ears. Then a dark figure came into the courtyard and moved toward a corner deep in shadow. I wouldn’t have seen any more except for a touch of modernity that seemed incongruous in the atmosphere of hushed darkness-a flashlight. The woman switched it on when she reached the dark corner, and the beam showed the shape of a door in the wall. Then the light jumped wildly as a hissing cry came from the part of the house immediately under my window. The cry was one of warning, I suppose; the light went out. But not before I had seen the face of the woman who held it. It was a dark, aquiline face like the ones I had seen in my dreaming vision, but now, with the fumes of the drug almost dissipated, I recognized it. Her name was Sophia, and she ran the store in the village where I bought my fish.
Chapter 12
SOMETHING TOLD ME I HAD BETTER GET BACK TO BED as fast as I could. I closed the window and made a run for it. Then I lay back and willed my pounding heart to calm itself. There wasn’t time enough; I could still feel the furious beat when Kore slipped into the room. She came straight to the bed and stood looking down at me.