our fears or desires. Didn’t I always tell you that?”
He disengaged himself and turned to look into Rosala’s smiling eyes. They were his favorite shade of blue. She was an ash blonde; he had a weakness for the Scandinavian type.
He said in an undertone, “How could anyone so lovely as you create anything so horrible as that?”
She pouted childishly. “Create? I didn’t create it. An artist only receives and records impressions.”
“Art is selection, Rosala. You could have selected worthier impressions than these. This picture is stark, gloating sadism. You must be a cruel woman.”
She stared at him strangely. “You can believe that?”
“Well, I don’t know. I only know I loathe this painting.”
She took a deep breath. “Very well, you loathe my work,” she said, in a hard voice startling different from her former tone. She thrust past him and punched at the canvas with both fists. There was strength in those slim, smooth arms. They smashed the painting to a torn ruin.
She turned on him with an angrily flushed face.
“Perhaps you—” she began, but quite impulsively he seized her, hugged her, and smothered her with kisses. She didn’t resist. She returned his kisses with passion. He observed, belatedly and with wry amusement, that she was quite naked. From the assured and easy way he fondled her, it was apparent that this embrace had happened many times, that his muscles and nervous system remembered what he did not.
“Ulysses,” she murmured, now tender and full of love.
“Why do you call me Ulysses?”
She stood back, holding him at arm’s length, and looked searchingly at him.
“Darling, you are talking strangely. Something has happened. What is it? Have the bad dreams come back?”
“Bad dreams?”
“That painting which you called sadistic didn’t come from my mind, you know. Nor from reality. It originated in your imagination. But it was
“No, Rosala, I don’t remember. I don’t know what’s been happening to me for some time past—at least, not clearly. You’ll have to help me to fill in the gaps, the blotted out parts. Perhaps I’d better tell you what I
She looked at him for a moment, then nodded, and pulled him gently to a nearby couch. They settled among cushions.
She watched him wonderingly while he told of the trek, the events which had led to it, the things seen through a glass darkly since he started wading ashore from the raft.
When he finished, she said, “As for me… It’s strange to have to tell you these things again. I’m Rosala —yes, that’s my real name. When I asked your name, you did not say ‘Sherret’” (she pronounced it “Sherry”) “but ‘Ulysses.’ And at first you called me ‘Circe,’ I don’t know why. But later, ‘Rosala.’
“One day I was walking sadly in my house, knowing that neither it nor I had much longer to live. I was wondering how much time was left to me, whether it would be worth starting another painting. Or if, in fact, I could ever paint again. Then I looked out of the window and saw you being trapped by the Melas tree.
“Then you fell and lost your senses. So I went out and brought you here. I felt sorry for you. And sorry for the Melas tree, too, because I was depriving it of further companions. Still, it had done very well for itself from you. I was glad of that. The Melas tree and we Petrans have a bond of sympathy, something in common which distinguishes us from all other living creatures on Amara.”
Sherret raised an eyebrow, and she paused.
“However,” she resumed, “Melas trees can live together in a community. The one beyond my garden, by the river, was unfortunate. It was isolated. Now it isn’t any more. It’s become a community because by chance you came. But we Petrans can’t live with each other for long. We have nothing to give one another. We must live alone, and die alone, unless—”
She broke off, and stroked his arm gently. Almost possessively, Sherret thought, with a vague alarm.
