Lasher

hard he almost broke the bones of her jaw. She shouted a warning to him, that the damage would be irreparable. He stopped his blows and stood over her with his fists clenched.

“I love you,” he said, crying, “and I hate you.”

“I know just what you mean,” she answered dully. There was so much pain in her face she thought perhaps he had broken her nose and her jaw. But it wasn’t so. Finally she sat up.

He had flopped down beside her, all knees and elbows, and with his large warm hands began to caress her. In pure confusion, she sobbed against his chest.

“Oh, my God, my God, what shall we do?” she asked. He was stroking her, covering her with kisses, suckling her again, all of his old tricks, his evil tricks, the Devil slipping into the cell of the nun, get away from me! But she didn’t have the courage to do anything. Or was it the physical strength she lacked? It had been so long since she had felt normal, healthy, vital.

The next time he became angry, it was when they’d stopped for gas and she’d wandered near the phone booth. He caught her, and she began to say very fast an old rhyme that her mother had taught her:

Alas! Alas! for Miss Mackay!

Her knives and forks have run away;

And when the cups and spoons are going,

She’s sure there is no way of knowing!

Just as she hoped, it made him weak with laughter. He actually fell to his knees. Such big feet he had. She stood there over him chanting:

Tom, Tom, the piper’s son,

Stole a pig and away he run,

The pig was eat, and Tom was beat

And Tom went crying down the street.

He begged her to stop, half laughing, half crying. “I have one for you,” he cried, and he leapt up and sang as he danced, slamming his feet on the ground, and slapping his thighs:

The sow came in with the saddle.

The little pig rocked the cradle.

The dish jumped over the table

To see the pot swallow the ladle.

The spit that stood behind the door

Threw the pudding-stick on the floor.

“Odsplut!” said the gridiron,

“Can’t you agree?

I’m the head constable,

Bring them to me!”

And then he grabbed her roughly, teeth clenched, and dragged her back to the car.

When they reached London, her face was entirely swollen. Anyone who caught a glimpse of her was alarmed. He put them up in a fine hotel, though where it was she had no idea, and he fed her hot tea and sweets and sang to her.

He said that he was sorry for all he’d done, that he had been reborn, did she not realize this, what it meant? That in him resided a miracle. Then came the predictable kissing and suckling and a coarse rough-and-tumble sex that was as good as any. This time, out of sheer desperation, she pushed him to do it again. Maybe she did this because it was the only way she could exert her will. She discovered that after the fourth time even he was spent, and he lay sleeping. She didn’t dare move. When she sighed, he opened his eyes.

He was now truly beautiful. The mustache and beard were of biblical length and shape and each morning he clipped them appropriately. His hair was very long. His shoulders were too big but it didn’t matter. His entire appearance was regal, majestic. Are those words for the same thing? He bowed to people when he spoke, he tipped his soft shapeless gray hat. People loved to look at him.

They went to Westminster Abbey and he walked through the entire place studying every detail of it. He watched the faithful moving about. He said at last: “I have only one simple mission. Old as the earth itself.”

“What is that?” she asked.

He did not answer her.

When they reached the hotel he said:

“I want your study to begin in earnest. We shall get a secure place…not here in Europe…in the States, so close to them that they won’t suspect. We need everything. Cost must be no obstacle. We will not go to Zurich! They’ll be looking for you there. Can you arrange for large amounts of money?”

“I already have,” she reminded him. It was clear from this and other remarks that he did not remember simple things well in sequence. “The bank trail is well laid. We can go back to the States if you wish.”

In fact, her heart silently leapt at the thought of it.

“There is a neurological institute in Geneva,” she said. “That’s where we should go. It’s famous worldwide. It’s vast. We can do some work there. And complete all the arrange-States. They are going to be looking for you. And for me. We must return. I am thinking of the place.”

She fell asleep, dreaming only of the lab, the slides, the tests, the microscope, of knowledge as though it were exorcism. She knew of course she could not do it on her own. The best she could do was get computer equipment and record her findings. She needed a city full of laboratories, a city where hospitals grew as if on trees, where she could go to one large center and then another…

He sat at the table reading the Mayfair History over and over. His lips moved so fast, it was the humming again. He laughed at things in the history as if they were entirely new to him. He knelt by her and looked into her face.

He said, “The milk’s drying up, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know. There is so much aching.”

He began to kiss her. He took some milk between his fingers and put it on her lips; she sighed. She said it tasted like water.

In Geneva, everything was planned, down to the last detail.

The most obvious choice for their final destination was the city of Houston, Texas. Reason? There were, very simply, hospitals and medical centers everywhere. Every form of medical research went on in Houston. She would find a building perhaps for them, some medical space now vacant due to the oil depression. Houston was overbuilt. It had three downtowns, they said. No one could find them there.

Money was no obstacle. Her large transfers were safe in the giant Swiss Bank. She had only to set up some sort of dummy accounts in California and in Houston.

She lay in bed, his fingers tight around her wrist, thinking Houston, Texas, only one hour by air from home. “Only one hour.”

“Yes, they’ll never guess,” he said. “You might as well have taken us to the South Pole, you couldn’t have thought of a more clever hiding place.”

Her heart sank. She slept. She was sick. When she woke she was bleeding. Miscarriage again, this time the viscid core was perhaps two inches long, maybe even longer, before it had begun to disintegrate.

In the morning after she had rested, she took a stand. She was going to the institute, to test this thing, and to run what tests she could on him. She screamed and screamed. And finally in terror, and misery, he consented.

“You’re frightened to be without me, aren’t you?” she asked.

“What if you were the last man on earth?” he asked. “And I were the last woman?”

She didn’t know what that meant. But he seemed to know. He took her to the institute. All the normal motions of life were now nothing to him-hailing cabs, tipping, reading, walking, running, going up in an elevator. He