Then was she already becoming paralyzed with indecision, like a boy with only one dime in a candy store, unable to make up his mind until the store had already closed and he was out on the sidewalk? She didn’t know, but she could see it coming. The stakes were too high, the pressure too brutal. Nobody was equipped to hold entirely in his hands the life of the person he loved above everything else on earth—no, not even in his hands, but poised like an egg on the back of one of them as though for an obstacle race in some macabre party game. Not even professionals, she thought; the surgeon called in another surgeon when the life of his own child was at stake.
10
But when he was quiet like this—if not rational, at least for the moment not in the seizure of that torment or terror—why in God’s name couldn’t she get through to him? It was obvious at a glance what kind of boy he was, and the way he’d been brought up; he’d open doors for you, give you his seat on a bus, or bring you a drink at a cocktail party. And while she suspected there might not be any great strength in him, there was no doubt he was educated, civilized, and probably incapable of deliberate evil or pointless cruelty until this thing, whatever it was, had happened to him. Then why wasn’t she able to reach in past the snarled wire-ends of his broken lines of communication and make contact with him, get him to realize what he was doing?
Maybe she hadn’t tried hard enough. Or she’d tried in the wrong way; she’d been half hysterical herself, and she’d screamed at him. And then she’d talked down to him, as though it were a recognized fact between them there was something wrong with his mind. Of course, she’d known the error of this the moment it was done, but it was too late to correct.
Anyway, try once more, she thought, and with a better approach; see if you can’t establish some kind of contact before even bringing up the subject of going back. Get him to talk about himself? No-o. She hated to throw out the oldest weapon in the arsenal, but there she’d be flirting with the very danger she had to avoid, any reminder of the horror he was fleeing. The past, maybe, but stay away from the voyage; whatever it was happened at sea. Talk about painting, even if you don’t know much about it, talk about yourself. That was it, she thought; if she could establish an identity he could recognize, first merely as a woman who was friendly and sympathetic, and then as one he could help in some way, she might penetrate the insularity of breakdown and get through, at least temporarily, to the old behavior patterns. God, if she could only get him to pick up the phone.
“… it’s an overworked word,” he was saying, “but definitely valid here. I know I could feel it.”
She came back with a start. Was he still talking about her face? “I’m sorry,” she said, “but I missed that. What was it?”
“Empathy,” he replied. “Sometimes you meet people you’re in full conversation with before a word has ever been said. It was that way when I first saw you. Oh, I don’t mean the sex thing—though God knows you have plenty of that.” Again his smile included her among the mature and the intelligent. He glanced into the compass and then back at her, leaning over the wheel. “I knew we’d like each other. I knew I could talk to you, and neither of us would need an interpreter. But I don’t even know your first name yet.”
“It’s Rae,” she said. It was starting out beautifully; he was doing it himself. There were cigarettes and a lighter in the right-hand pocket of the Bermuda shorts. She took them out and tried to light one. In the six-knot breeze of their passage, it didn’t take too much acting ability to fail three times in succession.
“Here, let me,” he offered.
He lit the cigarette for her and passed it back, and lit one for himself. Good, she thought; one conditioned response might lead to another, and then another… Then it occurred to her she could be oversimplifying just a little the labyrinthine complexities of modern psychiatry; if doctors spent lifetimes trying to find out why a mind went off the rails and how to get it back, there seemed a chance it wasn’t quite that easy. But at least she was doing something.
“Thank you, Hughie,” she said simply. Don’t overdo it; don’t gush.
“Je vous en prie, madame.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t speak French.” She was about to add that John was teaching her Spanish, but didn’t. Probably it was best to keep John out of it until she had some kind of bridge across the gap.
“I detect just a trace of Southern accent, I think. From where?”
“Texas,” she replied.
“Oil?”
She shook her head. “Every area has its slum dwellers. There are Texans who don’t own oil wells.”
“See, I knew we’d like each other.” Then he added, “I’m from Mississippi. Or was originally.” He explained briefly he’d gone to school in Switzerland and spent most of his life in Europe.
“Are your parents still there?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “My mother’s dead. She died six years ago.”
“I’m sorry. But your father is still living?”
The change in him was startling, attuned as she was to every nuance of his expression. “No!” he said loudly. “I mean—I don’t know!” Agitation was evident in his eyes, and she could sense his desperate groping through the mists in back of them.
Then he appeared to regain control. “I mean, I haven’t seen him for years. He still lives in Mississippi, and we never write to each other.”
She breathed softly. That had been close. It was obvious she’d made a mistake, but she couldn’t understand where or how. Surely his father hadn’t been on the boat. Pretend you didn’t see it, she told herself, and change the subject, fast.
But he had already fully recovered, as though it had never happened. He smiled at her and said, “Never mind me; you still haven’t told me anything about yourself. Except that you’re from Texas, which you’ll admit yourself is trite. When they get to the moon, they’ll find out there’s not only a Texan there, but he’s already bought it, air- conditioned it, and organized a local chapter of the John Birch Society. I could tell you more than that about yourself, just for a start. The chances are you weren’t an only child; you had a very good orthodontist when you were young, or ancestors with exceptional teeth; you’re warmhearted, and you have a great deal of sympathy and understanding, but you’re impulsive; and status probably means little or nothing to you. All surface, of course, and some guesswork. So you take it. Tell me what the leopard was looking for on the slopes of Kilimanjaro.” His gesture included all the vast and empty Pacific. “Just a parking place, or did he hear music?”
And the leopard was dead, she thought. But more immediately, that lightning reversal of mood was ominous; even when he was like this, he was further from reality than she’d believed. Well, you still had to try.
“He heard music,” she said. “Perhaps not very good music, and maybe even sentimental, or trite. But he also saw something up there.”
“What?” he asked. “Samarkand? A trail disappearing into the mist? Not the edge of a map, because maps don’t have edges any more. They just say continued on E-12.”
“No,” she said. “What he saw was simply another leopard listening to the same thing. A rather handsome leopard in a furry and beat-up sort of way, with the same odd taste for Mickey Mouse music and listening to it in strange places. It was like this.”
She didn’t like doing it; revealing herself this way to a stranger was too much like filling out a Kinsey questionnaire or undressing in public, but, weighed against any possible chance of success, the cost was small. She took a puff on her cigarette and wondered where to begin. Anywhere, she thought, just so you make him see you.
“One night about a year ago a man came to the hotel where I was registered in Miami, Florida. He was a curt, rather hardbitten sort of man with too much arrogance and a slight limp, and I didn’t think I liked him. And apparently it was mutual; he didn’t seem to think too highly of me. I did believe he was honest, though, which was important in the particular circumstances. And the reason I thought he was honest was that anybody that disagreeable and that indifferent to the impression he made on other people almost had to be.
