More Than Human

right. It’s all right,’ and put her hands on his shoulders, pressed him back into his chair. He tried to raise his hand and failed. She wiped his clammy forehead and upper lip with the napkin.

In time, his eyes opened. He looked round for her, found her sitting on the edge of the bed, watching him silently. He grinned sheepishly. ‘Whew!’

She rose. ‘You’ll be all right now. You’d better turn in. Good night!’

She was in the room, she was out of it. She had been with him, he was alone. It made a change which was too important to tolerate and too large to understand. He looked from the door to the bed and said ‘Good night,’ only because they were the last words she had said, and they hung shimmering in the silence.

He put his hands on the chair arms and forced his legs to cooperate. He could stand but that was all. He fell forward and sidewise, curling up to miss the table as he went down. He lay across the counterpane and blackness came.

‘Good morning.’

He lay still. His knees were drawn up and the heels of his hands were tight on his cheekbones. He closed his eyes tighter than sleep to shut out the light. He closed his kines-thetic sense „to shut out the slight tilting of the mattress which indicated where she sat on the bed. He disconnected his hearing lest she speak again. His nostrils betrayed him; he had not expected there to be coffee in the room and he was wanting it, wanting it badly, before he thought to shut it out.

Fussily he lay thinking, thinking something about her. If she spoke again, he thought, he’d show her. He’d lie there till she spoke again and when she spoke he’d ignore her and lie still some more.

He waited.

Well, if she wasn’t going to speak again, he couldn’t ignore her, could he?

He opened his eyes. They blazed, round and angry. She sat near the foot of the bed. Her body was still, her face was still, her mouth and her eyes were alive.

He coughed suddenly, violently. It closed his eyes and when he opened them he was no longer looking at her. He fumbled vaguely at his chest, then looked down at himself.

‘Slep’ in my clothes all night,’ he said.

‘Drink your coffee.’

He looked at her. She still had not moved, and did not. She was wearing a burgundy jacket with a grey-green scarf. She had long, level, grey-green eyes, the kind which in profile are deep clear triangles. He looked away from her, farther and farther away, until he saw the coffee. A big pot, a thick hot cup, already poured. Black and strong and good. ‘Whoo,’ he said, holding it, smelling it. He drank. ‘Whoo.’

He looked at the sunlight now. Good. The turn and fall and turn again of the breeze-lifted marquisette at the window, in and out of a sunbeam. Good. The luminous oval, a shadow of the sunlight itself, where the sun glanced off the round mirror on one wall to the clean paint on the adjoining one. Good. He drank more good coffee.

He set the cup down and fumbled at his shirt buttons. He was wrinkled and sweaty. ‘Shower,’ he said.

‘Go ahead,’ said the girl. She rose and went to the dresser where there was a cardboard box and some paper sacks. She opened the box and took out an electric hot plate. He got three buttons undone and somehow the fourth and fifth came off with little explosive tearing sounds. He got the rest of his clothes off somehow. The girl paid him no attention, neither looking at him nor away, just calmly doing things with the hot plate. He went into the bathroom and fussed for a long time with the shower handles, getting the water just right. He got in and let the water run on the nape of his neck. He found soap in the dish, so he let the water run on his head and then rubbed it furiously with the cake of soap until he was mantled in warm, kind, crawling lather. God, the thought came from somewhere, I’m thin as a xylophone. Got to put some beef back on or I’ll get sick and… The same thought looped back on him, interrupting itself: Not supposed to get well. Get good and sick, stay sick. Get sicker. Angrily he demanded, ‘Who says I got to get sick?’ but there was no answer except a quick echo off the tiles.

He shut off the water and stepped out and took an oversized towel from the rack. He started one end of it on his scalp, worked it on his hair from one end to the other. He threw it on the floor, in the corner, and took another towel and rubbed himself pink. He threw that one down too and came out into the room. The robe lay over the arm of an easychair by the door so he put it on.

The girl was spooning fragrant bacon grease over and over three perfect eggs in a pan. When he sat down on the edge of the bed she slid the eggs deftly on to a plate, leaving all the grease behind in the pan. They were perfect, the whites completely firm, the yolks unbroken, liquid, faintly filmed over. There was bacon, four brief seconds less than crisp, paper dried and aromatic. There was toast, golden outside, soft and white inside, with butter melting quickly, running to find and fill the welcoming caves and crevices; two slices with butter, one with marmalade. And these lay in some sunlight, giving off a colour possible only to marmalade and to stained glass.

He ate and drank coffee; ate more and drank coffee and coffee. All the while she sat in the easychair with his shirt in her lap and her hands like dancers, while the buttons grew back on to the material under their swift and delicate paces.

He watched her and when she was finished he came to her and put out his hand for the shirt, but she shook her head and pointed. ‘A clean one.’

He found a knitted pullover polo shirt. While he dressed she washed his dishes and the frying pan and straightened out the bed. He lay back in the easychair and she knelt before him and worked the soggy dressing off his left hand, inspected the cuts and bound them up again. The bandage was firm and comforting. ‘You can do without the sling now,’ she said, pleased. She got up and went to the bed. She sat there facing him, still again except for her eyes, except for her mouth.

Outside an oriole made a long slender note, broke it, and let the fragments fall through the shining air. A stake-bed truck idled past, busily shaking the string of cowbells on its back, while one hoarse man and one with a viola voice flanked it afoot, chanting. In one window came a spherical sound with a fly at its heart and at the other appeared a white kitten. Out by the kitten went the fly and the kitten reared up and batted at it, twisted and sprang down out of sight as if it had meant all along to leave; only a fool would have thought it had lost its balance.

And in the room was quiet and a watchfulness which was without demand, except perhaps a guarding against leaving anything unwatched. The girl sat with her hands aslumber and her eyes awake, while a pipe-cleaner man called Healing was born in all his cores, all his marrow, taking the pose of his relaxed body, resting and growing a little and resting again and growing.

Later, she rose. Without consultation, but merely because it seemed time to do so, she picked up a small handbag and went to the door where she waited. He stirred, rose, went to her. They went out.

They walked slowly to a place where there was smooth rolling land, mowed and tended. Down in the hollow some boys played Softball. They stood for a while, watching. She studied his face and when she saw reflected in it only the moving figures and not the consecutive interest of the game itself, she touched his elbow and moved on. They found a pond where there were ducks and straight cinder paths with flower beds. She picked a primrose and put it in his lapel. They found a bench. A man pushed a bright clean wagon up to them. She bought a frankfurter and a bottle of soda and handed them to him. He ate and drank silently.

It was a quiet time they had together.

When it began to grow dark, she brought him back to the room. She left him alone for half an hour and returned to find him sitting just where she had left him. She opened packages and cooked chops and mixed a salad, and while he was eating, made more coffee. After dinner he yawned. She was on her feet immediately. ‘Good night,’ she said, and was gone.

He turned slowly and looked at the closed door. After a time he said, ‘Good night.’ He undressed and got into bed and turned out the light.

The next day was the day they rode on a bus and lunched in a restaurant.

The day after that was the one they stayed out a little later to see a band concert.

Then there was the afternoon when it rained and they went to a movie which he watched wordlessly, not smiling, not frowning, not stirring to the musical parts.

‘Your coffee.’ ‘Let’s get these to the laundry.’ ‘Come.’ ‘Good night.’ These were the things she said to him. Otherwise she watched his face and, undemandingly, she waited.

He awoke, and it was too dark. He did not know where he was. The face was there, wide-browed, sallow,