“If there isn’t anyone else, then she must be the one, right?”
Perhaps so. But there was no hard proof that my wife was actually among these able-bodied six, all winners of the preliminary match, to begin with. I was only trying to anticipate the worst.
“That’s odd. Having to think so much to decide if someone is your own wife …”
Probably it did seem odd. But a man’s wife always exists for him in the totality of her personality. However beautiful, what that photograph showed was nothing but an exquisite assemblage of various bodily parts. It was impossible to make any mental connection between that and my image of my wife. Besides, that thick layer of pearly white was sending the blood of a stranger coursing to the farthest reaches of her body. No doubt her personality had been utterly transformed, too.
“Well, well, all three of you together; isn’t this unusual! Say, did you finish going over that manuscript for me?”
All at once the assistant director was standing directly behind us. The secretary stiffened automatically, but she did not seem particularly surprised.
“I typed up your speech for tomorrow in duplicate and gave one copy to the council… . Five Xerox copies will be enough, don’t you think?”
“Plenty.”
Were they fellow conspirators after all? The girl looked up at the assistant director with a helpless giggle. I felt betrayed. It had all come about so naturally that I got off to a bad start, and was unable to think of even one of the itemized questions that I had so carefully prepared for our next encounter.
“I would appreciate it if there were some way of checking out the real names of these contestants.”
“Yeah. They sure came up with some far-out stage names, didn’t they? Whoever’s in charge around here must be into either Turkish baths or modern poetry, one of the two.” Abruptly he gave the girl’s ear a pinch and said in a sober voice, “Poor kid, look at the shape you’re in.”
The crowd of spectators parted and a trio of shaven-headed fellows in sweat pants appeared, running with the distinctive way of holding the knees that comes from wearing jump shoes. When they saw us, all three put their hands up by their temples, palms out, and flapped them like elephant ears. The assistant director addressed one of them, who was carrying some newspapers in a paper bag slung around his shoulder.
“Let me have one of those, will you?”
“Can’t, sir; these are tomorrow’s papers.”
The trio ran off, and the flow of onlookers returned to normal.
“You seem pretty interested in one of these women.”
The secretary answered for me.
“He says she might be his wife.”
“I see… .” The assistant director glanced at the photograph on the bulletin board and gave a wry smile. “Still, you are keeping up with the notebooks, I hear.”
“What do you mean, ‘still’?”
“I suppose I mean something like ‘nevertheless.’ Well, what do you say, shall we have a look inside? I’ve got some extra tickets, so there’s one for you. I’m rather interested in this Masked Woman myself.” He turned and addressed the secretary. “You take the girl and go down to the lounge for a coffee or something, okay?”
The secretary bore down hard on the instep of my jump shoe with all her weight.
“I’m only waiting five minutes, hear? Keep an eye on the clock. I was going to have you touch me real nice. I’m entitled to that much.”
From inside the wheelchair as the secretary pushed it farther and farther away, the girl gazed back with an imploring look. I couldn’t tell which of us she was looking at. Not only were her eyes far away, but she seemed to be squinting slightly besides. I wiped away tears. They were from the pain in my foot, but the assistant director seemed to misunderstand.
“Now, I’m not going to jump on you for anything right now. But sometimes a little cruelty is necessary. Doctors are cruel, and patients endure their cruelty … that’s the law of survival.”
We pushed our way through a throng of people, all of whom stared resentfully at the tickets in our hands, and went through the door marked masked woman. Inside was a reception area surrounded on all four sides by black cloth. When one layer was pushed aside, another appeared in its place. Pushing right and left through layer after layer of cloth (for the life of me, I could not tell what order they went in), finally we came to a white-tiled room that looked like a lecture amphitheater for a dissection. In the front of the room was a semicircular cylinder covered with curved mirrors, surrounded fanwise by rows of nearly full seats.
A dry, expressionless voice came over the speakers.
The three-minute intermission will soon be over. Please take your seats.
Since of course the assistant director could not sit down, I decided to join him standing up.
The houselights dimmed and the cylindrical mirrors vanished; in their place appeared a wide bed. Evidently they were two-way mirrors. On the bed was a naked woman, her face painted white exactly as advertised, lying with her feet pointed toward the audience. Shudders began to spread outward from the core of my body like ripples of water. To keep the assistant director from noticing, I held my body stiff, but then my back teeth began to rattle like an old washing machine.
“Well? Isn’t she something? She may look a little delicate, but they say she’s got such a big lead now on the runner-up, Doll Pavilion, that she has the championship all wrapped up.” Inserted between the woman’s legs, which were half parted with one knee raised, was some sort of metal apparatus attached to a cord. Electrodes taped to her knees, hips, and shoulders were connected by fine insulated wires to a machine by the bed. Even in that state she had beauty and charm, rather like a dancer in the role of a captive Martian.
Two doctors in lab coats came out from in back, removed the apparatus from between her legs, and inspected the machine. With an air of familiarity, one of them gave her nipples a casual pinch and murmured words of encouragement as he left. The woman jerked reflexively.
“Amazing, isn’t it. She stays just on the verge of an orgasm.”
“Can she be cured?”
“If it’s a sickness, it’s a disease afflicting patients that stems from what you might call personality forfeiture, so it’s untreatable; treatment isn’t considered necessary anyway.”
“That’s horrible.”
“Is she really your wife?”
“For some reason I’m just not sure….”
“Some help you are. Speaking of your wife, by the way … the sex psychologists say she was suffering from a form of rape delusion.”
“Did you find her?”
“Remember that tape we listened to together, the one made in the outpatient waiting room? That noise like a sack of starch falling over evidently was your wife falling down, after all. She had a mild brain concussion. When she came to, she suddenly found herself surrounded by a circle of white-masked men. As a matter of fact, it was nothing but an ordinary examining room, but your wife jumped to the conclusion that she was going to be gang-raped. Rape delusion, you see, is a defensive arousal mechanism for escaping from the fear of rape. Fighting fire with fire, you might say. In other words, it’s a kind of compensatory arousal.”
“What bullshit!”
“You’ve gotten awfully sure of yourself, haven’t you?” The assistant director arched his back and looked over one shoulder at me like a comical camel, alternately stretching out and screwing up his upper lip. “Never mind; while the cat was away you certainly managed to get in your share of playing, didn’t you? Holing up somewhere with the girl from room eight and carrying on with her from morning till night…”
“We were not ‘carrying on’!”
“You don’t have to yell!” He was the one who was yelling. Several people turned around and gave us dirty looks. “Do whatever you want with hen Have her boiled or fried, just as you like. Of course, I’d be fooling myself if I said I didn’t miss her. You’re right, she was as nice as freshly squeez
ed orange juice … but I’ve decided to get over her once and for all. With the champion of tonight’s contest… the orgasm record-holder and the horse-man … that combination should make it considerably easier to get my idea across to people, don’t you think? Give me your opinion. I’ve asked two or three people and so far everyone agrees with me. …”
“I don’t know the first thing about any idea of yours.”
“That’s impossible. It’s all set up for tomorrow’s festival. After the memorial address, as horse-man I’m going to have intercourse in front of all the participants. With the winner of tonight’s contest. The idea is to give a personal demonstration of the ultimate retrogression, myself.”
“Playing monster, is that it?”
“You sure like to give a guy a hard time. When will you ever accept the true ugliness of health? If animal history has been a history of evolution, then the history of mankind is one of retrogression. Hooray for monsters! Monsters are the great embodiments of the weak.”
A buzzer sounded. A blue “Ready” light faded and a red “On” light took its place. Led out by a large, dark nurse, a balding, plump, middle-aged man came out timidly from the side door. A mane of pubic hair billowed around his erect penis, which he shyly covered with both hands. When the nurse pulled his hands away, the organ began losing its vitality before our eyes.
The assistant director clucked his tongue lightly.
“No good; he’s too nervous.”
The nurse rubbed oil on the middle-aged man’s penis and gave it an encouraging squeeze-pull. It regained its luster, and the audience roared approval. The woman parted her thighs at a signal, and the nurse injected some sort of fluid into the nicotine-colored place in her crotch, using an enema syringe. It was probably some sort of lubricating oil. A series of convulsions ran like ripples in a water bed from the woman’s abdominal region up under her ribs.
“You must have some way of finding out just who this woman is and where she’s from.”
“You aren’t exactly in a position to go around talking that way any more, are you?”
The middle-aged man crawled up on the bed, his round bottom toward us, and knelt between her legs. The woman twisted her head to the right, both fists tightly clenched. The move did have a familiar look, but I couldn’t be certain. The man was awkwardly shifting the position of his hips and bending his head; then, without changing posture, he started to masturbate. Evidently his penis had gone completely down. Laughter burst out from the audience, and even the woman lifted up her head to peer between his legs.
“If I could only see her closer up, then I’m sure I’d be able to tell….”
“That’s it! You do it!” The assistant director spoke suddenly, choking on his laughter. “With luck, your body will remember for you!”
The nurse came out with a syringe and gave the middle-aged man a quick shot in one buttock, then swabbed the site of the injection with alcohol-soaked cotton. Already, though, the attention of the audience had focused on me. A man with a plaster cast around his neck sitting in front of us turned around, grabbed my cock, and yelled, “It’s up! He’s rarin’ to go!”
“Watch it, buddy.”
The assistant director gave me a shove down to the end of the aisle. The steps, which were made of stainless-steel pipes, were about forty centimeters apart. If I ever lost my footing, it would be all I could do to stay upright. Somebody yanked on my shirttail, and a button popped off. The only way to keep from falling down headfirst was to go on down the stairs without trying to resist. My belt came off. My shirt sleeves were ripped to shreds. My fly came unzipped, and my pants slid down around my feet. By the time I had finally reached the bottom of the stairs and recovered my balance, I was dressed absurdly in nothing but my shorts, my jump shoes, and the back of my shirt. Lewd howls and war whoops flew back and forth in the hall, and seemed to penetrate even inside the two-way mirror. The woman propped herself up on one elbow, craned her white neck, and looked out from between the middle-aged man’s legs to see what was happening outside. The nurse sent flustered signals backstage, and the lighting dimmed until the glass cylinder reverted to being a mirror once again. Now it was our turn to be seen. Had she recognized me? …
I turned my back to the mirrors, took the steel pipe out from under my arm, and steadied myself. Then, holding it aloft menacingly in the air, I started back up the stairs. The five minutes I had promised the secretary were almost up. All I had to do was go and explain the situation to her, and then come back again. Even as I told myself that, however, I was well aware that in part it was only an excuse. I might just as easily have smashed the two-way mirror and forced my way inside. Instead I had chosen to back down. It made no sense even to me. Or was I just trying not to understand?
Several times I encountered heavy resistance, and heard screams. Brandishing the steel pipe, I ran inside the area partitioned with black cloth.
Inside was nothing but a dim light reflected off the ceiling; I could just barely make out my hand ahead of me in the dark. To keep from being taken by surprise, I stabbed and beat at the cloths with my pipe as I went. No one seemed to be after me, but the path was far more intricate than I had dreamed. In a series of two-meter-square enclosures, the way would be now straight ahead, now on one side; it was an endless maze, with no seeming pattern in all the turns and twists. Realizing that the assistant director had led us through in less than a minute only made me more impatient, which threw my sense of direction all the farther off track.
Suddenly, weaving through the black cloth walls like a howling wind, there came the echo of a woman’s deep, sad moaning. It sounded like the cry the north wind makes on clear winter evenings, brushing against telephone wires. Had the injection helped that middle-aged man to recover? Or had some other man taken his place? Swathed head to foot in black cloth, I kept pushing blindly ahead, frantically thrusting curtains aside one after another. Whether it meant that I would escape from my wife or be pulled back to her, I didn’t care. Abruptly the voices receded, and I stepped outside the door.
Out in the hall it was as crowded as ever. Everyone who had not been able to purchase a ticket stared at me inquisitively. I had come bursting out of the very place they were all dying to see, my eyes bloodshot and nothing on but a pair of shorts. Naturally they were suspicious. Quietly I laid the steel pipe down on the floor, put my hands on my hips and decided to keep running, against the flow of the crowd. With luck they might assume I was just out jogging.
The lounge had begun to empty a little, but there was no sign of the secretary. Looking at my watch, I saw that it was thirty minutes past the time we had agreed on. Had she given up waiting and gone off somewhere? Using my jump shoes, I leaped up nearly to the ceiling. On the third try I caught a glimpse of someone in a light-tan blouse crouching down in a far corner. No, she wasn’t crouching down; she was sitting in the wheelchair reading a newspaper. I felt an ugly premonition. I jumped up again, but there was no sign of the girl from room eight. In revenge for my broken promise she might have thrown her away, or given her to someone else. Ignoring the curses hurled my way, I scrambled madly through the crowd, cutting straight across the room. When the secretary saw me, she looked me up and down as if stifling an urge to laugh, then calmly offered me the newspaper she was reading.
“Look, this is tomorrow’s paper.”
Between the scarlet quilt and the secretary’s bottom, a reddish putty-like substance was poking out. She was sitting on top of the girl. Overwhelmed by an emotion that was neither rage nor pain, I grabbed the secretary’s arm and wrenched her up with all my might. With a sound of popping joints she rose in the air and landed under a nearby table with an exaggerated scream. When I lifted up the girl in the wheelchair, she squirmed slightly and groaned. Her life appeared to be in no immediate danger. Taking hold of what I guessed were her hands and feet, I pulled on them gently. I had a feeling that if I nursed her awhile, eventually I could have her back looking like a human being again.
Suddenly three young men in sweat pants appeared out of the crowd. One offered an arm to the secretary, and another sidled toward me in a karate stance. The third came at me silently with his fists, from the side. I twisted narrowly out of range and exchanged blows with him; in the instant when I attempted to lay the girl back in her wheelchair, the man in front came charging at me, head down. I barely managed to swallow a violent impulse to retch before I felt my consciousness plunge into a sea of nausea. Faces of bystanders surrounding me at a distance were as red as gladioli. Just before I was shut up inside a rubber bag, thicker than the assistant director’s corset, I heard the voice of the secretary singing far away.
Say the multiplication table.
Someone began reading a memorial address for me.
Two times two is four, two times three is six, two times four is eight, two times five is ten …
I came to in the dark. After groping around awhile, I found the wheel of the wheelchair and finally remembered what had happened. A dull pain lingered beneath my ribs. Rubbing my stomach, I opened the trunk under the wheelchair, took out a flashlight, and checked on the girl. She was as oddly distorted as a rubber doll blown up too hard, but putting my ear up close, I could hear faint breathing. In the depths of my irrational joy at being alone with her at last, my eyes filled with tears. I stuck a finger in the crease under her jaw and rubbed gently. She half opened her eyes, blinking as though the light were dazzling. I kissed her nipples, which were like two scars. An answering sound met my ears, as though someone had stepped on a ball with a hole in it.
I explored the room with the flashlight. The chairs, the tables, the counter, the piles of empty bottles and paper cups, all had disappeared without a trace. The floor was buried in a thick layer of ancient dust, undisturbed by a single footprint. I began to wonder if last night’s celebration had not been a festival of ghosts. Everything about the building itself was as I remembered it, though. The girl lay crushed in the wheelchair, and on my stomach was clearly imprinted the shape of that man’s head. What’s more, next to the wheelchair, “tomorrow’s newspaper” lay crumpled where it had been tossed.