The October Country. Ray Bradbury
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She leaped up. She grabbed at her breasts as if to squeeze, to pump to start the silent heart again!
It opened in her, closed, rattled and beat nervously, twenty rapid, shot-like times!
She sank on to the bed. What if it should stop again and not start? What would she think? What would there be to do? She’d die of fright, that’s what. A joke; it was very humorous. Die of fright if you heard your heart stop. She would have to listen to it, keep it beating. She wanted to go home and see Lila and buy the books and dance again and walk in Central Park and—listen—
Thud and a thud and a thud. Pause.
Joseph knocked on the door. Joseph knocked on the door and the car was not repaired and there would be another night, and Joseph did not shave and each little hair was perfect on his chin, and the magazine shops were closed and there were no more magazines, and they ate supper, a little bit anyway for her, and he went out in the evening to walk in the town.
She sat once more in the chair and slow erections of hair rose as if a magnet were passed over her neck. She was very weak and could not move from the chair, and she had no body, she was only a heart-beat, a huge pulsation of warmth and ache between four walls of the room. Her eyes were hot and pregnant, swollen with child of terror behind the bellied, tautened lids.
Deeply inside herself, she felt the first little cog slip. Another night, another night, another night, she thought. And this will be longer than the last. The first little cog slipped, the pendulum missed a stroke. Followed by the second and third interrelated cogs. The cogs interlocked, a small with a little larger one, the little larger one with a bit larger one, the bit larger one with a large one, the large one with a huge one, the huge one with an immense one, the immense one with a titanic one… .
A red ganglion, no bigger than a scarlet thread, snapped and quivered; a nerve, no greater than a red linen fiber twisted. Deep in her one little mech was gone and the entire machine, imbalanced, was about to steadily shake itself to bits.
She didn’t fight it. She let it quake and terrorize her and knock the sweat off her brow and jolt down her spine and flood her mouth with horrible wine. She felt as if a broken gyro tilted now this way, now that and blundered and trembled and whined in her. The color fell from her face like light leaving a clicked-off bulb, the crystal cheeks of the bulb vessel showing veins and filaments all colorless… .
Joseph was in the room, he had come in, but she didn’t even hear him. He was in the room but it made no difference, he changed nothing with his coming. He was getting ready for bed and said nothing as he moved about and she said nothing but fell into the bed while he moved around in a smoke-filled space beyond her and once he spoke but she didn’t hear him.
She timed it. Every five minutes she looked at her watch and the watch shook and time shook and the five fingers were fifteen moving, reassembling into five. The shaking never stopped. She called for water. She turned and turned upon the bed. The wind blew outside, cocking the lights and spilling bursts of illumination that hit buildings glancing sidelong blows, causing windows to glitter like opened eyes and shut swiftly as the light tilted in yet another direction. Downstairs, all was quiet after the dinner, no sounds came up into their silent room. He handed her a water glass.
“I’m cold, Joseph,” she said, lying deep in folds of cover.
“You’re all right,” he said.
“No, I’m not. I’m not well. I’m afraid.”
“There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
“I want to get on the train for the United States.”
“There’s a train in Leon, but none here,” he said, lighting a new cigarette.
“Let’s drive there.”
“In these taxis, with these drivers, and leave our car here?”
“Yes. I want to go.”
“You’ll be all right in the morning.”
“I know I won’t be. I’m not well.”
He said, “It would cost hundreds of dollars to have the car shipped home.”
“I don’t care. I have two hundred dollars in the bank home. I’ll pay for it. But, please, let’s go home.”
“When the sun shines tomorrow you’ll feel better, it’s just that the sun’s gone now.”
“Yes, the sun’s gone and the wind’s blowing,” she whispered, closing her eyes, turning her head, listening. “Oh, what a lonely wind. Mexico’s a strange land. All the jungles and deserts and lonely stretches, and here and there a little town, like this, with a few lights burning you could put out with a snap of your fingers …”
“It’s a pretty big country,” he said.
“Don’t these people ever get lonely?”
“They’re used to it this way.”
“Don’t they get afraid, then?”
“They have a religion for that.”
“I wish I had a religion.”
“The minute you get a religion you stop thinking,” he said. “Believe in one thing too much and you have no room for new ideas.”
“Tonight,” she said, faintly. “I’d like nothing more than to have no more room for new ideas, to stop thinking, to believe in one thing so much it leaves me no time to be afraid.”
“You’re not afraid,” he said.
“If I had a religion,” she said, ignoring him, “I’d have a lever with which to lift myself. But I haven’t a lever now and I don’t know how to lift myself.”
“Oh, for God’s—” he mumbled to himself, sitting down.
“I used to have a religion,” she said.
“Baptist.”
“No, that was when I was twelve. I got over that. I mean—later.”
“You never told me.”
“You should have known,” she said.
“What religion? Plaster saints in the sacristy? Any special special saint you liked to tell your beads to?”
“Yes.”
“And did he answer your prayers?”
“For a little while. Lately, no, never. Never any more. Not for years now. But I keep praying.”
“Which saint is this?”
“Saint Joseph.”
“Saint Joseph.” He got up and poured himself a glass of water from the glass pitcher, and it was a lonely trickling sound in the room. “My name.”
“Coincidence,” she said.
They looked at one another for a few moments.
He looked away. “Plaster saints,” he said, drinking the water down.
After a while she said, “Joseph?” He said, “Yes?” and she said, “Come hold my hand, will you?” “Women,” he sighed. He came and held her hand. After a minute she drew her hand away, hid it under the blanket, leaving his hand empty behind. With her eyes closed she trembled the words, “Never mind. It’s not as nice as I can imagine it. It’s really nice the way I can make you hold my hand in my mind.” “Gods,” he said, and went into the bathroom. She turned off the light. Only the small crack of light under the bathroom door showed. She listened to her heart. It beat one hundred and fifty times a minute, steadily, and the little whining tremor was still in her marrow, as if each bone of her body had a blue-bottle fly imprisoned in it, hovering, buzzing, shaking, quivering deep, deep, deep. Her eyes reversed into herself, to watch