A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

And with that, as if in direct and vengeful rejection of her prayer, as if her pleas had cabalistically produced the very thing she wanted to avert, came the stealthy indicating-signal of someone there outside the door. It wasn’t a knock, or even a tap; it was like someone stroking the door with the nails of two fingers, trying to make as little sound as possible and yet attract her attention.

“Are you in there?” a hushed voice wanted to know, mouth pressed up close against the door-seam.

She jumped erect so swiftly that the whole thing was like a coil shooting free; one single motion and she was up and straight and quivering like the feelers of an insect caught under somebody’s palm.

She didn’t answer, she couldn’t have, but maybe the stunned silence betrayed her. Such things can happen. There is a silence that vibrates, that speaks, that tells things.

It came again, the rasp, about like a match flicking sandpaper. And then a hiss to punctuate it, to attract.

“Sst. Are you in there?”

She went over by it on hushed tipped feet and stood there close to it, face lowered intently, her balance in flux but afraid to touch it for support even from the inside.

Then it breathed a name, the door, it spoke a name.

“Gerard.”

And suddenly no door had ever opened so fast. Suddenly there was no door anymore. Just two in love, trying to make themselves one. Suddenly all the world was heaven, noon-bright, and there was no such thing as fear, even its very definition had faded away from the language-books and left just a blank space where it once had been.

She didn’t even wait to see if it was he. There was no time to look at him, scan his face. It didn’t matter, her heart knew. Her arms went around him like the back-fling of a cracked whip. Her head was on his shoulder, her face was beside his face, and all she saw was blank wall opposite, but her heart knew him just the same.

His voice was low and cautioning in her ear, and a slight move his head made told her he had looked over his shoulder guardedly. “Not out here. Hurry up, let me get inside first!”

She reclosed the door after them. He went over to a chair, fixed the top of it with his hand first as if afraid it would get away from him, and then sank into it loose as a puddle of water. She thought she never had seen such exhaustion before. It was a collapse.

She couldn’t take her eyes off him. She moved first to one side of him, then to the other, then directly before him, slightly crouched, her hands to her knees. “I can’t believe it, I can’t, I can’t! When did you get out?”

He raised his head, which had sunk low almost to his chest with weariness, and looked at her. “I didn’t. I broke out.”

She gave a quick head-turn across the room, then back again. “God in heaven! You’re one of those three, on that broadcast I heard—? I never dreamed— They didn’t give any names.”

“They never do,” he said dully. “We’re just people without names. That’s so anyone on the outside who might know us, want to help us or hide us, won’t hear about it.”

“I didn’t even know where they’d sent you.”

“I didn’t want you mixed up in it at all. Did you get that note I smuggled out to you, after I was picked up and being held for trial?”

“A woman I didn’t know sat down next to me one night, at that little place I eat down the street. She folded her arms on the counter, and with the outside one slipped it to me underneath the one that was next to me. Then she got up and walked out without a word.”

“That was Malin’s wife,” he said without emotion. “He was the one killed a week ago Monday. Three little kids.”

“It wasn’t in your handwriting, but I knew it must be—”

“He passed her the message on from me, and had her write it down.”

“I can still remember every word of it by heart,” she said devoutly, like when you recite your rosary. “ ‘Stay out of it. Keep away from the trial. And if I’m sent up don’t come down and try to say good-bye to me before I go. If they question you, you don’t know me.’

“I kept it for two whole days, and then I did away with it,” she said tenderly, as if she were speaking of a love-poem.

“That was the thing to do,” he approved.

Outside in the hall before, without looking at him at all, she had known him. Now, inside and looking at him, she almost didn’t know him anymore. The terrible changes the thing had brought to him. The dust of the wayside and the soot of the box-car that were no longer just surface grime anymore but gave the appearance of having gotten under his skin and made him look permanently dingy. The deep sweat-etched lines of intolerable strain and tiredness that would never quite go away again. The hunger of the indrawn cheeks and the out-staring eyes.

He’d been so young once and been so spruce and eye-pleasing. He wasn’t now. And strange is the way of the heart: She loved him now more than she ever had then.