Into the Night

Even the nurse at the hospital, as given at second hand by himself: “She’s a real sick girl. I don’t know what you’ve done to her, but keep away from her!”

She jolted to her feet, and her face wasn’t just white, it was yellow with illness.

“Where’s the bathroom? Hurry up—!” she said in a strangled voice.

“In there — the door with the mirror—”

The mirror flashed back the lights of the room as she flung the door open, then an instant later flashed again like a panel of running water as she came out almost immediately afterward.

“False alarm,” she said sardonically, to no one in particular. “I must have a stronger stomach than I—”

She looked around for the Hennessy, found it, and poured herself some without asking him to help her. She poured it into a small shot glass, downed it at a throw. She needed it.

She sat down on the sofa without looking toward him. There was silence between them for a long time after that. He seemed to have forgotten she was even there. She couldn’t forget that he was.

“How long after you were married did you find it out?” she asked suddenly.

He shook his head doggedly. “I knew it before.”

If anything new could have been rung in on the gamut of emotions she’d already experienced in this one evening, this did it now. She felt a mixture of disgust and dismay, and an overall incredulity. “You knew it, and you went ahead and married her!” she choked.

“I was in love with her. I even left my wife for her.” Then he corrected, as an afterthought, “My first wife.”

“Don’t put it that way,” she said, grimacing in horror.

For the first time since the thing had come out into the open, he turned and looked directly at her. Her own eyes turned and fled off into a far corner, straining to get away from his look, refusing to endure him. “I never loved somebody like I loved her. Couldn’t you see it, the way I looked when you said her name? Couldn’t you tell it, the way I spoke when I said it?

“I knew when I married her. She didn’t. I married her with my eyes wide open. What was the difference, by then?”

“What was the difference?” she gasped.

“We’d already been sleeping with each other while I was still living with Dell. The marriage didn’t bring on anything new. I didn’t want a paramour. I loved her like a man loves the woman he wants to marry — and does marry.

“It’s not so terrible. It’s just the idea that frightens you and sounds so terrible.”

“It’s accursed,” she cut in sharply. “It’s unclean. It’s forbidden,” but he paid no attention.

“We were complete strangers,” he said, raising his voice in his own defense. “Even if we’d spent a year together as children — even a half year, a month. But we’d never set eyes on each other in our lives before, until the day we met and started to fall in love. No one was as complete strangers as we two were. The only thing that was the same was the blood. And what does the blood know, how can it tell? Cousins often marry cousins. In ancient Egypt the law in the ruling family was for brother to marry sister. It was traditional. It’s only because it’s taboo now that it shocks so.”

“That was paganism. This is Christianity. And by that I mean as well Judaism, Islam, call it what you will; it’s condemned by all of them alike. It’s taboo for a reason,” she said coldly, “and it’s not meant to be disobeyed.”

“You see this beautiful face,” he said dreamily. “You love this beautiful face. You love this beautiful person. Then you find out that for a little while, at the start of life, you nursed at the breast of the same woman who nursed her afterward. But if you already love as deeply as you do it’s too late to make a difference anymore. It doesn’t seem to matter, it fans your love even more. Now you love not only her, you love the added closeness that brings you that much nearer to her each time. Your sense of owning, of possessing, is strengthened that much more.”

“You’re not trying to convince me,” she said dully. “You’re trying to convince yourself. It’s written on your face, the guilt, the fear—”

“Yes, because now she’s gone. She’s not here anymore to keep the guilt, the fear, at a distance, make me forget.”

“You can’t bury your conscience, you can’t kill it completely. You’ve destroyed yourself. Now you won’t be able to bear living, and you’ll be terrified of dying. Or you should be.”

He hung his head in admission.

“How did you first find out?”

He spoke with his head still downturned, without looking up at her. “Quite simply, nothing complicated about it. My mother died about seven, eight years ago. The night before she passed, I was sitting there beside her bed, and she told me there was something she wanted to get off her mind before she went, she’d feel better about it if she did. It sounds like one of those old melodramas, I know, but it really happened this way.

“She was jilted, as a young girl, after the guy got her pregnant. The child, when it came, was stillborn. This preyed on her mind and, I guess, turned her queer for a while.