Two

She came to herself four days later, outside on the hill overlooking the road that led down to the Sea of Galilee. She knew it was at least four days, because she had four distinct memories of Judith, who was increasingly frightened as she came to clean and cook the one meal Mary ate.

Something in her apparently prevented her from raging (as she had vague recollections of raging) while Judith was there--the same something in her that kept her from throwing herself off the cliff, or more importantly into the fire, so that her outward form would be preserved for a torment far worse than mere burning. She had a glimpse at herself dashing towards the hearth and falling to the floor as if tripped, and she heard the echo of the horrible sounds that came from her mouth--the man-sounds, as if from the depths of a cave, saying words not given to her to understand. And there was laughter, was there not? Who was laughing at whom? But that was not to be thought of.

In any case, whatever this was about her or within her, it was silent when Judith was there, and it let her mind see over the edge of the pit into which her eyes had fallen. And she could even, with great effort, remember something of these times of lucidity, when the pit closed over and the self that could think took its place again behind her eyes. And, she found, she could even recall snatches of the life inside the pit, if she suddenly surprised it by paying no attention for a time and then suddenly turning her mental head before it had a chance to veil itself. But what she saw, as now, filled her with a horror that made this a game not even one who hated herself as much as she would dare to play more than rarely. She hungered to know what went on when she was someone else, but could not really bring herself to find out.

In any case, certain it was that Judith was terrified, even of her in her moments when the world existed; she could see her looking into her eyes as if she could see lurking behind them the beast that was there, ready to spring out at the unwary and pull it into the pit along with her, laughing with the male voice that came out of the tombs.

Four days.

What had happened? She remembered the fire. It was the same fire she had asked Judith to make for something, and it had blazed up out of all reason, to engulf the world. Ah, yes, it was burning the bedclothes, she remembered; Judith had put them all on the fire as ordered. But why? Why did she want to burn the bedclothes? A part of her mind warned her to tread slowly; this was another thing one had to steel oneself to face. But then, when Judith had left and the fire had risen up to fill all of space, she had tried to leap into it--it was then that it happened--to let it possess her as a man possesses a woman. And she could not.

It was coming back to her, whether she would or no. Now she fought to keep from thinking of it, and they forced her to attend, for some reason. She saw now how she had fought. The part of her with the cavernous voice screamed and ranted, while another part, with another voice like the cry of vultures, froze her to the spot. Then the clever one interjected, "Let it live. Do this!" And then she felt once again the pain of the worst moment of the abortion, the heat, the fire, the snakes within her tearing her apart until she could bear it no longer--and it went on.

Now she was somewhere above, watching herself writhing on the bloody floor beside the bed, while at the same time she was down there, screaming in torment, but not with her own voice, and laughing at the same time. How could she make two different sounds at once?

There followed vague tactile images of pain, with some kind of visual experience that could not be described, which made things far worse than if she knew what was happening. At the same time, she from her position nowhere above herself saw herself doing something, without being able to tell what it was she was doing--until Judith's tread sounded on the path outside, loud as drumbeats, and her heart pounded in rhythm, seven beats to each step, while she picked herself up and ran a comb through her futile hair, then sat as if musing upon the sunset. Judith would speak, and she would mumble an answer; Judith would prepare some food, which she, to her surprise, found herself eating; and Judith would perform some household tasks under Mary's instruction--the correct tasks, Mary could see now, remembering as she watched once again from high above, though she had no idea how she could have known what had to be done. Judith, each time, made a move to try to plead with her, and she would cut her off, until the girl, finally finished, backed out of the room and around the turn of the path, where Mary could hear the preternaturally loud footsteps scampering in terror down the hill--and then the torment would begin again worse than ever.

She remembered how she tore her clothes and even tried to rip her skin off, but how the others--herself--would not let her damage her appearance, though they let her feel the sensation of gouging herself to the bone with her nails. Once she heard herself--the self with the voice she recognized--plead with them, who were all of her, to let her kill herself; and all of her laughed at her and cried "No! Not yet! Not for many years yet!" in cackles and roars and animal voices.

This was all familiar to her, though now she--whoever "she" was--was remembering it clearly for the first time. Why was she now, this self that could think, being allowed to see all this? Up to this moment, she only knew that there were conflicts within her, which she thought of only as raging emotions, not as people who actually spoke to one another, and about her as some kind of object.

Previously, all there were were the times when she would be alone, walking about in her room, and would suddenly find herself in another place, and discover that it was hours or even days and sometimes weeks later. Time had passed just as if she had been in a dreamless sleep, except that she knew that there had been dreams, and vaguely felt that it would be suicide to recall them. She now was experiencing some of what filled these voids, that there were somehow others who stepped behind her eyes and were herself but not herself.

Who was she? Was she really the one she now was, or would one of the others wake up in a few moments wondering what had happened, resuming a life that had been left behind while she--the present she--was pondering who she was?

She began to shake in horror, and then the feeling took over her whole body, which chilled to the marrow, and quaked and quaked. Her teeth felt as if they would break as they clacked against each other. She grabbed for a blanket, tore it off the bed and sat so close to the fire that it almost burned, and shivered and shook until, exhausted, she was able to will herself to be still except for spasms like sobs after one has been weeping.

She, who had always been so self-possessed, so sure of herself and what she wanted, who had always known exactly what she was doing and why--now did not even know who she really was! She had been doing, all this time, all sorts of things she was not conscious of--or that the one of her that existed now was not conscious of--and it was not even she who was doing it, though it was no one else! What kind of thing was she?

And these things in her who were she and not she wanted to destroy her--and how fervently she wanted them to! How desperately! But they wanted her preserved, evidently, so that they could invent new and ingenious ways of torturing her.

As they now were doing, by letting her see, she realized. They now were telling her that she was not even herself, that she was someone--many people--whom she had never even met, who were not even human, and that these people were arguing among themselves about how to kill her without killing her, to keep her in a state of eternal dying without death. Were they telling her that one of them was her real self, and that her "real" self, the only self she knew of until this moment, was an illusion which she--the really real self, the one she knew nothing about--was preserving only for the pleasure of ruining it without destroying it?

Always to be being destroyed, without ever being able to go out of existence; was that it? How could she bear it? She could not bear it; her constitution was not as strong as they thought it was; she would die. But of course, that was just what she could not do, they would see to that, they were clever enough, they would stop just short of that; she would forever be dying, but never die.

That was what it had been all her life, ever since that first encounter with Zebadiah and her first murder. That had been a dying, and yet she had not died, even in that earliest time; she had woken up, had she not, wallowing in the filth of The Valley. She had tried to kill herself then, she remembered, and even then could not. She had lived in the hope that if it ever became absolutely unbearable, she would kill herself.

And now she realized that she would not be able to do so. There was no hope at all. It was unbearable already, and what was there to do but bear it? But she could not. She would go mad.

She was mad.

She shook uncontrollably again for what seemed half the night, so violently that at least she could not think. She realized as this too subsided that she was in terror that it would become even worse. But how could it be worse? What conceivable thing could make it worse?

Then if so, since she could think, let her now think, in the time that thinking was given her. She wondered if they could hear her thinking. Perhaps not. Perhaps this was a straw of hope to grasp at in this ocean of torment.

Then what had she in fact done? What had precipitated this latest lapse into the pit?

She now remembered what happened a moment ago four days ago. She had killed her son, that tiny corpse she had held for a moment in one palm. She almost felt herself slip back at the thought of it, but clenched her fists until her palms bled, determined to face it--now realizing that it was perhaps these moments of flight from the horror of reality that plunged her into a horror of something far more real than what ordinary people call the real world. She would face it.

She said aloud. "Very well, you killed your son. It is not the first person you killed--and if you take into account those who killed themselves over you, not even the first man. And what did those deaths give you but a joy beyond describing? For a moment. And he--you did him a favor. Anyone who can die at his age has a blessing beyond diamonds and emeralds, but what could his life have been, tied to you as the son of what you are? His life could not have been as wretched as mine, no one's could be, but it would be close, because I would have seen to that, would I not, seeing him grow not only into a man, but into a man who was the embodiment of my hate? Why should I care?"

Of course, the mere asking of the question showed how futile it was to reason herself out of caring. They wanted her to care, she could see, and she did care, somehow. For no reason at all; it simply mattered to her. She burst into tears and wailed at the top of her voice, because something mattered to her--someone who was no longer anyone, who never was anyone--mattered to her. He was and is not, and it is because of what I have done that he is not, and I would not have done it to him, and I did it to him without knowing what I was doing, without knowing that I cared, thinking only of myself, while he was suffering what I was suffering, for no other reason than that he was trying to survive!

She felt the slipping again and saw the pit open up, and to claw her way back she went over to the window and looked out at the moonlit hills marching down to the great lake, the sea, they called it, letting its friable beauty bring her mind back to where it belonged. Strange, how inanimate objects create life.

She sat there. She thought of all the men she longed to kill with the most horrible of tortures. "I could kill again, if it came to that. Gladly," she said. She sat, contemplating how these men were to die by her hand, just at the moment when they thought they were to receive the greatest of pleasure. She smiled.

"But not another son," she said finally. Her mind went back to the revelation she had had while she held the tiny figure in her hand, almost caressing it, she now realized, thinking that it had simply been using her without loving or hating her in any way, only using her as one breathes the air and thinks nothing of it.

She, who had never tolerated being used, was ready to be used in that way, she did not know why. Not to be used by one who hated her, still less by one who loved her, by anyone to whom she was important, but to be used by someone who did not even realize he was using, who simply needed.

"Not another son," she said again, and suddenly saw the trap. Just as happened with her first conversation with the priest when she climbed out of The Valley, she understood everything in one blinding instant.

This was why they had revealed themselves, and this was why they were letting her think. She had believed she had rescued herself from falling back down into the abyss, but they had pushed her back, had they not?

It was simple. She could not refrain from seeing men. It was impossible, unthinkable. Even were she not to hate them and have them to take out her vengeance upon them, even if she were somehow set free from this, what would she do when she saw the huge shoulders, the flat stomach, the tiny hips? Even the thought of it now made her breasts harden and created stirrings between her legs that made her scream in pain because of what she had just done to herself--no, what had been done four long days ago.

If she needed a man now, when the mere thought of taking one was agony, if she would have taken him even now, despite what it would mean, how could she not have them when the injury had healed? Oh, yes, she understood perfectly.

Because she had been so careful all these years; even this last time, there had been no lapse; she had taken all the precautions. She knew in her rational mind that none of the precautions were perfect, but they had always worked, and what else could she do? But in the end, they had all failed her.

And of course, she had deluded herself that it had not happened, because it could not happen, because she had been so careful and taken all the precautions, and they had never failed. And so she waited, knowing all the while that she should not wait, since if it had actually happened, the thing to do was to rid herself of it immediately; but she could not believe that it was happening, and so she had waited. Waited so long that she had to undergo the torment she had endured.

And that meant that, since she could not refrain from seeing men, she would once again be as careful as she had been in the past--how could she be more careful, she who had studied every aspect of the subject?--and it would happen again, soon or late. Yes, she understood very well indeed.

She would once again try to deceive herself that this was not the time the precautions had failed; she would again wait, because she could not kill another son. But she would wait again until it was clear that what seemed to be killing her was killing something that she could see was her second son. And then her third, and then her fourth. They would see to it that it happened again, would they not? Of course they would. That was why they were letting her understand this.

But she would not do it. "I cannot," she said to the moon. "Not another son." She could not do this any more than she could avoid the men who brought her to do it.

But she would do it.

She stared off at the faint line of the lake behind the hill, wondering whether she could really see it, or whether what she was seeing was what she knew was there but could not really discern.

"No, I will kill myself first," she said, and heard laughter from behind her ears. That was exactly what she would not do. That was what they were telling her now. She would try and she would fail, just as she would take precautions and would fail, and would kill her son.

Having a son with one of those pig's turds for a father! Even were she to delay so long that he was born, she would kill him. Deliberately. She could see herself strangling him, wailing like Medea in the play she had once seen by the hypocrites who traveled from town to town. She had liked Medea, she knew all about her, because she was Medea. "More so now than ever," she remarked aloud.

Yes, the next killing would not be one she discovered after the fact; it would be a deliberate choice, whenever it happened, and that was why they were showing all this to her. She would know what to expect now when she called the "doctor" and groveled and pleaded for his services, for him to tear her apart as well as the son who was simply using her as one breathes the air. And she would ask to see him once again, and she would look on him whom she had pierced, though it would be impossible to do so, and her soul would tear itself into shards while she looked, and though it was impossible to look, it would not be possible not to look, while her soul tore itself into shards and clattered on the packed, bloody earth.

And it would be soon, this next time, would it not, because they were informing her about her future life. They had waited years for this moment, until she was perfectly ready to see just exactly how insupportable and yet inevitable was the rest of her life. And the more she put off the moment--and she would--the greater would be the torture, and the less attractive she would be afterwards to the men she needed more and more, and whom she hated more and more as she hated herself more and more, and the closer would be the time when she would have to beg them to do what they now begged and paid--in how many ways they paid!--to do. And finally, no man would look at her except with loathing and revulsion, and she would twist in the ultimate agony of desire that could find no fulfillment, even in hate.

And then she would descend into the pit fully, and it would go on forever and ever and ever.

And then there would be no man to blame, because from this time on, she was doing it to herself for herself, and not simply to take vengeance on what men had originally done to her--though for a time at least, there would be that consolation--she would do it, knowing that she could refuse, and refusing to refuse. She would be wholly and completely at fault, finally, only she. They were mere catalysts of the torment that she was inflicting on herself, and if they suffered or did not suffer also, what relevance had that?

--The thought struck her that it was even possible that she had been deluding herself into thinking that she was able to lead them into agonies of remorse, and that, knowing that she wished this, at least some of them pretended to be shocked at what they had done, and went away laughing as soon as her back was turned. Why else would they come back and come back? Oh, in some cases she saw that it was a need that was even greater than her own; but in others? She wondered.

So her "vengeance" was simply an added spice to their banquet of pleasure! She who was taking advantage of those who would take advantage of her was being taken advantage of in the very act of turning the tables! She could not endure it! She would kill them! She would kill herself!

She would not.

If her worst enemy--and she had so many!--had conceived this retribution, how could he have thought of anything more perfect? She would not fall into the trap, she would walk in, now, with her eyes wide open, in full daylight, knowing just exactly what the trap was, able to turn aside and avoid it, and not turning aside and not avoiding it.

It was not something horrible that would happen to her; she cared nothing about what happened to her, and there were no horrors that could happen that had not already happened, physical or mental. She and suffering understood each other, and she had thought that she was safe. Let the suffering come! Those who caused it would suffer more!

They would laugh.

And she would seek it out; it would not happen to her; she would do it to herself. This was what her worst enemy had brought her to. That she would deliberately torture no one but her own self, with a torture than up to this moment she had not come close to conceiving. That is what her enemies had brought upon her.

And those enemies had now revealed themselves; they were the one enemy worthy of her: herself.

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