F Paul Wilson - Secret History 02 (58 page)

           
"I'm off. One of my floating
days off."

           
"Would you mind stopping by the
Chelsea house and helping me with a few things? I want to make some
changes."

           
"Sure! Be glad to! See you
around nine?"

           
He hung up. How about that? She
wanted 'to make some changes.' Wasn't that just like a woman in a new house?
Maybe all his fears were groundless.

           
Whatever. He'd be on West
Twenty-first Street bright and early tomorrow morning.

           
Kara couldn't stand the noise any
longer.

           
God,
that's awful. Can you say you actually enjoy that caterwauling?

           
After Jill had gone off to bed,
Gabor had seated Kara's body in the recliner on the heavily draped third floor.
With a remote electronic control he had started up the CD player. Seconds
later, operatic voices began blasting through the room. He tilted the chair
back, closed her eyes, and Kara found herself enclosed in darkness, listening
to a woman screeching in Italian. She had to admit, though, that the sound
system was impressive. She could almost believe that she was in an opera house
listening to a live performance. But that did not make her enjoy what she was
being forced to hear.

           
"That is not caterwauling. That
is Mirlella Freni singing Verdi's
Ernani
at La Scala. It's beautiful."

           
It's
awful. But not as awful as how you have perverted your ability.

           
Her eyes opened.

           
"Perverted?" And to what
use, pray tell, do you think I should have put my talent? The good of humanity?
Don't make me laugh."

           
Kara had pulled herself from her
depression. Having Jill around helped. She had set her mind to work on getting
free of Gabor. It wouldn't be easy—he was so much more experienced at this—and
it might even be impossible. But she had to try. And to have any hope of
success, she had to know more about what made him tick.

           
Why
not? Think what you might be able to do for coma patients. Maybe you could wake
them up. Or schizophrenics. Maybe you could put their minds back on track.

           
"Perhaps. Perhaps not."

           
But
you've never even tried. You have this power and you could have contributed
something, but instead you're nothing but a
—
a voluptuary
!

           
"Voluptuary. I like that word.
You have an excellent vocabulary, Kara. But you have not thought your scenario
all the way through. Here I am, the hero of the medical world, snatching lives
back from the depths of coma and psychosis, the wonderful Gabor Gati! But what
happens when they all go home for the night? Where is Gabor? Gabor is in a crib
in a diaper being fed gruel by a nurse. He can't watch films on TV, he can't
choose the music he'd like to hear, he can't even speak to carry on a
conversation. And where are the friends and company and conversation Gabor
might want? They're somewhere else, and glad to be there, glad they don't have
to look at that blind, shrunken, deformed, ugly little geek they use during the
day!"

           
That's
the way
you
see yourself. Aren't you
engaging in what you psychiatrists call 'projection
?'

           
"Very good! It is exactly that.
But don't try to psychoanalyze me, my dear. I'm way ahead of you. Do you think
I have no perspective on myself? I do. I know I am egocentric, and even
narcissistic in my own way. And I might even be considered a sociopath. But I
exist outside the terminology created for the common
Homo sapiens
. The developmental defects that so grossly altered my
body altered my brain as well. I'm different from you. I'm different from
everybody. Your rules don't apply to me. I am a species apart."

           
Hitler
probably thought the same way.

           
"Perhaps I am rationalizing.
But I'm not a megalomaniac. I've no plans to sneak about, impregnating women
with my sperm in order to start a super race of my kind."

           
It
probably wouldn't work anyway.

           
"I agree. But if I were the
B-movie power-crazed monster you're implying I am, I'd certainly give it a try.
But I'm not interested in ruling the world. I don't
care
about the world. I care about Gabor. I came into this world
trapped in a blind, mute, deformed body incapable of experiencing anything
beyond the most rudimentary sensations. But I found a compensatory power within
me that allows me to experience all manner of sensation via the bodies of
others. So I use that power. It would be a sin, after all, to waste it."

           
Did
your power come with a gift for moral contortions as well, or did you develop
that on your own?

           
"I don't explain myself, Kara.
Even to myself."

           
Maybe
you
—

           
Kara felt her body start as
something tapped her shoulder.

           
It was Jill, tired, rubbing her
eyes.

           
"I can't sleep with all that
noise," she said above the blare of the opera.

           
The sound ebbed as Kara's thumb
pressed the volume control.

           
"And you didn't kiss me good
night."

           
Had Kara's muscles been responsive
to her moods, they would have bunched into cramped knots. The thought of Gabor
kissing Jill…

           
"Sorry, my dear. Let's get you
back to bed."

           
"And how come you keep calling
me 'my dear?' "

           
"Because you
are
my dear."

           
"What do you usually call
her?" "
Honey." Or
"Bug
."

           
"How quaint."

           
He led her down to the bedroom and
did a decent job of tucking her back in.

           
"Don't forget my kiss!"

           
Kara's body bent and her lips kissed
Jill on the cheek.

           
"And a hug!"

           
Kara felt Jill's arms go around her
neck and squeeze.

           
"I love you, Mom!"

           
Had she eyes and tears, Kara would
have wept. That hug and those words were meant for
her
and Gabor was stealing them. She raged blindly.

           
I'll
get us out of this, Jill! Someway, somehow, I'll get free of him!

           
A calm, monstrously self-assured
voice replied.

           
"No you won't."

 
 

           
"Where you going with that
food, Mom?"

           
You freeze for a moment. You were
doing what you always do: preparing breakfast for your body in the basement.
You reached into the pantry for some junior foods to take downstairs, but you
forgot the child.

           
Up to this point, the morning has
gone quite well. Jill is a charming child, bright, intelligent, good-natured.
She stirs some lost, long-dormant part of you. A child. Progeny. The future.
You realize with a pang of loss that you will never have a child of your own,
that an entire wing of the Gati family has reached its terminus in you. That
perspective has escaped you until now. The tragedy of it makes you grieve.

           
But now the child has seen the baby
food and wants to know about it.

           
You tell her, 'I'm going to take
some of it downstairs. To make more room up here."

           
"How come it's here?"

           
"Someone with a baby probably
lived here before we moved in."

           
"Why'd they leave it?"

           
"I don't know," you say,
unable to keep a snap out of your voice. "Stop asking so many
questions."

           
The child starts as if she'd been
slapped.

           
Don't
talk to her like that!

           
"I'll speak to her the way I
choose. Doesn't she ever stop asking questions?"

           
Never.
How else is a child to learn? How do you think you learned?

           
"By stealing. I never had a
childhood of my own. I had to siphon it off from others."

           
Asking's
better than stealing.

           
"I had no choice."

           
Awww.
I'll get some violin music for you
.

           
You don't know how long you can
tolerate sharing a body with this woman. Her contempt for you is a cold damp
wind on the back of your neck. Her rage at having control of her body torn from
her is a palpable thing, a growing weight on your shoulders. Her sense of self
is too strong, too deeply seated to allow you a comfortable coexistence.