Poisonous Kiss (32 page)

     Arany feels dizzy and sick. He manages to make it to the toilet. He leans over the bowl and starts to vomit. It hurts like hell. Then he washes his face and rinses his mouth at the washbasin. Looking into the mirror he sees a stranger staring at him.

     His hands tremble. His body is wracked with new attacks of sickness. He has to support himself against the washbasin. He knows he can't stay here. He re-enters the bar and drops some bills on the counter. He overpays. He can't wait for the change. When he gets out to the street, the noise and color of the outside world take over him with an unexpected violence. He staggers backwards.

     He isn't aware of what he's doing. He isn't thinking about anyone's feelings. He isn't thinking at all. The pay phone draws him like a magnet. He drops the coins into the slot automatically and dials. And then he leans against the shelf of the phone booth, waiting for Celia to get there.

Celia turned up in thirty minutes. Her face was tense. Her eyes were frightened. But she didn't cry. She isn't the type who'd start sobbing when there's still work to be done. She leaned over me and caressed my face gently.

     "God!" she whispered.

     "Just don't be angry with me." I tried to smile. I sat next to the phone booth. I had crawled out twenty minutes ago when someone opened the door for the third time, trying to get in, and a female voice started to say something pointed about junkies.

     "Come on!"

     I leaned on her shoulder. I would never have guessed she was so strong. I lowered my face so I could feel her silky hair against my cheek. She paused, letting me embrace her, then swept me along. I tried to pull myself together, I didn't want to put all my weight on her shoulders. Faces and figures danced before my eyes, they moved aside momentarily, then closed ranks again behind my back.

     Celia's car was nearby. She'd left the motor running, the hazard flashers were still blinking. As soon as I got in, I lay back in the seat and closed my eyes. I heard the other door open and Celia get in.

     "Are you sick?"

     "No, I'm not," I forced a whisper.

     When I opened my eyes again I felt as if I were watching a movie about some place I'd never seen before. Nothing seemed real: The houses looked like scenery. The people around us were like actors. Everything seemed to blur together. When I did see something clearly, we drove past it so fast that I couldn't figure out what it was.

     I thought of the tough-faced heavy. Suddenly I knew. I knew I'd seen that jawline, the dark glance, the pug nose…I was sure. It was when I took Gladys out of the Rumball. He had been sitting there in a booth with three other hard-ass types—all muscle and menacing looks. He gave me the once-over as I was marching between the tables, shield held high in one hand, my gun ready in the other hand, ready to shoot. That was it. That was what I'd been looking for all along. The link, the tie-in between Delacroix and the heavies from the Rumball's. And what was the use?

     "Does it hurt?"

     Even though Celia stepped on the brake gingerly I drew in my breath in pain. The safety belt rubbed up against a bruise.

     "No." I lied without thinking.

     It wasn't the hospital where they took Pat. And it wasn't the place where the doctors brought me back to life after my brief encounter with Frost's knife. Celia knew the way. She led me along the corridors, then made me sit on a bench and disappeared. I sat slumped forward. I hadn't planned our meeting like this. I was planning to be angry or radiate dignified aloofness. When a door opened I looked up and saw an unknown face. He was a chubby man with spectacles. He looked me over without a word and disappeared behind the door again. Silence. I didn't know where I was and that frustrated me enormously. I saw no patient's rooms in the long hallway. There were no gurneys or waiting families. None of the normal features of a hospital. I looked up at the closed door. There was something frightening and mysterious about it. I felt like I was in a movie again—a horror movie.

     Then suddenly Celia was back. I noticed the bloodstain on her blouse. The fat man with the spectacles stood behind her. His face was expressionless, but I had the impression that he knew all there was to know about my body. They took off my clothes. I felt strangely shy in the presence of Celia. The fat man examined me carefully, taking his time feeling around my side, moving my hands and feet, shining his pen light into my pupils. When he tapped my knee he used a coffee mug instead of a rubber reflex hammer. I'd never seen anything like this before. I couldn't tear my eyes off his hand. His fingers were short and stubby, his nails were trimmed very close. There were sparse black hairs on the back of his hand. I didn't dare lose sight of his hand. Finally he sat back in his chair. There was some yellowish, sticky paste on a plate at his elbow. He absently took some between his fingers, crammed it into his mouth and started chewing. Thank God, it hadn't occurred to him to offer me some.

     "Bruises and a concussion. One of his eyes looks to have experienced a little surface bleeding." Judging from his voice he remained unimpressed.

     I looked around in the room. Computer terminals, filing cabinets, armchairs, a coffee table with newspapers stacked on it and the plate containing the yellowish goo. Where had this woman taken me?

     Celia stared at him nervously. The fat man went on chewing. He took his time before continuing.

     "Why don't you find a bed for him? A week of bed rest might do the trick. No frustration, no noise." He sighed. "You're a lucky man. If only I could stay in bed for a week."

     Maybe Celia's vaccine was bothering me, or it was just that I had just been knocked around.

     "I could arrange to get you beaten up so you could have that refreshing week of rest, too."

     The fat man thought my proposition over and shrugged in a bored sort of way. But Celia was standing already. She hugged him quickly and dragged me out of the room.

     "How could you?" she whispered angrily.

     I didn't have the energy to start arguing with her. I followed her back to the car, on my best behavior. After what I'd been through that day I found it surprising that my energy started to return slowly. I didn't need to lean on Celia's shoulder. I made it to the car under my own steam, though my step was a little uneasy. Celia kept talking, but I couldn't follow everything. She was basically telling me that the fat guy was a fantastic doctor, a good man. I was supposed to be grateful that he found some time to examine me. All right, I would be grateful. Until then, I wasn't aware that I had bruises and contusions. That I was concussed and there was something wrong with my eye. Going to the hospital was not in my plans. I ached for my own bed, I wanted to lie in it, feel the familiar lumps in it, let myself be surrounded by my apartment as if it were some warm and soft armor. My things. My books, my taste, my mess.

     We had a short argument in which it became clear that fatso's opinion was sacrosanct in Celia's eyes. For my part, I was stubborn as hell. The end was some freakish compromise: Celia took me home and I promised to stay in bed all day and take things easy.

     There was silence in the car. Celia drove carelessly, but we were lucky—there wasn't much traffic. Her face was pale and drawn. Still, I found her beautiful, more beautiful than usual.

     "Are you angry with me?" She'd pulled into a parking lot, stopped the car and switched off the engine. So she wasn't coming with me. She must have been in a hurry to get home. I'm not supposed to complain. I guess I'm supposed to be grateful that she came when I called her. She came right away and left her husband alone.

     I shrugged. How the hell could I tell her about my feelings, the confused state I was in?

     "Martin didn't know anything about it," she continued in a soft, frightened voice. As if that mattered. As if it was important what Martin knew. She just wanted to protect him, and I wasn't allowed to say a single damning word about him.

     "I know what you are thinking," Celia spoke without looking at me, she stared out of the window, at a tree at in the corner of the parking lot. Everything was still, the drooping leaves didn't move at all. The branches of the tree reminded me of an old Japanese etching. "You think I just did this because I wanted to experiment with you."

     "Didn't you?"

     "Yes, I did." She lowered her head and allowed herself to cry, allowed me to hold her, console her, feel the softness and warmth of her body. But then she pushed me away, her muscles tensed under my caress. I began to lose my temper, I felt like hitting her. I restrained myself and tried to hug her again. This time I was more patient, more considerate.

     "You wouldn't believe me if I told you I didn't want to experiment with you," she gasped. I didn't argue with her. She was right: I wouldn't believe her. "You were the ideal subject. Someone who accepted violence as part of his job even though you lacked normal aggressive tendencies."

     I'd never have believed I was lacking in aggressiveness. But I didn't interrupt.

     I didn't have to. Celia read my thoughts. Either she was a very good psychologist or simply a sensitive woman in love.

     "I'm not talking about aggressiveness in its everyday sense. Garden-variety aggressiveness is characterized by sudden flashes of anger, quarrels that come and go— like when you snap impatiently at someone who pushes you too hard. The phenomenon I'm talking about occurs when aggressiveness starts to suppress and dominate self-discipline, empathy, compassion, our social conditioning…"

     She paused and smiled at me through her tears. I felt a mad desire—which started to suppress and dominate empathy, compassion and social conditioning—to make love to her right there in the car, in that dark parking lot.

     "I'll try to explain this more plainly."

     I couldn't really pay attention to what she was saying. My attention was focused on the tiny teardrop on her face, so I reached over and wiped it away softly with the tip of a finger. Celia shook her head as if she was bothered by a mosquito.

     "Imagine you're driving your car and some aggressive driver over-takes you. You get angry with him, you think he's a stupid jerk who should be taken out and shot. But you don't shoot him. It never really occurs to you that you could shoot him."

     I shrugged. A commonplace remains a commonplace even if told by a wonderful woman, the wife of a famous scientist.

     "Q-virus doesn't make you angrier, or make you want to hurt someone even more. It simply reduces your control." She spoke softly and slowly, giving each word special emphasis. "You've become more courageous because you're not worried by the consequences of your actions. Your empathy is reduced, too. You don't try to picture yourself in your victim's place. You don't feel pity for his teeth that you've just knocked out. It doesn't occur to you that there are people who love him, that to his mother he is still a little boy. To you, the victim is just a troublesome thing which needs fixing because you've decided to break it."

     I thought of the tough-faced guy with the broken knee. Did I have an inkling of what the injury involved? A series of operations, and it still won't be as strong as it used to be. Did I feel sorry for having broken his knee? No, I didn't. I would break his knee again without hesitation if I had to, if I had the opportunity. I didn't used to be like this. I couldn't look at Celia. I turned away but I there was no way to shut her voice out.

     "After a while you can reach the point where you don't even fear for your personal well-being and safety. You don't exercise enough judgment and self-control to consider all the risks you're taking. You know how worrying too much about risks can get you into trouble in a fight: If someone tries to attack you with a knife in his hand you mustn't think of your chances, you mustn't think of what will happen if they slash you. You have to suspend your fears to fight."

     She was talking like an experienced fighter. I was impressed. I didn't think she had ever faced I knife attack, but I did think she was right. I knew she was right.

     "Q-virus helps you suspend your fear. In extreme cases, you stop caring at all about what's happening to you. You see, there are degrees of infection with Q-virus. At one end of the spectrum, there is the Jain monk from India, who walks slowly and carefully while sweeping the road in front of him with a soft broom so as not to kill any creature, not even an insect by stepping on it inadvertently. The other extreme includes killers, soldiers who attack civilian populations: the Hutu and the Tutsi, the Yugoslavian ethnic cleansers, the religious fanatics. They can set villages on fire and kill indiscriminately. Q-virus has found fertile ground among them. It's the virus that makes some people capable of gunning down an innocent family simply because they have different last names—or they pray differently. Or they don't pray at all. Or the aggressors have developed a sudden liking for their house. Police and politicians tend to think that all these killings really take place because of the house, the religion, the mother tongue, love of a dubious fatherland. Bullshit! A healthy person wouldn't be able to kill for these things any more than they would be able to drop their pants at a busy intersection and take a crap in broad daylight."

     The tone wasn't becoming to Celia. I would have bet she was just echoing Martin's words. The great scientist had explained his theory to me after all, even if he didn't do it in person. He let his devout follower do all the talking for him.

     "The Q-virus seems to have been with us for a long time. The human constitution apparently needs a small amount of the virus. We can't all be Jainist monks, living in India and trying not to swat mosquitoes. We wouldn't eat meat, wouldn't dare to go out into traffic, surgeons wouldn't dare to operate on patients. Q-virus isn't dangerous until it reaches a certain level. In normal conditions, when it can't spread rapidly through society, those who are prone to the virus might turn into criminals. But they might also become soldiers, police officers, adventurers, test pilots, sportsmen…among individuals the effect of the virus is unpredictable. The real problems come when the virus spreads rapidly to others, and society itself gets infected. Martin has figured out the rate above which a person—or a society for that matter—should be certified as sick. Sick societies grow more and more aggressive. They actively seek conflict."