The Wounded Land (6 page)

For an instant, his gaze winced as if he were distressed by the idea that she did in fact have the necessary background. But then he shook his head sharply. When he resumed, she could not tell what kind of answer he had decided to give her.

“I wouldn’t know about it myself,” he said, “if her parents hadn’t called me. About a month ago. They don’t have much use for me, but they were frantic. They told me everything they knew.

“I suppose it’s an old story. The only thing that makes it new is the way it hurts. Joan divorced me when we found out I had leprosy. Eleven years ago. Took Roger and went back to her family. She thought she was justified—ah, hell, for years
I
thought she was justified. Kids are more susceptible to leprosy than adults. So she divorced me. For Roger’s sake.

“But it didn’t work. Deep inside her, she believed she’d betrayed me. It’s hard to forgive yourself for deserting someone you love—someone who needs you. It erodes your self-respect. Like leprosy. It gnaws away at you. Before long, you’re a moral cripple. She stood it for a while. Then she started hunting for cures.”

His voice, and the information he was giving her, steadied Linden. As he paced, she became conscious of the way he carried himself, the care and specificity of all his movements. He navigated past the coffee table as if it were a danger to him. And repeatedly he scanned himself with his eyes, checking in turn each hand, each arm, his legs, his chest, as if he expected to find that he had injured himself without knowing it.

She had read about such things. His self-inspection was called VSE—visual surveillance of extremities. Like the care with which he moved, it was part of the discipline he needed to keep his illness arrested. Because of the damage leprosy had done to his nerves, the largest single threat to his health was the possibility that he might bump, burn, scrape, cut, or bruise himself without realizing it. Then infection would set in because the wound was not tended. So he moved with all the caution he could muster. The furniture in his house was arranged to minimize the risk of protruding corners, obstacles, accidents. And he scanned himself regularly, looking for signs of danger.

Watching him in this objective, professional way helped restore her sense of who she was. Slowly she became better able to listen to his indirect explanation without impatience.

He had not paused; he was saying, “First she tried psychology. She wanted to believe it was all in her mind—and minds can be fixed, like broken arms. She started going through psychological fads the way some people trade in cars, a new one every year. As if her problem really was mental instead of spiritual.

“None of it made sense to her parents, but they tried to be tolerant, just did what they could to give Roger a stable home.

“So they thought she was finally going to be all right when she suddenly gave that up and went churchy. They believed all along that religion was the answer. Well, it’s good enough for most people, but it didn’t give her what she needed. It was too easy. Her disease was progressing all the time. A year ago, she became a fanatic. Took Roger and went to join a commune. One of those places where people learn the ecstasy of humiliation, and the leader preaches love and mass suicide.

“She must have been so desperate—For most of her life, the only thing she really wanted to believe was that she was perfectly all
right. But after all those years of failure, she didn’t have any defenses left. What did she have to lose?”

Linden was not wholly convinced. She had no more use for God than for conceptions of good and evil. But Covenant’s passion held her. His eyes were wet with violence and grief; his mouth was as sharp as a blade. He believed what he was saying.

Her expression must have betrayed some of her doubt; his voice took on an echo of Joan’s ferocity. “You don’t have to believe in God to grasp what she was going through. She was suffering from an affliction for which there’s no mortal cure. She couldn’t even arrest the way it rotted her. Maybe she didn’t know what it was she was trying to cure. She was looking for magic, some power that could reach into her and heal—When you’ve tried all the salves in the world and they don’t work, you start thinking about fire. Burn out the pain. She wanted to punish herself, find some kind of abnegation to match her personal rot.”

His voice broke; but he controlled it instantly. “I know all about it. But she didn’t have any defenses. She opened the door for him, and he saw she was the perfect tool, and he’s been using her—
using
her, when she’s too damaged to even understand what he’s using her for.”

Using her? Linden did not comprehend. He?

Slowly Covenant suppressed his anger. “Of course, her parents didn’t know anything about that. How could they? All they knew was that about six weeks ago she woke them up in the middle of the night and started babbling. She was a prophet, she’d had a vision, the Lord had given her a mission. Woe and retribution to the wicked, death to the sick and the unbelieving. The only sense they could make out of it was that she wanted them to take care of Roger. Then she was gone. They haven’t seen her since.

“After a couple weeks, they called me. I hadn’t seen her—that was the first I’d heard about it. But about two weeks ago she showed up here. Sneaked into my room during the night and tried to tear my face off. If she hadn’t been so weak, she would have succeeded. She must have come all the way on foot.”

He seemed too exhausted himself to go on pacing. His red-rimmed eyes made him look ill, and his hands trembled. How long had he been without decent sleep or peace? Two weeks? When he sat down on the opposite end of the sofa, Linden turned so that she could continue to study nun. In the back of her mind, she began trying to conceive some way to give him a sedative.

“Since then,” he sighed, “Berenford and I have been taking care of her. I got him into this because he’s the only doctor I know. He thinks I’m wrong about her, but he’s helping me. Or he was. Until he got you into this.” He was too tired to sound bitter. “I’m trying to reach her any way I can, and he’s giving her drugs that are supposed to clear her mind. Or at least calm her so I can feed her. I leave the lights on in there all the time. Something happens to her when she’s alone in the dark. She goes berserk—I’m afraid she’ll break an arm or something.”

He fell silent. Apparently he had reached the end of his story— or of his strength. Linden felt that his explanation was incomplete, but she held her questions in abeyance. He needed aid, a relief from strain. Carefully she said, “Maybe she really should be in a hospital. I’m sure Dr. Berenford’s doing what he can. But there are all kinds of diagnostic procedures he can’t use here. If she were in a hospital—”

“If she were in a hospital”—he swung toward her so roughly that she recoiled—“they’d keep her in a straitjacket, and force-feed her three times a day, and turn her brain into jelly with electroshock, and
fill her up with drugs until she couldn’t recognize her own name if God Himself were calling for her, and it wouldn’t do any good! Goddamn it, she was my
wife
!” He brandished his right fist. “I’m still wearing the bloody ring!”

“Is that what you think doctors do?” She was suddenly livid; her failure made her defensive. “Brutalize sick people?”

He strove to contain his ire. “Doctors try to cure problems whether they understand them or not. It doesn’t always work. This isn’t something a doctor can cure.”

“Is that a fact?” She did not want to taunt him; but her own compulsions drove her. “Tell me what good
you’re
doing her.”

He flinched. Rage and pain struggled in him; but he fought them down. Then he said simply, “She came to me.”

“She didn’t know what she was doing.”

“But I do,” His grimness defied her. “I understand it well enough. I’m the only one who can help her.”

Frustration boiled up in her. “Understand
what?
”

He jerked to his feet. He was a figure of passion, held erect and potent in spite of weakness by the intensity of his heart. His eyes were chisels; when he spoke, each word fell distinctly, like a chip of granite.

“She is possessed.”

Linden blinked at him. “Possessed?” He had staggered her. He did not seem to be talking a language she could comprehend. This was the twentieth century; medical science had not taken
possession
seriously for at least a hundred years. She was on her feet. “Are you out of your mind?”

She expected him to retreat. But he still had resources she had not plumbed. He held her glare, and his visage—charged and purified by some kind of sustaining conviction—made her acutely aware of her own moral poverty. When he looked away, he did not do so because he was abashed or beaten; he looked away in order to spare her the implications of his knowledge.

“You see?” he murmured. “It’s a question of experience. You’re just not equipped to understand.”

“By God!” she fumed defensively, “that’s the most arrogant thing I’ve ever heard. You stand there spouting the most egregious nonsense, and when I question you, you just naturally assume there must be something wrong with me. Where do you get the gall to—?”

“Dr. Avery.” His voice was low, dangerous. “I didn’t say there was anything wrong with you.”

She did not listen to him. “You’re suffering from classic paranoia, Mr. Covenant.” She bit each word mordantly. “You think that everybody who doubts you isn’t quite right in the head. You’re a textbook case.”

Seething irrationally, she turned on her heel, stamped toward the door—fleeing from him, and fighting furiously to believe that she was not fleeing. But he came after her, caught hold of her shoulders. She whirled on him as if he had assaulted her.

He had not. His hands dropped to his sides, and twitched as if they ached to make gestures of supplication. His face was open and vulnerable; she saw intuitively that at that moment she could have asked him anything, and he would have done his best to answer. “Please,” he breathed. “You’re in an impossible situation, and I haven’t made it any easier. But please. At least consider the chance that I know what I’m doing.”

A retort coiled in her mouth, then frayed and fell apart. She was furious, not because she had any right to be, but because his attitude showed her how far she had fallen into the wrong. She swallowed to stifle a groan, almost reached out toward him to apologize. But he deserved something better than an apology. Carefully she said, “I’ll consider it.” She could not meet his eyes. “I won’t do anything until I talk to you again.”

Then she left the house, frankly escaping from the exigency of his incomprehensible convictions. Her hands fumbled like traitors as she opened the door of her car, slid behind the wheel.

With failure in her mouth like the taste of sickness, she drove back to her apartment.

She needed to be comforted; but there was no comfort in those grubby walls, in the chipped and peeling floorboards which moaned like victims under her feet. She had accepted that apartment precisely because it offered her no comfort; but the woman who had made that decision was a woman who had never watched herself buckle under the demands of her profession. Now for the first time since that moment of murder fifteen years ago, when her hands had accepted the burden of blood, she yearned for solace. She lived in a world where there was no solace.

Because she could think of no other recourse, she went to bed.

Tension and muggy sheets kept her awake for a long time; and when she finally slept, her dreams were sweat and fear in the hot night. The old man, Covenant, Joan—all babbled of
He
, trying to warn her.
He
who possessed Joan for purposes too cruel to be answered.
He
who intended to harm them all. But at last she sank into a deeper slumber, and the evil went back into hiding.

She was awakened by a knocking at her door.

Her head felt swollen with nightmares, and the knocking had a tentative sound, as if the knocker believed the apartment to be dangerous. But it was imperative. She was a doctor.

When she unclosed her eyes, the light of midmorning pierced her brain.

Groaning she climbed out of bed, shrugged her arms into a bathrobe, then went to open the door.

A short timid woman with hands that fluttered and eyes that shied stood on the landing. Timorously, she asked, “Dr. Avery? Dr. Linden Avery?”

With an effort, Linden cleared her throat. “Yes.”

“Dr. Berenford called.” The woman seemed to have no idea what she was saying. “I’m his secretary. You don’t have a phone. I don’t work on Saturdays, but he called me at home. He wants you to meet him. He’s supposed to be on rounds.”

“Meet him?” A pang of apprehension went through her. “Where?”

“He said you’d know where.” Insistently the woman went on, “I’m his secretary. I don’t work on Saturdays, but I’m always glad to help him. He’s a fine man—a fine doctor. His wife had polio. He really should be on rounds.”

Linden shut her eyes. If she could have summoned any strength, she would have cried out, Why are you doing this to me? But she felt drained by bad dreams and doubt. Muttering, “Thank you,” she closed the door.

For a moment, she did not move; she leaned against the door as if to hold it shut, wanting to scream. But Dr. Berenford would not have gone to such trouble to send for her if the situation were not urgent. She had to go.

As she dressed in the clothes she had worn the previous day and ran a comb through her hair, she realized that she made a choice. Sometime during the night, she had given her allegiance to Covenant. She did not understand what was wrong with Joan, or what he thought he could do about it; but she was attracted to him. The same intransigence which had so infuriated her had also touched her deeply; she was vulnerable to the strange appeal of his anger, his extremity, his paradoxically savage and compassionate determination to stand loyal to his ex-wife.

She drank a quick glass of orange juice to clear her head, then went down to her car.

The day was already unnaturally hot; the sunlight hurt her eyes. She felt oddly giddy and detached, as if she were experiencing a hallucination, as she entered the dirt roadway and approached Covenant’s house. At first, she was not sure of her vision when she descried the dark stain on the wall.