Bradbury, Ray - SSC 09
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Authors: The Small Assassin (v2.1)
The Small Assassin
Ray Bradbury
Contents
SMALL ASSASSIN
J
ust when the idea occurred to her that she
was being murdered she could not tell. There had been little subtle signs,
little suspicions for the past month; things as deep as sea tides in her, like
looking at a perfectly calm stretch of tropic water, wanting to bathe in it and
finding, just as the tide takes your body, that monsters dwell just under the
surface, things unseen, bloated, many-armed, sharp-finned, malignant and
inescapable.
A
room floated around her in an effluvium of hysteria. Sharp instruments hovered
and there were voices, and people in sterile white masks.
My
name, she thought, what is it?
Alice
Leiber
. It came to her.
David
Leiber’s
wife.
But it gave her no comfort. She was
alone with these silent, whispering white people and there was great pain and
nausea and death-fear in her.
I
am being murdered before their eyes. These doctors, these nurses don’t realize
what hidden thing has happened to me. David doesn’t know. Nobody knows except
me and—the killer, the little murderer, the small assassin.
I
am dying and I can’t tell them now. They’d laugh and call me one in delirium.
They’ll see the murderer and hold him and never think him responsible for my
death. But here I am, in front of God and man, dying, no one to believe my
story, everyone to doubt me, comfort me with lies, bury me in ignorance, mourn
me and salvage my destroyer.
Where
is David?
she
wondered. In the waiting room, smoking
one cigarette after another, listening to the long
tickings
of the very slow clock?
Sweat
exploded from all of her body at once, and with it an agonized cry.
Now.
Now! Try and kill me, she screamed. Try,
try
, but I won’t die! I won’t!
There
was
a hollowness
.
A vacuum.
Suddenly the pain fell away.
Exhaustion,
and dusk came
around. It was over. Oh, God! She plummeted down and struck a black nothingness
which gave way to nothingness and nothingness and another and still
another. . . .
Footsteps.
Gentle, approaching footsteps.
Far
away, a voice said, “She’s asleep. Don’t disturb her.”
An odor of tweeds, a pipe, a certain shaving lotion.
David
was standing over her. And beyond him the immaculate smell of Dr. Jeffers.
She
did not open her eyes. “I’m awake,” she said, quietly. It was a surprise, a
relief to be able to speak, to not be dead.
“
Alice
,” someone said, and it was David beyond her
closed eyes, holding her tired hands.
Would
you like to meet the murderer, David?
she
thought. I
hear your voice asking to see him, so there’s nothing but for me to point him
out to you.
David
stood over her. She opened her eyes. The room came into focus. Moving a weak
hand, she pulled aside a coverlet.
The
murderer looked up at David
Leiber
with a small,
red-faced, blue-eyed calm. Its eyes were deep and sparkling.
“Why!”
cried David
Leiber
, smiling. “He’s a
fine
baby!”
Dr.
Jeffers was waiting for David
Leiber
the day he came
to take his wife and new child home. He motioned
Leiber
to a chair in his office, gave him a cigar,
lit
one
for himself, sat on the edge of his desk, puffing solemnly for a long moment.
Then he cleared his throat, looked David
Leiber
straight on and said, “Your wife doesn’t like her child, Dave.”
“What!”
“It’s
been a hard thing for her. She’ll need a lot of love this next year. I didn’t say
much at the time, but she was hysterical in the delivery room. The strange
things she said—I won’t repeat them. All I’ll say is that she feels alien to
the child. Now, this may simply be a thing we can clear up with one or two
questions.” He sucked on his cigar another moment, then said, “Is this child a
‘wanted’ child, Dave?”
“Why
do you ask?”
“It’s
vital.”
“Yes.
Yes, it is a ‘wanted’ child. We planned it together.
Alice
was so happy, a year ago, when—”
“
Mmmm
—
That
makes it more difficult.
Because if the child was unplanned, it would be a simple case
of a woman hating the idea of motherhood.
That doesn’t fit
Alice
.” Dr. Jeffers took his cigar from his lips,
rubbed his hand across his jaw. “It must be something else, then. Perhaps
something buried in her childhood that’s coming out now. Or it might be the
simple temporary doubt and distrust of any mother who’s gone through the
unusual pain and near-death that
Alice
has. If so, then a little time should heal
that. I thought I’d tell you, though, Dave. It’ll help you be easy and tolerant
with her if she says anything about—well—about wishing the child had been born
dead. And if things don’t go well, the three of you drop in on me. I’m always
glad to see old friends, eh? Here, take another cigar along for—ah—for the
baby.”
It
was a bright spring afternoon. Their car hummed along wide, tree-lined
boulevards.
Blue sky, flowers, a warm wind.
Dave
talked a lot, lit his cigar, talked some more.
Alice
answered directly, softly, relaxing a bit
more as the trip progressed. But she held the baby not tightly or warmly or
motherly enough to satisfy the queer ache in Dave’s mind. She seemed to be
merely carrying a porcelain figurine.
“Well,”
he said, at last, smiling. “What’ll we name him?”
Alice
Leiber
watched green trees slide by. “Let’s not
decide yet. I’d rather wait until we get an exceptional name for him. Don’t
blow smoke in his face.” Her sentences ran together with no change of tone. The
last statement held no motherly reproof, no interest,
no
irritation. She just mouthed it and it was said.
The
husband, disquieted, dropped the cigar from the window. “Sorry,” he said.
The
baby rested in the crook of his mother’s arm, shadows of sun and tree changing
his face. His blue eyes opened like fresh blue spring flowers. Moist noises
came from the tiny, pink, elastic mouth.
Alice
gave her baby a quick glance. Her husband
felt her shiver against him.
“Cold?”
he asked.
“A chill.
Better raise the window, David.”
It
was more than a chill. He rolled the window slowly up.
Suppertime.
Dave
had brought the child from the nursery, propped him at a tiny, bewildered
angle, supported by many pillows, in a newly purchased high chair.
Alice
watched her knife and fork move. “He’s not
highchair size,” she said.
“Fun
having him here, anyway,” said Dave, feeling fine.
“Everything’s
fun.
At the office, too.
Orders
up to my nose.
If I don’t watch myself I’ll make another fifteen
thousand this year. Hey, look at Junior, will you?
Drooling
all down his chin!”
He reached over to wipe the baby’s mouth with his
napkin. From the corner of his eye he realized that
Alice
wasn’t even watching. He finished the job.
“I
guess it wasn’t very interesting,” he said, back again at his food. “But one
would think a
mother’d
take some interest in her own
child!”
Alice
jerked her chin up. “Don’t speak that way!
Not in front of him! Later, if you must.”
“Later?”
he cried. “In front of, in back of, what’s the difference?” He quieted
suddenly, swallowed,
was
sorry.
“All
right.
Okay. I know how it is.”
After
dinner she let him carry the baby upstairs. She didn’t tell him to; she
let
him.
Coming
down, he found her standing by the radio, listening to music she didn’t hear.
Her eyes were closed, her whole attitude one of wondering, self-questioning.
She started when he appeared.
Suddenly,
she was at him, against him, soft, quick; the same. Her lips found him, kept
him. He was stunned. Now that the baby was gone, upstairs, out of the room, she
began to breathe again, live again. She was free. She was whispering, rapidly,
endlessly.
“Thank
you, thank you, darling.
For being yourself, always.
Dependable, so very dependable!”
He
had to laugh. “My father told me, ‘Son, provide for your family!’ “
Wearily,
she rested her dark, shining hair against his neck. “You’ve overdone it.
Sometimes I wish we were just the way we were when we were first married. No
responsibilities, nothing but ourselves. No—no babies.”
She
crushed his hand in hers, a supernatural whiteness in her face.
“Oh,
Dave, once it was just you and me. We protected each other, and now we protect
the baby, but get no protection from it. Do you understand? Lying in the
hospital I had time to think a lot of things. The world is evil “
“Is
it?”
“Yes.
It is. But laws protect us from it. And when there aren’t laws, then love does
the protecting. You’re protected from my hurting you, by my love. You’re
vulnerable to me, of all people, but love shields you. I feel no fear of you,
because love cushions all your irritations, unnatural instincts, hatreds and
immaturities.
But—what about the baby?
It’s too young
to know love, or a law of love, or anything, until we teach it. And in the
meantime be vulnerable to it.”
“Vulnerable to a baby?”
He held her away and laughed gently.
“Does
a baby know the difference between right and wrong?” she asked.
“No.
But it’ll learn.”
“But
a baby is so new, so amoral,
so
conscience-free.” She
stopped. Her arms dropped from him and she turned swiftly. “That noise? What
was it?”