Night-Gaunts and Other Tales of Suspense

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Love love love you. Oh—Nath’iel …

  A single glass of wine might have been sufficient to render the naive girl intoxicated, and Mary Frances has had two, in fairly rapid succession. And so the flunitrazepam will be doubly, even triply potent. N___ hopes he will be able to revive her—eventually.

  It will not be an aesthetic experience but it should not be onerous: “making love”—“having sex”—with the experimental subject. Essentially a mechanical act like most physical processes that are quasi-involuntary, “instinctive”—in which N____’s body might participate while his mind looks on bemused. Or rather, his mind looks away, fastidiously repelled.

  This is not actually me but another in my place—“Nathaniel.”

  It is difficult to tell if the experimental subject is drunk, or just wildly affectionate, or both. She is very demonstrative, sobbing with emotion. Many times moaning Love you, Nath’iel. Love love love you not seeming to notice that her lover remains (grimly) silent.

  Does he dare to see the girl in the bed? The unclothed female body, so much larger, fleshier than he’d imagined? Heavy breasts corroded with faint bluish veins, nipples like copper coins, heated skin with myriad small blemishes and marks, coarser than his own. Wiry rust-colored pubic hair like underbrush sprouting at the pit of the protruding belly, far thicker than his own, or any he’d ever seen, or imagined. Yet it is touching, Mary Frances seems to have shaved her lower legs, that are hard with muscle; her thighs, slack and jiggly, are covered in coarse hairs. Touching too, the low-browed girl with simian features had taken time to apply mascara to her eyes, lipstick to her mouth.

  Despite his reputation for aloofness among his scientist colleagues N___ has felt desire intermittently in his life. Precarious and perishable as swirls of cloud in a windswept sky. Long ago—in another lifetime, and in another language—before he’d become N____—he’d been attracted to very young girls—(children his own age?)—with smooth, hairless, epicene bodies—and long silky (black) hair. These were not sisters of his but might have been sisters for all had been children together, lost and helpless and desperate to be saved by—whoever would save them … In his new lifetime no one matters to him, not as these young girls had mattered. And all of them vanished. He will not think of it, never thinks of it, for there is no purpose to such thinking in his new life as the chief technician of a renowned primate laboratory.

  Wondering in subsequent years if it is a sort of sex-fetish—the female must have a full head of hair, preferably falling past her shoulders, yet the female must not have hair, hairs, on any other part of her body for such hairs are repulsive to the male eye …

  Ugh!—having to touch the female hairs. That are springy and resilient to the touch, like Galahad’s hairy pelt.

  Yet N___ is discovering that despite his disdain he is “attracted” to Mary Frances—perhaps because of his disdain. (There are fine hairs even on her breasts!—disgusting.) It is somehow exciting to him, the girl has become so—passionate. Her skin is coarsely mottled, flushed. Her smeared lips are parted. She is panting, grunting. She is shameless, grasping at him with her hands as no one before has ever grasped at him. A descent into chaos, N___ thinks. Dissolution of a compound, hissing like acid. Fastidious N___ is falling into pieces, he is no longer he. What springs out of the base of his flat belly, like the rosy-pink fleshy tube that springs out of Galahad’s belly, is not he.

  A crude stranger, suddenly frantic with desire. Grunting like a chimp.

  Nothing aesthetic here. Only just raw appetite here.

  No holding back, N___ must enter the female body as Galahad might have done. Shuts his eyes, ceases breathing. Immediately the female grips him, muscled arms, legs. Inside the heated flesh, muscle. He is thrusting, pumping. Involuntary. Helpless. The chief technician in the Professor’s esteemed lab has become a wildly thrusting machine, brainless as a chimp.

  Fleeting images of very young girl-children with long silky (black) hair pass through his brain like wraiths. But too quickly, he can’t hold on to them and will forget them at once.

  At last, it is over. Has ended.

  Spent and exhausted on the sweat-slick body of the female. His spirit seems to have detached itself from the ordeal. Possibly N___ has died (he thinks): his soul floats above his lifeless body. He feels nothing—for air cannot feel.

  The other, the low-browed girl, is barely conscious. She has been sobbing. Her face appears swollen, damp with tears, mucus. Her flesh has gone slack as if boneless. The drug has worked perfectly as the Professor has assured N___ it would.

  How N___ would like to flee! Extricate himself from this smelly embrace, hurriedly dress and flee to his own apartment, step into a shower as hot as he can bear …

  But no. Now comes the most delicate step of the procedure.

  The syringe, filled with the frothy-clotty semen of Pan troglodytes verus, has been placed strategically beneath the bed, where N____’s groping fingers can locate it.

  Very carefully, N___ raises himself on his elbow. He is still breathing hard, audibly. (When is the last time N___ has breathed audibly? Even when he jogs in the early morning, he does not pant; his heartbeat is only slightly accelerated, like the calm cascade of his thoughts.) With the most remarkable composure, under these awkward circumstances, N___ brings the tip of the syringe against the vagina of the experimental subject. Inside that nest of damp, sticky hair, as coarse as chimpanzee hair. N___ inserts the tip of the syringe as carefully as he can so as not to disturb Mary Frances who lies spread-eagled and sprawled in the damp bedclothes. (Though by this time very little could have disturbed the unconscious girl, who could not have been more deeply asleep if she’d been anesthetized.)

  Within seconds the syringe is emptied of its cloudy liquid. N___ has succeeded in the first step of the experiment!

  Unknowing, sprawled in a bliss of erotic satisfaction, Mary Frances slumbers on. Perhaps she will be impregnated this very night—it is not probable, but a possibility. The raw yearning with which she’d made love with him suggests that she is ovulating.

  Ovulating! Disgusting thought.

  Cautiously N___ climbs out of the rumpled bed and stands beside it, naked. With his iPhone he takes several quick pictures of the stuporous experimental subject, to email to the Professor who is sure to be waiting for the latest news.

  Step one: completed.

  Wondering whether, in fact, he might flee the premises and shower at his apartment, and sleep in his own, pristine bedsheets that night; or, for it is more in line with the romantic narrative in which N___ and the experimental subject each have roles, he should shower here, and try to spend the remainder of the night with Mary Frances who may, in the morning, need to be placated and assured that she is cherished by her lover.

  No. Not possible that he can “sleep” with her. Someone will have to change those soiled sheets before he comes anywhere near them again.

  The lab administrator can arrange for housekeeping. He will have nothing to do with it.

  Deciding that he will shower in the apartment on Edgar Street. It would be distasteful to dress in his clothes, his body sticky and unclean.

  It is the first time—he supposes, resigned, that it will not be the last time—that N___ showers in this apartment. At least, there is a good supply of towels, for which he has the lab administrator to thank. At least the shower is adequate—the water temperature is more responsive to calibration than the shower in his own small apartment.

  N___ is still giddy—he is still mildly repelled—he feels a thrill of something like vanity. No one else in the Professor’s laboratory could have executed the procedure so flawlessly. His colleagues will make crude jokes, out of envy. But not even the married men, seasoned in the routines of sex, experienced and adroit in feigning emotions they have long since ceased to feel, could have performed as convincingly as N___ performed with a female as unattractive as the experimental subject.

  If the experiment comes to fruition, the Professor wi
ll single out his chief technician for special thanks though, given the unorthodox nature of the experiment, the details of N____’s contribution will not be divulged.

  Previous experiments with creating a (forbidden) hybrid species, a Humanzee, have ended in failure. Insemination of female chimpanzees and other apes with the sperm of Homo sapiens have never resulted in fertilization, so far as reliable records show, though there are accounts of the efforts of the Russian biologist Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov attempting, in the 1920s, to create a hybrid species by impregnating a female ape, that ended with failure and the exile of Ivanov to Siberia.

  There are (unverified) accounts too of human females impregnated with the semen of apes, whether voluntarily or otherwise, in laboratories in China, in more recent years; but no scientific data, no conclusive results. If there are rumors that a Humanzee was actually born, somewhere in China in the 1970s, it is usually the case that the Humanzee died soon after birth, and its remains were lost. No data, no photographic evidence.

  Ideally, the experimental subject would be a human female voluntarily involved in the experiment, who would nurse and nurture the Humanzee after birth, as human females have occasionally nursed and nurtured chimpanzee infants; but overly restrictive “ethics” laws in the US and elsewhere make such an experiment impossible, and in any case, as the Professor has many times pointed out, no human female could be trusted to continue with the experiment if/when the hybrid specimen is taken from her by research scientists. If, for instance, for whatever reason, the Humanzee had to be euthanized and anatomized, like any experimental animal. Thus, ignorance on the part of the experimental subject is crucial to the project.

  When N___ returns to the humid, smelly bedroom, revived from the shower, hair wetly combed, he sees with a small thrill of disgust that the girl is still unconscious, asprawl and oblivious. Hardly a girl, which suggests innocence, but a young woman, which suggests experience.

  Softly the young woman moans in her sleep, her back teeth grind just audibly. Her eyelids flutter, he is panicked that she will wake up, but she continues to sleep. Has a forked sperm of Galahad’s pierced an egg inside that slack, fattish belly yet? For N____’s sake, he hopes it will be soon.

  Must keep in mind, they are a couple. He will leave a note for her on the bedside table—

  Dear Mary Frances

  You are so beautiful.

  I will call you soon.

  Please lock door when you leave.

  Thank you.

  —Nathaniel

  It requires twenty minutes to compose the note. Each word is eked from him. Like squeezing leaden drops of blood out of his veins.

  Realizing later that thank you was (probably) not the appropriate phrase.

  In a turmoil of dismay, disgust like that sensation of diarrhea microbes simmering in the gut, about to explode through the intestines—N___ lies awake in his chaste bed in fresh-laundered sheets reliving the sex-intercourse with the experimental subject. A part of him is so appalled, it hovers in the air above his prone, motionless body like a wraith. Another part, more callow, careerist, beyond shame, is calculating that the Professor will be very impressed with him. Very.

  No. He cannot do it again. Cannot.

  But must. One injection of semen will (surely) not be enough.

  In his insomniac misery N___ finds himself thinking of the mountains west of Red Bluff. Where with a college friend he’d hiked, backpacked and camped long ago in another lifetime it seemed.

  In the mountains above Red Bluff they’d found an abandoned cabin overlooking a fast-moving stream, white-water rapids. Sleeping bags on the floor of the cabin, a birch-log fire in the fireplace. Even when pelting rain fell from the sky he’d been happy there with his friend as aloof and reticent as himself, and as smart.

  N___ has long ago lost contact with his friend who’d failed to win a prestigious fellowship to Cal Tech as N___ had. But at the time of his thirtieth birthday N___ returned to hike and backpack alone near Red Bluff wanting to give himself a gift and not knowing what to give himself, remembering he’d been happy on the trail there overlooking the white-water rapids, but the cabin had collapsed and he hadn’t been able to sleep in his sleeping bag on the floor, or build a birch fire as he’d remembered … Yet still for a while he’d been happy there listening to the rushing, downward-plunging mountain stream. So happy!—he recalls.

  “Was this person—‘Mary Frances Bowes’—a virgin?” the Professor inquires with an air of bemused disdain.

  Taken by surprise N___ cannot think of a reply.

  Was the experimental subject a virgin? Possibly. Or not. No? Is it important, belatedly? N___ tries to explain that he doesn’t know, can’t recall. In the height/depth of sexual urgency his consciousness was obliterated, he’d (virtually) ceased to exist.

  Scrolling through the pictures on N____’s cell phone, stroking his stiff white goatee, the Professor seems distracted. At last glancing up at N___ as if he has forgotten that N___ is there.

  “Good work, N____! Project Galahad is under way.”

  Nath’iel? Hi. Kind of missing you. Give a call …

  He has given the experimental subject a cell phone number to call. It is not his cell phone and when he checks it, he sees that Mary Frances has called several times. Maybe he will call back, or maybe he will wait for a day or two.

  Even after they have become lovers it is N____’s stratagem to see the experimental subject intermittently and unpredictably. Not setting dates with the girl but promising to call her so that she is never sure of him, cannot take him for granted, and is grateful when he calls; often, practically sobbing with relief which she tries to hide, and N___ tries not to acknowledge. Neediness in the female is her disadvantage, and her disadvantage is their advantage. Keep her, the Professor has said, on edge.

  “The crucial thing is, if and when the experimental subject becomes pregnant she must be led to believe that you will continue to love her, and that you and you alone will provide her medical care. She must not become desperate and tell someone. She must not arrange for an abortion.”

  N___ sees desperation in the small squinting eyes, and feels a thrill of guilt—She is afraid of losing me. Me! As if he were a rare treasure and not rather (as he often thinks of himself) an empty vessel waiting to be filled.

  Clinging to N____’s arm when they walk together. Exasperating, and flattering! So desperate is the girl to establish that they are, not two individuals who see each other only occasionally, and who are obviously mismatched, but a couple.

  N___ still tutors Mary Frances in biology at least once a week. This was the original pretext of their relationship and it is the (only) part of the relationship that N___ enjoys. It is satisfying to him when Mary Frances earns a decent grade on a quiz or, at midterm, a not-disgraceful grade of 74 which translates into a solid C—passing.

  “Oh Nath’iel! I love you.“

  Flinching from Mary Frances’s exuberance as she throws her arms around his neck to hug, pressing her bosom against his narrow torso. Feeling a sharp current of desire, in the same instant rebuffed.

  He has lost something of the acuity of the peregrine falcon. He must try to retrieve it!

  N___ doesn’t want to think that without him Mary Frances would soon forget everything he has taught her. Carefully memorized definitions of biological terms, processes—a synopsis of Darwinian evolutionary theory N___ had prepared for her in the simplest possible terms: in danger of evaporating overnight.

  She might not get into nursing school, N___ thinks. How disappointed she will be!

  For by then, N___ will out of her life. The experimental subject will be expelled from the experiment, of no further use.

  Possibly, she could train to be a nurse’s aide? A hospital attendant?

  Elementary school teacher? No doubt, Mary Frances could make the right man a good wife.

  Maybe, in some circuitous way unknown to her, the Professor could help her find work. N___ will inquire, in time.
r />   N___ doesn’t see Mary Frances for days. A week. It is part of the stratagem but he doesn’t miss her and tries not to think of her—that is, of their frantic and convulsive couplings in the bed in the Edgar Street apartment which are followed by 1) Mary Frances’s stupor, lasting for hours; and 2) the injection of chimpanzee semen, executed by the lab technician with unwavering skill if with unyielding disgust. When at last they meet for dinner at an obscure Chinese restaurant in the vicinity of Edgar Street N___ sees the wild anguish in the girl’s eyes, the chapped lips that look as if she has been gnawing them, and the thought comes to him—Is she pregnant? He realizes that he is frightened of the possibility.

  Mary Frances clutches at N____’s hand. It is her worry, she says, can’t sleep at night worrying, that N___ does not “respect” her now. “I mean, now that we are, like, seeing each other—kind of—‘seriously’… .” Her voice trails off weakly, she is deeply embarrassed and can’t bring herself to say, having sex.

  Quickly N___ says that his feelings for her have not changed at all—of course he “respects” her. But then his mind goes blank. He has no idea what to say next.

  “I hope you mean it, Nath’iel, and aren’t just saying it to—be nice …”

  Still, N___ can’t think what to say. He is supposed to say—Of course I love you.

  Impulsively then, Mary Frances leans forward across the table, and kisses N____’s startled mouth. Her eyelids droop coquettishly, pathetically. “I think about you—us—all the time. Really hard to concentrate on my courses! Y’know—what I am thinking: do you? Darling?”