by Fritz Leiber
"Yes, accidents do seem to cluster around Lavinia," Mrs. Grotius agreed in that dry voice of hers. "I wonder if that's why she always wears black, Ken?"
She always does, you know. It's a regular fetish with her. Lavinia once explained it, with a stab at psychoanalysis, as being an unconscious guilt-reaction to the fact that her mother had died bringing her into the world.
The mothers of monsters generally die giving them birth, so perhaps it's fair enough that the monsters should wear mourning.
Then another time Lavinia suggested, with hush-voiced Midwestern idealism, that perhaps she wore black because she was so conscious of the miserable state of the world. Which may be a lot more to the point.
Now I have a third explanation that's much more convincing to explaining why I left Lavinia on that sight-seeing tour.
I think Mrs. Grotius saw pretty deeply into Lavinia. Underneath her faddish interest in the occult Mrs. Grotius is quite an acute old lady. Come to think of it, it was she who first pointed out to me, in an earlier and idler conversation, another oddity in Lavinia's dress.
"Ever notice anything else queer about the way Lavinia dresses?" she asked me a little teasingly because I had just fallen in love with Lavinia.
"I don't think so," I replied, "except maybe that her clothes are a bit out of fashion."
"Behind the fashions, you mean?"
"I suppose so."
Mrs. Grotius shook her head. "That's what any man would say and most women. And they'd be wrong. Actually Lavinia is always about a year ahead of the fashions. But since next year's clothes always look more like last year's clothes, most people would explain it the other way. But I notice details and Lavinia is always ahead, not behind."
"Really?" I said, hardly listening.
"Oh yes. Understand, there's nothing particularly clever or striking about her dresses – ugh, that awful black! In fact, they're what you'd call conservative models. Still, they're six months to a year ahead."
"How do you explain it?" I asked, still not much interested.
Mrs. Grotius shrugged lightly. "Perhaps she picks it up when she's off with her father in foreign parts. Though I never knew that Casablanca and Teheran were nerve-centers for the world of haute couture. Or perhaps," she added, with a whimsical smile, "Lavinia peeks into the future."
That remark of Mrs. Grotius may not have been pure whimsy. She may have been remembering the thing that happened at a still earlier date. And that takes me back to 1937 and the real beginning of the story of Lavinia and myself. She was about seventeen then and engaged to my friend Conners Maytal.
I didn't have a flicker of conscious interest in Lavinia at the time. I just thought of her as another of those precocious but proper Midwestern girls, brought up in a world of politically-active, internationally-minded adults but never losing that trace of Bible-belt coldness and gaucherie, that "fresh from the prairie" look. Slim, tall, dark-haired, dreamy-eyed, not at all sexy, at least not in any exciting way. I wasn't aware of the excitement of coldness in those days.
We were all gathered in Mrs. Grotius' apartment with its restful pearl-gray furnishings and mildly arty feel. Conners Maytal, a curly-haired, dashing young man with some hush-hush, vaguely dangerous government job. The nubile Lavinia. Theodore her father, a thin-cheeked, beaming man with manners that a lifetime in the Foreign Service had made the easiest and jolliest, most unimpeachable you could imagine.
He's just got back from a legation job in Spain and would soon be off to some other corner of the world. Lavinia, of course, always went with him. He'd raised her from a baby, despite his world-wide jaunts. I imagine it was on her account that he always tried to get back to Chicago between assignments, though Mrs. Grotius claimed it was to stock up on some sensible Midwestern isolationism, after those foreigners drained it out of him.
Besides those three there was myself, Mrs. Grotius, of course, and four or five others. Mrs. Grotius had just heard about Professor Rhine's telepathy experiments at Duke and insisted that we try our luck at them.
She had the stuff you need – a deck of cards with the different symbols – square, circle, star and so on. The way we did it was that one person went slowly through the deck, concentrating on each symbol as it came up, while the other person, who of course couldn't look at the cards, drew a picture of whatever symbol he thought was up at the time.
It turned out to be pretty boring. None of us had anything unusual in the way of scores until it came to Lavinia's turn. She was a whiz at it. Her score was well beyond anything you could reasonably expect – and that in spite of the fact that she drew two or three symbols that weren't on the original cards.
One was just a circle with a jagged line through it – a little like a cartoonist's diagram of the world cracking in two. The other was a bit more complicated. It consisted of two ellipses over-lapping each other crosswise with a dot in the very center.
We puzzled over that latter diagram a good while without recognizing it. The fact is that no one would have recognized it then except a chemist or physicist. Now everyone knows what it means. It's been blazoned all over magazine covers and advertisements -the simplest symbol for the atom.
Maybe that's not beyond the bounds of chance – a girl back in 1937 and repeatedly drawing the symbol of the thing that eight years later was to disrupt the whole course of history. Still, especially with the world of today striding blindly toward some atomic doom like a somnambulist under the control of an evil magician, I don't know.
I like even less to think about that other symbol – the circle split by a jagged line. You see, we don't know yet what that symbol is going to mean. That is, if it's going to mean anything. Still, I don't like to think about it.
As soon as Lavinia found out that she had drawn some symbols that weren't on the original cards she became very upset and insisted on tearing up all her drawings. I think most of us put it down to some sophomoric passion for conformity on her part. As I said, she seemed a most proper girl, very easily embarrassed.
The next day I received a puzzling visit from Conners Maytal. He wouldn't tell me exactly what was on his mind but he kept pacing up and down and peering out of the window, every now and then letting drop something about a "great danger" over-shadowing him.
"I've got on to something, Ken," he said, impressively. "A piece of information has dropped into my hands. It's big, Ken. So big I'm frightened – so big I don't know where to take it or what to do with it. And the worst thing is that I think certain people know I have this information."
Of course I was curious and very much concerned. Conners was a hero of mine and I tried my best to get him to tell me about it. But the most he would say was, "It's something that would never occur to you in your wildest fancies, Ken. Something utterly strange."
It never entered my mind that there might be any connection with his engagement to Lavinia. Though I did get the impression that someone at Mrs. Grotius' party might be concerned. But the world situation being what it was at the time, my guesses ran almost entirely in the direction of foreign agents and American fascists. Perhaps, I thought, Conners had uncovered evidence of serious disloyalty in high government circles.
He left me without telling me any more.
The next day Conners was knocked down by a hit-and-run driver and his brains bashed out on the curb.
Naturally I didn't rest until I was able to secure a private interview with Conners' supervisor. He listened rather skeptically to my story, and as I told it I became painfully aware that it didn't contain an ounce of concrete fact. Then too, I found that Conners' job hadn't been nearly as undercover or dangerous as some people – not Conners – had made it out to be.
When I finished my story Conners' superior promised me there'd be a thorough investigation. However, he strongly implied that he didn't think anything would be turned up. He was inclined to write the whole business off as nerves on poor Conners' part.
As time passed I was inclined to agree with him. The more so, si
nce I have myself at times experienced some of those same nerves. Often, when you wake up with a start to the terrifying predicament of the world, you wonder for a moment if there isn't something you can do about it.
Something that will avert the horrible dangers mankind is brewing for itself with all the compulsiveness of a drugged savage responding to the tom-tom beat. And you find you can't or that no one will listen. It is enough to drive a man into neurosis.
Back in the years just before the war such feelings were pretty common. We have become a little less sensitive since then, a little tougher-skinned – though that isn't going to help us when the atom bombs start to fall.
Meanwhile the Simes were off to Austria. There was talk of Theodore having hurried their departure on Lavinia's account. She was pictured as a tragic figure – young love cut short and all that.
However, as it happened the Simes were in for an unguessably exciting junket. It was more than five years before they got back to the States. In rapid succession came assignments in Czechoslovakia, Poland, France, London, Leningrad and London again, where they spent a good deal of the war.
From what I've heard of Theodore it was as much his social as his diplomatic abilities that made him valuable to our government and there must have been endless parties and functions, even in war's shadow, that both he and Lavinia attended.
I get frightened now, when I think of the number of people, the world's most prominent folk among them, who must have met that colorless-seeming Midwestern girl and listened idly to her chatter and then, later on – But I mustn't get ahead of my story.
Doubtless you noticed something striking about that list of assignments, coming in the order they did – it was like a road map of catastrophe for World War II. Oddly enough, that sort of thing had already given Theodore a peculiar reputation in the Service.
He'd been in Barcelona in '35, just before the Spanish Civil War, and again in '36. In Naples in '33 and '34, the year before the invasion of Ethiopia. As you'll remember, Hitler came to power in Germany early in '32.
Well, a year or so previously Theodore had a post in Nuremberg. He always seemed to keep ahead of the big events, as Lavinia did with her fashions. In some cases, as with Casablanca and Teheran and Shanghai, several years intervened.
Among his colleagues Theodore was jokingly referred to as a black bird of disaster. As soon as he arrived at a legation or consulate, superstitious tongues would start to wag – something would happen there in a year or two. Of course such talk was trifling stuff. Still, there was that feeling. Where Theodore Simes went, there went destiny.
Of course they might just as well have said – where Lavinia Simes went, there went destiny. But people didn't think of Lavinia that way. They just accepted her as "that delightful man's daughter."
However, with their arrival in Vienna late in '37, Lavinia ceased to play quite such a passive part. She began to get her share of the spotlight in a most unhappy way -her singular series of ill-starred courtships, tragically reproducing the pattern of the Conners Maytal episode.
First, it seems, there was Fritz Nordenfelt, a young Austrian official. They had not announced a formal engagement but there was no doubt of the degree to which he was enchanted by his Corn Belt siren. He disappeared shortly after the Anschlusz.
Then there was Elliot Davies, an American attaché at Prague. He died unromantically of a blood infection.
Next came a young Englishman named Clive Maybrick, a Londoner. He fell into an unguarded bomb crater during the blackout, cut his throat on some torn ironwork and bled to death.
Then there was René Coulet, Vichy, killed in a train wreck. And then – oh, there were a couple of others, both of them Americans. One of them, serving in the army in Italy, was run over by a truck miles behind the lines.
Accidents, all. No, hints of a "mysterious danger" as with Conners Maytal – at least none that I heard about.
Except perhaps in the case of Davies. I spoke with someone who visited him before he died. Tossing on his Prague hospital bed, he kept talking about something "weird and horrible" that had come into his life, something that made the world seem like a "madhouse at the mercy of an insane doctor." But with Hitler striding up and down the boundaries of the Sudetenland, snarling and lashing his arms, that wasn't an unreasonable remark.
So much I got from Mrs. Grotius and my other gossips. The Simes eventually came home and I bumped into Lavinia in the Loop in October, '47, and five days later we were engaged to be married.
Sudden? Of course. But there were reasons for that. I'd just quit my government job. I was sick to death for a breath of old times, when we had been dreamy and fresh-spirited, and at least thought ourselves honorable.
I felt that there wasn't a solitary person whose feelings hadn't been shriveled and coarsened by the enlightening horrors of war. I agree, we're probably more honest today and maybe even a bit more considerate in a rough and ready way – but we have lost something.
Well, Lavinia was a breath of the old times and a lot more besides. It sounds silly when you say a person hasn't changed a bit, because of course they always have. But applied to Lavinia it really meant something.
In the hustling, stop-light-ignoring Boul Miche crowd, a black sleeve brushed my elbow and a clear voice said, "Why, hello, Ken!" and I turned and got that fresh-from-the-prairie smile and was looking into those misty eyes.
A moment later we were talking about the last thing we'd discussed at the Grotius party in '37, which was Elizabethan music, and moments after that were walking arm in arm, with Lavinia taking those long strides that are faintly ungainly but graceful – you see what I mean?
Not that ten years of globe-circling hadn't left their mark on Lavinia. You felt that she had become a very wise person with all sorts of unknown mystical depths. You felt, possibly because you'd heard of those ill-starred courtships, an aura of romantic melancholy around her. You felt, almost, a touch of something dark and frightening.
But the important thing was that her inmost self seemed unchanged. Her experiences were like some gorgeous garment she wore, enhancing her glamour, some beautifully embroidered and be-diamonded black cloak that she could wrap around her or throw off at will. Inside she would still be fresh, innocent, untouched.
I believe that's true in a very literal sense. I mean, I think that Lavinia was and still is a virgin, though it hasn't made her sharp or antagonistic or given her a peaked look and a host of vague ailments or had any other common side effects.
I don't say that solely because of the touch of Midwestern puritanism clinging to her or because she always put a stop to our petting before it had advanced beyond a mild stage. No, there was more t it than that. I think she stayed a virgin, not only because it was the safe and proper thing but because she needed to be a virgin.
You know, there were pagan priestesses who stayed virgins, not because of any notion that sex is sinful but solely because they believed that sex weakens the special spiritual powers needed by anyone in communication with those awful influences beyond the world.
To be frank I think a lot more than that. I think that underneath Lavinia liked to tease men. I think she fed on their unsatisfied desire. I think she got something out of Conners Maytal and Fritz Nordenfelt and then after she had fed – But I mustn't let my emotions get out of hand.
Well, as I said, after five days we became engaged. And right away the incidents began – the slips – leading up to the frightening affair of the spiked punch at the Grotius party and its horrifying aftermath the next day.
The early slips didn't amount to much. I think the first occurred about two days after we became engaged.
We were alone in the living room of the Simes apartment. We'd been talking about our own future but the conversation had drifted around to politics – Lavinia is a liberal and she was going on at a great rate. I was a darn sight more interested in Lavinia than in any political theory ever conceived and there came a point where I stopped listening very hard to w
hat those desirable lips were saying.
Suddenly the words, "March 1952," hit my ear.
I must have reacted visibly for she broke off at once. She looked at me frightenedly. Then, "Oh, Ken, I shouldn't have said that."
"Said what?" I asked.
"Didn't you hear?"
"I heard you say, 'March 1952.' What did you mean?"
"Yes, but what I said right before that – you heard, didn't you?"
"I'm afraid I didn't," I admitted a little embarrassedly. "I was looking at you and thinking how nice it would be to kiss you and – What was it anyhow?"
"Oh, I'm so glad," she said, putting her hands on my shoulders and granting my desire.
I forgot all about March 1952.
But now I remember it. When that month rolls around I'll be watching the headlines and the undercurrents. Though I don't know how I'll be able to be certain it was her doing. Still, there may be a sign.
The other slips were mostly like that one. None of them made much conscious impression on me. Not even enough to make me think back to the telepathy test and the atom symbol and the other one. But just the same the slips were getting in their subconscious work. Deep in my mind an uneasiness was building, building – toward the night of the Grotius party.
How Lavinia and I were spending our time those days has an important bearing on what happened. I was carrying out a long-postponed project of mine – to really see Chicago. Not the nightclubs and theatres, not even especially the parks and museums, but the solider stuff.
I have a positive passion for the inner workings of cities. I like to see with my own eyes how the vast supplies of food and fuel come in, where the work comes from, where the brain is, how things are moved around – the railroad yards, the warehouses, the wholesale markets, the grubby side-tentacles of the transportation systems, the courts and jails, things like that.
I like to be able to picture a city as a huge steel and stone creature, with people for blood, a creature that breathes and feeds, digests the useful, rejects the useless, builds up protections against foreign bodies.
