Savage bride

by Cornell Woolrich; Internet Archive

"I have forgotten Spanish. I have forgotten Spanish. I have forgotten Spanish. I have forgotten Spanish."

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Alone now in the dungeon, he could sleep.

  Human beings must sleep. Give them time enough, and they can sleep anywhere, in any situation. Even on the floor of Purgatory, even in the mouth of Hell, they will sleep. Night comes and they will sleep.

  Sleep was friendly. It was awakening that was the cruel time. For in sleep he still dreamed he was back home, in his own country, in his United States. Voices spoke to him in English, sometimes he saw a car or two skim by in the background, women appeared in short swirling skirts and high-heeled slippers; once he was manipulating an automatic toaster, from which the slices of bread kept flying up without his being able to catch them.

  Sometimes, for a minute or two after awakening, before he'd yet opened his eyes, the kindly illusion would prolong itself. Sure, on the other side of those closed lids was Baltimore. All he'd have to do was raise them, and—

  And then his eyes would open, and he would be back in the greenish pallor of the dungeon around him. Inert on the floor, being punished for no reason, just for the sake of being pimished. The tribal morahty of the dim dead past.

  The dream was in the waking and the waking was in the dream.

  It wasn't the darkness of the dungeon. He could have borne that. It wasn't the fact of being fettered. He could have borne that. Devil's Island or Alcatraz, it wouldn't have mattered. It was the fact that outside the dungeon was a greater dungeon, over and above the immediate shackles on his wrist were vaster shackles. He was imprisoned in the wrong age.

  He had suffered a solitary fate, which had never befallen another individual, which was too cruel almost to be borne. He used to wonder sometimes, in wry retrospect, if all the thousands of lads who, as they turned the pages of a history book or adventure tale, had fleetingly wished themselves back in some former, more glamorous time, would have still wished that if they'd known what it felt like as he did now. The sense of cosmic loneliness, greater than any marooned sailor ever felt on a desert island. For loneliness was not just lengthwise now, a matter of distance. It was on a more imponderable plane, a matter of time.

  Yes, many times he cried, softly, to himself, deep in the night, where pain would not have made him cry, nor even excess of fear. But strangeness did; the lack of explanation, the withholding of reasonable understanding. Strangeness broke him down and shattered his restraint and courage to pieces, and he'd press his hands flat against his face to keep from hearing himself, and press his face in turn flat against the ground or against the wall, and breathe harshly and wetly into that self-imposed mask over his own weeping, till his sides ached and his teeth chattered and his throat was torn with the rebuffed breath. But the answer never came. Strangeness, things without explanation. Strangeness, taking away all props.

  For what is courage, after all, but a reliance on the things that one knows, the things one is sure of?

  But this was only sometimes. Then there were the nights he lay in sullen rage, planning plans that never came to anything. And there were the nights when he lay in dulled listlessness, not caring much. And more and more, increasing while the others diminished, there were the nights when he just slept, and dreamed of the past that was the future. Six months ago, but still five hundred years ahead of the present he was in now.

  Then one night he dreamed he heard Chris speaking to him in the dark, back at the finca. He couldn't see her but he knew it was her voice. She was saying his name in the dark and afraid to make much noise. She couldn't seem to come to him, she was on the outside of some doorway or opening and he was on the inside, but he could hear her cautiously breathing his name. It was the slenderest sort of whisper, the merest skein of sibilant sound, repeated over and over, patiently thrown into the dark at him as one throws particles of gravel against a window pane until at last one of them succeeds in attracting the attention of someone behind it.

  "Larry." And then, "Larry." And then, "Larry."

  Just breaths of silkiness in the darkness of the night.

  His head rolled over, and he slurred sleepily, "Be there right away, just wait a minute."

  The sound of his own voice completed his awakening. A hissed warning to silence came, like something left over from the dream, that had escaped out of it. "Sh-h-h-h."

  He lay there for a minute with his eyes still closed. He'd never dreamed of her yet. Only of Mitty, and once or twice of another girl from long ago, Jane Abbott. But never of this kid, whom he'd only half noted in the gathering clouds of strangeness those last few weeks down at La Escondida.

  "Larry."

  The whisper was still sounding, and yet the dream was over. He reared upright, pushed himself away from the wall in a sitting position.

  "Larry."

  He struggled to his feet, sawed the darkness around with his free arm, trying to split it into sections. "Chris! Are you in here with me?"

  "No, I'm in the inside passage, up against the cell door. I'm right by the opening in it." Then, as the metal hoop gave a flexing creak with his attempt to draw away from it, she said, "Sh-h."

  "Where's the guard? Isn't he there by you?"

  "He sleeps on the ground, outside in the open, right at the mouth of the passage. I had to—I had to step over him to get in here. I'll have to go back that way too, across his body."

  He strained toward her at an angle, swaying off balance.

  "I'm holding my arm all the way in through the opening," she whispered. "Are you near enough? Reach out, reach out and see if you can touch it."

  He kept fanning the blackness with his unfettered arm.

  "I've got something for you. I'm holding it. I'm afraid to drop it, he may hear."

  Suddenly his splaying fingers touched something cold, the handle of an obsidian knife that she was swaying back and forth as sightlessly as he. A shudder of deep emotion ran through the two of them at the slight contact, the first friendly contact in months. His hands tightened on the knife and he took it from her. It was short, but it had provided the necessary extra length that just spanned the distance between them.

  "Is it any good? Will it help you?"

  "Will itl" he breathed with hot gratitude. "The hoop's metal, but my hand's attached to it with some sort of a thong or fiber. I can saw through that."

  "I've had it on me for over a week. I've been trying to steal out every night to get to you with it. This was the first chance I had. Use it a little at a time. Free yoiu"self from the wall first. Then later you can begin digging at this wooden barrier. Don't try to do it all in one night; you'll only be caught at it. I've got to go back now."

  "Wait, Chris," he pleaded. "Don't leave me yet. Let me talk to you just a minute more. It feels so good to talk to someone again."

  "I'll come tomorrow night. If I stay too long tonight, then I may never come again. I only have to be caught at this once, you know. She doesn't know what mercy is."

  He hardly knew what he was saying; it was like a form

  of delirium. "Say some more. Say anything. Let me hear the words. I don't care what they are. Oh, I'm so lonely it hurts."

  "I'm afraid to stay too long. My place is on the floor right beside her. She may wake any minute and find me gone. There's a long flight of steps up into the temple, too. I carried down an empty water jug and left it standing there as an excuse. Tomorrow night. Will you be careful?"

  "I'll be careful."

  "Tomorrow night."

  There was the slight rustle of her garb, out there in the gloom, and then he didn't hear her any more. He counted, with his heart, the steps that would take her back to the outside of the passage, and lift her across the recumbent guard. He lived that awful moment with her as she passed through it, his ears straining against the thick walls that still would not have kept out the disastrous sounds. A sleepy grunt, a growl of interrogation— and catastrophe.

  But nothing came. The minute became another minute, the othe
r minute became a third. She'd made it, she was safe. The night was still and empty.

  He corkscrewed around on his hips, inward toward the wall, and began sawing away briskly at the thong that held him to the hoop.

  Tomorrow night had come. The whisper of his name had come. She had come. He'd been free of his iron staple since just before dawn of the night before, but all day long he'd had to lie back against it with his arm under him. They didn't look at him very closely any more when they brought the food. His muscles were still fairly weak and uncertain from the strictures of his long confinement, but all day long he'd been massaging his legs endlessly, and ever since darkness had fallen and it was safe to do so, he'd been practicing motion, walking and flexing them, alone there in the cell.

  He trod gingerly across the dungeon floor and put his face up close to the vent. He could feel the warmth of her breath coming to him from the other side. Now there was only this left between them.

  "I worked all last night, after you left. I've been free since dawn. I cried a little in the beginning, and I swore I wouldn't tell you; now that's the first thing I'm doing— telling you."

  "What do you suppose I'm doing right now?" "Let me feel your tears. Let me touch them with my hand." He traced his fingertips softly across her cheek, and something warm and wet dropped to one of them and clung there. He brought his hand back and put it to his own lips.

  She was whispering, and he didn't want to miss anything she said.

  "I found something they use. I don't know what it is. Powdered roots. Narcotic, I guess. I put a pinch in the water jug she drinks from. I was afraid to use too much, she might have noticed it by the taste. It makes it a little safer. She'll sleep a little deeper."

  "Let me hold your hand for a little while." He covered it with both his own, and then she added her other one to it, making a knot of longing and of hope. He placed his fips to it, and then presently she did hers too.

  They both sighed deeply in unison. "That feel so good. I'm not so lonely now." "I'm not so frightened now..'

  He sundered the knot, extended his hands through the opening. "Bring your face closer. Bring it nearer mine." Their lips met, and he kissed her with an avid ferocity. With the kiss came the knowledge, the certainty, withheld until now: I love her. This is my love, my only love. There never was another, never will be any more. I know it now. Too late, but I know it now.

  He held her face pressed to his like that for a moment. "I love you, Chris. Excuse me if I—sort of slop over, but I just now found it out."

  "I found it out so long ago," she said with wistful simplicity, "that I can't remember when it was now, any more."

  He pressed his mouth to hers afjain. And then again. And still again. "How strange it feels to kiss with real love for the first time. Am I doing it right? Is this the way? I don't even know, because I've never done it before. Am I frightening you, Chris?"

  "No, you're taking all the fright away. All of it away.

  You're making the bad dream stop, and the daytime come back again."

  They Ungered like that, on dangerous, knife-edged moments. She hadn't asked if her father were in there with him. He wondered if she knew. She must, or she would have tried to speak to him as well.

  "Chris," he faltered finally. "You know—how it is I'm by myself in here?"

  "I know about that. I keep pretending that he's still in there with you, only he's asleep and so he doesn't hear us.

  "But when you had the knife yourself, didn't you want to—"

  "No, I only wanted it for you. I wanted you to live. To have used it on her, that would have meant death for you, as well as myself. You be my knife. You be my right arm. I'll grieve later. Ill hate later. Right now there's only you to think of."

  They made their final plans. "I'm at the halfway stage now," he said. "My arms are free. There's just the barrier. That means one more night. Because we must both go the same night that I pry that out. It can't be hidden in the daytime, like the iron ring was behind my back."

  "Do you think you can loosen it?"

  "I'm siure I can. I've been tying it up and down all day, while I was lying there. Now that I can get up flush with it, and now that I have the knife. I can stretch my arm through the opening and across the outside, and whittle away the thongs that lash the two iron hoops together. That's all that holds it; I've seen them when they open it."

  "Well, maybe I can do it for you from this side even better."

  "No," he said, "that'll be my job. There's too much of tonight used up already; daylight would be here just about the time we got through. And we'll need the darkness for our getaway; that's the only headstart we'll have. I'll begin right at dusk tomorrow, and you slip out as soon as you see the moon come up."

  "The moon's going to be full tomorrow night. Will that be good or bad?"

  "Bad only in the beginning, until we can get clear of this built-up place. Good as soon as we're out in the open jungle."

  "I'd better go back now. I'll be here when the moon comes up."

  "You're not afraid, are you? It means going back again, for one more night and one more day."

  "I'm not afraid, if you say so. Only, be careful. We re so close to it now, just a night away. For both of us, be careful."

  "For both of us," he promised.

  They parted with their lips.

  "Just one more tomorrow night."

  One more tomorrow night. Hope has so many tomorrow nights. Hope never runs out of tomorrow nights. That's what hope is, all hope is.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  HIS TIMING was beautiful. Almost uncanny. Just a quarter of an hour before the rise of the moon, he felt the final sudden spring of looseness that told him the last of the thongs had parted under his untiring knife. The shifting back of the barrier could have been done in about two minutes time, if he cared to risk having it creak or complain; he did it in twelve, in an absolute velvety silence. One shoulder to it, both his arms pressed tight to it; the latter holding it back against him, rather than urging it forward. He eased it a fraction of an inch at a time on its way, then stopped, keeping all unevenness, both of the wood and of his body, out of it, so that the wood had no chance to find a voice.

  He stopped when the opening was little more than a foot in width. That was enough. He held it tight now, one arm on each side of it, and squeezed through side.

  The realization that he was on the outside, that he was free, hit him all at once, as if by delayed action. He'd been too taken up with the mechanics of the act itself until now. It nearly made him dizzy for a minute, in a hteral sense. He swayed, and had to plant both palms against the wall, to keep from teetering against the wood and perhaps undoing all his stealth after all.

  His heart sang as it had never sung before. I'm outl I'm in the open! In the open, I tell you!

  He hadn't noticed yet that she wasn't here. That is to say, he had, of course, but hadn't had time to worry about it yet.

  He dropped to all fours like an animal, put the knife bladewise between his teeth, and started to pad in sinuous menace along the inner passage, toward its mouth, where the guard lay sleeping.

  One palm, the opposite knee, the other palm, the opposite knee to that. Death down close to the ground.

  There wasn't going to be any quarter given, there wasn't going to be any boy-scout morality or fair-fight ethics. He was among primitives, and he was going to kill according to their code.

  He could see the guard's legs now, athwart the passage entrance; the trunk of his body must be to the side.

  One last step, and then there was no room for any more; he was almost on top of him. But he couldn't get to him from this side, the inside; the wall was in the way. He rose swayingly against the side of the opening, knife still in his teeth. He arched his leg out widely, and put his foot down on the other side of the guard's legs. He swayed for a moment, off balance between the wall and the guard's leg. Then he gathered his weight, stepped lightly to the other side of the guard, and dropped down
beside his sleeping enemy.

  The man was on his back, nostrils pointed up, bared chest exposed in its serried gradations, which were like steppingstones downward.

  Suddenly the moon came up, just in time to be in at the death. It came up in fitting hue for it, too; lurid coppery-red.

  He put out his hand, opened it, and sheltered for a minute the place where the heart was. As if to mark it, as if to bid it stay there where it was for an instant longer. He put the hand toward his mouth, and it came back with the knife in it.

  The bloodthirsty moon was paling into yellow now with impatience.

  There was a middling-sized flat stone lying there (the guard was using an even larger one for a head rest). He picked that up in his other hand. He held the knife perpendicular to the heart now. He raised the stone high overhead, and swung, from all the way around in back of him.

  There was a crack as it crashed into the knife haft. He let it roll off down the side of the man's body, and he sank prostrate beside him, spent by the blow.

  The man slumped over a little more to one side, that was all, and then stayed that way.

  When he raised his own head again to look at him, the only change was that his mouth was now open instead of closed. The haft was all that protruded of the knife; the rest of it had all gone in.

  He got to his feet, and crossed the man's ankles so that he could get a good grip on them, and dragged him that way, a little at a time, around the turn of the opening, and into the passage, and down the length of that, and finally left him right there by the barrier.

  Then he worked on the knife haft, and with the help of his foot against the body, finally managed to get the knife out again. It was dark in there, so he couldn't see it while he was doing it, only know it, which wasn't so bad. He whetted the knife this way and that against the hard-packed earth floor to dry it off, and then he sheathed it against him, and went back to the entrance to wait for her.

  The moon had whitened now, as if from loss of blood. He stood there straining his eyes and ears, watching for her coming, listening for the sound of it. Nothing moved. The night was still and empty.