Return From the Stars

by Stanisław Lem

  From time to time I glanced at Eri. She was silent, stiff, only rarely did she look out at the changing landscape. The house — our house — was supposed to be blue, with an orange roof. Touching my lips with my tongue, I could taste salt. The road turned and ran parallel to the sandy shoreline. The ocean, its waves seemingly motionless because of the distance, joined its voice to the roar of the straining engine.

  The cottage was one of the last along the road. A tiny garden, its bushes gray from the salt spray, bore the traces of a recent storm. The waves must have come right up to the low fence: here and there lay empty shells. The slanting roof jutted out in front, like the fancifully folded brim of a flat hat, and gave a great deal of shade. Behind a large, grassy dune the neighboring cottage could be seen, some six hundred paces away. Below, on the half-moon beach, were the tiny shapes of people.

  I opened the car door.

  “Eri.”

  She got out without a word. If only I knew what was going on behind that furrowed forehead. She walked beside me to the door.

  “No, not like that,” I said. “You’re not supposed to walk across the threshold.”

  “Why?”

  I lifted her up.

  “Open…” I asked her. She touched the plate with her fingers and the door opened.

  I carried her in and put her down.

  “It’s a custom. For luck.”

  She went first to look at the rooms. The kitchen was in the rear, automatic and with one robot, not really a robot, only an electrical imbecile to do the housework. It could set the table. It carried out instructions but spoke only a few words.

  “Eri,” I said, “would you like to go to the beach?”

  She shook her head. We were standing in the middle of the largest room, white and gold.

  “Then what would you like, maybe…”

  Before I could finish, again the same movement.

  I could see now what was in store. But the die was cast and the game had to be played out.

  “I’ll bring our things,” I said. I waited for her to reply, but she sat on a chair as green as grass and I realized that she would not speak. That first day was terrible. Eri did nothing obvious, did not go out of her way to avoid me, and after lunch she even tried to study a little — I asked her then if I could stay in her room, to look at her. Promising that I would not utter a word and would not disturb her. But after fifteen minutes (how quick of me!) I realized that my presence was a tremendous burden to her; the line of her back betrayed this, her small, cautious movements, their hidden effort; so, covered with sweat, I beat a hasty retreat and began to pace back and forth in my own room. I did not know her yet. I could see, however, that the girl was not stupid, far from stupid. Which, in the present situation, was both good and bad. Good, because even if she did not understand, she could at least guess what I was and would not see in me some barbarous monster or wild man. Bad, because in that case the advice that Olaf had given me at the last moment was worthless. He had quoted to me an aphorism that I knew, from Hon: “If the woman is to be like fire, then the man must be like ice.” In other words, he felt that my only chance was at night, not during the day. I did not want this, and for that reason had been wearing myself out, but I understood that in the short time I had I could not hope to get through to her with words, that anything I said would remain on the outside — for in no way would it weaken her rectitude, her well-justified anger, which had shown itself only once, in a short outburst, when she began to shout, “I don’t! I don’t!” And the fact that she had then controlled herself so quickly I also took to be a bad sign.

  In the evening she began to be afraid. I tried to keep low, step softly, like Voov, that small pilot who managed — the perfect man of few words — to say and do everything he wanted without speaking.

  After dinner — she ate nothing, which alarmed me — I felt anger growing inside me; at times I almost hated her for my own torment, and the great injustice of this feeling only served to intensify it.

  Our first real night together: when she fell asleep in my arms, still all hot, and her ragged breath began, in single, ever-weaker sighs, to pass into oblivion, I was certain that I had won. Throughout she had struggled, not with me but with her own body, which I came to know, the delicate nails, the slender fingers, the palms, the feet, whose every part and curve I unlocked and brought to life, as it were, with my kisses, my breath, stealing my way into her — against her — with infinite patience and slowness, so that the transitions were imperceptible, and whenever I felt a growing resistance, like death, I would retreat, would begin to whisper to her mad, senseless, childish words, and again I would be silent and only caress her, and I besieged her with my touch, for hours, and felt her open and her stiffness give way to the trembling of a last defense, and then she trembled differently, conquered now, but still I waited and, saying nothing, for this was beyond words, drew from the darkness her slender arms, and breasts, the left breast, for there beat the heart, faster and faster, and her breath grew more violent, more desperate, despairing, and the thing took place; this was not even pleasure, but the mercy of annihilation and dissolving, a storming of the last wall of our bodies, so that in violence they could be one for a few seconds, our battling breaths, our fervor passed into mindlessness, she cried out once, weakly, in the high voice of a child, and clutched me. And then her hands slid away from me, furtively, as if in great shame and sadness, as if suddenly she understood how horribly I had tricked her. And I began everything again, the kisses placed in the bends of the fingers, the mute appeals, the whole tender and cruel progression. And everything was repeated, as in a hot black dream, and at one point I felt her hand, buried in my hair, press my face to her naked shoulder with a strength I had not expected in her. And later, exhausted, breathing rapidly, as if to expel from herself the accumulated heat and sudden fear, she fell asleep. And I lay motionless, like one dead, taut, trying to figure out whether what had happened meant everything or nothing. Just before I fell asleep it seemed to me that we were saved, and only then came peace, a great peace, as great as that on Kereneia, when I lay on the hot sheets of cracked lava with Arder, whose mouth I could see breathing behind the glass of his suit although he was unconscious, and I knew that it had not been in vain, yet I hadn’t the strength then even to open the valve of his reserve cylinder; I lay paralyzed, with the feeling that the greatest thing of my life was behind me now and that if I were to die right there, nothing would change, and my immobility was like the unutterable silence of triumph.

  But in the morning everything began again. In the early hours she was still ashamed, or perhaps it was contempt, I do not know whether it was directed at me or whether it was herself she despised for what had taken place. Around lunchtime I succeeded in persuading her to take a short drive. We rode along the huge beaches, with the Pacific stretched before us in the sun, a roaring colossus furrowed by crescents of white-and-gold foam, filled to the horizon with the tiny colored sheets of sailboats. I stopped the car where the beaches ended, ended in an unexpected wall of rock. The road made a sharp turn here, and, standing a meter from the edge, one could look straight down upon the violent surf. We returned for lunch. It was as on the previous day, and everything in me cringed at the thought of the night, because I did not want it. Not like that. When I was not looking at her, I felt her eyes on me. I was puzzled by her renewed frowns, her sudden stares, and then — how or why I do not know — just before dinner, as we sat at the table, suddenly, as though someone had opened my skull with a single blow, I understood everything. I wanted to punch myself in the head — what a self-centered fool I had been, what a self-deceiving bastard — I sat, stunned, motionless, a storm within me, beads of sweat on my forehead. I felt extremely weak.

  “What is the matter?” she asked.

  “Eri,” I croaked, “I… only now. I swear! Only now do I understand, only now, that you went with me because you were afraid, afraid that I… yes?”

  Her eyes widened with
surprise, she looked at me carefully, as if suspecting a trick, a joke.

  She nodded.

  I jumped up.

  “Let’s go.”

  “Where?”

  “To Clavestra. Pack your things. We’ll be there” — I looked at my watch — “in three hours.”

  She stood without moving.

  “You mean it?” she said.

  “Eri, I didn’t know. Yes, it sounds unbelievable. But there are limits. Yes, there are limits. Eri, it is still not clear to me how I could have done such a thing — because I blinded myself, I guess. Well, I don’t know, it doesn’t matter, it has no importance now.”

  She packed — so quickly… Everything inside me broke and crumbled, but on the surface I was perfectly, almost perfectly, calm. When she sat down beside me in the car, she said:

  “Hal, forgive me.”

  “For what? Ah!” I understand. “You thought that I knew?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right. Let’s not talk about it any more.”

  And again I drove at a hundred; houses flashed by, purple, white, sapphire, the road twisted and turned, I increased our speed, the traffic was heavy, then let up, the cottages lost their colors, the sky became a dark blue, the stars appeared, and we sped along in the whistling wind.

  The surrounding countryside grew gray, the hills lost their volume, became outlines, rows of dark humps, the road stood out against the dusk as a wide, phosphorescent band. I recognized the first houses of Clavestra, the familiar turn, the hedges. At the entrance I stopped the car, carried her things into the garden, to the veranda.

  “I don’t want to go inside. You understand.”

  “I understand.”

  I did not say good-bye to her, but simply turned away. She touched my arm; I flinched as if I had been struck.

  “Hal, thank you.”

  “Don’t say anything. Just don’t say anything.”

  I fled. I jumped into the car, took off; the roar of the engine saved me for a while. It was laughable. Obviously she had been afraid that I would kill him. After all, she had seen me try to kill Olaf, who was as innocent as a lamb, simply because he had not let me — and anyway! Anyway, nothing. There in the car I howled, I could permit myself anything, being alone, and the engine covered my madness — and again I do not know at what point it was that I realized what I had to do. And once more, as the first time, peace came. Not the same. Because the fact that I had taken advantage of the situation so terribly and had forced her to go with me, and that everything had taken place on account of that — it was worse than anything I could have imagined, because it robbed me even of my memories, of that night, of everything. Alone, with my own hands, I had destroyed all, through a boundless egoism, a lie that had not let me see what was at the very surface, the most obvious thing. Yes, she told the truth when she said that she did not fear me. She did not fear for herself. For him.

  Lights flew by, flowed, moved slowly to the rear, the landscape was indescribably beautiful, and I — torn, pierced — hurtled, tires squealing, from one turn to the next, toward the Pacific, toward the cliff there; at one point, when the car veered more sharply than I expected and went off the edge of the road with its right wheels, I panicked for a fraction of a second, then burst into crazy laughter — that I was afraid to die here, having decided to do it in another place — and the laughter turned suddenly into sobbing. I must do it quickly, I thought, I’m no longer myself. What’s happening to me is worse than terrible, it’s disgusting. And I also told myself that I ought to be ashamed. But the words had no weight or meaning. It had got completely dark, the road practically deserted, because few drove at night, when I noticed, not far behind me, a black gleeder. It went lightly and without effort in the places where I had had to employ all my skill with brake and accelerator. Because gleeders hold the road with magnetic forces, or gravitational, God knows. The point is that it could have passed me with no difficulty, but it kept to the rear, some eighty meters behind me, sometimes a little closer, sometimes farther back. On sharp bends, when I skidded across the road and cut from the left, it kept its distance, though I did not believe that it could not keep up with me. Perhaps the driver was afraid. But, then, there would be no driver. Anyway, what did the gleeder matter to me?

  It mattered, because I felt that it did not hang back by chance. And suddenly came the thought that it was Olaf, that Olaf, who didn’t trust me in the least (and rightly!), had stayed in the vicinity and was waiting to see how things turned out. Yes, there was my deliverer, good old Olaf, who once again would not let me do what I wanted, who would be my big brother, my comforter; and at that thought something took hold of me, and for a second I could not see the road through my red fury.

  Why don’t they leave me alone? I thought, and began to squeeze every last shred out of the machine, every possibility, as if I did not know that the gleeder could go at twice the speed.

  Thus we raced through the night, among the hills with scattered lights, and above the shrill whistling of the wind I could hear now the roar of the invisible, spreading, immense Pacific, as though the sound rose from bottomless depths.

  Drive, then, I thought. Drive. You don’t know what I know. You spy on me, trail me, won’t leave me be, fine; but I’ll fool you, I’ll give you the slip before you know what’s happened; and no matter what you do it won’t help, because a gleeder can’t go off the road. So that even at the last second I’ll have a clear conscience. Excellent.

  I went by the cottage where we had stayed; its three lit windows stabbed me as I passed, as if to prove to me that there is no suffering that cannot be made still greater, and I began the last stretch of road, parallel to the ocean. Then the gleeder, to my horror, suddenly increased its speed and began to overtake me. I blocked its way brutally, veering to the left. It fell back, and thus we maneuvered — whenever it tried to pass me I blocked the left lane with the car, maybe five times altogether. Suddenly, though I was barring the way, it began to pull in front of me; the body of my car practically brushed the glistening black hull of that windowless, seemingly unoccupied projectile. I was certain, then, that it could only be Olaf, because no other man would have attempted such a thing — but I could not kill Olaf. I could not. Therefore I let him by. He got in front of me, and I thought that now he would in turn try to cut me off, but instead he stayed some fifteen meters ahead. Well, I thought, that’s all right. And I slowed down, in the small hope that he might increase the distance between us, but he did not; he, too, slowed down. It was about two kilometers to that last turn at the cliff when the gleeder slowed down even more and kept to the center, so that I could not pass it. I thought I might be able to do it now, but there was no cliff yet, only sandy beach, the car’s wheels would sink in the sand after a hundred meters, I wouldn’t even make it to the ocean — it would be idiotic. I had no choice, I had to drive on. The gleeder slowed down still more and I saw that it would stop soon; the rear of its black body glowed, as though splashed with burning blood, from the brake lights. I tried to slip around it with a sudden swerve, but it blocked my way. He was faster and more agile than I — but, then, a machine was driving the gleeder. A machine always has faster reflexes. I slammed on the brakes, too late, there was a terrible crash, a black mass loomed up before the windshield, I was thrown forward and lost consciousness.

  I opened my eyes, awakened from a dream, a senseless dream — I dreamed that I was swimming. Something cold and wet ran down my face, I felt hands, they shook me, and I heard a voice.

  “Olaf,” I mumbled. “Why, Olaf? Why… ?”

  “Hal!”

  I roused myself; I propped myself up on one elbow and saw her face over me, close, and when I sat up, too stunned to think, she slumped slowly onto my knees, her shoulders heaving — and still I did not believe it. My head was huge, as if filled with cotton.

  “Eri,” I said; my lips were curiously large, heavy, and somehow very remote.

  “Eri, it’s you. Or am I only…”<
br />
  And suddenly strength came to me, I caught her by the arms, lifted her, got to my feet, and staggered with her; we both fell on the still warm, soft sand. I kissed her wet, salty face and wept — it was the first time in my life — and she wept. We said nothing for a long time; gradually we began to be afraid — of what, I can’t say — and she looked at me with lunatic eyes.

  “Eri,” I repeated. “Eri… Eri…”

  That was all I knew. I lay down on the sand, suddenly weak, and she grew alarmed, tried to pull me up, but hadn’t the strength.

  “No, Eri,” I whispered. “No, I’m all right, it’s only this…”

  “Hal. Say something! Say something!”

  “What should I say… Eri…”

  My voice calmed her a little. She ran off somewhere and returned with a flat pan, again poured water on my face — bitter, the water of the Pacific. I had intended to drink much more of it, flashed a thought, senseless; I blinked. I came to. Sat up and touched my head.

  There was not even a cut; my hair had cushioned the impact, so I had only a lump the size of an orange, a few abrasions, still I a ringing in my ears, but I was all right. At least, as long as I sat. I tried to stand up, but my legs didn’t seem cooperative.

  She knelt in front of me, watching, her arms at her sides.

  “It’s you? Really?” I asked. Only now did I understand; I turned and saw, through the nauseating vertigo brought on by that movement, two tangled black shapes in the moonlight, a dozen or so meters away at the edge of the road. My voice failed j me when I returned my eyes to her.

  “Hal…”

  “Yes.”

  “Try to get up. I’ll help you.”

  “Get up?”

  Apparently my head was still not clear. I understood what had happened, and I didn’t understand. Had that been Eri in the gleeder? Impossible.

  “Where is Olaf?” I asked.

  “Olaf? I don’t know.”