The World Asunder

by Ian Wallace

  Most of our eating was silent; we were looking for alternate topics.

  One alternate topic occurred almost simultaneously to Esther and to me. We looked at each other and knew what we were thinking. We looked at the men: they looked at us, and they knew what we were thinking.

  Esther broke it. Looking hard at Dio, she said, “During fifty years I’ve been dying because I thought you hadn’t bothered to follow me. And now you’re young and I’m old.”

  Rourke and I were watching them and each other. It came into me that his thoughts about me were the same as mine about him; and then for a few seconds we smiled at each other, and we knew how we wanted it to be tonight. Knowing this now with confidence, we turned to them—.

  Staring at Esther, Dio: “I love you. Do you still love me?”

  Her shoulders rose and fell. “No matter who was in bed with me, even my friend Rourke, whom I love—after Dio, there hasn’t been anybody else since nineteen forty-five, if that’s what you mean.”

  He incised, “That’s—exactly what I mean when I say I love you. Sex or no sex, that’s what I mean. For me there hasn’t been anybody else, either.” He turned to me, his eyes warm: “Not even you, my friend Lil whom I love.”

  I quick-smiled and quick-gripped his hand. Quickly withdrawing my hand, I looked at Esther. Ever since all of us had met, she and Dio had been avoiding this confrontation-just as Rourke and I, until now, had been avoiding this confrontation. ...

  Dio told her quietly, “You’d have to accept it that I am a career man, that isn’t going to change. But I do it a hell of a lot better when you are around. I don’t care how old you are, I’ll never forget all our fire when we were young; I might just find a special interest in this new age difference, or I would settle for platonic love with you and pick up my nookie elsewhere if that were best. But I want you with me, always.”

  Gravely she dwelt upon him. “I don’t care how young you are, I might just find a special interest in this new age difference, or I would settle for platonic love with you and pick up my homing elsewhere if that were best. But I want you coming home to me, always.”

  They mused with each other.

  Radiantly smiling, Rourke said, “By the authority vested in me as commodore, I now pronounce you man and wife. I think they’ve just arranged the room assignments, my Lilith.”

  I want to dwell on this, and yet I don’t want to dwell on this. How Rourke and I were with each other that night, it was the urgency and the caring of our peony-night enriched by our knowledge that now it was free, that neither of us needed the other, that in our affection and trust and my greater maturity and his far greater maturity we simply wanted each other now. The peony-night had been—well: for my part, a groping for meaning-in-Burk coupled with a strong sense of Eternal Mother role-playing; for his part, desperate need, semiconfidence merging into sudden confidence and explosive triumph, followed by subsidence into soul-relief in which I was his redeeming goddess. I will not fault this relationship: it was necessary and wonderful and good. But it could happen only once, and never again. Tonight, neither of us had any thought of trying to revivify that unique moment which is eternal in the past but only then; we remembered and savored and honored all the meanings of that moment, but now we embraced as mature old friends haring with each other human-splendid pleasure-of-the-body blended with love, each honoring the other for his affectionate delight We lay there then, side by side, blessing it

  until he coughed. Badly.

  I sat up alert. “Rourke—” Afterward I would find it interesting that I hadn’t said “Burk.”

  He kept coughing, out of control. Death-alarmed but curiously not guilty at all, I tumbled out of bed and started for the door to find doctor-help. I heard him gasp, “Wait—” I turned. Sitting up in bed, he was fighting for self-discipline, and presently he got it enough to articulate, “Get Dio. That’s top-urgent.”

  I was wholly governed by this command, I had no question. Hurrying to the communicating door, I rapped on it and called, “Dio! get in here with Rourke, fast, fast!” Then I listened unashamed, keeping an eye on Rourke, who was breathing hard but seemed to be settling, and I heard Esther say, “Get out of me and in there,” and quickly the door opened and pajama-pantsed Dio was with us and pajamaed Esther not far behind.

  Rourke, rigid: “Sit on my bedside, Dio.”

  He sat there, gazing at Rourke’s eyes.

  Rourke clutched Dio’s shoulder and with a stupendous effort arrived at smiling wan and saying it light. “It comes fast, and suddenly it has come. I’d prefer taking my adventure-chances with the hereafter if any, but I can’t duck Kali and Earth and the fleet. I’m hitting you with our agreement before lunch. Are you still willing?”

  Earnestly Dio grasped a Rourke upper arm; and Esther and I knew that these men were in comprehensive intermind communion.

  Suddenly, Rourke fell back dead.

  I don’t think you ever really know immediately what grief is. Painfully accepting the death, we women watched Dio.

  After many seconds of sitting there gazing at dead Rourke, Dio slowly arose. Looking down at Rourke, absurdly he made as if to thrust hands into bathrobe pockets which weren’t there; eventually he gave up the thrusting and let his hands hang.

  He turned then to us. And we knew that everything of Burk Halloran and Rourke Mallory, from his birth on to 2002, was now in Diodoro Horse.

  He said without emphasis, “Lilith, you be the one to close his mouth and eyelids. Esther, you arrange his hands and feet. Kiss him then, or not if you prefer not, but then stand well back.”

  Esther and I required that we smile while we performed this duty. He was my Burk’s good father, and yet my Burk too; he was Esther’s profound friend. Together we bent to kiss his still-warm temples. Then we stepped back.

  A full minute intervened before he vanished.

  Dio filled and emptied his lungs, and told us, “His body is aboard the Ishtar; they knew from me just now that he was coming. You two go to sleep, if you like, in Esther’s bed. I have to think, we can straighten out our tactics at breakfast”

  His face went haggard. “Esther—I’m sorry—”

  We women exchanged weary glances; then we went to flank Dio, who stared at the empty bed. Both of us at once hugged his hard waist, gazing at the bed; his arms clasped our waists and hugged us hard. Each of us kissed a Dio-cheek. We released him, and clasped hands, and went into the other room and closed the door. It was his to fight out Exhaustion came over us; we fell into bed and sleep.

  25.

  He awakened us at seven-thirty, and we wasted little time: before eight-thirty we were breakfasting, and our sober talk was purely tactical. We thought of Dio as Dio, but we knew that his mind was Dio/Rourke; during much of the night he had lain awake in labor while these friendly but new-acquainted and potently individuated minds now utilizing the same brain alternately discussed and fenced and probed and cajoled in their process of feeling toward mutual integration; eventually there had seemed to be general agreement that the Dio-mind must be in command with the Rourke-mind as highest-level staff, and the Dio-mind had made some concessions to the Rourke-mind in order to facilitate this; and since they had now achieved the first major step toward integration and ultimate mutual individuation, both minds together had willed Dio to sleep so that the process could advance through the night at subconscious levels.

  This morning, the process had reached a point where Dio was the Dio-mind in unquestioned leadership with the Rourke-mind everpresent urgently prompting. And the situation as between this man and us women was asexually interhuman: Dio was in command, he had to be, we wanted him to be—the issue didn’t arise even mentally, simply we were his team.

  By nine-thirty, we were down by the river. The chateau overhung us; we ignored it, our concerns were with the waterfront. We strolled it, trying to seem merry, exchanging greetings with docked fishermen and colliers, smelling the Loire, keeping our eyes open for private yachts, of which there
were the usual several.

  Not far down the line, we spotted a seventy-foot yawl painted white. It meant confrontation; but I am going to take you circumstantially with us through our somewhat tortuous approach....

  I gripped Dio’s biceps: “If Burk Halloran is here, he shouldn’t see me yet, it might mess up his future.” We agreed that Esther and I would hang back; and he designated a signal, a simple wave, which would mean “All clear, move in.” Then Dio prowled forward while Esther and I stood watching; with our minds attuned to his, we could see and hear what he saw and heard. Esther murmured to me, “I’d have given a pretty to have this ability during past years; but now I’m glad I didn’t, so forget it.”

  An American seaman was perched on a dock rail beside the yawl. Dio did a friendly approach, hailing him in American English, “Handsome yawl, friend!” The young seaman grinned: “Hey, hello! you aren’t a frog!” Restraining a sarcasm, Dio came forward and halted just before him, gazing at the yacht: “Nice to meet an American at riverside, most of them are up touring the chateau. Star of Boston. Who’s your skipper?”

  “Got two of ’em. No sweat, though: they get along.”

  "Two commanders?”

  “Co-owners, Randolph and Halloran, both sweet joes, you know, tough in a sweet way, easy to like if you work hard. I do.”

  “I’d like to go aboard,” mused Dio, gazing upward. “Can you fix it?”

  “Go on aboard, ask anybody for one of the captains. Where you from, friend?”

  “Arizona originally, then New York City. And you?”

  “Terre Haute. Hey, New York’s a good city, too—”

  Dio suffered a few minutes of interstate gossip, then consulted his wristwatch and jerked his head shipward: “Good tack, friend, but I gotta board that ship.” And he mounted the gangplank, being careful not to wave at us—not yet.

  Esther was cool-intent, but I was loaded with hypertensive symptoms. Loving and grieving for the Rourke-father who had been Burk, nevertheless I knew that this dread imminence would be Burk.

  Once aboard, Dio knew with Rourke-nostalgia that he had known the Star as he had known Esther: inside and outside, hull and cabins and rigging, responses to fair weather and to stormy weather—although the body of the Star Dio had never boarded. And he knew with the certainty of memory where Halloran would be found. And he also knew the most probable location of Randolph, just as he knew Randolph. Troubled faintly by his foreknowledge that Randolph would be lost overboard in a 1954 squall, leaving everything to his Halloran-partner, whose name had changed late in 1952 to Rourke Mallory, Dio moved swiftly upward to the bridge.

  Co-owner Randolph (sole owner until a year ago when Halloran had bought in) was a nervously affable ascetic in his early forties; Dio found him alternately admiring the chateau and absorbing the river and criticizing the deck work below. He turned, startled but not upset, when Dio appeared at the companionway-head and hailed him, “Mr. Randolph? I’m a visitor, name’s Horse—” Randolph came instantly and stuck out his hand to help Dio up. “Good to see another American,” Randolph commented in a thin tenor whose accent suggested Boston aristocracy with Harvard engrafted; and then, with a sharp look at Dio’s complexion and features: “By the name and look of you, an Indian original.”

  Dio grinned. “Zuñi, but I’ve been naturalized. You don't mind a nosy tourist?”

  (On the dock, Esther and I mindwatched and listened: I needed no headphones now—Dio was unidirectionally transmitting to us his sensitives.) Randolph, somewhat taller than Dio (what man isn’t?), took a guest-arm and led Dio to a riveted-on table with four riveted-on swivel chairs and a clamped-down liquor stand firmly clasping several beverage bottles and a number of clean glasses. Dio begged off midmorning alcohol; Randolph approved in theory, but served two tomato juices with Tabasco dashes, his with and Dio’s without vodka. “Wish my partner were here,” said Randolph. “Tell me about yourself.”

  With restraint that Esther marveled at, Dio spread hands: “Just a tourist from Manhattan. Professional man off duty.”

  “Lawyer?”

  “You could say that. I get a sense, Mr. Randolph, that you are the kind of guy I’ve always wanted to be: a freedom-millionaire with a yacht.”

  Randolph spread hands. “The life has its points. You like the Star?”

  “Very much. She’s free, easy, trim, a nifty lady with mean clean lines and impeccable rigging.”

  “You a sailor, Mr. Horse?”

  “Landlubber,” Dio half-lied, knowing with Rourke’s memory that it was so no longer. “Love ships from a distance, read about ’em a lot. Get a thrill right down to here just being aboard.”

  “Boy would my partner like to meet you! Look, he should be back any time, he jumped ship last night. Hell, he may even have sneaked back aboard; but then he’d be in his cabin and‘wouldn’t want to be disturbed, otherwise he’d have let me know—”

  Dio decided to take a chance; and making a great show of peering at us ashore, he exclaimed, “Hey, what do you know! There’s my wife with her niece!” And when Randolph instantly urged it, Dio waved at us; and aboard we came, listening all the way up to the bridge....

  Dio enthused, “They’re going to love this! Hey—mind telling me what ports you like to make?”

  Randolph leaned his bead back on his hands to consult the sky. “Well, Halloran picks the places and times, really; we co-own the Star, but he’s captain and I’m exec, actually, and I like it that way. That’s why I never had all that fun until we teamed up: “I know ships and winds and currents and stars and such, but Halloran knows places and has ideas.

  Like now for instance, we were in Lyons on some business that he was cooking up, and the notion arose that we should shift the business here to Blois, which is our headquarters; but Halloran got a sort of whimsy about that, and damned if we didn’t come to Blois by way of the Suez Canal and Johannesburg! What do you think about that! Oh, wait—the ladies—”

  Esther was Mrs. Horse,'I was her niece Miss Vogel. After two or three minutes of Randolph-urbanity, Esther blurted, “Lil, take Horse below and seduce him or something—I want this Randolph!” Dio grinned merrily, knowing she’d half meant it; Randolph grinned fatuously proving Esther’s late-middle-age charm, and offered drinks (we girls went the full Bloody Mary route); whereafter Randolph was burbling to conduct us everywhere aboard.

  We three visitors managed to accept with delight. Soul-cold, we knew that we were accepting an invitation to confront the Hot Rind or the Gelid Core of Hell.

  Toward the end of the tour, half an hour later, Randolph diffidently showed us a modest quarter-deck cabin, which he called “my digs—I don’t really need much”; and then with flustered enthusiasm he bustled us onward to the adjacent door. “Halloran’s cabin,” respectfully he announced. (These guys were partners?) He knocked, observing, “Precaution— as I said, he just might have slipped back in.”

  We waited. He knocked again. We waited. Nothing.

  Dio’s mind said to us: “It was a chance I took, and now I feel him deep in there. Lilith, I’ll need you with me for your psychology and because you knew him. Esther, I love you, but I’ll be cuing you to decoy Randolph away; okay?”

  Esther and I saw that it was here. Esther consulted my eyes, realizing that I was the emotional primary; I was wilting, but then I straightened and jerked my head at Dio: we must follow his lead. Esther’s mind said to Dio, “Okay. Be careful. Come back.”

  Randolph opened the door a trifle, peered in, flung the door wide, ushered us in. “Halloran’s command-suite. He didn’t want all this, but I insisted—he’s really the boss, and he owns sixty percent.”

  Maybe that was a slight relief. No, it was a trifle: continuing oppression...

  We surveyed the cabin. It was a good deal less than an admiralty, but twice as spacious as Randolph’s digs, and furnished with plain elegance: commanded by a large desk with leather-upholstered swivel chair, offering another easy chair and a sofa for guests, and in one co
rner a well-mattressed thirty-inch bunk and a washstand and a door labeled head and a roomy chest of drawers; nautical charts and a globe and knickknacks in profusion. We stood appreciating, not really daring to go deep in with Halloran absent.

  Next to the door labeled head was another door labeled private. Dio’s alertness fastened upon this second door, he seemed to freeze upon it; dismally I knew why, and so did Esther.

  Randolph’s voice dropped to a secretive low. “I will say that Halloran sometimes has—moods. Then he lets me know that he will be in that room for a while; and we all know not to disturb him, not even to bring him food.” Awe crept in: “You know how it is with great men—”

  I was feeling a little sick. . . . Only, an unspoken Dio-command came into the minds of us women, and with it a softness for Esther: “I love you; stay in touch—I intend to win, but you may not like the outcome, but I love you.”

  Esther looked at him briefly, and I felt her mind reach to him: “I have never stopped loving you; and if you come out of this distorted, I will figure out a way still to love you.”

  Mind-silence

  then Dio’s mental command: “Esther—decoy?'