Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along after the Bomb

IX

When Stuart McConchie returned to the East Bay from his trip to the peninsula south of San Francisco he found that someone—no doubt a group of veterans living under the pier—had killed and eaten his horse, Edward Prince of Wales. All that remained was the skeleton, legs and head, a heap worthless to him or to anyone else. He stood by it, pondering. Well, it had been a costly trip. And he had arrived too late anyhow; the fanner, at a penny apiece, had already disposed of the electronic parts of his Soviet missile.

Mr. Handy would supply another horse, no doubt, but he had been fond of Edward Prince of Wales. And it was wrong to kill a horse for food because they were so vitally needed for other purposes; they were the mainstay of transportation, now that most of the wood had been consumed by the wood-burning cas and by people in cellars using it in the winter to keep warm, and horses were needed in the job of reconstruction—they were the main source of power, in the absence of electricity. The stupidity of killing Edward maddened him; it was, he thought, like barbarism, the thing they all feared. It was anarchy, and right in the middle of the city; right in downtown Oaldand, in broad day. It was what he would expect the Red Chinese to do.

Now, on foot, he walked slowly toward San Pablo Avenue. The sun had begun to sink into the lavish, extensive sunset which they had become accustomed to seeing in the years since the Emergency. He scarcely noticed it. Maybe I ought to go into some other business, he said to himself. Small animal traps—it’s a living, but there’s no advancement possible in it. I mean, where can you rise to in a business like that?

The loss of his horse had depressed him; he gazed down at the broken, grass-infested sidewalk as he picked his way along, past the rubble which once had been factories. From a burrow in a vacant lot something with eager eyes noted his passing; something, he surmised gloomily, that ought to be hanging by its hind legs minus its skin.

This, he thought, explains why Hoppy might legitimately have imagined he was seeing the afterlife. These ruins, the smoky, flickering pallor of the sky… the eager eyes still following him as the creature calculated whether it could safely attack him. Bending, he picked up a sharp hunk of concrete and chucked it at the burrow—a dense layer of organic and in-organic material packed tightly, glued in place by some sort of white slime. The creature had emulsified some of the debris lying around, had reformed it into a usable paste. Must be a brilliant animal, he thought. But he did not care. The world could do without the brilliant and deranged life forms exposed to the light of day in the past years.

I’ve evolved, too, he said, turning one last time to face the creature, in case it might scuttle after him from behind. My wits are much clearer than they formerly were; I’m a match for you any time, so give up.

Evidently the creature agreed; it did not even come forth from its burrow.

I’m evolved, he thought, but sentimental. For he genuinely missed the horse. Damn those criminal veterans, he said to himself. They probably swarmed all over Edward the moment we pushed off in the raft. I wish I could get out of town; I wish I could emigrate to the open country where there’s none of this brutal cruelty and hoodlumism. That’s what that psychiatrist did, after the Emergency. Stockstill got right out of the East Bay; I saw him go. He was smart. He did not try to return to his old rut, he did not merely pick up where he left off, as I did.

I mean, he thought, I’m no better off now than I was before the goddam Emergency; I sold TV sets then and now I sell electronic vermin traps. What is the difference? One’s as bad as the other. I’m going downhill, in fact.

To cheer himself he got out one of his remaining special deluxe Gold Label Andrew Gill cigarettes and lit up.

A whole day wasted, he realized, on this wild goose chase to the far side of the Bay. In two hours it would be dark and he would be going to sleep, down in the cat peltlined basement room which Mr. Hardy rented him for a dolhr in silver a month. Of course, he could light his fat lamp; he could burn it for a little while, read a book or part of a book—most of his library consisted of merely sections of books, the remaining portions having been destroyed or lost. Or he could visit old Mr. and Mrs. Hardy and sit in on the evening transmission from the satellite.

After all, he had personally radioed a request to Dangerfield just the other day, from the transmitter out on the mudflats in West Richmond. He had asked for “Good Rockin’ Tonight,” an old-fashioned favorite which he remembered from his childhood. It was not known if Dangerfield had that tune on his miles of tapes, however, so perhaps he was waiting in vain.

As he walked along he sang to himself,

It brought tears to his eyes to remember one of the old songs, from the world the way it was. All gone now, he said to himself. Bluthgelded out of existence, as they say… and what do we have instead, a rat that can play the noseflute, and not even that because the rat got run over.

There was another old favorite, the tune about the man who had the knife; he tried to recall how it had gone. Something about the shark having teeth or pretty teeth. It was too vague; he could not recollect it. His mother had played a record of it for him; a man, with a gravelly voice, had sung it and it was beautiful.

I’ll bet the rat couldn’t play that, he said to himself. Not in a million years. I mean, that’s practically sacred music. Out of our past, our sacred past that no brilliant animal and no funny person can share. The past belongs only to us genuine human beings. I wish (the idea stirred him) that I could do like Hoppy used to do; I wish I could go into a trance, but not see ahead like he did—I want to go back.

If Hoppy’s alive now, can he do that? Has he tried it? I wonder where he is, that preview; that’s what he was, a preview. The first phoce. I’ll bet he did escape with his life. He probably went over to the Chinese when they made that landing up north.

I’d go back, he decided, to that first time I met Jim Fergesson, when I was looking for a job and it was still tough for a Negro to find a job in which he met the public. That was the thing about Fergesson; he didn’t have any prejudice. I remember that day; I had a job selling aluminum pans door to door and then I got the job with the Britannica people but that was also door to door. My god, Stuart realized; my first genuine job was with Jim Fergesson, because you can’t count that door to door stuff.

While he was thinking about Jim Fergesson—who was now dead and gone all these years since the bomb fell– he arrived on San Pablo Avenue with its little shops open here and there, little shacks which sold everything from coat hangers to hay. One of them, not far off, was HARDY’S HOMEOSTATIC VERMIN TRAPS, and he headed in that direction.

As he entered, Mr. Hardy glanced up from his assembly table in the rear; he worked under the white light of an arc lamp, and all around him lay heaps of electronic parts which he had scavenged from every corner Of Northern California. Many had come from the ruins out in Livermore; Mr. Hardy had connections with State officials and they had permitted him to dig there in the restricted deposits.

In former times Dean Hardy had been an engineer for an AM radio station in downtown Oakland; he was a slender, quiet-spoken, elderly man who wore a green sweater and a necktie even now—and a tie was unique, in these times. His hair was gray and curly, and he reminded Stuart of a beardless Santa Claus: he had a droll, dour expression and a roguish sense of humor. Physically, he was small; he weighed only a hundred and twenty pounds. But he had a near-violent temper and Stuart respected him. Hardy was nearly sixty, and in many respects he had become a father-figure to Stuart. Stuart’s actual father, dead since the ‘70s, had been an insurance underwriter, also a quiet man who wore a tie and sweater, but he had not had Hardy’s ferocity, his outbursts; or if he had, Stuart had never witnessed them or had repressed the memory of them.

And, too, Dean Hardy resembled Jim Fergesson.

That more than any other factor had drawn Stuart to him, three years ago. He was conscious of it; he did not deny it or want to deny it. He missed Jim Fergesson and he was drawn to anyone who resembled him.

To Mr. Hardy he said, “They ate my horse.” He seated himself on a chair at the front of the shop.

At once Ella Hardy, his employer’s wife, appeared from the living quarters in the rear; she had been fixing dinner. “You left him?”

“Yes,” he admitted. She, a formidable woman, glared at him with accusing indignation. “I thought he was safe out on the City of Oakland public ferry pier; there’s an official there who—”

“It happens all the time,” Hardy said wearily. “The bastards. It must have been those war vets who hole up down there. Somebody ought to drop a cyanide bomb under that pier; they’re down there by the hundreds. What about the car? You had to leave it, I guess.”

“I’m sorry,” Stuart said.

Mrs. Hardy said caustically, “Edward was worth eighty five silver U.S. dollars. That’s a week’s profit gone.”

“I’ll pay it back,” Stuart said, rigidly.

“Forget it,” Hardy said. “We have more horses at our store out in Orinda. What about the parts from the rocket?”

“No luck,” Stuart said. “All gone when I got there. Except for this.” He held up a handful of transistors. “The farmer didn’t notice these; I picked them up for nothing. I don’t know if they’re any good, thought.” Carrying them over to the assembly table he laid them down. “Not much for an all-day trip.” He felt more glum than ever.

Without a word, Ella Hardy returned to the kitchen; the curtain closed after her.

“You want to have some dinner with us?” Hady said, shutting off his light and removing his glasses.

“I dunno,” Stuart said. “I feel strange. It upset me to come back and find Edward eaten.” He roamed about the shop. Our relationship, he thought, is different with animals now. It’s much closer; there isn’t the great gap between us and them that there was. “Over on the other side of the Bay I saw something I’ve never seen before,” he said. “A flying animal like a bat but not a bat. More like a weasel, very skinny and long, with a big head. They call them tommies because they’re always gliding up against windows and looking in, like peeping toms.”

Hardy said, “It’s a squirrel. I’ve seen them.” He leaned back in his chair, loosened his necktie. “They evolved from the squirrels in Golden Gate Park.” He yawned. “I once had a scheme for them… they could be useful—in theory, at least—as message carriers. They can glide or fly or whatever they do for amounts up to a mile. But they’re too feral. I gave it up after catching one.” He held up his right hand. “Look at the scar, there on my thumb. That’s from a torn.”

“This man I talked to said they taste good. Like old-time chicken. They sell them at stalls in downtown San Francisco; you see old ladies selling them cooked for a quarter apiece, still hot, very fresh.”

“Don’t try one,” Hardy said. “Many of them are toxic. It has to do with their diet.”

“Hardy,” Stuart said suddenly, “I want to get out of the city and out into the country.”

His employer regarded him.

“It’s too brutal here,” Stuart said.

“It’s brutal everywhere.”

“Not so much if you get away from town, really far away, say fifty to a hundred miles.”

“But then it’s hard to make a living.”

“Do you sell any traps in the country?” Stuart asked.

“No,” Hardy said.

“Why not?”

“Vermin live in towns, where there’s ruins. You know that. Stuart, you’re a woolgatherer. The country is sterile; you’d miss the flow of ideas that you have here in the city. Nothing happens; they just farm and listen to the satellite. Anyhow, you’re apt to run into the old race prejudice against Negroes, out in the country; they’ve reverted to the old patterns.” Once more he put on his glasses, turned his arc light back on and resumed the assembling of the trap before him. “It’s one of the greatest myths that ever existed, the superiority of the country. I know you’d be back here in a week.”

“I’d like to take a line of traps say out around Napa,” Stuart persisted. “Maybe up to the St. Helena Valley. Maybe I could trade them for wine; they grow grapes up there, I understand, like they used to.”

“But it doesn’t taste the same,” Hardy said. “The ground is altered. The wine is—” He gestured. “You’d have to taste it, I can’t tell you, but it’s really awful. Foul.”

They were both silent, then.

“They drink it, though,” Stuart said. “I’ve seen it here in town, brought in on those old wood-burning trucks.”

“Of course, because people will drink anything they can get their hands on now. So do you, so do I.” Mr. Hardy raised his head and regarded Stuart. “You know who has liquor? I mean the genuine thing; you can’t tell if it’s prewar that he’s dug up or new that he’s made.”

“Nobody in the Bay Area.”

Hardy said, “Andrew Gill, the tobacco expert.”

“I don’t believe it.” He sucked in his breath, fully alert, now.

“Oh, he doesn’t produce much of it. I’ve only seen one bottle, a fifth of brandy. I had one single drink from it.” Hardy smiled at him crookedly, his lips twitching. “You would have liked it.”

“How much does he want for it?” He tried to sound cassal.

“More than you have to pay.”

“And—it tastes like the real thing? The pre-war?”

Hardy laughed and returned to his trap-assembling. “That’s right.”

I wonder what sort of a man Andrew Gill is, Stuart said to himself. Big, maybe, with a beard, a vest… walking with a silver-headed cane; a giant of a man with wavy, snow-white hair, imported monocle—I can picture him. He probably drives a Jaguar, converted of course now to wood, but still a great, powerful Mark XVI Saloon.

Seeing the expression on Stuart’s face, Hardy leaned toward him. “I can tell you what else he sells.”

“English brier pipes?”

“Yes, that, too.” Hardy lowered his voice. “Girly photos. In artistic poses—you know.”

“Aw, Christ,” Stuart said, his imagination boggling; it was too much. “I don’t believe it.”

“God’s truth. Genuine pre-war girly calendars, from as far back as 1950. They’re worth a fortune, of course. I’ve heard of a thousand silver dollars changing hands over a 1962 Playboy calendar; that’s supposed to have happened somewhere back East, in Nevada, somewhere like that.” Now Hardy had become pensive; he gazed off into space, his vermin trap forgotten.

“Where I worked when the bomb fell,” Stuart said, “at Modern TV, we had a lot of girly calendars downstairs in the service department. They were all incinerated, naturally.” At least so he had always assumed.

Hardy nodded in a resigned way.

“Suppose a person were poking around in the ruins somewhere,” Stuart said. “And he came onto a entire warehouse full of girly calendars. Can you imagine that?” His mind raced. “How much could he get? Millions? He could trade them for real estate; he could acquire a whole county!”

“Right,” Hardy said, nodding.

“I mean, he’d be rich forever. They make a few in the Orient, in Japan, but they’re no good.”

“I’ve seen them,” Hardy agreed. “They’re crude. The knowledge of how to do it has declined, passed into oblivion; it’s an art that has died out. Maybe forever.”

“Don’t you think it’s partly because there aren’t the girls any more who look like that?” Stuart said. “Everybody’s scrawny now and have no teeth; the girls most of them now have burn-scars from radiation, and with no teeth what kind of a girly calendar does that make?”

Shrewdly, Hardy said, “I think the girls exist. I don’t know where; maybe in Sweden or Norway, maybe in outof-the-way places like the Solomon Islands. I’m convinced of it from what people coming in by ship say. Not in the U.S. or Europe or Russia or China, any of the places that were hit—I agree with you there.”

“Could we find them?” Stuart said. “And go into the business?”

After considering for a little while Hardy said, “There’s no film. There’re no chemicals to process it. Most good cameras have been destroyed or have disappeared. There’s no way you could get your calendars printed in quantity. If you did print them—”

“But if someone could find a girl with no burns and good teeth, the way they had before the war—”

“I’ll tell you,” Hardy said, “what would be a good business. I’ve thought about it many times.” He faced Stuart meditatively. “Sewing machine needles. You could name your own price; you could have anything.”

Gesturing, Stuart got up and paced about the shop. “Listen, I’ve got my eye on the big time; I don’t want to mess around with selling any more—I’m fed up with it. I sold aluminum pots and pans and encyclopedias and TV sets and now these vermin traps. They’re good traps and people want them, but I just feel there must be something else for me.

Hardy grunted, frowning.

“I don’t mean to insult you,” Stuart said, “but I want to grow. I have to; you either grow or you go stale, you die on the vine. The war set me back years, it set us all back. I’m just where I was ten yeas ago, and that’s not good enough.”

Scratching his nose, Hardy said, “What did you have in mind?”

“Maybe I could find a mutant potato that would feed everybody in the world.”

“Just one potato?”

“I mean a type of potato. Maybe I could become a plant breeder, like Luther Burbank. There must be millions of freak plants growing around out in the country, like there’re all those freak animals and funny people here in the city.”

Hardy said, “Maybe you could locate an inteffigent bean.”

“I’m not joking about this,” Stuart said quietly.

They faced each other, neither speaking.

“It’s a service to humanity,” Hardy said at last, “to make homeostatic vermin traps that destroy mutated cats and dogs and rats and squirrels. I think you’re acting infantile. Maybe your horse being eaten while you were over in South San Francisco—”

Entering the room, Ella Hardy said, “Dinner is ready, and I’d like to serve it while it’s hot. It’s baked cod-head and rice and it took me three hours standing in line down at Eastshore Freeway to get the cod-head.”

The two men rose to their feet. “You’ll eat with us?” Hardy asked Stuart.

At the thought of the baked fish head, Stuart’s mouth watered. He could not say no and he nodded, following after Mrs. Hardy toward the little combination living room and kitchen in the rear of the building. It had been a month since be had tasted fish; there were almost none left in the Bay any longer—most of the schools had been wiped out and had never returned. And those that were caught were often ,radioactive. But it did not matter; people had become able to eat them anyhow. People could eat almost anything; their lives depended on it.

The little Keller girl sat shivering on the examination table, and Doctor Stockstill, surveying her thin, pale body, thought of a joke which he had seen on television years ago, long before the war. A Spanish ventriloquist, speaking through a chicken… the chicken had produced an egg.

“My son,” the chicken said, meaning the egg.

“Are you sure?” the ventriloquist asked. “It’s not your daughter?”

And the chicken, with dignity, answered, “I know my business.”

This child was Bonny Keller’s daughter, but, Doctor Stockstill thought, it isn’t George Keller’s daughter; I am certain of that… I know my business. Who had Bonny been having an affair with, seven yeas ago? The child must have been conceived very close to the day the war began. But she had not been conceived before the bomb fell; that was clear. Perhaps it was on that very day, he ruminated. Just like Bonny, to rush out while the bomb was falling, while the world was coming to an end, to have a brief, frenzied spasm of love with someone, perhaps some man she did not even know, the first man she happened onto… and now this.

The child smiled at him and he smiled back. Superficially, Edie Keller appeared normal; she did not seem to be a funny child. How he wished, God damn it, that he had an x-ray machine. Because—

He said aloud, “Tell me more about your brother.”

“Well,” Edie Keller said in her frail, soft yoice, “I talk to my brother all the time and sometimes he answers but more often he’s asleep. He sleeps almost all the time.”

“Is he asleep now?”

For a moment the child was silent. “No, he’s awake.”

Rising to his feet and coming over to her, Doctor Stockstill said, “I want you to show me exactly where he is.”

The child pointed to her left side, low down; near, he thought, the appendix. The pain was there. That had brought the child in; Bonny and George had become worried. They knew about the brother, but they assumed him to be imaginary, a pretend playmate which kept their little daughter company. He himself had assumed so at first; the chart did not mention a brother, and yet Edie talked about him. Bill was exactly the same age as she. Born, Edie had informed the doctor, at the same time as she, of course.

“Why of course?” he had asked, as he began examining her—he had sent the parents into the other room because the child seemed reticent in front of them.

Edie had answered in her calm, solemn way, “Because he’s my twin brother. How else could he be inside me?” And, like the Spanish ventriloquist’s chicken, she spoke with authority, with confidence; she, too, knew her business.

In the years since the war Doctor Stockstill had examined many hundreds of funny people, many strange and exotic variants on the human life form which flourished now under a much more tolerant—although smokily veiled—sky. He could not be shocked. And yet, this—a child whose brother lived inside her body, down in the inguinal region. For seven years Bill Keller had dwelt inside there, and Doctor Stockstill, listening to the girl, believed her; he knew that it was possible. It was not the first case of this kind. If he had his x-ray machine he would be. able to see the tiny, wizened shape, probably no larger than a baby rabbit. In fact, with his hands he could feel the outline… he touched her side, caefully noting the firm cyst-like sack within. The head in a normal position, the body entirely within the abdominal cavity, limbs and all. Someday the girl would die and they would open her body, perform an autopsy; they would find a little wrinkled male figure, perhaps with a snowy white beard and blind eyes… her brother, still no larger than a baby rabbit.

Meanwhile, Bill slept mostly, but now and then he and his sister talked. What did Bill have to say? What possibly could he know?

To the question, Edie had an answer. “Well, he doesn’t know very much. He doesn’t see anything but he thinks. And I tell him what’s going on so he doesn’t miss out.”

“What are his interests?” Stockstill asked. He had completed his examination; with the meager instruments and tests available to him he could do no more. He had verified the child’s account and that was something, but he could not see the embryo or consider removing it; the latter was out of the question, desirable as it was.

Edie considered and said, “Well, he uh, likes to hear about food.”

“Food!” Stockstill said, fascinated.

“Yes. He doesn’t eat, you know. He likes me to tell him over and over again what I had for dinner, because he does get it after a while… I think he does anyhow. Wouldn’t he have to, to liver

“Yes,” Stockstill agreed.

“He gets it from me,” Edie said as she put her blouse back on, buttoning it slowly. “And he wants to know what’s in it. He especially likes it if I have apples or oranges. And—he likes to hear stories. He always wants to hear about places. Far-away, especially, like New York. My mother tells me about New York so I told him; he wants to go there someday and see what it’s like.”

“But he can’t see.”

“I can, though,” Edie pointed out. “It’s almost as good.”

“You take good care of him, don’t you?” Stockstill said, deeply touched. To the girl, it was normal; she had lived like this all her life—she did not know of any other existence. There is nothing, he realized once more, which is “outside” nature; that is a logical impossibility. In a way there are no freaks, no abnormalities, except in the statistical sense. This is an unusual situation, but it’s not something to horrify us; actually it ought to make us happy. Life per se is good, and this is one form which life takes. There’s no special pain here, no cruelty of suffering. In fact there is solicitude and tenderness.

“I’m afraid,” the girl said suddenly, “that he might die someday.”

“I don’t think he will,” Stockstill said. “What’s more likely to happen is that he’ll get larger. And that might pose a problem; it might be hard for your body to accommodate him.”

“What would happen, then?” Edie regarded him with large, dark eyes. ‘Would he get born, then?”

“No,” Stockstill said. “He’s not located that way; he would have to be removed surgically. But—he wouldn’t live. The only way he can live is as he’s living now, inside you.” Parasitically, he thought, not saying the word aloud. “We’ll worry about that when the time comes,” he said, patting the child on the head. “If it ever does.”

“My mother and father don’t know,” Edie said.

“I realize that,” Stockstill said.

“I told them about him,” Edie said. “But—” She laughed.

“Don’t worry. Just go on and do what you’d ordinarily do. It’ll all take care of itself.”

Edie said, “I’m glad I have a brother; he keeps me from being lonely. Even when he’s asleep I can feel him there, I know he’s there. It’s like having a baby inside me; I can’t wheel him around in a baby carriage or anything like that, or dress him, ‘but talking to him is a lot of fun. For instance, I get to tell him about Mildred.”

“Mildred!” He was puzzled.

“You know.” The child smiled at his ignorance. “The girl that keeps coming back to Philip. And spoils his life. We listen every night. The satellite.”

“Of course.” It was Dangerfield’s reading of the Maugham book. Eerie, Doctor Stockstill thought, this parasite swelling within her body, in unchanging moisture and darkness, fed by her blood, hearing from her in some unfathomable fashion a second-hand account of a famous novel… it makes Bill Keller part of our culture. He leads his grotesque social existence, too. God knows what he makes of the story. Does he have fantasies about it, about our life? Does he dream about us?

Bending, Doctor Stockstill kissed the girl on her forehead. “Okay,” he said, leading her toward the door. “You can go, now. I’ll talk to your mother and father for a minute; there’re some very old genuine pre-war magazines out in the waiting room that you can read, if you’re careful with them.”

“And then we can go home and have dinner,” Edie said happily, opening the door to the waiting room. George and Bonny rose to their feet, their faces taut with anxiety.

“Come in,” Stockstill said to them. He shut the door after them. “No cancer,” he said, speaking to Bonny in particular, whom he knew so well. “It’s a growth, of course; no doubt of that. How large it may get I can’t say. But I’d say, don’t worry about it. Perhaps by the time it’s large enough to cause trouble our surgery will be advanced enough to deal with It.”

The Kellers sighed with relief; they trembled visibly.

“You could take her to the U.C. Hospital in San Francisco,” Stockstill said. “They are performing minor surgery there… but frankly, if I were you I’d let it drop.” Much better for you not to know, he realized. It would be hard on you to have to face it… especially you, Bonny. Because of the circumstances involving the conception; ft would be so easy to start feeling guilt. “She’s a healthy child and enjoys life,” he said. “Leave it at that. She’s had it since birth.”

“Has she?” Bonny said. “I didn’t realize. I guess I’m not a good mother; I’m so wrapped up in community activities—”

“Doctor Stockstill,” George Keller broke in, “let me ask you this. Is Edie a—special child?”

“‘Special’?” Stockstill regarded him cautiously.

“I think you know what I mean.”

“You mean, is she a funny person?”

George blanched, but his intense, grim expression remained; he waited for an answer. Stockstill could see that; the man would not be put off by a few phrases.

Stockstill said, “I presume that’s what you mean. Why do you ask? Does she seem to be funny in some fashion? Does she look funny?”

“She doesn’t look funny,” Bonny said, in a flurry of concern; she held tightly onto her husband’s ann, clinging to him. “Christ, that’s obvious; she’s perfectly normal-looking. Go to hell, George. What’s the matter with you? How can you be morbid about your own child; are you bored or something, is that it?”

“There are funny people who don’t show it,” George Keller said. “After all, I see many children; I see all our children. I’ve developed an ability to tell. A hunch, which usually is proved correct. We’re required, we in the schools, as you know, to turn any funny children over to the State of California for special training. Now—”

“I’m going home,” Bonny said. She turned and walked to the door of the waiting room. “Good-bye, Doctor.”

Stockstill said, “Wait, Bonny.”

“I don’t like this conversation,” Bonny said. “It’s ill. You’re both ill. Doctor, if you intimate in any fashion that she’s funny I won’t ever speak to you again. Or you either, George. I mean it.”

After a pause, Stockstill said, “You’re wasting your words, Bonny. I am not intimating, because there’s nothing to intimate. She has a benign tumor in the abdominal cavity; that’s all.” He felt angry. He felt, in fact, the desire to confront her with the truth. She deserved it.

But, he thought, after she has felt guilt, after she’s blamed herself for going out and having an affair with some man and producing an abnormal birth, then she will turn her attention to Edie; she will hate her. She will take it out on the child. It always goes like that. The child is a reproach to the parents, in some dim fashion, for what they did back in the old days or in the first moments of the war when everyone ran ‘his own crazy way, did his private, personal harm as he realized what was happening. Some of us killed to stay alive, some of us just fled, some of us made fools out of ourselves… Bonny went wild, no doubt; she let herself go. And she’s that same person now; she would do it again, perhaps has done it again. And she is perfectly aware of that.

Again he wondered who the father was.

Someday I am going to ask her point blank, he decided. Perhaps she doesn’t even know; it is all a blur to her, that time in our lives. Those horrible days. Or was it horrible for her? Maybe it was lovely; she could kick the traces, do what she wanted without fear because she believed, we all did, that none of us would survive.

Bonny made the most of it, he realized, as she always does; she makes the most out of life in every contingency. I wish I were the same… he felt envious, as he watched her move from the room toward her child. The pretty, trim woman; she was as attractive now as she had been ten years ago—the damage, the impersonal change that had descended on them and their lives, did not seem to have touched her.

The grasshopper who fiddled. That was Bonny. In the darkness of the war, with its destruction, its infinite sporting of life forms, Bonny fiddled on, scraping out her tune of joy and enthusiasm and lack of care; she could not be persuaded, even by reality, to become reasonable. The lucky ones: people like Bonny, who are stronger than the forces of change and decay. That’s what she has eluded– the forces of decay which have set in. The roof fell on us, but not on Bonny.

He remembered a cartoon in Punch–

Interrupting his thoughts, Bonny said, “Doctor, have you met the new teacher, Hal Barnes?”

“No,” he said. “Not yet. I saw him at a distance only.”

“You’d like him. He wants to play the cello, except of course he has no cello.” She laughed merrily, her eyes dancing with pure life. “Isn’t that pathetic?”

“Very,” he agreed.’

“Isn’t that all of us?” she said. “Our cellos are gone. And what does that leave? You tell me.”

“Christ,” Stockstill said, “I don’t know; I haven’t the foggiest idea.”

Bonny, laughing, said, “Oh, you’re so earnest.”

“She says that to me, too,” George Keller said, with a faint smile. “My wife sees mankind as a race of dungbeetles laboring away. Naturally, she does not include herself.”

“She shouldn’t,” Stockstill said. “I hope she never does.”

George glanced at him sourly, then shrugged.

She might change, Stockstill thought, if she understood about her daughter. That might do it. It would take something like that, some odd blow unprecedented and unanticipated. She might even kill herself; the joy, the vitality, might switch to its utter opposite.

“Kellers,” he said aloud, “introduce me to the new teacher one day soon. I’d like to meet an ex-cello player. Maybe we can make him something out of a washtub strung with baling wire. He could play it with—”

“With horsetail,” Bonny said practically. “The bow we can make; that part is easy. What we need is a big resonating chamber, to produce the low notes. I wonder if we can find an old cedar chest. That might do. It would have to be wood, certainly.”

George said, “A barrel, cut in half.”

They laughed at that; Edie Keller, joining them, laughed, too, although she had not heard what her father—or rather, Stockstill thought, her mother’s husband—had said.

“Maybe we can find something washed up on the beach,” George said. “I notice that a lot of wooden debris shows up, especially after storms. Wrecks of old Chinese ships, no doubt, from years ago.”

Cheerfully, they departed from Doctor Stockstill’s office; he stood watching them go, the little girl between them. The three of them, he thought. Or rather, the four, if the invisible but real presence within the girl was counted.

Deep in thought he shut the door.

It could be my child, he thought. But it isn’t, because seven years ago Bonny was up in West Marin here and I was at my office in Berkeley. But if I had been near her that day—

Who was up here then? he asked himself. When the bombs fell… who of us could have been with her that day? He felt a peculiar feeling toward the man, whoever he was. I wonder how he would feel, Stockstill thought, if he knew about his child… about his children. Maybe someday I’ll run into him. I can’t bring myself to tell Bonny, but perhaps I will tell him.