The Sphinx (17 page)

“I did hope,
when we first got married, that you Could help me,” she said softly.

“Help you? What
do you mean?” 138

“I hoped that
it was possible to learn how to become nothing more extraordinary than your
wife. Your ordinary, American wife. I hoped that you’d understand me, and that
you’d teach me.

This breed of
Ubasti must come to an end somewhere, Gene. It has to die out sometime. I hoped
that I was going to be the last.”

“You mean, you
and your mother, you’re the last lion-people left?”

She nodded.
“There may be others, but we’ve never seen or heard of them. The tribe was cast
out of Tell Besta by the armies of the pharaohs long before Christ was born,
long before Moses.

They were
spread all over the world, but very few of them survived. Many of them were
killed or captured because they were more lion than human, and some of them
simply found it impossible to adapt to human society. Our family, I suppose,
was lucky. We were more human than beast, and we hid ourselves in Europe for
hundreds of years. The lion strain only makes itself apparent through the women
of the family, and so our name was always changing, and we were difficult to
trace. Sometimes we invented names, like my mother’s maiden name Masib.

That’s an
anagram for Simba, the African word for lion.”

“Your father...
died, didn’t he? Mauled to death. Was it really by bears?” Gene shuddered. “Or
was it your mother?”

“Mother is very
traditional,” whispered Lorie. “She’s not like me. She believes in all the old
rituals.”

“You mean she
actually killed your father?”

“I don’t know
for certain. It is something that she never speaks about. But in the old books
of Tell Besta, it is said that a lion-woman must always devour her mate after
he has been of service to her.”

“Of service?”
queried Gene.

“It depends
what she wanted her mate to do for her. I think that once my father had brought
my mother to America, and set her up in the kind of lifestyle she wanted, and
given her a daughter, then after that she had no further use for him.”

Gene finished
his cigarette, and ground it out hi the bedside ashtray. He blew out smoke.

“And that was
what was going to happen to me? Once I’d been of service and set you up in
Washington, society, you were going to rip me apart?”

“Gene,” she
said intensely, “you don’t understand.”

“Maybe I don’t.
Maybe I don’t want to. Maybe all I want to do is get the hell out of this
place.

Lorie, can’t
you see what you’re asking me to do? You come home naked and covered hi blood,
and you expect me to grin and say -hi, dear, have a nice night?’“

“You said
tonight that you loved me.”

“Well this
morning I’m not so sure.”

“Gene, I
thought you’d...”

“You thought
I’d what” he yelled. “You thought I'd sit back and allow myself to be treated
like a dummy? Don’t you understand what it took for me to come back here after
I’d found out about your body? I loved you, and I thought that I could persuade
you to have yourself changed.

But as soon as
I get back, you’re out stalking your prey like some goddamned wild beast!”

“Gene, I want
to change. I want to. You’re my only hope.”

“You didn’t say
you wanted to change yesterday. Tm Ubasti and proud of it,’ that’s what you
said. “Honoring and obeying doesn’t include altering my racial
characteristics.’ Lorie, you’re not even goddamned human.

She flinched.
For a moment, her eyes widened, but then she seemed to relax, made a conscious
effort to restrain the ferocious animal that ran inside her veins. “Gene,” she
told him, “I love you.” He didn’t answer.

“I’m your wife,
Gene, whatever I’m like. I know you want me to change and I will. I’ll go to
the plastic surgeon, Gene, I mean it. I’ll have these breasts removed. And I’ll
never go out again at night. I’ll learn Gene, if you’ll help me. Just help me,
please. Even if you don’t love me, even if you think I’m a revolting animal,
please help me to shake off this terrible thing.”

He coughed.
“That’s easy to say with a full belly, isn’t it? What happens when you get
hungry again? What happens when you feel like a mouthful of juicy led blood?”

“Gene, I
promise.”

“You don’t have
to. I’m leaving. My attorney will send you the divorce papers.”

She went down
on her knees on the carpet. She was crying.

“Get up,” he
snapped impatiently. “Crying won’t help.”

“Oh, Gene, just
give me a chance. Please, Gene, please.”

“I said get
help!!”

At that moment,
tall and forbidding in a long white robe, Mrs. Semple appeared at the bedroom
door. Her hair was immaculately brushed and she was even wearing makeup. She
came sweeping in, and she put her arms around Lorie’s shoulders, staring up at
Gene with, a cold, distrustful glare.

“You’ve upset
her,” she said, accusingly. “Don’t you know how sensitive she is?”

Gene gave an
almost imperceptible nod. “I also know how good she is at Jumping out of
second-floor windows and slaughtering sheep.”

“She’s a
Ubasti, you fool!” hissed Mrs. Semple. “A living descendant of one of the
proudest and rarest people on earth. Have you no understanding at all?”

“Oh, I
understand all right. I’ve read all about the Ubasti.”

“Then you’ll
know that you can’t treat Lorie like a common housewife. Oh, Lorie, don’t weep,
ma chere. Look at her, Gene. Can’t you see breeding and pride-When you have it
right in front of your nose?”

“What pride?”
Gene said simply. “Pride as in ‘pride of lions?’.”

“Oh, Lorie,”
said her mother, “don’t weep, darling, don’t weep.”

Gene went over
to the dressing table and collected his cufflinks, his comb, and a few bits and
pieces from Jus pockets. In the mirror he could see Mrs. Semple watching him,
but he deliberately kept his back turned. He wanted to show her that he wasn’t
frightened, that he wasn’t a helpless gazelle, even if his heart wag bumping
furiously and his hands were shaking.

“What are you
going to do?” asked Mrs. Semple. “Are you going to leave this poor girl,
desolate and abandoned?”

Gene didn’t
turn around.

“Are you going
to let her struggle to survive on her own, a strange and rare creature in a
world that hates her? Is that what you’re going to do?”

“I’ll see my attorney
tomorrow,” Gene said. ‘Tm Sure we can work something out.”

“You’ve
decided, because she has fits of strange behavior, and because she has an
appetite for fresh meat; that you don’t love her anymore? Just like that?”

“I didn’t say
that,” Gene told her, in a hoarse voice.

“AD I said was
that I can’t take this kind of behavior any more. I’ve already been bitten- and
badly injured once. Tonight I. was threatened, and it was only sheer chance
that I wasn’t eaten alive. I can come to terms with some of the physical
problems, and the whole thing about Lorie’s ancestry, but I can’t take the
danger of it. Mrs. Semple, if you want to know the whole.

God’s-honest
truth, I’m scared shitless.”

He went to the
wardrobe to fetch his valise, and he packed away the few shirts that he had
brought to the Semple mansion, along with his socks and ties. Lorie remained
kneeling on the carpet, her hands covering her eyes, and her mother stayed
beside her, gently stroking her daughter’s hah-.

“Well,” said
Gene, “I’m afraid that’s it.”

“You’re sure?”
said Mrs. Semple. “Even if I give) you guarantees?”

“Guarantees?
What guarantees?”

“Well,” said
Mrs. Semple, “supposing I guarantee) your safety, and your peace of mind.”

“How can you do
that?”

“At night, we
could lock Lorie hi the next room, the Small room where you stayed before. You
could have the key. Also, Mathieu could lend you his rifle. You could keep it
beside the bed, and if you were ever in any danger from anyone, you would be
very well protected.”

“Is that what
love’s turned out to be? A locked door and a loaded gun?”

Mrs. Semple
stood up, and took his hand. “Gene, it won’t last for long. Once she knows that
you’re going to stay with her, and that you’re going to help her forget that
she’s a Ubasti, she’ll slowly get better. Gene, you love her. You can also
rehabilitate her. Make it possible for Lorie to live like a normal human being.

Can’t you see
how damned she is without your love? She will never love another man as much as
you. Do you want her to stay like this for the rest of her life?”

“Supposing she
comes in to attack me one night? Supposing I’m put hi the position of having to
shoot her? Then what?”

“It won’t
happen. The gun is simply for your own peace of mind.”

“How can you be
sure? What about your own late husband? Is that what happened to him?”

“He died hi
Canada, Gene. He was mauled by a bear.”

“You mean it
looked as if he’d been mauled by a bear.”

Mrs. Semple
released his hand and went back to Lorie, who was now sitting on the edge of
the bed, cradling herself in her arms as if she was cold.

“I know what
your suspicions are, Gene, and I know you’ve had a bad shock. I can only ask
you to forgive us.”

Gene licked his
lips. He felt uncertain now. Walking out on Lorie would certainly be the safest
and easiest thing to do, but how much of a man would he be if he did that? How
much of a husband? He knew that she could possibly be dangerous, but she had
never done anything worse than a woman who was spasmodically psychotic. Perhaps
with some help from Peter Graves, the psychiatrist, he could actually train
Lorie to become completely human. After all, real lions and tigers had been
successfully trained to be docile. Why couldn’t a creature that was already
halfway human do the same?

“Please, Gene,
don’t leave me,” Lorie said, the melting sound of her words finally convincing
him.

“Okay,” he said
heavily. “We’ll give it one more try.

But this time,
we do it my way. We arrange the plastic surgery. We go to see a qualified
psychiatrist. And we make sure that the bedroom door stays locked and bolted
until I decide that I’m good and ready to let you out.”

He went across
to the bed and he held Lorie in his arms. Next to them, with a feline smile,
Mrs. Semple was almost purring with satisfaction.

Peter Graves
came out of his consulting room and closed the door behind him. He looked
deeply thoughtful. Gene, who had been sitting reading tattered copies of Time
magazine, looked up. “Well? What do you think?”

Peter sat down,
and rested his chin in his hands. “She’s a strange one, all right,” he said,
uninformatively. “In fact, she’s one of the strangest ones I’ve ever seen,”

Gene laid down
his magazine. “Listen, Peter, I know that already. That’s why we’re here. What
I want to know is, what’s wrong, and what can you do about it?”

Peter sat back.
“Well,” he said slowly, “it’s not one of those psychoses that you can cure by
driving at it with a bulldozer. In fact, I’m not so sure it’s a psychosis at
all”

“If it’s not a
psychotic condition, what is it?”

“I’m not too
sure. You see, in layman’s language, a psychosis is a disturbance of the
personality in which the subject’s relation to reality is seriously impaired,
but hi this case, you wife seems to have a very consistent view of reality,
even though the reality she’s talking about is somewhat... unusual.”

“You mean she’s
not disturbed?”

“I wouldn’t say
so, no. You can seek a second opinion if you like. She’s slightly neurotic
about her relationship with you, and she feels guilt because she told you some
lies, but otherwise she seems as sane as anyone else.”

“What about
this unusual reality?”

Peter shrugged.
“It’s unusual because, unlike you or I, she thinks it’s perfectly normal to
have more than one pair of breasts, and to slaughter animals and eat their meat
raw. But there’s no suggestion that this attitude is brought about by a
psychotic illness. Whatever the physiological makeup of her mentality may be,
her brain cells appear to regard such things with complete equilibrium and
dispassion. Her EEG reading was undisturbed and regular, and the only tunes
when she became anxious was when we talked about you, and how you felt about
her. She’s very concerned about pleasing you, you know.”

“Do you really
think she’s a lion-woman?”

Peter pulled a
face. “Who knows? She certainly has some sexual characteristics that resemble a
lioness, and there is some ingredient in her mental makeup that makes her
behave in a related manner, but that’s about as far as it goes.”

“Peter–I saw
her leap from a second-floor window, hands first, like a cat, and she wasn’t
even hurt.”

Peter frowned.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t like a little course of analysis yourself?”

“Peter, I swear
it.”

“Well,” said
Peter, “I just don’t know. I've never come across anything like it I’ve looked
up a couple of cases where people have had freakish bodies, and have required
psychoanalysis, but in most of these cases the subjects are worried about the
way they look and, despite their outward appearance, are inwardly normal. What
strikes me about your wife is that she is so utterly consistent about herself.
There isn’t a flaw in her personality anywhere.”

“So what can I
do? What happens if she turns nasty?”

Peter sighed.
“I think the only option open to you is to go on treating her with love and
affection, and try to show her what you want from her in terms of daily
behavior. If she starts acting ferocious, tell her you disapprove. Gradually,
the incentive to play out this lion-woman role will become less and less
attractive to her.”

“What about
this predestined future of hers? Did she tell you anything about that?”