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  Calmly he said, “You don’t really believe I would be unfaithful to you, do you? When you know, you absolutely must know, that I love you. That I could not live without you.”

  “That I believe,” Glynnis said, laughing. “But it doesn’t follow from it that you love me. Still less, that you haven’t been unfaithful to me.”

  “Glynnis, this is all so absurd. In the morning—”

  “That diseased little tramp. Sigrid Hunt.”

  Ian winced. “Why do you say that? Why say such a thing? Diseased? Why? How?”

  “Are you worried? You do look worried!”

  “Sigrid was your friend, not—”

  “As if I wouldn’t know. Wouldn’t guess. Sense.”

  “She was your friend, not mine. She came into my life by way of—”

  “And do you really fuck her? You? Ian McCullough so very suddenly the lover?”

  “I’ve told you there is nothing between us. There was nothing. Damn you,” Ian whispered. “It isn’t what you think—I swear.”

  “How many times have you fucked her? Or have you—at all?”

  “Glynnis, please stop. This is ugly, this is absurd, you are saying things you’ll regret—”

  “I am ugly, I am absurd, because I have ferreted out the truth, is that it?”

  “I swear—”

  “Swear on a stack of Bibles!”

  Glynnis’s face glowed in mockery. She was making an allusion—an unforgivable allusion, Ian thought it—to an incident of many years back: while at Harvard, the McCulloughs had befriended a young man in Ian’s department, like Ian an assistant professor without tenure; and this young man, by the name of Scobie, “borrowed” heavily from an article of Ian’s he had read in manuscript and hurriedly published his borrowings in the prestigious journal World Politics—with no reference to Ian McCullough, of course. He claimed that the ideas were his own, and not Ian’s; they had come to him quite independently of Ian; who could prove they had not? Certain ideas circulated in the air, in the very atmosphere; who could prove they did not? “I would never steal from you or from anyone,” Scobie had said indignantly. “I swear on a stack of Bibles.” Though really quite angered by their friend’s betrayal, and, at the time, deeply hurt, the McCulloughs had managed finally to laugh together over Scobie’s rhetoric: for would not, as Glynnis pointed out, a single Bible have been enough for Scobie’s purposes? Why a stack?

  “You’re drunk,” Ian said.

  “You’re a liar,” Glynnis said.

  “We’ll talk about it in the morning,” Ian said. “Morning is soon enough.”

  “Where are you going tonight?”

  “Going—?”

  I want you out of here. Tonight.”

  “Glynnis, for christ’s sake—”

  Go to her, go quickly to telephone her. Why sit here with me?”

  “Glynnis, please. You must know—”

  I know too much.”

  You are exaggerating this. There was absolutely nothing—”

  “Swear on a stack of Bibles!”

  “Goddamn you, that isn’t funny. In the morning—”

  “There isn’t going to be any morning.”

  “I am not leaving this house. This is my house, and I am not leaving it.”

  “Ah, but did you, do you, really fuck her? You—and her?”

  “Shut up!”

  “I find that a novel idea, really. I find that—novel.”

  “Why are you doing this? Making it so vulgar and—”

  “You of all people: Ian McCullough the lover,” Glynnis said, laughing. “I find that novel.”

  “—so vulgar and degrading—”

  “And not romantic? I’m so sorry.”

  “It isn’t like you. In the morning—”

  “And it isn’t like you? Lying to me, and deceiving me, and making a fool of me, and—”

  “There was nothing between Sigrid Hunt and me. I’ve said—”

  “Don’t shout at me, goddamn you. Who do you think you are, goddamn you? I found the check, and you weren’t going to tell me about it, were you, ever: you and her, imagine you fucking her, Sigrid Hunt, you, Ian McCullough, impotent half the time, three quarters of the time, goddamn you don’t you look at me like that, I won’t tolerate that, you pack your goddamn things and get out of the house tonight, I don’t have to tolerate you, or her, bringing that woman into our lives, that bitch, that cunt, into our bed, how many ‘sexual partners’ do you think a woman like that has had in her lifetime, and how many have each of those ‘sexual partners’ had, goddamn you, I’m talking to you, bringing disease into our lives, bringing death, for all I know bringing death—”

  Glynnis’s voice rose precipitously. Her eyes were wild, now, and bright with tears. Ian tried to take her hand, to calm her, but she drew away; he said, “But Glynnis, you haven’t listened. I am not Sigrid Hunt’s lover—as I’ve tried to tell you. All that might be said of me, or of our relations, is that we are friends of a kind. Vague, undefined—”

  “Ah, yes, ‘vague’! ‘Undefined’!”

  “But I am not her lover: I have not ever made love to her. You might speak with her, if—”

  Glynnis gave a little scream and brought her fists down hard on the table. “Speak to her yourself—go and sneak away and telephone her yourself. That little conniving bitch.”

  Ian’s temples throbbed, his gut was awash with nausea. He could not bear this terrible scene, yet he knew he must; he must think of it as a game, a codified game, not unlike similar games Glynnis had forced him to play in the past: his humiliation, her self-righteous triumph. For he was to be humbled and surely deserved to be humbled; she had right on her side, was therefore righteous: deserved, however rough the passage, triumph. He could not bear it, yet he must. He said, “But I love you, Glynnis—you must know that.”

  Glynnis said angrily, “I don’t know the first thing about you.”

  At this point Ian rose to embrace her, meaning to comfort her; but, as if perversely, Glynnis misunderstood the gesture, gave a little scream and shrank back, and the table shook, and one of the candles toppled from its holder. Before Ian could pinch out the flame with his fingers the tablecloth was scorched. Ian thought, Something terrible is going to happen.

  Yet he did not walk away, did not, as instinct urged, flee the house and Glynnis. He sat down again at his place, heavily, as if fated: staring at this woman with the wild hurt eyes and disheveled hair with a new fascination, as if he had never really seen her before, had not, before tonight, really known her. And Glynnis in her turn stared at him. “Just don’t you touch me,” she whispered.

  IAN WOULD RECALL afterward, to the degree to which he recalled the next hour and a half at all, that much of the time he and Glynnis had not seemed to be quarreling; were merely talking, talking earnestly, if heatedly, their voices slightly raised and slightly careening as if from side to side, like roller-coaster cars. Again and again, with numbing persistence, Glynnis returned to the matter of the check, to Ian’s deception, as she saw it; and Ian defended himself, telling her—or trying, through her interruptions, to tell her—what had happened between him and Sigrid Hunt, what had not happened between him and Sigrid Hunt. If Glynnis listened she did not hear, seemed incapable of hearing. It is her self-hatred with which I am contending, Ian thought, and the thought astonished him. He had not known, had not guessed.

  There was the matter of Sigrid Hunt, but there was also the matter, as it developed, of Bianca: Bianca’s love, the loss of which Glynnis blamed on Ian, with a cold, reasoned passion that quite astonished him. And there was the matter, yet again, yet now more embittered, of Ian’s “chronic impotence”—his withdrawal, as Glynnis saw it, from her and from their marriage.

  And there was the matter, revealed with unnerving candor, of the affairs Glynnis herself claimed to have had: intermittently, as she said, throughout their marriage.

  Affairs? Glynnis? Throughout their marriage?

  Seeing Ian’s look
of utter disbelief Glynnis said, “Of course, you would never have guessed.” She smiled at him, angrily. “You—wrapped in your own little world—would never have guessed.”

  Ian thought, I must get out of here; I can’t breathe.

  Glynnis said, “Wouldn’t you even like to know who they were? The men? Aren’t you at least curious?”

  Ian shook his head mutely. He really could not believe what he’d heard; stared at Glynnis, as if in appeal.

  “one of them I really did love—I love him, as a matter of fact, even now,” Glynnis said, her voice breaking. “Gave him up for you, hurt his feelings, hurt myself—for you.”

  “Glynnis, you are saying things you—”

  “And all for what? For you.”

  “For God’s sake—”

  “For you, for you. And now you’re too cowardly even to ask his name.”

  Again Ian shook his head. His heart was knocking against his ribs.

  He said, “Who was it?”

  “Is it.”

  “Who is it?”

  Now that she had roused him to anger, Glynnis smiled at him bitterly and shrugged. “What difference does it make? It’s over now.”

  “Who is it? Someone I know?”

  “Too late! All over! Because of you!”

  “Someone in Hazelton?”

  “Yes, it’s someone in Hazelton,” Glynnis said indifferently, pouring herself another glass of wine. Her hands were very unsteady now. “A prominent man, a much talked-of man, in Hazelton. A friend of yours, in fact. And I gave him up, and that was a mistake; Christ, was that ever a mistake, wasn’t it. And now you, you, lying to me about her, you hypocrite, you bastard—thinking you could deceive me—”

  “Glynnis, you must listen to me—”

  “As if I can believe anything you say!”

  Then, with no warning, Glynnis was on her feet, sobbing uncontrollably, screaming at Ian to get out of the house. Ian leapt up and tried to restrain her, for she’d become, in that instant, hysterical; and she shoved him away, screaming, as if fearful he meant to hurt her. Though he had not seen her snatch it up, she was holding the steak knife in her right hand; brandishing it, in fact, in an extravagant gesture, that at another time would have reduced them both to tears of laughter. Ian reached blindly for the knife, closing his fingers around the blade, and Glynnis, screaming, struck him on the head and on the nose, bloodying his nose; and in their desperate struggle the table was overturned, and everything went flying and crashed to the floor—china, food, candles, bottles. Ian had no awareness of his fingers bleeding but he knew his nose was bleeding and still Glynnis continued in her fury, striking wild blows against his head, his chest, taunting him with that terrible word you, you, you as if it were the foulest of obscenities. He seized her shoulders and began to shake her, pleading with her to stop, to stop this madness, damn you oh goddamn you, stop; and still she struggled, demonically strong, and would not stop screaming, her eyes wild and her forehead gleaming with sweat and her hair charged as if with static electricity. Ian thought of Medusa: that monstrous being at whom the hero Perseus could not look directly, out of terror of being turned to stone. Ian thought, She wants my heart; nothing less will appease her.

  He ducked to avoid her crazed flailing blows and shoved her from him, with all his strength; and Glynnis stumbled, and tripped, and fell with great force, backward, against one of the plate-glass windows—and through it, the wall of glass shattering instantly, amid her terrified screams. Shards and splinters flew into Ian’s face like stinging insects.

  The noise of the breaking glass was deafening, yet it died away at once; as Glynnis’s screaming, so terrible in his ears, died away at once: almost at once.

  She was lying on the flagstone terrace beneath the window, one of her legs still caught in the window. Ian stepped through to help her and almost fell on top of her, his ankle suddenly livid with pain—he’d cut it on a jagged fragment of glass still in the window frame. He called her name repeatedly, crouching over her, trying, in nightmare panic, to lift her. There was, suddenly, glass everywhere: in Glynnis’s hair and in Ian’s, in their clothing, on the flagstones. A net of blood began to spread over Glynnis’s face; she did not seem to have lost consciousness yet was incoherent, insensible, writhing and moaning, her eyelids fluttering, her body a dead weight in his arms. Ian knew he must run to the telephone to call an ambulance, to get help for her, but for some seconds, for what seemed a very long time, he squatted there, paralyzed, simply unable to move; unable to lay Glynnis back down on the terrace, amid the shattered glass and the blood, and leave her.

  TWO

  THE VIGIL

  1.

  On an evening of the previous year, in another lifetime, it now seemed, Ian McCullough entered a crowded, buzzing room—was it in fact his own living room? in his own house?—and paused for a moment on the threshold and stared, overcome by a sudden sense of confronting, not the men and women who were his friends, but a gathering of souls.

  How strange we are to one another, he thought.

  Each soul was encased in flesh, bound by an envelope of skin, turned inward, immersed in silence. The soul was light, or flame—its heat small, ephemeral, easily extinguished. Ian stared and felt afraid: yet felt, in that instant, an uncanny happiness. He saw himself so brotherly, so deeply kindred to them all—these souls, these separate beings, whom he did not know.

  And then Meika Cassity came up to him, and slipped her arm through his, and said, “What a lovely party, Ian!” as if she had never said those words before.

  And Ian said, “Is it? We’re so glad.”

  AT THE HAZELTON Medical Center, waiting for Glynnis to be returned to him, waiting out the long hours—there would be nearly seven—during which she was in surgery, Ian was overcome by this same strangeness: a certitude that we are all in disguise from one another and from ourselves, souls glimmering like phosphorescent fire, hidden in the opacity of flesh. He stared at the faces of strangers as if he knew them and was in dread of their knowing him. If Glynnis should die? If he should never speak with her again? The thought opened before him like a chasm, the far side of which he could not contemplate, let alone see. He was bathed in terror as in a cold slick sweat.

  He himself had been treated, efficiently and sympathetically, in an open area of the emergency room: his erratic heartbeat monitored; his lacerated right hand cleaned, stitched, and bandaged; the cuts on his forearms and ankle attended to; his bloodied face washed. The police had requested that he take a Breathalyser test, and Ian had, shamefaced, acquiesced; it would have seemed very wrong of him not to. (And what were the results? A blood alcohol level of .14, when anything above .10 constituted legal intoxication.) He could have wept, to be so exposed and humiliated. He and Glynnis both, a matter now of public record.

  “Did you and your wife have a struggle of some kind, Mr. McCullough?” the doctor asked, in a rather too casual voice.

  And Ian said, shutting his eyes, “I don’t know, I really don’t know, everything happened too quickly. . . .”

  He had telephoned for an ambulance at 11:40 P.M., and the ambulance had arrived at 11:44 P.M. Within five swift minutes both he and Glynnis were admitted to the Medical Center, and by midnight the decision was made to operate on Glynnis as quickly as possible. With a hand that shook so badly he could barely hold a pen, Ian managed to sign papers, papers in triplicate: yes he had medical coverage yes he was on the faculty at the Institute yes he had a local doctor yes he would gladly sign this form and that form and all forms, if only they would save Glynnis. “Do anything you can,” he begged; “anything, everything.” He must have said many extravagant things before witnesses, as he doubtless had in the ambulance being brought from that scene of shame and ignominy—the smashed window, the glass crackling underfoot like laughter, in the dining room a havoc of china, cutlery, glasses, bottles, food. Could it be possible such a nightmare had happened? And had happened to the McCulloughs?

  How swiftly his drunkenn
ess faded. He’d been rendered sober, he thought, as if by a sledgehammer blow to the head.

  A NEUROSURGEON OF local reputation, Dr. Morris Flax, was called in, and by 12:35 A.M. of April 24, Glynnis was undergoing emergency neurosurgery to repair arterial damage in the brain: to the degree to which, as Ian was told, it could be repaired. Glynnis had suffered some subarachnoid hemorrhaging as a consequence of multiple fractures to the skull, and without immediate surgery, brain damage, paralysis, even death were “imminent.”

  The operation lasted until 6:45 A.M., during which time Ian waited in the visitors’ lounge, sitting, and standing, and pacing about, and sitting again, his head in his hands. His bandaged right hand was stiff as a club and throbbed with pain, but the powerful drug with which he’d been injected, to ease the acceleration of his heartbeat, made him lethargic, heavy-headed. All that had happened was rapidly fading, like a bad dream; he could think only of Glynnis, on the operating table, her skull sawed open . . . for wasn’t the skull sawed open, for brain surgery? And what were her chances, her real chances, of recovery? Of survival?

  Ian would recall, vaguely, wrapping his bleeding hand in a kitchen towel; but it was in fact one of the young police officers who had wrapped it for him, seeing how he bled, how he stood helpless and staring, like a man wakened from a dream. And his nose and mouth were bloodied too. Take care, mister, the young man said, you’re hurt too.

  And the other police officer asked, What happened to your hand?

  A Hazelton police patrol car had swung into the driveway almost immediately after the ambulance’s arrival; two youngish police officers had entered the house, as boldly as if they had been summoned, and moved upon the scene, seemed indeed to move into the scene, with an authority Ian would have found outrageous under other circumstances. For what right had they to enter a private residence? What right to intrude, to interfere, to ask their blunt and unanswerable question: What happened here, mister?—staring at the wreckage, the unconscious woman being lifted onto a stretcher. Ian’s initial thought was that they were the same police officers who had come to his door last September, under the pretext of mistaking his house for another. The very men about whom he had filed a formal complaint and written a half dozen letters.