Alyx - Joanna Russ by Unknown Author Read Free Book Online Page B

particular—and the other gentleman was about to rise and was reaching for something or other under the table when her gentleman said:
    “She’s crazy.” He cleared his throat. “You sit down,” he said. “My apologies. You behave,” and social stability thus reestablished, they plunged into a discussion she understood pretty well but did not pay much attention to, as she was too busy looking about. The owl blinked, turned his head completely around, and stood on one foot. The blowfish rotated lazily. Across the room stood a row of casks and a mortared wall; next to that a face in the dimness—a handsome face—that smiled at her across the serried tables. She smiled back, a villainous smile full of saltpeter, a wise, nasty, irresponsible, troublemaking smile, at which the handsome face winked. She laughed out loud.
    “Shut up,” said Blackbeard, not turning round.
    He was in a tight place.
    She watched him insist and prevaricate and sweat, building all kinds of earnest, openhearted, irresistible arguments with the gestures of his big hands, trying to bully the insignificant other gentleman—and failing—and not knowing it—until finally at the same moment the owl screeched like a rusty file, a singer at the end of the bar burst into wailing quartertones, and Blackbeard—wiping his forehead—said, “All right.”
    “No, dammit,” she cried, “you’re ten percent off!”
    He slapped her. The other gentleman cleared his throat.
    “All right,” Blackbeard repeated. The other man nodded. Finishing his wine, drawing on his gloves, already a little bored perhaps, he turned and left. In his place, as if by a compensation of nature, there suddenly appeared, jackrabbited between the tables, the handsome young owner of the face who was not so handsome at close range but dressed fit to kill all the same with a gold earring, a red scarf tucked into his shirt, and a satanic resemblance to her late husband. She looked rapidly from one man to the other, almost malevolently; then she stood rigid, staring at the floor.
    “Well, baby, ” said the intruder.
    Blackbeard turned his back on his girl.
    The intruder took hold of her by the nape of the neck but she did not move; he talked to her in a low voice; finally she blurted out, “Oh yes! Go on!” (fixing her eyes on the progress of Blackbeard’s monolithic back towards the door) and stumbled aside as the latter all but vaulted over a table to retrieve his lost property. She followed him, her head bent, violently flushed. Two streets off he stopped, saying, “Look, my dear, can I please not take you ashore again?” but she would not answer, no, not a word, and all this time the singer back at the tavern was singing away about the Princess Oriana who traveled to meet her betrothed but was stolen by bandits, and how she prayed, and how the bandits cursed, and how she begged to be returned to her prince, and how the bandits said, “Not likely,” and how she finally ended it all by jumping into the Bosphorus—in short, art in the good old style with plenty of solid vocal technique, a truly Oriental expressiveness, and innumerable verses.
    (She always remembered the incident and maintained for the rest of her life that small producers should combine in trading with middlemen so as not to lower prices by competing against each other.)'
    In the first, faint hint of dawn, as Blackbeard lay snoring and damp in the bedclothes, his beard spread out like a fan, his woman prodded him in the ribs with the handle of his sword; she said, “Wake up! Something’s happening.”
    “I am,” she added. She watched him as he tried to sit up, tangled in the sheets, pale, enormous, the black hair on his chest forming with unusual distinctness the shape of a flying eagle. “Wha’?” he said.
    “I am,” she repeated. Still half asleep, he held out his arms to her, indicating that she might happen all over the place, might happen now, particularly in bed, he did not care. "Wake