John Norman Read online

  The white-washed interior seemed golden and dim. She looked at the arched roof, its beams, the corrugated tin. It was hot, terribly hot. She seldom spent time in her quarters before sundown.

  She was vaguely aware that she lay on her mattress, on her iron cot, and that there were no sheets beneath her.

  She recalled, suddenly, her trip with Gunther and William, the heat, the dust, the seeing of the leopard, her being handcuffed, tranquilized.

  She was angry. They could not treat her in this fashion. Herjellsen must hear of this!

  She tried to rise, but fell back, fighting the lethargy of the drug.

  Again she stared at the ceiling, at the hot tin above her. She closed her eyes. It was difficult to keep them open. It was so warm.

  She opened her eyes again.

  The room seemed familiar, and yet somehow it was different. She moved one foot against the other, dimly aware that her shoes, her stockings, had been removed.

  Suddenly she sat up in bed. The room was indeed different, it was almost empty.

  She looked about herself, alarmed. She swung her legs quickly over the side of the bed. Startled, she realized she was clothed differently than she had been.

  Her dresser, her trunk, her suitcases, her books, were gone. The table had been removed. The only furniture remaining in the room was three cane chairs, and her iron cot.

  A mirror was in the room, which had not been there before. She saw herself. She wore a brief cotton dress, thin, white and sleeveless. It was not hers. It came well up her thighs, revealing her legs. She noted in the mirror that her legs were trim. She was terrified. The tiny dress was not belted. It was all she wore, absolutely.

  She leaped to her feet and ran to the door of the almost empty, bleak room. The knob had been removed. She dug at the crack of the door with her fingernails. It was closed. She sensed, too, with an empty feeling, it must be secured, on the outside. She turned about, terrified, breathing heavily, her back pressed against the door. She looked across the room to the window. She moaned. She ran to the window and thrust aside the-light curtain. Her two fists grasped the bars which had been placed there.

  She turned about again, regarding the room. It was bare, except for the three cane chairs, the iron cot with its mattress, no bedding.

  She felt the planking of the floor beneath her bare feet. She looked across the room to the mirror, which had not been in the room before. It its reflection she saw, clad in a brief, sleeveless garment of white cotton, a slender, trimlegged, very attractive, dark-haired woman. She was a young woman, not yet twenty-five years of age. Her eyes were deep, dark, extremely intelligent, very frightened. She had long straight dark hair, now loose, unpinned and unconfined, falling behind her head. She knew the woman was Brenda Hamilton, and yet the reflection frightened her. It was not Brenda Hamilton as she had been accustomed to seeing her. No longer did she wear the severe white laboratory coat; no longer was her hair rolled in a tight bun behind her head. The young woman. in the reflection seemed very female, her body in the brief garment fraught with a startling, unexpected, astonishing sexuality.

  Suddenly, to a sinking feeling in her stomach, she realized that her body had been washed, and her hair combed. The dust of the Rhodesian bush was no longer upon her.

  She looked at her figure, her breasts lovely, sweet, revealed in the cotton. She wanted her brassiere. But she did not have it.

  She threw her head to one side. She fled from the window to the closet, throwing open its door. It, too, was empty. There was nothing within, not even a hanger.

  There was no hanger; such might serve, she supposed, as a tool. Her shoes were gone, with their laces, and, too, her stockings. The bedding from her cot, was missing. Her brief cotton dress lacked even a belt.

  She returned to the center of the room, near the cot. Over it, dangling on a short cord, some four inches long, from a beam, was a light bulb. Its shade was missing. The bulb was off.

  Numbly she went to the wall switch and turned the bulb on. It lit. Then, moaning, she turned it off again.

  She went then again to the center of the room, and looked slowly about, at the white-washed plaster, the bleakness, and then up at the hot tin overhead, then down to the thin, striped mattress on the iron cot.

  Then suddenly she ran to the door and pounded on it, weeping. “William!” she cried. “Gunther! Professor Herjellsen! Professor Herjellsen!”

  There was no answer from the compound.

  She screamed and pounded on the door, and wept. She ran to the barred window, which bars had been placed there in her absence with William and Gunther. She seized the bars in her small fists and screamed between them. “William!” she screamed. “Gunther! Professor Herjellsen! Professor Herjellsen!” Then she screamed out again. “Help! Please, help! Someone! Help me! Please help me!”

  But there was again no answer from the compound.

  Dr. Brenda Hamilton, shaking, walked unsteadily to the iron cot. ‘

  Her mind reeled.

  “You understand nothing,” Gunther had told her. “You were a fool to come to the bush,” Gunther had told her.

  “I’m needed!” had cried Hamilton.

  “Yes, little fool,” had said Gunther. “You are needed. That is true.”

  Hamilton was bewildered.

  She sank to the floor beside the cot. She put her head to the boards, and wept.

  “Here is a brush, cosmetics and such,” said William, placing a small cardboard shoe box on the floor of Brenda Hamilton’s quarters.

  Brenda Hamilton stood across the room from him, facing him. She wore still the brief white garment, that of thin cotton, sleeveless.

  He sat on one of the cane chairs. It was ten P.M. Mosquito netting had been stapled across the window. The room was lit from the single light bulb, dangling on its short cord from the beam.

  A tray, with food, brought earlier by William, lay on Brenda Hamilton’s cot. It was not touched.

  “Eat your food,” said William.

  “I’m not hungry,” she said.

  He shrugged.

  “I want my clothing, William,” she said.

  “It is interesting,” said William. “In all your belongings, there was not one dress.”

  “I do not wear dresses,” she said.

  “You are an attractive woman,” said William. “Why not?”

  “Dresses are hobbling devices,” she said. “They are a garment that men have made for women, to set them apart and, in effect, to keep them prisoner.”

  “You do not appear much hobbled,” observed William.

  Brenda Hamilton flushed.

  “I feel exposed,” she said. “Another function of the dress,” she said, “is to make the female feel exposed, to make her more aware of her sexuality.”

  “Perhaps,” said William.

  “Give me my own clothing,” begged Brenda Hamilton.

  “You are quite lovely as you are,” said William.

  “Do not use that diminishing, trivializing word of me,” snapped Hamilton. “It is as objectionable as `pretty’.”

  William smiled. “But Brenda,” he said, “you are quite pretty.”

  Please, William,” begged Hamilton.

  She looked in the mirror. It was true what William had said. She was, to her fury, very lovely, very pretty.

  “Actually,” said William, “you are rather more than lovely, and certainly far more than pretty.”

  “Please, William,” begged Hamilton.

  “You are beautiful, quite beautiful, Brenda,” said William.

  “Call me Doctor Hamilton,” said Hamilton.

  “Very well,” agreed William. He looked at her, appreciatively, scrutinizing her casually, to her rage, from her trim ankles to her proud head. “You are indeed far more than pretty, Doctor Hamilton,” said William. “You are beautiful, quite beautiful, Doctor Hamilton,” said William.

  Hamilton turned away, stifling a sob.

  “Be careful, Doctor Hamilton,” cautione
d William. “That is almost a female response.”

  She spun to face him. “I am a female!” she cried.

  “Obviously,” said William.

  “Why am I being treated like this?” demanded Brenda Hamilton.

  “Like what?” asked William.

  “Why has that mirror been placed in the room?” she demanded. “Why am I dressed like this?”

  “It seems strange, does it not,” asked William, “that you, an attractive female, should object to being clothed as an attractive female?”

  “I do not wish to be so clothed!” she cried.

  “Are you ashamed of your body?” asked William.

  “No!” she cried.

  “Of course, you are,” smiled William. “But look at yourself in the mirror. You should not be ashamed of your body, but proud of it. You are extremely beautiful.”

  “I am being displayed,” she wept.

  “True,” said William.

  “I do not wish to be displayed,” she said.

  “You are not simply being displayed for our pleasure,” said William.

  She looked at him.

  “You are being displayed also for your own instruction, that you may be fully aware of what a beauty you are.”

  She looked at the mirror. “It is so-so different from a man’s body,” she said.

  “Precisely,” said William. “It is extremely different, its softness, its vulnerability, its beauty.”

  “So different,” she whispered.

  “And you, too, my dear Doctor Hamilton, are quite different.”

  “No!” she snapped.

  William laughed.

  “Being a female is a role,” cried Hamilton. “Only a role!”

  “Tell that to a sociologist,” said William, “not to a physician, or a man of the world, one experienced in life.”

  Hamilton turned on him in rage.

  “The body and the mind,” said William, “is a unity. Do you really think that with a body like yours you might have any sort of mind, one, say, like mine or Gunther’s? Do you not think there might not be, associated with such a body, an indigenous sensibility, indigenous talents,. emotions, brilliancies? Do you really think that the mind is only an accident, unrelated to the entire evolved organism?”

  “I have a doctorate in mathematics,” said Hamilton, lamely, defensively.

  “And we both speak English,” said William. “I speak of deeper things.”

  “Being feminine,” said Hamilton, “is only a role.”

  “And doubtless,” said William, “being a leopard is only a role, one played by something which is really not a leopard at all.”

  “You are hateful,” said Brenda Hamilton.

  “I do not mean to be, Doctor Hamilton,” said William. “But I must remind you that what you seem to think so significant, a cultural veneer, is a recent acquisition to the human animal, an overlay, a bit of tissue paper masking deeper realities.” William looked down. “I suppose,” he said, “we do not know, truly, what a man is, or a woman.”

  “We can condition a man to be feminine, and a woman to be masculine,” said Brenda Hamilton. “It is a simple matter of positive and negative reinforcement.”

  “We can also stunt trees and dwarf animals, and drive dogs insane,” said William. “We can also bind the feet of Chinese women, crippling them. We can administer contradictory conditioning programs and drive men, and women, insane with anxieties and guilts, culturally momentous, and yet, physiologically considered, meaningless, irrelevant to the biology being distorted.”

  Brenda Hamilton looked down.

  “You are afraid to be a woman,” said William. “Indeed, perhaps you do not know how. You are ignorant. You are frightened. Accordingly, it is natural for you to be distressed, hostile, confused, and to seize what theories or pseudotheories you can to protect yourself from what you most fear-your femaleness.”

  “I see now,” said Doctor Hamilton, icily, “why I have been dressed as I am, why there is this mirror in my room.”

  “We wish you,” said William, “to learn your womanhood, to recognize it-to face it.”

  “I hate you,” she said.

  “It is my hope that someday,” said William, “you will see your beauty and rejoice in it, and display it proudly, unashamed, brazenly even, excited by it, that you will be no longer an imitation man but an authentic woman, true to your deepest nature, joyous, welcoming and acclaiming, no longer repudiating, your femaleness, your womanhood, your sexuality.”

  “Being a female,” wept Hamilton, “is to be less than a maul”

  William shrugged. “If that is true,” he said, “dare to be it.”

  “No!” said Hamilton. “No!”

  “Dare to be a female,” said William.

  “No!” said Hamilton. “No! No!”

  Brenda Hamilton ran in misery to the wall of her quarters. She put her head against the white-washed plaster, the palms of her hands.

  She sobbed.

  “Very feminine,” said William.

  She turned to face him, red-eyed.

  “You are doubtless playing a role,” said William.

  “Please be kind to me, William,” she begged.

  William rose from the chair.

  “Don’t go, William!” she cried. She put out her hand.

  William stood in the room, in the light of the single light bulb. He did not move.

  “Why am I being treated like this?” whispered Brenda Hamilton.

  “The third series of tests will begin in a day or two,” said William.

  Brenda Hamilton said nothing.

  “The second series will terminate tomorrow evening.”

  “Why am I being treated like this?” demanded Brenda Hamilton.

  William did not speak.

  “Bring me my clothing, William,” begged Hamilton.

  “You are wearing it,” said William.

  “At least bring me my brassiere,” she begged.

  “You do not need it,” he said.

  She turned away.

  “Your other clothing,” said William, “has been destroyed, burned.”

  Brenda Hamilton turned and faced him, aghast.

  She shook her head. “Why?” she asked.

  “You will not be needing it,” said William. “Furthermore it is evidence of your presence.”

  She shook her head, numbly.

  “All of your belongings have been disposed of,” said William. “Books, shoes, everything.”

  “No!” she said.

  “There will not be evidence that you were ever within the compound.”

  She looked at him, blankly.

  “You have never been outside of it, except once in the Rover with Gunther and me,” said William. “You can be traced to Salisbury,” said William, “that is all.”

  “But Herjellsen,” she said.

  “The Salisbury authorities know nothing of Herjellsen,” said William. “They do not even know he is in the country.”

  Brenda Hamilton leaned back against the wall. She moaned.

  William turned to go.

  “William!” she cried.

  He paused at the door.

  “Free me,” she said. “Help me to escape!”

  William indicated two buckets near the wall. He had brought them earlier. “One of these,” he said, “the covered one, is water. The other is for your wastes.”

  “William!” wept Hamilton.

  William indicated the tray, untouched, on the bed. “I recommend you eat,” he said, “that you keep up your strength.”

  “I do not want to be a woman,” said Hamilton. “I have never wanted to be a woman! I will not be a woman! Never!”

  “You should eat,” said William. “It will be better for you.”

  Hamilton shook her head. “No,” she said. “I’ll starve!”

  With his foot, William indicated the cardboard shoe boa on the floor. “Here is a brush and comb,” he said, “and cosmetics.”

 
“I do not wear cosmetics,” said Hamilton.

  “It does not matter to me,” said William. “But you are expected to keep yourself groomed.”

  Hamilton looked at him with hatred.

  “Is that understood?” asked William.

  “Yes,” said Hamilton. “It is understood perfectly.”

  Just then Hamilton and William heard the two heavy locks, padlocks, with hasps and staples, on the door being unlocked. William, while within the room, was locked within.

  “Who is it?” asked Hamilton.

  “Gunther,” said William.

  “He must not see me like this!” wept Hamilton.

  The door opened. One does not knock on the door of a prisoner.

  Gunther entered. Hamilton backed away, against the opposite wall.

  Gunther looked at her. His eyes prowled her body. Gunther had had many women.

  His eye strayed to the cot, to the untouched tray. He looked at Hamilton.

  “Eat,” he said.

  “I’m not hungry,” whispered Hamilton.

  “Eat,” said Gunther, “now.”

  “Yes, Gunther,” she said, obediently. She came timidly to the cot.

  William was irritated.

  “Herjellsen is nearly ready,” said Gunther.

  “All right,” said William.

  Hamilton sat on the cot and, looking down, began to eat.

  “No,” said Gunther to Hamilton. She looked at him, startled, frightened. “Kneel beside the cot,” he said.

  Hamilton knelt beside the cot, and, as she had been bidden, ate from the tray.

  “She must be habituated,” said Gunther to William. “You are too easy with her.”

  William shrugged.

  “When a man enters the room,” said Gunther to Hamilton, “you are to kneel, and you are not to rise until given permission.”

  Hamilton looked at him, agonized.

  “Do you understand?” asked Gunther.

  “Even if it is one of the blacks?” asked Hamilton.

  “Yes,” said Gunther. “They are males.” He looked down at her. “Is this clearly understood?”

  “Yes, Gunther,” said Brenda Hamilton. She dared not question him.

  Gunther indicated the cardboard boa. He kicked it toward her.