Ray Bradbury

The Small Assassin

Just when the idea occurred to her that she was being murdered she could not tell. There had been little subtle signs, little suspicions for the past month; things as deep as sea tides in her, like looking at a perfectly calm stretch of tropic water, wanting to bathe in it and finding, just as the tide takes your body, that monsters dwell just under the surface, things unseen, bloated, many-armed, sharp-finned, malignant and inescapable.

A room floated around her in an effiuvium of hysteria. Sharp instruments hovered and there were voices, and people in sterile white masks.

My name, she thought, what is it?

Alice Leiber. It came to her. David Leiber's wife. But it gave her no comfort. She was alone with these silent, whispering white people and there was great pain and nausea and death-fear in her.

I am being murdered before their eyes. These doctors, these nurses don't realize what hidden thing has happened to me. David doesn't know. Nobody knows except me and―the killer, the little murderer, the small assassin.

I am dying and I can't tell them now. They'd laugh and call me one in delirium. They'll see the murderer and hold him and never think him responsible for my death. But here I am, in front of God and man, dying, no one to believe my story, everyone to doubt me, comfort me with lies, bury me in ignorance, mourn me and salvage my destroyer.

Where is David? she wondered. In the waiting room, smoking one cigarette after another, listening to the long tickings of the very slow clock?

Sweat exploded from all of her body at once, and with it an agonized cry. Now. Now! Try and kill me, she screamed. Try, try, but I won't die! I won't!

There was a hollowness. A vacuum. Suddenly the pain fell away. Exhaustion, and dusk came around. It was over. Oh, God! She plummeted down and struck a black nothingness which gave way to nothingness and nothingness and another and still another….

Footsteps. Gentle, approaching footsteps.

Far away, a voice said, «She's asleep. Don't disturb her.»

An odor of tweeds, a pipe, a certain shaving lotion. David was standing over her. And beyond him the immaculate smell of Dr. J effers.

She did not open her eyes. «I'm awake,» she said, quietly. It was a surprise, a relief to be able to speak, to not be dead.

«Alice,» someone said, and it was David beyond her closed eyes, holding her tired hands.

Would you like to meet the murderer, David? she thought. I hear your voice asking to see him, so there's nothing but for me to point him out to you.

David stood over her. She opened her eyes. The room came into focus. Moving a weak hand, she pulled aside a coverlet.

The murderer looked up at David Leiber with a small, redfaced, blue-eyed calm. Its eyes were deep and sparkling.

«Why!» cried David Leiber, smiling. «He's a _fine_ baby!»

Dr. Jeffers was waiting for David Leiber the day he came to take his wife and new child home. He motioned Leiber to a chair in his office, gave him a cigar, lit one for himself, sat on the edge of his desk, puffing solemnly for a long moment. Then he cleared his throat, looked David Leiber straight on and said, «Your wife doesn't like her child, Dave.»

«What!»

«It's been a hard thing for her. She'll need a lot of love this next year. I didn't say much at the time, but she was hysterical in the delivery room. The strange things she said―I won't repeat them. All I'll say is that she feels alien to the child. Now, this may simply be a thing we can clear up with one or two questions.» He sucked on his cigar another moment, then said, «Is this child a 'wanted' child, Dave?»

«Why do you ask?»

«It's vital.»

«Yes. Yes, it is a „wanted“ child. We planned it together. Alice was so happy, a year ago, when―»

«Mmmm―that makes it more difficult. Because if the child was unplanned, it would be a simple case of a woman hating the idea of motherhood. That doesn't fit Alice.» Dr. Jeffers took his cigar from his lips, rubbed his hand across his jaw. «It must be something else, then. Perhaps something buried in her childhood that's coming out now. Or it might be the simple temporary doubt and distrust of any mother who's gone through the unusual pain and near-death that Alice has. If so, then a little time should heal that. I thought I'd tell you, though, Dave. It'll help you be easy and tolerant with her if she says anything about―well―about wishing the child had been born dead. And if things don't go well, the three of you drop in on me. I'm always glad to see old friends, eh? Here, take another cigar along for―ah―for the baby.»

It was a bright spring afternoon. Their car hummed along wide, tree-lined boulevards. Blue sky, flowers, a warm wind. Dave talked a lot, lit his cigar, talked some more. Alice answered directly, softly, relaxing a bit more as the trip progressed. But she held the baby not tightly or warmly or motherly enough to satisfy the queer ache in Dave's mind. She seemed to be merely carrying a porcelain figurine.

«Well,» he said, at last, smiling. «What'll we name him?»

Alice Leiber watched green trees slide by. «Let's not decide yet. I'd rather wait until we get an exceptional name for him. Don't blow smoke in his face.» Her sentences ran together with no change of tone. The last statement held no motherly reproof, no interest, no irritation. She just mouthed it and it was said.

The husband, disquieted, dropped the cigar from the window. «Sorry,» he said.

The baby rested in the crook of his mother's arm, shadows of sun and tree changing his face. His blue eyes opened like fresh blue spring flowers. Moist noises came from the tiny, pink, elastic mouth.

Alice gave her baby a quick glance. Her husband felt her shiver against him.

«Cold?» he asked.

«A chill. Better raise the window, David.»

It was more than a chill. He rolled the window slowly up.

Suppertime.

Dave had brought the child from the nursery, propped him at a tiny, bewildered angle, supported by many pillows, in a newly purchased high chair.

Alice watched her knife and fork move. «He's not high-chair size,» she said.

«Fun having him here, anyway,» said Dave, feeling fine. «Everything's fun. At the office, too. Orders up to my nose. If I don't watch myself I'll make another fifteen thousand this year. Hey, look at Junior, will you? Drooling all down his chin!» He reached over to wipe the baby's mouth with his napkin. From the corner of his eye he realized that Alice wasn't even watching. He finished the job.

«I guess it wasn't very interesting,» he said, back again at his food. «But one would think a mother'd take some interest in her own child!»

Alice jerked her chin up. «Don't speak that way! Not in front of him! Later, if you must.»

«Later?» he cried. «In front of, in back of, what's the difference?» He quieted suddenly, swallowed, was sorry. «All right. Okay. I know how it is.»

After dinner she let him carry the baby upstairs. She didn't tell him to; she _let_ him.

Coming down, he found her standing by the radio, listening to music she didn't hear. Her eyes were closed, her whole attitude one of wondering, self-questioning. She started when he appeared.

Suddenly, she was at him, against him, soft, quick; the same. Her lips found him, kept him. He was stunned. Now that the baby was gone, upstairs, out of the room, she began to breathe again, live again. She was free. She was whispering, rapidly, endlessly.

«Thank you, thank you, darling. For being yourself, always. Dependable, so very dependable!»

He had to laugh. «My father told me, „Son, provide for your family!“»

Wearily, she rested her dark, shining hair against his neck. «You've overdone it. Sometimes I wish we were just the way we were when we were first married. No responsibilities, nothing but ourselves. No―no babies.»

She crushed his hand in hers, a supernatural whiteness in her face.

«Oh, Dave, once it was just you and me. We protected each other, and now we protect the baby, but get no protection from it. Do you understand? Lying in the hospital I had time to think a lot of things. The world is evil―»

«Is it?»

«Yes. It is. But laws protect us from it. And when there aren't laws, then love does the protecting. You're protected from my hurting you, by my love. You're vulnerable to me, of all people, hut love shields you. I feel no fear of you, because love cushions all your irritations, unnatural instincts, hatreds and immaturities. But―what about the baby? It's too young to know love, or a law of love, or anything, until we teach it. And in the meantime be vulnerable to it.»

«Vulnerable to a baby?» He held her away and laughed gently.

«Does a baby know the difference between right and wrong?» she asked.

«No. But it'll learn.»

«But a baby is so new, so amoral, so conscience-free.» She stopped. Her arms dropped from him and she turned swiftly. «That noise? What was it?»

Leiber looked around the room. «I didn't hear―»

She stared at the library door. «In there,» she said, slowly.

Leiber crossed the room, opened the door and switched the library lights on and off. «Not a thing.» He came back to her. «You're worn out. To bed with you―right now.»

Turning out the lights together, they walked slowly up the soundless hall stairs, not speaking. At the top she apologized. «My wild talk, darling. Forgive me. I'm exhausted.»