The Magus - John Fowles [212]
opened, but only for tantalising moments, then closed as she twisted away. In the end I threw myself back. "Julie. Come on. For Christ's sake." It must have sounded more like despair than pleasure, because she suddenly knelt beside me, her hair hanging, staring down. She caught hold of my wrists and pretended to hold me down. "Do you want me?" "I'm dying for you." Then very quickly she slipped off the bed; ran to the door. I sat up. "Julie?" I saw her pale figure against the faint rectangle; watching me for a moment. Her right hand reached sideways. She spoke. The strangest voice; as hard as glass. "There is no Julie." There was the sound of her alien voice and a metallic click. For a fraction of a second I thought it was a joke, she was acting again, had accidentally touched the key. Then there was a violent cascade of events. The door was flung wide open, the light came on, there were two black figures, two tall men in black trousers and shirts. One was the Negro and the other was "Anton." Joe came first, so fast at me that I had no time to do anything but convulsively grip the bedspread over my loins. I tried to see Julie, her face, because I still could not accept what I knew: that she had turned the key and opened the door. Anton flung her something she caught and quickly put on--a deep-red towel bathrobe. Joe flung himself at me just as I was about to shout. His hand clapped violently across my mouth and I felt the weight of him; a whiff of shaving lotion, or hair oil. I was in no fit state to struggle. What fighting I did was mainly to try to keep the bedspread over me. Anton gripped my legs. They must have had loops of rope ready prepared, because in fifteen seconds I was tied up. Then I was gagged. I got out one stifled beginning of what I felt at Julie. "You --" But then I was silenced. The two men forced my arms back, so I was lying fiat, straining my neck up to see Julie. She turned, tying the ends of the belt. Another figure appeared in the door: Conchis. He was dressed like the others, in black shirt and trousers. He looked at Julie, and gave a little nod of approval; touched her shoulder. She was combing her hair briefly, not looking at me. Like a woman athlete who had just won a race. Conchis came and stood over me. He looked down at me absolutely without expression. I threw all the hate I had in me at him, tried to make obscene sounds that he could understand. A flash of awareness: this was an echo of the torture room in the war; a corner room at the end of a corridor; a man lying on his back on the table; symbolically castrated. Now Julie came to the other side of the bed. My eyes began to fill with tears of frustrated rage and humiliation. I was just able to realise that her look was not completely detached from me; there was no contempt in it, no mockery; but a strange reversion to her old self, the Lily self, the cool, aloof self that I had first known. Not as if she was an athlete now, but a woman surgeon who had just performed a difficult operation successfully. Peeling off the rubber gloves; surveying the suture. They were all the same; not gloating, not taunting, even a little anxious--relieved, efficient, yet anxious. A team, less interested in each other, than in their difficult common purpose. Julie's cool, controlled eyes looked down into my wet, angry ones, and I couldn't stand it. I had to shut them. I felt the lightest touch on my bare arm, and I knew it was her hand. A moment later, when I looked again, she was halfway to the door. She went out. Conchis came forward from doing something by the table. He leant over me. "Nicholas, we shall not frighten you any more. But we want you to go to sleep. It will be convenient for us and less painful for you. Please do not struggle." The absurd memory of the pile of exam papers I had still to mark flicked through my mind. Joe and Anton held my left arm like a vice. I resisted for a moment, then gave in. A dab of wet. The needle pricked into my forearm. I felt the morphine, or whatever it was, enter. The needle was withdrawn, another dab of something