"She was fearfully frightened," I told him.
"Who wouldn't be? Those kids would have scared old Stalin himself."
"I mean frightened of more than 'kids.' They didn't look like 'kids.'"
"What did they look like?"
I tried without much success to describe the three faces. A vague
impression of viciousness and effeminacy doesn't mean much.
"Well, I could be wrong," he said finally. "Do you know the girl? Where
she lives?"
"No," I half lied.
The other policeman hung up his radiophone and ambled toward us,
kicking at the tendrils of dissipating smoke. The black cloud no longer
hid the dingy facades with their five-year-old radiation flash-burns,
and I could begin to make out the distant stump of the Empire State
Building, thrusting up out of Inferno like a mangled finger.
"They haven't been picked up so far," the approaching policeman
grumbled. "Left smoke for five blocks, from what Ryan says."
The first policeman shook his head. "That's bad," he observed solemnly.
I was feeling a bit uneasy and ashamed. An Englishman shouldn't lie, at
least not on impulse.
"They sound like nasty customers," the first policeman continued in the
same grim tone. "We'll need witnesses. Looks as if you may have to stay
in New York longer than you expect."
I got the point. I said, "I forgot to show you all my papers," and
handed him a few others, making sure there was a five dollar bill in
among them.
* * * * *
When he handed them back a bit later, his voice was no longer ominous.
My feelings of guilt vanished. To cement our relationship, I chatted
with the two of them about their job.
"I suppose the masks give you some trouble," I observed. "Over in
England we've been reading about your new crop of masked female
bandits."
"Those things get exaggerated," the first policeman assured me. "It's
the men masking as women that really mix us up. But, brother, when we
nab them, we jump on them with both feet."
"And you get so you can spot women almost as well as if they had naked
faces," the second policeman volunteered. "You know, hands and all
that."
"Especially all that," the first agreed with a chuckle. "Say, is it
true that some girls don't mask over in England?"
"A number of them have picked up the fashion," I told him. "Only a few,
though--the ones who always adopt the latest style, however extreme."
"They're usually masked in the British newscasts."
"I imagine it's arranged that way out of deference to American taste,"
I confessed. "Actually, not very many do mask."
The second policeman considered that. "Girls going down the street bare
from the neck up." It was not clear whether he viewed the prospect with
relish or moral distaste. Likely both.
"A few members keep trying to persuade Parliament to enact a law
forbidding all masking," I continued, talking perhaps a bit too much.
The second policeman shook his head. "What an idea. You know, masks are
a pretty good thing, brother. Couple of years more and I'm going to
make my wife wear hers around the house."
The first policeman shrugged. "If women were to stop wearing masks, in
six weeks you wouldn't know the difference. You get used to anything,
if enough people do or don't do it."
I agreed, rather regretfully, and left them. I turned north on Broadway
(old Tenth Avenue, I believe) and walked rapidly until I was beyond
Inferno. Passing such an area of undecontaminated radioactivity always
makes a person queasy. I thanked God there weren't any such in England,
as yet.
The street was almost empty, though I was accosted by a couple of
beggars with faces tunneled by H-bomb scars, whether real or of makeup
putty, I couldn't tell. A fat woman held out a baby with webbed fingers
and toes. I told myself it would have been deformed anyway and that she
was only capitalizing on our fear of bomb-induced mutations. Still,
I gave her a seven-and-a-half-cent piece. Her mask made me feel I was
paying tribute to an African fetish.
"May all your children be blessed with one head and two eyes, sir."
"Thanks," I said, shuddering, and hurried past her.
"... There's only trash behind the mask, so turn your head, stick to
your task: Stay away, stay away--from--the--girls!"
* * * * *
This last was the end of an anti-sex song being sung by some
religionists half a block from the circle-and-cross insignia of a
femalist temple. They reminded me only faintly of our small tribe
of British monastics. Above their heads was a jumble of billboards
advertising predigested foods, wrestling instruction, radio handies and
the like.
I stared at the hysterical slogans with disagreeable fascination. Since
the female face and form have been banned on American signs, the very
letters of the advertiser's alphabet have begun to crawl with sex--the
fat-bellied, big-breasted capital B, the lascivious double O. However,
I reminded myself, it is chiefly the mask that so strangely accents sex
in America.
A British anthropologist has pointed out, that, while it took more
than 5,000 years to shift the chief point of sexual interest from the
hips to the breasts, the next transition to the face has taken less
than 50 years. Comparing the American style with Moslem tradition is
not valid; Moslem women are compelled to wear veils, the purpose of
which is concealment, while American women have only the compulsion of
fashion and use masks to create mystery.
Theory aside, the actual origins of the trend are to be found in
the anti-radiation clothing of World War III, which led to masked
wrestling, now a fantastically popular sport, and that in turn led to
the current female fashion. Only a wild style at first, masks quickly
became as necessary as brassieres and lipsticks had been earlier in the
century.
I finally realized that I was not speculating about masks in general,
but about what lay behind one in particular. That's the devil of the
things; you're never sure whether a girl is heightening loveliness
or hiding ugliness. I pictured a cool, pretty face in which fear
showed only in widened eyes. Then I remembered her blonde hair, rich
against the blackness of the satin mask. She'd told me to come at the
twenty-second hour--ten p.m.
I climbed to my apartment near the British Consulate; the elevator
shaft had been shoved out of plumb by an old blast, a nuisance in these
tall New York buildings. Before it occurred to me that I would be
going out again, I automatically tore a tab from the film strip under
my shirt. I developed it just to be sure. It showed that the total
radiation I'd taken that day was still within the safety limit. I'm
not phobic about it, as so many people are these days, but there's no
point in taking chances.
I flopped down on the day bed and stared at the silent speaker and the
dark screen of the video set. As always, they made me think, somewhat
bitterly, of the two great nations of the world. Mutilated by each
other, yet still strong, they were crippled giants poisoning the planet
with their dreams of an impossible equality and an impossible success.
I fretfully switched on the speaker. By luck, the newscaster was
talking excitedly of the prospects of a bumper wheat crop, sown by
planes across a dust bowl moistened by seeded rains. I listened
carefully to the rest of the program (it was remarkably clear of
Russian telejamming) but there was no further news of interest to
me. And, of course, no mention of the Moon, though everyone knows
that America and Russia are racing to develop their primary bases
into fortresses capable of mutual assault and the launching of
alphabet-bombs toward Earth. I myself knew perfectly well that the
British electronic equipment I was helping trade for American wheat was
destined for use in spaceships.
* * * * *
I switched off the newscast. It was growing dark and once again I
pictured a tender, frightened face behind a mask. I hadn't had a date
since England. It's exceedingly difficult to become acquainted with a
girl in America, where as little as a smile, often, can set one of them
yelping for the police--to say nothing of the increasing puritanical
morality and the roving gangs that keep most women indoors after dark.
And naturally, the masks which are definitely not, as the Soviets
claim, a last invention of capitalist degeneracy, but a sign of great
psychological insecurity. The Russians have no masks, but they have
their own signs of stress.
I went to the window and impatiently watched the darkness gather. I was
getting very restless. After a while a ghostly violet cloud appeared to
the south. My hair rose. Then I laughed. I had momentarily fancied it a
radiation from the crater of the Hell-bomb, though I should instantly
have known it was only the radio-induced glow in the sky over the
amusement and residential area south of Inferno.
Promptly at twenty-two hours I stood before the door of my unknown girl
friend's apartment. The electronic say-who-please said just that. I
answered clearly, "Wysten Turner," wondering if she'd given my name to
the mechanism. She evidently had, for the door opened. I walked into a
small empty living room, my heart pounding a bit.
The room was expensively furnished with the latest pneumatic hassocks
and sprawlers. There were some midgie books on the table. The one I
picked up was the standard hard-boiled detective story in which two
female murderers go gunning for each other.
The television was on. A masked girl in green was crooning a love song.
Her right hand held something that blurred off into the foreground.
I saw the set had a handie, which we haven't in England as yet, and
curiously thrust my hand into the handie orifice beside the screen.
Contrary to my expectations, it was not like slipping into a pulsing
rubber glove, but rather as if the girl on the screen actually held my
hand.
A door opened behind me. I jerked out my hand with as guilty a reaction
as if I'd been caught peering through a keyhole.
She stood in the bedroom doorway. I think she was trembling. She was
wearing a gray fur coat, white-speckled, and a gray velvet evening
mask with shirred gray lace around the eyes and mouth. Her fingernails
twinkled like silver.
It hadn't occurred to me that she'd expect us to go out.
"I should have told you," she said softly. Her mask veered nervously
toward the books and the screen and the room's dark corners. "But I
can't possibly talk to you here."