The Black Gondolier and Other Stories

IN THE X~RAY

“Do the dead come back?” Dr. Ballard repeated the question puzzeledly. “What's that got to do with your ankle?"

“I didn't say that,” Nancy Sawyer answered sharply. “I said: ‘I tried an ice pack.’ You must have misheard me."

“But...” Dr. Ballard began. Then, “Of course I must have,” he said quickly. “Go on, Miss Sawyer."

The girl hesitated. Her glance strayed to the large, gleaming window and the graying sky beyond. She was a young woman with prominent eyes, a narrow chin, strong white teeth, reddish hair, and a beautiful, doe-like figure which included legs long and slim—except for the ankle of the one outstretched stockingless on the chair before her. That was encircled by a hard, white, somewhat irregular swelling.

Dr. Ballard was a man of middle age and size, with strong, soft-skinned hands. He looked intelligent and as successful as his sleekly-furnished office.

“Well, there isn't much more to it,” the girl said finally. “I tried the ice pack but the swelling wouldn't go down. So Marge made me call you."

“I see. Tell me, Miss Sawyer, hadn't your ankle bothered you before last night?"

“No. I just woke up from a nightmare, frightened because something had grabbed my foot, and I reached down and touched my ankle—and there it was."

“Your ankle didn't feel or look any different the day before?"

“No."

“Yet when you woke up the swelling was there?"

“Just as it is now."

“Do you think you might have twisted your foot while you were asleep?"

“No."

“And you don't feel any pain in it now?"

“No, except a feeling of something hard clasped snugly around it and every once in a while squeezing a bit tighter."

“Ever do any sleepwalking?"

“No."

“Any allergies?"

“No."

“Can you think of anything else—anything at all—that might have a bearing on this trouble?"

Again Nancy looked out the window. “I have a twin sister,” she said after a moment, in a different voice. “Or rather, I had. She died more than a year ago.” She looked back quickly at Dr. Ballard. “But I don't know why I should mention that,” she said hurriedly. “It couldn't possibly have any bearing on this. She died of apoplexy."

There was a pause.

“I suppose the X-ray will show what's the matter?” she continued.

The doctor nodded. “We'll have it soon. Miss Snyder's getting it now."

Nancy started to get up, asked, “Is it all right for me to move around?” Dr. Ballard nodded. She went over to the window, limping just a little, and looked down.

“You have a nice view, you can see half the city,” she said. “We have the river at our apartment. I think we're higher, though."

“This is the twentieth floor,” Dr. Ballard said.

“We're twenty-three,” she told him. “I like high buildings. It's a little like being in an airplane. With the river right under our window I can imagine I'm flying over water."

There was a soft knock at the door. Nancy looked around inquiringly. “The X-ray?” He shook his head. He went to the door and opened it.

“It's your friend Miss Hudson."

“Hi, Marge,” Nancy called. “Come on in."

The stocky, sandy-haired girl hung in the doorway. “I'll stay out here,” she said. “I thought we could go home together though."

“Darling, how nice of you. But I'll be a bit longer, I'm afraid."

“That's all right. How are you feeling, Nancy?"

“Wonderful, dear. Especially now that your doctor has taken a picture that'll show him what's inside this bump of mine."

“Well, I'll be out here,” the other girl said and turned back into the waiting room. She passed a woman in white who came in, shut the door, and handed the doctor a large, brown envelope.

He turned to Nancy. “I'll look at this and be back right away."

“Dr. Myers is on the phone,” the nurse told him as they started out. “Wants to know about tonight. Can he come here and drive over with you?"

“How soon can he get here?"

“About half an hour, he says."

“Tell him that will be fine, Miss Snyder."

The door closed behind them. Nancy sat still for perhaps two minutes. Then she jerked, as if at a twinge of pain. She looked at her ankle. Bending over, she clasped her hand around her good ankle and squeezed experimentally. She shuddered.

The door banged open. Dr. Ballard hurried in and immediately began to reexamine the swelling, swiftly exploring each detail of its outlines with gentle fingers, at the same time firing questions.

“Are you absolutely sure, Miss Sawyer, that you hadn't noticed anything of this swelling before last night? Perhaps just some slight change in shape or feeling, or a tendency to favor that ankle, or just a disinclination to look at it? Cast your mind back."

Nancy hesitated uneasily, but when she spoke it was with certainty. “No, I'm absolutely sure."

He shook his head. “Very well. And now, Miss Sawyer, that twin of yours. Was she identical?"

Nancy looked at him. “Why are you interested in that? Doctor, what does the X-ray show?"

“I have a very good reason, which I'll explain to you later. I'll go into the details about the X-ray then, too. You can set your mind at rest on one point, though, if it's been worrying you. This swelling is in no sense malignant."

“Thank goodness, Doctor."

“But now about the twin."

“You really want to know?"

“I do."

Nancy's manner and voice showed some signs of agitation. “Why, yes,” she said, “we were identical. People were always mistaking us for each other. We looked exactly alike, but underneath...” Her voice trailed off. There was a change hard to define. Abruptly she continued, “Dr. Ballard, I'd like to tell you about her, tell you things I've hardly told anyone else. You know, it was she I was dreaming about last night. In fact, I thought it was she who had grabbed me in my nightmare. What's the matter, Dr. Ballard?"

It did seem that Dr. Ballard had changed color, though it was hard to tell in the failing light. What he said, a little jerkily, was: “Nothing, Miss Sawyer. Please go ahead.” He leaned forward a little, resting his elbows on the desk, and watched her.

“You know, Dr. Ballard,” she began slowly, “most people think that twins are very affectionate. They think stories of twins hating each other are invented by writers looking for morbid plots.

“But in my case the morbid plot happened to be the simple truth. Beth tyrannized me, hated me, and ... wasn't above expressing her hate in a physical way.” She took a deep breath.

“It started when we were little girls. As far back as I can remember, I was always the slave and she was the mistress. And if I didn't carry out her orders faithfully, and sometimes if I did, there was always a slap or a pinch. Not a little-girl pinch. Beth had peculiarly strong fingers. I was very afraid of them.

“There's something terrible, Dr. Ballard, about the way one human being can intimidate another, crush their will power, reduce to mush their ability to fight back. You'd think the victim could escape so easily —look, there are people all around, teachers and friends to confide in, your father and mother—but it's as if you were bound by invisible chains, your mouth shut by an invisible gag. And it grows and grows, like the horrors of a concentration camp. A whole inner world of pain and fright. And yet on the surface —why, there seems to be nothing at all.

“For of course no one else had the faintest idea what was going on between us. Everyone thought we loved each other very much. Beth especially was always being praised for her ‘sunny gaiety.’ I was supposed to be a little ‘subdued.’ Oh, how she used to fuss and coo over me when there were people around. Though even then there would be pinches on the sly—hard ones I never winced at. And more than that, for..."

Nancy broke off. “But I really don't think I should be wasting your time with all these childhood gripes, Dr. Ballard. Especially since I know you have an engagement for this evening."

“That's just an informal dinner with a few old cronies. I have lots of time. Go right ahead. I'm interested.

Nancy paused, frowning a little. “The funny thing is,” she continued, “I never understood why Beth hated me. It was as if she were intensely jealous. She was the successful one, the one who won the prizes and played the leads in the school shows and got the nicest presents and all the boys. But somehow each success made her worse. I've sometimes thought, Dr. Ballard, that only cruel people can be successful, that success is really a reward for cruelty ... to someone."

Dr. Ballard knit his brows, might have nodded.

“The only thing I ever read that helped explain it to me,” she went on, “was something in psychoanalysis. The idea that each of us has an equal dose of love and hate, and that it's our business to balance them off, to act in such a way that both have expression and yet so that the hate is always under the control of the love.

“But perhaps when the two people are very close together, as it is with twins, the balancing works out differently. Perhaps all the softness and love begins to gather in the one person and all the hardness and hate in the other. And then the hate takes the lead, because it's an emotion of violence and power and action—a concentrated emotion, not misty like love. And it keeps on and on, getting worse all the time, until it's so strong you feel it will never stop, not even with death.

“For it did keep on, Dr. Ballard, and it did get worse.” Nancy looked at him closely. “Oh, I know that what I've been telling you isn't supposed to be so unusual among children. ‘Little barbarians,’ people say, quite confident that they'll outgrow it. Quite convinced that wrist-twisting and pinching are things that will automatically stop when children begin to grow up."

Nancy smiled thinly at him. “Well, they don't stop, Dr. Ballard. You know, it's very hard for most people to associate actual cruelty with an adolescent girl, maybe because of the way girls have been glorified in

advertising. Yet I could write you a pretty chapter on just that topic. Of course a lot of it that happened in my case was what you'd call mental cruelty. I was shy and Beth had a hundred ways of embarrassing me. And if a boy became interested in me, she'd always take him away."

“I'd hardly have thought she'd have been able to,” remarked Dr. Ballard.

“You think I'm good-looking? But I'm only good-looking in an odd way, and in any case it never seemed to count then. It's true, though, that twice there were boys who wouldn't respond to her invitations. Then both times she played a trick that only she could, because we were identical twins. She would pretend to be me—she could always imitate my manner and voice, even my reactions, precisely, though I couldn't possibly have imitated her—and then she would ... do something that would make the boy drop me cold."

“Do something?"

Nancy looked down. “Oh, insult the boy cruelly, pretending to be me. Or else make some foul, boastful confession, pretending it was mine. If you knew how those boys loathed me afterwards ...

“But as I said, it wasn't only mental cruelty or indecent tricks. I remember nights when I'd done something to displease her and I'd gone to bed before her and she'd come in and I'd pretend to be asleep and after a while she'd say—oh, I know, Dr. Ballard, it sounds like something a silly little girl would say, but it didn't sound like that then, with my head under the sheet, pressed into the pillow, and her footsteps moving slowly around the bed—she'd say: ‘I'm thinking of how to punish you.’ And then there'd be a long wait, while I still pretended to be asleep, and then the touch ... oh, Dr. Ballard, her hands! I was so afraid of her hands! But ... what it is, Dr. Ballard?"

“Nothing. Go on."

“There's nothing much more to say. Except that Beth's cruelty and my fear went on until a year ago, when she died suddenly—I suppose you'd say tragically—of a blood clot on the brain. I've often wondered since then whether her hatred of me, so long and cleverly concealed, mightn't have had something to do with it. Apoplexy's what haters die of, isn't it, doctor?"

“I remember leaning over her bed the day she died, lying there paralyzed, with her beautiful face white and stiff as a fish's and one eye bigger than the other. I felt pity for her (you realize, doctor, don't you, that I always loved her?) but just then her hand flopped a little way across the blanket and touched mine, although they said she was completely paralyzed, and her big eye twitched around a little until it was looking almost at me and her lips moved and I thought I heard her say: ‘I'll come back and punish you for this,’ and then I felt her fingers moving, just a little, on my skin, as if they were trying to close on my wrist, and I jerked back with a cry.

“Mother was very angry with me for that. She thought I was just a little selfish, thoughtless girl, afraid of death and unable to repress my fear even for my dying sister's sake. Of course I could never tell her the real reason. I've never really told that to anyone, except you. And now that I've told you I hardly know why I've done it."

She smiled nervously, quite unhumorously.

“Wasn't there something about a dream you had last night?” Dr. Ballard asked softly.

“Oh yes!” The listlessness snapped out of her. “I dreamed I was walking in an old graveyard with gnarly grey trees, and overhead the sky was grey and low and threatening, and everything was weird and dreadful. But somehow I was very happy. But then I felt a faint movement under my feet and I looked down at the grave I was passing and I saw the earth falling away into it. Just a little cone-shaped pit at first, with the dark sandy earth sliding down its sides, and a small black hole at the bottom. I knew I must run away quickly, but I couldn't move an inch. Then the pit grew larger and the earth tumbled down its sides in chunks and the black hole grew. And still I was rooted there. I looked at the gravestone beyond and it said ‘Elizabeth Sawyer, 1926-48.’ Then out of the hole came a hand and arm, only there were just shreds of dark flesh clinging to the bone, and it began to feel around with an awful, snatching swiftness. Then suddenly the earth heaved and opened, and a figure came swiftly hitching itself up out of the hole. And although the flesh was green and shrunken and eaten and the eyes just holes, I recognized Beth—there was still the beautiful reddish hair. And then the ragged hand touched my ankle and instantly closed on it and the other hand came groping upward, higher, higher, and I screamed ... and then I woke up."

Nancy was leaning forward, her eyes fixed on the doctor. Suddenly her hair seemed to bush out, just a trifle. Perhaps it had ‘stood on end.’ At any rate, she said, “Dr. Ballard, I'm frightened."

“I'm sorry if I've made you distress yourself,” he said. The words were more reassuring than the tone of voice. He suddenly took her hand in his and for a few moments they sat there silently. Then she smiled and moved a little and said, “It's gone now. I've been very silly. I don't know why I told you all I did about Beth. It couldn't help you with my ankle."

“No, of course not,” he said after a moment.

“Why did you ask if she was identical?"

He leaned back. His voice became brisker again. “I'll tell you about that right now—and about what the X-ray shows. I think there's a connection. As you probably know, Miss Sawyer, identical twins look so nearly alike because they come from the same gene cell. Before it starts to develop, it splits in two.

Instead of one individual, two develop. That was what happened in the case of you and your sister.” He paused. “But,” he continued, “sometimes, especially if there's a strong tendency to twin births in the family, the splitting doesn't stop there. One of the two cells splits again. The result—triplets. I believe that also happened in your case."

Nancy looked at him puzzledly. “But, then what happened to the third child?"

“The third sister,” he amplified. “There can't be identical boy-and-girl twins or triplets, you know, since sex is determined in the original gene cell. There, Miss Sawyer, we come to my second point. Not all twins develop and are actually born. Some start to develop and then stop."

“What happens to them?"

“Sometimes what there is of them is engulfed in the child that does develop completely—little fragments of a body, bits of this and that, all buried in the flesh of the child that is actually born. I think that happened in your case."

Nancy looked at him oddly. “You mean I have in me bits of another twin sister, a triplet sister, who didn't develop?"

“Exactly."

“And that all this is connected with my ankle?"

“Yes."

“But then how—?"

“Sometimes nothing happens to the engulfed fragments. But sometimes, perhaps many years later, they begin to grow—in a natural way rather than malignantly. There are well-authenticated cases of this happening—as recently as 1890 a Mexican boy in this way ‘gave birth’ to his own twin brother, completely developed though of course dead. There's nothing nearly as extensive as that in your case, but I'm sure there is a pocket of engulfed materials around your ankle and that it recently started to grow, so gradually that you didn't notice it until the growth became so extensive as to be irritating."

Nancy eyed him closely. “What sort of materials? I mean the engulfed fragments."

He hesitated. “I'm not quite sure,” he said. “The X-ray was ... oh, such things are apt to be odd, though harmless stuff—teeth, hair, nails, you never can tell. We'll know better later."

“Could I see the X-ray?"

He hesitated again. “I'm afraid it couldn't mean anything to you. Just a lot of shadows."

“Could there be ... other pockets of fragments?"

“It's not likely. And if there are, it's improbable they'll ever bother you."

There was a pause.

Nancy said, “I don't like it."

“I don't like it,” she repeated. “It's as if Beth had come back. Inside me."

“The fragments have no connection with your dead sister,” Dr. Ballard assured her. “They're not part of Beth, but of a third sister, if you can call such fragments a person."

“But those fragments only began to grow after Beth died. As if Beth's soul ... and was it my original cell that split a second time?—or was it Beth's?—so that it was the fragments of half her cell that I absorbed, so that...” She stopped. “I'm afraid I'm being silly again."

He looked at her for a while, then, with the air of someone snapping to attention, quickly nodded.

“But doctor,” she said, also like someone snatching at practicality, “what's to happen now?"

“Well,” he replied, “in order to get rid of this disfigurement to your ankle, a relatively minor operation will be necessary. You see, this sort of foreign body can't be reduced in size by heat or X-ray or injections. Surgery is needed, though probably only under local anaesthetic. Could you arrange to enter a hospital tomorrow? Then I could operate the next morning. You'd have to stay about four days."

She thought for a moment, then said, “Yes, I think I could manage that.” She looked distastefully at her ankle. “In fact, I'd like to do it as soon as possible."

“Good. We'll ask Miss Snyder to arrange things."

When the nurse entered, she said, “Dr. Myers is outside."

“Tell him I'll be right along,” Dr. Ballard said. “And then I'd like you to call Central Hospital. Miss Sawyer will take the reservation we got for Mrs. Phipps and were about to cancel.” And they discussed details while Nancy pulled on stocking and shoe.

Nancy said goodbye and started for the waiting room, favoring her bad leg. Dr. Ballard watched her. The nurse opened the door. Beyond, Nancy's friend got up with a smile. There was now, besides her, a dark, oldish man in the waiting room.

As the nurse was about to close the door, Dr. Ballard said, “Miss Sawyer."

She turned. “Yes?"

“If your ankle should start to trouble you tonight—or anything else—please call me."

“Thank you, doctor, I will."

Dr. Ballard nodded. Then he called to his friend, “Be right with you.” The dark, oldish man flapped an arm at him.

The door closed. Dr. Ballard went to his desk, took the X-ray photograph out of its brown envelope, switched on the light, and studied the photograph incredulously.

He put it back in its envelope and on the desk. He got his hat and overcoat from the closet. He turned out the light. Then suddenly he went back and got the envelope, stuffed it in his pocket, and went out.

The dinner with Dr. Myers and three other professional friends proved if anything more enjoyable than Dr. Ballard had anticipated. It led to relaxation, gossip, a leisurely evening stroll, a drink together, a few final yarns. At one point Dr. Ballard felt a fleeting impulse to get the X-ray out of his overcoat pocket and show it to them and tell his little yarn about it, but something made him hesitate, and he forgot the idea. He felt very easy in his mind as he drove home about midnight. He even hummed a little. This mood was not disturbed until he saw the face of Miss Willis, his resident secretary.

“What is it?” he asked crisply.

“Miss Nancy Sawyer. She...” For once the imperturbable, greying blonde seemed to have difficulty speaking.

“Yes?"

“She called up first about an hour and a half ago."

“Her ankle had begun to pain her?" “She didn't say anything about her ankle. She said she was getting a sore throat."

“What!"

“It seemed unimportant to me, too, though of course I told her I'd inform you when you got in. But she seemed rather frightened, kept complaining of this tightness she felt in her throat..."

“Yes? Yes?"

“So I agreed to get in touch with you immediately. She hung up. I called the restaurant, but you'd just left. Then I called Dr. Myers’ home, but didn't get any answer. I told the operator to keep trying.

“About a half hour ago Miss Sawyer's friend, a Marge Hudson, called. She said Miss Sawyer had gone to bed and was apparently asleep, but she didn't like the way she was tossing around, as if she were having a particularly bad dream, and especially she didn't like the noises she was making in her throat, as if she were having difficulty breathing. She said she had looked closely at Miss Sawyer's throat as she lay sleeping, and it seemed swollen. I told her I was making every effort to get in touch with you and we left it at that."

“That wasn't all?"

“No.” Miss Willis’ agitation returned. “Just two minutes before you arrived, the phone rang again. At first the line seemed to be dead. I was about to hang up. Then I began to hear a clicking, gargling sound. Low at first, but then it grew louder. Then suddenly it broke free and whooped out in what I think was Miss Sawyer's voice. There were only two words, I think, but I couldn't catch them because they were so loud they stopped the phone. After that, nothing, although I listened and listened and kept saying ‘hello’ over and over. But, Dr. Ballard, that gargling sound! It was as if I were listening to someone being strangled, very slowly, very, very..."

Dr. Ballard had grabbed his surgical bag and was racing for his car. He drove rather well for a doctor and, tonight, very fast. He was about three blocks from the river when he heard a siren, ahead of him.

Nancy Sawyer's apartment hotel was at the end of a short street terminated by a high concrete curb and metal fence and, directly below, the river. Now there was a fire engine drawn up to the fence and playing a searchlight down over the edge through the faintly misty air. Dr. Ballard could see a couple of figures in shiny black coats beside the searchlight. As he jumped out of his car he could hear shouts and what sounded like the motor of a launch. He hesitated for a moment, then ran into the hotel.

The lobby was empty. There was no one behind the counter. He ran to the open elevator. It was an automatic. He punched the twenty-three button.

On that floor there was one open door in the short corridor. Marge Hudson met him inside it.

“She jumped?"

The girl nodded. “They're hunting for her body. I've been watching. Come on."

She led him to a dark bedroom. There was a studio couch, its covers disordered, and beside it a phone. River air was pouring in through a large, hinged window, open wide. They went to it and looked down. The circling launch looked like a toy boat. Its searchlight and that from the fire engine roved across the dark water. Shouts and chugging came up faintly.

“How did it happen?” he asked the girl at the window.

“I was watching her as she lay in bed,” Marge Hudson answered without looking around.

“About twenty minutes after I called your home, she seemed to be getting worse. She had more trouble breathing. I tried to wake her, but couldn't. I went to the kitchen to make an ice pack. It took longer than I'd thought. I heard a noise that at first I didn't connect with Nancy. Then I realized that she was strangling. I rushed back. Just then she screamed out horribly. I heard something fall—I think it was the phone—and footsteps and the window opening. When I came in she was standing on the sill in her nightdress, clawing at her throat. Before I could get to her, she jumped."

“Earlier in the evening she'd complained of a sore throat?"

“Yes. She said, jokingly, that the trouble with her ankle must be spreading to her throat. After she called your home and couldn't get you, she took some aspirin and went to bed."

Dr. Ballard switched on the lamp by the bed. He pulled the brown envelope from his coat pocket, took out the X-ray and held it up against the light.

“You say she screamed at the end,” he said in a not very steady voice. “Were there any definite words?"

The girl at the window hesitated. “I'm not sure,” she said slowly. “They were suddenly choked off, exactly as if a hand had tightened around her throat. But I think there were two words. ‘Hand’ and ‘Beth.’”

Dr. Ballard's gaze flickered toward the mocking face in the photograph on the chest of drawers, then back to the ghostly black and whites of the one in his hands. His arms were shaking.

“They haven't found her yet,” Marge said, still looking down at the river and the circling launch.

Dr. Ballard was staring incredulously at the X-ray, as if by staring he could make what he saw go away. But that was impossible. It was a perfectly defined and unambiguous exposure.

There, in the X-ray's black and greys, he could see the bones of Nancy Sawyer's ankle and, tightly clenched around them, deep under the skin and flesh, the slender bones of a human hand.