The Lovers   ::   Фармер Филип Хосе

'Don't play shib with me,' she said. 'This is what started the whole thing. You trying to... put off your... duty.'

'My duty,' said Hal. 'The shib thing to do. Of course.'

'Don't talk like that,' she said. 'I don't want you to do it just because it's your duty. I want you to do it because you love me, as you are enjoined to do. Also, because you want to love me.'

'I am enjoined to love all of mankind,' said Hal. 'But I notice that I am expressly forbidden to perform my duty with anyone but my realistically bound wife.'

Mary was so shocked that she could not reply, and she turned her back to him. But he, knowing that he was doing it as much to punish her and himself as doing what he should, reached out for her. From then on, having made the formal opening statement, everything was ritualized. This time, unlike some times in the past, everything was executed step by step, the words and actions, as specified by the Forerunner in The Western Talmud. Except for one detail: Hal was still wearing his dayclothes. This, he had decided, could be forgiven, for it was the spirit, not the letter, that counted, and what was the difference whether he wore the thick street garments or the bulky nightclothes? Mary, if she had noticed the error, had said nothing about it.

3



Afterward, lying on his back, staring into the darkness, Hal thought as he had many a time before. What was it that cut through his abdomen like a broad, thick steel plate and seemed to sever his torso from his hips? He was excited, in the beginning. He knew he must be because his heart beat fast, he breathed hard. Yet, he could not- really-feel anything. And when the moment came- which the Forerunner called the time of generation of potentiality, the fulfillment and actualization of reality – Hal experienced only a mechanical reaction. His body carried out its prescribed function, but he felt nothing of that ecstasy which the Forerunner had described so vividly. A zone of unfeeling, a nerve-chilling area, a steel plate, cut through him. He felt nothing except the jerk-ings of his body, as if an electrical needle were stimulating his nerves at the same time it numbed them.

This was wrong, he told himself. Or was it? Could it be that the Forerunner was mistaken? After all, the Forerunner was a man superior to the rest of humanity. Perhaps, he had been gifted enough to experience such exquisite reactions and had not realized that the remainder of mankind did not share his good fortune.