Lathe of Heaven, The by Le Guin Ursula K

Author:Le Guin, Ursula K. [Le Guin, Ursula K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-11-13T18:11:11+00:00

Orr opened the door. His hair hung in locks and snarls, his eyes were bloodshot, his lips dry. He stared at her blinking. He looked degraded and undone. She was terrified of him.

"Are you ill?" she said sharply.

"No, I ... Come in. . . ."

She had to come in. There was a poker for the Franklin stove: she could defend herself with that. Of course, he could attack her with it, if he got it first.

Oh for Christsake she was as big as he was almost, and in lots better shape. Coward coward. "Are you high?"

"No, I ..."

"You what? What's wrong with you?"

"I can't sleep,"

The tiny cabin smelt wonderfully of woodsmoke and fresh wood. Its furniture was the Franklin stove with a two-plate cooker top, a box full of alder branches, a cabinet, a table, a chair, an army cot. "Sit down," Heather said. "You look terrible. Do you need a drink, or a doctor? I have some brandy in the car. You'd better come with me and we'll find a doctor in Lincoln City."

"I'm all right. It's just mumble mumble get sleepy."

"You said you couldn't sleep."

He looked at her with red, bleary eyes. "Can't let myself. Afraid to."

"Oh Christ. How long has this been going on?"

"Mumble mumble Sunday."

"You haven't slept since Sunday?"

"Saturday?" he said enquiringly.

"Did you take anything? Pep pills?"

He shook his head. "I did fall asleep, some," he said quite clearly, and then seemed for a moment to fall asleep, as if he were ninety. But even as she watched, incredulous, he woke up again and said with lucidity, "Did you come here after me?"

"Who else? To cut Christmas trees, for Christsake? You stood me up for lunch yesterday."

"Oh." He stared, evidently trying to see her. "I'm sorry," he said, "I haven't been in my right mind."

Saying that, he was suddenly himself again, despite his lunatic hair and eyes: a man whose personal dignity went so deep as to be nearly invisible.

"It's all right. I don't care! But you're skipping therapy--aren't you?"

He nodded. "Would you like some coffee?" he asked. It was more than dignity.

Integrity? Wholeness? Like a block of wood not carved.

The infinite possibility, the unlimited and unqualified wholeness of being of the uncommitted, the nonacting, the uncarved: the being who, being nothing but himself, is everything.

Briefly she saw him thus, and what struck her most, of that insight, was his strength. He was the strongest person she had ever known, because he could not be moved away from the center. And that was why she liked him. She was drawn to strength, came to it as a moth to light. She had had a good deal of love as a kid but no strength around her, nobody to lean on ever: people had leaned on her. Thirty years she had longed to meet somebody who didn't lean on her, who wouldn't ever, who couldn't....

Here, short, bloodshot, psychotic, and in hiding, here he was, her tower of strength.

Life is the most incredible mess, Heather thought. You never can guess what's next.

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