“What?” He glanced at her in surprise, thinking she must be giving him advice for their route back to Cowville. But there was no intersection sign ahead, and the last instructions he had read from the roadside had informed him it was twenty-three miles to the next exit.
‘Two ways you can go,” Magda repeated. “Into yourself-or out of the world that other people share. Apart from that, you can’t go anywhere and still be a person.”
Sheklov pondered that. He was driving, and terribly
aware that he probably was not doing it very well. He had
had a ready-made excuse for that when Lora had sug
gested it, and Magda had deferred, on their departure
from the restaurant where they had eaten dinner and
drunk a lot of wine and beer, he had produced the data
incorporated in his briefing, which explained that, like
many Canadians, he had never owned an American car,
but had stuck to Swedish and Italian imports.
Still, this thing of Lora’s seemed to be designed for people who didn’t drive well, and certainly the roads were . .
He rapidly reviewed everything that had happened or been talked about since they left Cowville on the outward leg of their trip. They had had to go a long way-north, of course-before finding a place where they would serve a mixed party with less than forced tolerance. One restaurant-owner had even offered the classic excuse: “It’s not that 1 object, mind you, only that my other customers . . . 1”
Goodbyel
And then it had proved to be very pleasant, although the meal was incredibly expensive and the continuous
music grated on Sheklov’s ears and the high voices of other diners uttering demonstrably false statements had made him now and then want to get up and beat a little common sense into their heads. Still, that wasn’t his brief. He had to act as though he were what he pretended to be. Turpin’s comment about being shot to death by an Army firing-squad rang continually in his brain.
So there had been no awkwardnesses until they were getting back into the car, and Lora had said outright that she intended to ride in back with Danty and not drive home. And held out the car-key for Sheklov to take.
Following which, on the dark road, occasional gasps and mutters had punctuated the music from the radio, and once, perfectly clearly, “Danty, you’re terrific)”
It was reaching down through Sheklov’s mental armour, and hitting him in the-well, the hormones, you might say. He had entertained the notion that when they arrived back in Cowville Magda might . . .
1 don’t understdnd! 1 simply don’t) Culture shock!
How on Earth (he consciously capitalised it) could this sort of promiscuous, casual behavior co-exist with all the billboards he kept seeing that advertised Koenig’s? That brand-name, and its implications, had been explained to him in detail; lead-impregnated, Koenig’s underwear was claimed to protect the gonads from accidental irradiation, and styles were offered for women as well as men.
While the cars that whizzed past-he had proof of this at his back-were marketed with rear seats that folded down to facilitate seduction)
It dawned on him, perhaps as much as two miles later at the speed they were travelling, that Magda was offering the explanation he yearned for . . . and then he recalled that she had claimed to possess more empathy than most people, to the extent of having a talent someone in trouble could call on her to exercise.
Me too?
It made him abruptly cold to think of what she might have-not guessed=.deduced about him. His briefing had never taken a person like her into account.
Yet he had learned to trust some of his own instinctual reactions, too, and nothing about Magda-Danty was a different matter-had made his nape prickle, his usual warning-sign. There was no hint of menace about her, just a curiosity that he found almost refreshing, as though she
put the most personal possible questions without a thought of giving offence.
He said, framing his words carefully, “I guess you must have noticed how hard this country has hit me. I mean, when I took on this job of mine, fixing that pulp-contract that brought me down here, I walked into it thinking what ;’ I guess most people think north of the border: ‘They’re .` right next door, so they’re probably no more different than