Free Janus by John Park

slip as long as he’s been here, not even been tempted, as far as I know.”
    “That’s interesting,” Grebbel said carefully. “I’d like to think about what you said. Maybe we can talk about it some more.”
    Menzies nodded. “That’s why I told you. There’s no need to shout this right across the valley, by the way.”
    Grebbel wondered whether to challenge the man and ask him if he had been talking about himself or using a piece of fiction as some kind of bait. Then he decided he really did need to think about Menzies’ story.
    He spent the afternoon moving gravel from the river bank to the growing dam. After half an hour he began to feel comfortable with the vehicle.
    Thinking of what Menzies had said, he remembered the woman, Elinda, in the cafeteria late that morning. He was drawn by an intensity in her look, and a vulnerability. And their potentially shared hidden pasts. She was interested too, also in spite of herself, he could tell. He was reluctant to admit that his emotions were so labile, but he would not hide from himself.
    Grebbel watched the smoky spears of sunlight edge along the far valley wall as he worked. He tried to picture Menzies as the actor in the story he had told, a man with two lives, the conventional family role, and the secret appetites. The mask and the true face beneath. He had been forced to choose. But what convulsions came, when he chose the mask and denied the flesh?
    At the end of the shift, he ate quickly in the cafeteria without getting into any long conversations, then walked beside the river.
    When he judged it was the equivalent of early evening, he turned towards the path up the valley side, to see if Elinda would keep their appointment.

    She was late. Grebbel had been pacing back and forth long enough to see the first moon appear like a pale dead leaf above the mountains. He watched a large membranous creature drift towards the west like a squarish kite. The local equivalent of a vulture, he thought, until it vanished above a mountain of cumulus.
    He remembered the icy water glittering around their feet, as though the stones they stood on were flowing uphill. Perhaps he had misread her, and she wouldn’t come. Perhaps something had happened with the friend she was looking for. . . . How close a friend?
    Perhaps all his judgements were empty guesswork, and their basis in experience had been stripped away when he came through the Knot.
    When Elinda appeared, she walked slowly, as though she were having to think about each step. Grebbel went to meet her, and she halted abruptly, her face half-turned from him, her eyes in shadow.
    “You see,” she said, in a thin remote voice, “I remembered. We both remembered to come and remember. What do you think we should remember this time? How about something really important, like the number of the bus you took to school, or what we were doing the day they liberated the mental wards in Chile. It’s the fault of the moons, you see. They both pull up tides in our brains, and our thoughts keep getting pulled apart. I shouldn’t be here otherwise. You can feel the tides if you want. You turn to the moons and you feel the tides in your eyes.”
    She lifted her face until the red sunlight spilled across it, and he saw that she was crying quietly, and must have been crying all the time she talked.
    “What’s happened?”
    “They tried to give me a sedative, but I wouldn’t. I can feel the tides now, and I have to keep my head above water or I’ll go down in the mud. Face in the mud. Mud in Barbara’s hair, and dead leaves—her teeth snapped and she screamed, but then she was like stone again. They say she’ll be all right, and they know, don’t they? But they didn’t want to upset me any more, that’s why they took me away from her and tried to give me a sedative. So perhaps they’re not telling the truth. We took her to the clinic this afternoon, but she must have been out there all along. Ever since I woke up