"Do you believe I'm mad?"
Still smiling, she nodded.
"Why? Never mind what the Pelerine told you. Have I said anything to you tonight to make you think so?"
"Or spellbound, perhaps. It isn't anything you've said at all. Or at least, not much. But you are not just one man."
She paused after saying that. I think she was waiting for me to deny it, but I said nothing.
"It is in your face and the way you move - do you know that I don't even know your name? She didn't tell me."
"Severian."
"I'm Ava. Severian is one of those brother - sister names, isn't it? Severian and Severa. Do you have a sister?"
"I don't know. If I do, she's a witch."
Ava let that pass. "The other one. Does she have a name?"
"You know she's a woman then."
"Uh huh. When I was serving the food, I thought for a moment that one of the exultant sisters had come to help me. Then I looked around and it was you. At first it seemed that it was just when I saw you from the corner of my eye, but sometimes, while we've been sitting here, I see her even when I'm looking right at you. When you glance to one side sometimes you vanish, and there's a tall, pale woman using your face. Please don't tell me I fast overmuch. That's what they all tell me, and it isn't true, and even if it were, this isn't that."
"Her name is Thecla. Do you remember what you were just saying about losing humanity? Were you trying to tell me about her?"
Ava shook her head. "I don't think so. But I wanted to ask you something. There was another patient here like you, and they told me he came with you."
"Miles, you mean. No, my case and his are quite different. I won't tell you about him. He should do it himself, or no one should. But I will tell you about myself. Do you know of the corpse-eaters?"
"You're not one of them. A few weeks ago we had three insurgent captives. I know what they're like."
"How do we differ?"
"With them..." She groped for words. "With them it's out of control. They talk to themselves - of course a lot of people do - and they look at things that aren't there. There's something lonely about it, and something selfish. You aren't one of them."
"But I am," I said. And I told her, without going into much detail, of Vodalus's banquet.
"They made you," she said when I was through. "If you had shown what you felt, they would have killed you."
"That doesn't matter. I drank the alzabo. I ate her flesh. And at first it was filthy, as you say, though I had loved her. She was in me, and I shared the life that had been hers, and yet she was dead. I could feel her rotting there. I had a wonderful dream of her on the first night; when I go back among my memories it is one the things I treasure most. Afterward, there was something horrible, and sometimes I seemed to be dreaming while I was awake - that was the talking and staring you mentioned, I think. Now, and for a long time, she seems alive again, but inside me."
"I don't think the others are like that."
"I don't either," I said. "At least, not from what I've heard of them. There are a great many things I do not understand. What I have told you is one of the chief ones."
Ava was quiet for the space of two or three breaths, then her eyes opened wide. "The Claw, the thing you believe in. Did you have it then?"
"Yes, but I didn't know what it could do. It had not acted - or rather, it had acted, it had raised a woman called Dorcas, but I didn't know what had happened, where she had come from. If I had known, I might have saved Thecla, brought her back."
"But you had it? You had it with you?"
I nodded.
"Then don't you see? It did bring her back. You just said it could act without your even knowing it. You had it, and you had her, rotting, as you say, inside you."
"Without the body..."
"You're a materialist, like all ignorant people. But your materialism doesn't make materialism true. Don't you know that? In the final summing up, it is spirit and dream, thought and love and act that matter."
I was so stunned by the ideas that had come crowding in on me that I did not speak again for some time, but sat wrapped in my own speculations. When I came to myself again at last, I was surprised that Ava had not gone and tried to thank her.
"It was peaceful, sitting here with you, and if one of the sisters had come, I could have said I was waiting in case one of the sick should cry out."
"I haven't decided yet about what you said about Thecla. I'll have to think about it a long time, probably for many days. People tell me I am a rather stupid man."
She smiled, and the truth was that I had said what I had (though it was true) at least in part to make her smile. "I don't think so. A thorough man, rather."
"Anyway, I have another question. Often when I tried to sleep, or when I woke in the night, I have tried to connect my failures and my successes. I mean the times when I used the Claw and revived someone, and the times when I tried to but life did not return. It seems to me that it should be more than mere chance, though perhaps the link is something I cannot know."
"Do you think you've found it now?"
"What you said about people losing their humanity - that might be a part of it. There was a woman... I think she may have been like that, though she was very beautiful. And a man, my friend, who was only partly cured, only helped. If it's possible for someone to lose his humanity, surely it must be possible for something that once had none to find it. What one loses another finds, everywhere. He, I think, was like that. Then too, the effect always seems less when the deaths come by violence..."
"I would expect that," Ava said softly.
"It cured the man-ape whose hand I had cut away. Perhaps that was because I had done it myself. And it helped Jonas, but I - Thecla - had used those whips."
"The powers of healing protect us from Nature. Why should the Increate protect us from ourselves? We might protect ourselves from ourselves. It may be that he will help us only when we come to regret what we have done."
Still thinking, I nodded.
"I am going to the chapel now. You're well enough to walk a short distance. Will you come with me?"
While I had been beneath that wide canvas roof, it had seemed the whole of the lazaret to me. Now I saw, though only dimly and by night, that there were many tents and pavilions. Most, like ours, had their walls gathered up for coolness, furled like the sails of a ship at anchor. We entered none of them but walked between them by winding paths that seemed long to me, until we reached one whose walls were down. It was of silk, not canvas, and shone scarlet because of the lights within.
"Once," Ava told me, "we had a great cathedral. It could hold ten thousand, yet be packed into a single wagon. Our Domnicellae had it burned just before I came to the order."
"I know," I said. "I saw it."
Inside the silken tent, we knelt before a simple altar heaped with flowers. Ava prayed. I, knowing no prayers, spoke without sound to someone who seemed at times within me and at times, as the angel had said, infinitely remote.
Chapter Eleven
Loyal to the Group of Seventeen's Story - The Just Man
The next morning, when we had eaten and everyone was awake, I ventured to ask Foila if it was now time for me to judge between Melito and Hallvard. She shook her head, but before she could speak, the Ascian announced, "All must do their share in the service of the populace. The bullock draws the plow and the dog herds the sheep, but the cat catches mice in the granary. Thus men, women, and even children can serve the populace."
Foila flashed that dazzling smile. "Our friend wants to tell a story too."