philip_k_dick_-_the_man_in_the_high_castle

ocking her, swinging her back and forth, peering down into her face, breathing his warm breath
over her, squeezing her until she bleated.
'No,' she said. 'I'm just — slow to change.' Still a little scared of you, she thought. So scared I
can't even say it, tell you about it.
'Out the window,' Joe cried, stalking across the room with her in his arms. 'Here we go.'
'Please,' she said.
'Kidding. Listen — we're going on a march, like the March on Rome. You remember that. The
Duce led them, my Uncle Carlo for example. Now we have a little march, less important, not noted
in the history books. Right?' Inclining his head, he kissed her on the mouth so hard that their teeth
clashed. 'How nice we both'll look, in our new clothes. And you can explain to me exactly how to
talk, deport myself; right? Teach me manners; right?'
'You talk okay,' Juliana said. 'Better than me, even.'
'No.' He became abruptly somber. 'I talk very bad. A real wop accent. Didn't you notice it when
you first met me in the cafe?'
'I guess so,' she said; it did not seem important to her.
'Only a woman knows the social conventions,' Joe said, carrying her back and dropping her to
bounce frighteningly on the bed. 'Without a woman we'd discuss racing cars and horses and tell
dirty jokes; no civilization.'
You're in a strange mood, Juliana thought. Restless and brooding, until you decide to move on;
then you become hopped up. Do you really want me? You can ditch me, leave me here; it's
happened before. I would ditch you, she thought, if I were going on.
'Is that your pay?' she asked as he dressed. 'You saved it up?' It was so much. Of course, there
was a good deal of money in the East. 'All the other truck drivers I've talked to never made so — '
'You say I'm a truck driver?' Joe broke in. 'Listen; I rode that rig not to drive but keep off
hijackers. Look like a truck driver, snoozing in the cab.' Flopping in a chair in the corner of the
room he lay back, pretending sleep, his mouth open, body limp. 'See?'
At first she did not see. And then she realized that in his hand was a knife, as thin as a kitchen
potato skewer. Good grief, she thought. Where had it come from? Out of his sleeve; out of the air
itself.
'That's why the Volkswagen people hired me. Service record. We protected ourselves against
Haselden, those commandos; he led them.' The black eyes glinted; he grinned sideways at Juliana.
'Guess who got the Colonel, there at the end. When we caught them on the Nile — him and four of
his Long Range Desert Group months after the Cairo campaign. They raided us for gasoline one
night. I was on sentry duty. Haselden sneaked up, rubbed with black all over his face and body,
even his hands; they had no wire that time, only grenades and submachine guns. All too noisy. He
tried to break my larynx. I got him.' From the chair, Joe sprang up at her, laughing. 'Let's pack. You
tell them at the gym you're taking a few days off; phone them.'
His account simply did not convince her. Perhaps he had not been in North Africa at all, had not
even fought in the war on the Axis side, had not even fought. What hijackers? she wondered. No
truck that she knew of had come through Canon City from the East Coast with an armed
professional ex-soldier as guard. Maybe he had not even lived in the U.S.A., had made everything
up from the start; a line to snare her, to get her interested, to appear romantic.
Maybe he's insane, she thought. Ironic . . . I may actually do what I've pretended many times to
have done: use my judo in self-defense. To save my — virginity? My life, she thought. But more
likely he is just some poor low-class wop laboring slob with delusions of glory; he wants to go on a