The Perfect Host Read Online Free

eat?”
    “Yes.”
    “And the certificate for her?” He motioned toward the corpse. “And whatever papers are necessary for the child?”
    “All those.”
    “You are paid.”
    “Too well, in money.”
    “Good. Now go. Do not come back here for anything, ever.”
    The doctor moved to a basin and washed his hands. “You’ll send for me if I’m needed? Children sicken, you know.”
    “This one won’t. I am not accustomed to failure and there will be none of it in my house. The child will not sicken.”
    The doctor packed his instruments, glanced around the room, and walked out. The father followed him to the door with that in his bearing which ensured the departure and was not polite. At the door the doctor turned suddenly, to stare up into the long controlled face, to look blatantly at the signs in it of the naked grief that was about to break there. “Have you no friends, man?”
    “Friends!” spat the father. “There are friends about me as there is disease about you. No sickness will get the better of you if it is within your power. No friend will eat, and suck, and weaken me. Go back to your ingrown nails and your physics and your death-watches, and leave me to myself.”
    The doctor shrugged and left, blowing what seemed to be a taint out of his nostrils.
    She was born quietly, and quietly she passed her childhood. Her father, when he thought about her silence in other terms thanappreciation, thought her a mute. When she showed she was not, he felt no surprise.
    The house was large and as alone as its master. The rooms and the stairs and the wide hallways were carpeted, wall to wall, with heavy gray rugs. The house was old and solid, its timbers pegged, its paneling and joinery screwed and glued and immovable. Inside the brassbound oaken slab of a door, a cushioned vestibule held a rack for shoes. Barefoot he glided about the house, and barefoot his daughter toddled until, early indeed, she learned his soundless stride.
    He named her—Quietly. Quietly she grew.
    She was not beautiful—not if mannequins and calendar girls are beautiful. Her face was her father’s, but softened with womanliness and with something else. Her nose was his, but rounded. She had his far-horizoned gray eyes, but wide and wide-set. Her jaw was strong and planar, yet only a part of the clean complex curve of shoulder, neck and cheek. Her hair fell to her waist and was the color of black-iron heated until it just begins to glow its deepest red.
    He taught her strangely. He brought her, in his teaching, not only the contents of his library, but the quintessence of his own astonishing experience. All that he said was simple—simple and quiet. He explained that often, saying,
    “What is basic is simple. Complicated things are not basic, and are not important.”
    So everything she learned was simple. She learned about earning—that things could be had without being earned, but that without being earned, they could not be kept. She learned about fear—that it’s not a shameful thing, nor a foolish one, since it is the essence of self-preservation; but that he who truly hides his fear is accepted as superior. She learned about giving—that to give is to get, but that to give too much is to take and to lose. She learned to define evil: that which is extreme. She learned to define good: that which is moderate. She learned, above all, to be alone. She learned to accept aloneness at any time—halfway through a meal, or on waking, or even in the midst of a lesson, for her father would sometimes leave a sentence unfinished and step out of the room, to be gone, sometimes,for days. There were occasions when there was no food in the house, or when there was food hidden. In these cases, she did without, or she went into the woods and made snares and caught small animals or collected berries and wild birds’ eggs. The one inexcusable offense was to sit frightened and bleat her father’s name. That happened once, and all her life she bore