Bianka was definitely in the final stages of labor this time; scared and sweaty; and worse, she still wasn’t sure if she wanted the baby who even now was kicking for release. Josef came in now and then, terrified, his hefty weight balanced as carefully as he could so no squeaking floorboards would announce his presence, in which case Bianka’s mother would scream and chase him from the room. He could hardly see, anyhow, for the steam from the boiling water that fogged the windows and cleared his sinuses at the same time. He felt frantic. If he’d known that childbirth was so … agonizing, would he have left Bianka alone? He squinted his brown eyes with dismay. No, nothing would have kept him away from that lusty body of hers. And in his mind’s eye, he saw the two of them in puppylike embrace, filled with an ecstasy that left him confused and triumphant at once.

“Get out,” Mrs. Hosentauf screamed. “At least when you’re drunk you aren’t under foot.”

“Josef,” cried Bianka, “I’m almost ready.”

“Out! Out!” yelled Mrs. Hosentauf.

“AArrr,” yelled Josef back, but he lumbered out of the room with one anguished look at Bianka. She’d be small again after the birth, he thought, with a sense of elation he felt guilty about at once; and she’d be his again. And while all of this was going on, Lydia invisibly prowled about the room.

Bianka moaned and closed her eyes, and as she did so, some part of Lydia responded, fluttered, searched for freedom; sought for a beginning in which she could grow into being from a different angle. Suddenly something inside Lydia’s personal reality turned as clear as cellophane. She could see through herself—through her subjective surface to her core—and as she did, she felt an exquisite acquiescence and exhilaration, and at the same time, a thrust of aggressive action so strong that it seemed to propel her into a creativity that was too fast to follow.

Oversoul Seven was there, and Lydia felt her experience merge with his, or his with hers. Yet, conversely, her own independence was never clearer. Even now, she could accept new birth or reject it, and if she refused it, there would be other choices. Yet how dear and solitary that bedroom looked, a tableau tucked in time and an infant about to be born in a house anonymous to history. Yet in that birth, or any birth, she suddenly knew that the unknown universe re-created itself into new knowing.

“Quick, the boiling water,” Mrs. Hosentauf shouted.