The room held her close, cold and white, a nun's cell. If you counted the
window-place it was shaped like a cross. The door at the foot, the window
at the head, bookshelves at the end of each arm. A kitchen lamp with a
tin reflector, on a table, stood in the breast of the cross. Its flame
was so small that she had to turn it on to her work like a lantern.
"Dumpetty, dumpetty dum. Tell them that Bion is dead; he is dead, young
Bion, the shepherd. And with him music is dead and Dorian poetry
perished--"
She had the conceited, exciting thought: "I am translating Moschus, the
Funeral Song for Bion."
Moschus was Bion's friend. She wondered whether he had been happy or
unhappy, making his funeral song.
If you could translate it all: if you could only make patterns out of
English sounds that had the hardness and stillness of the Greek.
"'Archet', Sikelikai, to pentheos, archet' Moisai,
adones hai pukinoisin oduramenai poti phullois.'"
The wind picked at the pane. Through her thick tweed coat she could feel
the air of the room soak like cold water to her skin. She curved her
aching hands over the hot globe of the lamp.
--Oduromenai. Mourning? No. You thought of black crape, bunched up
weepers, red faces.
The wick spluttered; the flame leaned from the burner, gave a skip and
went out.
Oduromenai--Grieving; perhaps.
Suddenly she thought of Maurice Jourdain.
She saw him standing in the field path. She heard him say "Talk to _me_.
I'm alive. I'm here. I'll listen. I'll never misunderstand." She saw his
worn eyelids; his narrow, yellowish teeth.