1
It was several weeks after his interview with Lewis that Levine
stepped out of his office into a street swept with wind and rain. It
was welcome to him, tired out by an afternoon spent in unraveling the
evidence in a case that was pre-empting the headlines of all papers.
He ducked against the oblique advance of the rain, buttoned his coat
across his throat, and resolved to walk the three miles to
Bannerman's studio. Poldy had not been heard from since the day he
left the hospital, and Levine was going to look at his pictures, his
curiosity about them heightened by the fact of Poldy's disappearance.
By looking at the pictures, Levine thought, he might be able to
predict whether Poldy would return or not; though he could hardly
have told what would be the cue for this revelation, what evidence in
the pictures would guide him. There was, moreover, a certain
portrait that he wanted to see, in the presence of which he thought
he might decide things that were troubling him, that he mused over as
he strode forward against the rain.
The streets were deserted. Walking alone in his long rain-coat, and
with his head and huge shoulders thrust forward, Levine looked like a
mythical figure doomed to appear in storms when all others are
indoors. He walked rapidly, save when his glasses became too wet and
a temporary blindness overtook him. Then he had to seek the shelter
of a doorway to take them off and dry them. It was almost dark when
he knocked at Bannerman's door, and found his friend working in
bathrobe and stocking feet. Bannerman turned to him, revealing a
forehead that was wet and shining from cold applications.
"Levine," he announced, "I'm a chart ... a regular chart." He paused
and gingerly fished out a napkin from the bowl of water that stood
under his easel. "I'm going to hire myself out to a clinic. I'm
convinced that medical science has a great deal to learn from me.
And why am I a chart? Because I can tell where every nerve is
located by the pains I have. For instance, why does it suddenly
catch me here? Right here, on this particular spot, whenever I put
my foot down? Because there's a nerve there, of course, nearer the
surface than the others." He lifted his foot and laid his finger
with great precision on the tip of his heel. "May be a nerve there
that they don't know about as yet. Never in the left foot, you
understand, but always in the right. Now that must be significant.
Or take this ... the fleshy part of the arm up here. There's a nerve
here that's specially vicious. How do I know? It just barks
whenever I move. As for my back, there's a whole mob of them there.
Yes, sir ... a tribe of them. And one of them acts like a streak of
lightning. Now watch this." He ducked his head forward and held his
face contorted for a moment. "Aha ... there it is," he called out
triumphantly, and demonstrated with his hand. "From the right
shoulder blade across to the left ribs, then straight around my
middle losing itself in the navel. I don't mention my head. That's
entirely too complicated. But God! What a freak I am. Come in,
ladies and gentlemen, and see the human chart. An illuminated chart,
lit up by pains. What do you say, Levine, do you know of a good
clinic that I can hire myself out to?"
"Nothing but your cervical plexus," Levine answered, taking off his
hat and contemplating its wet surface. "But if your devotion to
science is so keen, why not donate your carcass after death? It will
mean much more to them."
"Now as to that," Bannerman lifted his finger admonishingly, "I don't
know. I'm sensitive about it. No, I shouldn't like it at all. But
here I am, quite willing to give my living carcass. I'd stand up
before them and say: Gentlemen, watch! In another moment a pain will
light up somewhere else, and you may draw your conclusions
accordingly. Then we would all wait breathlessly, and suddenly, when
it catches me here in the forearm my hand would fly to the spot, and
they'd all say: Ah, there! ... there must be something right there.
And they would all fall on their notebooks and write: Right forearm,
peculiarly vicious; twinges every two minutes. Don't you think it's
a brilliant plan?"
"I think it's plain exhibitionism. But incidentally, if it gratifies
you at all to know it, you're probably developing a first-class case
of neuritis. If I were you I'd give up painting for a while."
"Hm ... neuritis," Bannerman said suspiciously. "What are the
symptoms?"
"Oh no ... oh no," Levine chortled. "You don't get _me_ to tell the
symptoms. People develop too much pride about such matters. A woman
that I had for a client once got very confidential with me, and came
into my office one day, sick ... sick as a dog. This was wrong with
her and that was wrong with her, and half a dozen other things, that
she recounted for a half-hour in a heartbroken voice." Levine
stopped to wring his hat into the bowl where Bannerman's wet napkin
was floating. "Well, by the time she was through I decided she was a
perfect case of catarrhal enteritis. Yes, sir, I built up a
beautiful case for her, by picking a symptom here and a symptom
there--those that I needed, you understand--and discarding others
that didn't help the case. And then, when we were all through and
she was quite enthusiastic, a dreadful thing happened. 'Do you have
diarrhœa?' I asked. 'Are your excreta green in color?' No ... no
... that wasn't the case at all. Conditions were quite otherwise in
fact. 'Very well, then,' I said, 'it isn't catarrhal enteritis at
all.' Would you believe it ... she was completely broken up! She
wilted, she was crushed. I tried to fix it for her when I saw how
disappointed she was. We searched together among all the other
symptoms, those we had discarded, to see whether there was anything
we had overlooked that might fit in. There wasn't, of course. Her
case was completely ruined. 'Madam,' I said, 'go to a specialist.
This matter is very complicated.' And she did, and she called me up
some weeks later, and she was just chirping with happiness. 'He
says,' she said over the telephone, 'it's a _perfect_ case of an
infected liver.' Emphasis on the perfect, you understand. Yes, my
boy, it was so perfect that she died of it a month later. Why she
had to. What's that you're making?"
Bannerman covered the object he was working on. "It's a doll," he
said sheepishly.
"Really? Well, why not?"
"Oh, I wouldn't bother with a thing like this if I weren't called
upon to do it. It's for a bazar. Several well-known artists have
been asked to make dolls and I'm among them. Do you know about the
Young People's Philanthropic League? It's a wonderful idea. No one
can belong unless they're under twenty-three. The idea," he
concluded sententiously, "is to enlist the youth of the country."
"Yes ... I see. Some old procuress runs it, I suppose?"
"What do you mean?"
"There are some women," Levine began, striding about the studio and
whirling his arms in an effort to dry himself, "_old_ women, who,
finding that they can no longer solicit men, compromise by soliciting
youth. Young people become a sex to them ... a disgusting vice. I'm
right, that an old woman runs it?"
Bannerman looked thoughtfully before him. "Well, there's Mrs.
Wainwright," he said slowly, "a sort of preserved woman. But come to
think of it now, she does give you the feeling of being old as mother
earth, just because she's so preserved. Incidentally, Levine, you're
sprinkling water on that picture. There's the faucet in the bathroom
that I use as a hatrack."
"Yes, I saw one of them the other day," Levine continued after a
temporary retirement to the bathroom. "I was standing on the steps
of the library and she came sailing along with her victims, and
mounted the steps and took out all sorts of banners and posters, and
prepared for some sort of demonstration. Whew! ... how she reeked of
being old. And in the midst of it, while she was fluttering around
and giving directions, she stopped before one of the rather
better-looking girls, and chirps out: What I like about you young
people is your _youngness_. Yes, take my word for it. Whenever a
movement has the word youth in it, be sure one of these old
procuresses runs it."
Bannerman continued to look thoughtful for a while and then sighed by
way of dismissing the problem. "Well, anyway," he said, "they're
running this bazar and all the well-known artists are making dolls
for it. No specifications as to what sort of dolls ... so I had a
very original idea. Now the others, I'm sure, are all making _dolls_
... the usual pretty little girls. I," Bannerman continued, removing
the cloth from his work with a spectacular flourish, "am making a
man-doll. Levine, what do you say to that?"
Levine gave a long appreciative whistle. "Not bad! Not bad at all,"
he said crisply, holding the doll at arm's length. "Complete ...
horribly complete. Shoes, laces, socks, tie, and ... can it be?
Cuff buttons. How did you manage it all, Bannerman? It's marvelous.
There isn't a thing omitted. Marvelous ... these little buttons in
the crutch of his pants."
Flushing at Levine's praise, Bannerman took the doll and balanced it
tenderly on his palm. "It's quite an idea, isn't it, to make a
man-doll. I thought it would make a hit. And when I thought of
doing it, I decided to make it complete, as you say. No point to it
otherwise."
Levine was studying it with narrowed eyes. "Bannerman," he began,
"come to think of it, you've hit off one of the major faults of our
American civilization."
Bannerman nodded approval.
"I mean the complete degeneration of dolls. Do you realize what has
happened to dolls in this country? How completely they've been
feminized? A degenerate fate, a terrible fate for a noble and
ancient species. Take any of the dolls of ancient civilizations. We
find they are always man-dolls, and always beautifully complete. But
here in America, the doll--"
"Precisely," Bannerman finished. "In fact that's how I got the idea.
I saw some Chinese dolls in a window, male of the species, and
something of what you said struck me then and there. It's a
beginning ... a humble beginning."
"And what is the purpose of the doll?" Levine continued with a
rhetorical wave of his hand. "To throw the civilized being into
relief by means of miniature. Very good. Yet what will excavators
two thousand years from now, let us say, be able to learn about
Americans today, if there should be only dolls to go by? After a
while, having found nothing but women dolls, they will exclaim with
horror: What, were there no men in those times?"
Bannerman, absorbed in adjusting an infinitesimal belt around the
waist of his man-doll, nodded cordially at Levine's harangue. The
pins in his mouth made him pucker his lips and scowl. "I can't talk
while I'm doing this," he announced thickly, as soon as there was
only one pin left in his mouth. "If you don't mind, Levine, play by
yourself a while. If you want to see Poldy's pictures, they're off
in that corner. Truth is, I've never taken the wrappings off.
You'll have to undress them yourself."
Except for occasional grunts from Bannerman, when operations on the
doll became too difficult, and the sound of Levine's movements as he
unwound the cloth from Poldy's pictures, there was silence in the
room. Levine worked awkwardly, making too many motions around the
canvas, and all but stepping into one of the pictures. As they
emerged he stood them against the wall, scarcely looking at them,
reserving them for a time when they could be contemplated at leisure.
"What sort of a chap was this Poldy?" he asked.
Bannerman, with his lips shut severely on the pins, looked at Levine
and shrugged his shoulders.
"I thought he came here to paint."
Bannerman nodded. After a while he removed the pins, putting his
hand to his mouth with a motion as if he had just eaten a cherry and
wanted to get rid of the pit. "Look at his portrait," he said,
noisily sucking back a thread of saliva. "He did the usual
self-portrait. Not a bad likeness, either. About the only one of
his pictures that he did well. Personally, I don't think much of a
painter who doesn't do women."
Standing away from it, his head to one side, Levine studied Poldy's
self-portrait for a long time. "Rather good-looking," he pronounced
slowly. "Yes, quite good-looking. The dark and romantic type."
"Too much jaw-bone," Bannerman said.
"A little, perhaps. Makes the face weak ... too Christ-like."
"Yes, I think myself he was the weak sort." Bannerman's voice came
muffled and distant from the closet in which he was rummaging. "He
used to tear in here at any time of the day ... or night, for that
matter, to paint something that was on his mind. Now one never has
to be so urgent about things. The results are always better if you
take it easy. Then there wasn't any scheme or central idea in his
work as far as I could figure out ... no vision. Then take his
peculiar attitude towards his money. It sort of frightened him. He
went pale if you mentioned it, looked almost guilty..." Bannerman's
voice grew fainter and trailed off into silence. He emerged and took
up the man-doll again, his face once more severe and concentrated
above it. "The hair," he mused in the interval between pins, "will
give me a lot of trouble. Whether it should be straight or curly..."
"Make him bald."
Bannerman continued to work in silence. "Straight will make him too
ferocious," he mused again, "curly is too effeminate. Did you say
make him bald?"
"Make him bald, I said."
"But why?"
"Because," and Levine felt his own hair ruefully, "baldness is the
formal hair-comb of the civilized American, isn't it? It's always
been a sign of civilization to do something decorative with the hair,
so he solves the problem by letting it fall out. Behold in me a
living example." He stroked his hair, rubbing the thinning surfaces
with a woebegone look. "Bannerman," he sighed, "take my word for it.
There's nothing more formal, more civilized than baldness."
"Curly..." Bannerman said wistfully. For a long time he held the
doll on his palm, his eye fixed tenderly and speculatively on its
tiny celluloid scalp. Then he put it down and began to stretch
himself to a loud vocal accompaniment, in the midst of which he
paused abruptly to pluck off the little white threads that clung to
his bathrobe. These he rolled between his fingers into a pill of
perfect roundness, which he carefully mounted on a wooden cube.
"Personally," he began, carrying the cube aloft with sacrificial
solemnity, "I don't think much of painters who don't do women. Now a
woman's body is all you need. There isn't any arrangement of planes
or masses that you can't achieve with a little ... research. And the
chances for composition are endless ... positively endless. And
then, what's equally important--in addition to pure composition, you
have the woman there too. Instead of--" He shuddered and looked
fearfully in the direction of Poldy's pictures, "oranges!"
Levine did not answer, too absorbed in unwrapping the pictures, and
Bannerman put the cube down on a table in the center of the room and
stepped back, surveying the arrangement with his head on one side.
In the midst of his survey, however, his face suddenly contorted
itself into a comic expression of pain, he collapsed groaning into a
chair. "I swear to you, Levine, I swear that two muscles changed
places just then. Oh lord, oh lord ... why do my muscles play leap
frog inside of me?"
"Where was it?"
"Here ... right here in the shoulder blade."
"Yes, just where it would be. Take my advice," Levine said, setting
one of Poldy's pictures against the wall, "and give up painting for a
while."
For a long time Bannerman sat there, lifting his hand from time to
time to his shoulder, with a fearful expression. He rose after a
while and walked about the room, picking his steps carefully, as if
he had the pains nicely balanced and did not want to jar them. Then
he fetched an apple from out of the confusion of his paint tubes, and
sat down again, holding it in his hand. When Levine looked round in
the fading light, he saw Bannerman's plump white fingers vaguely and
brightly outlined against the apple, and for a moment he had the
feeling that the fingers were a five-petalled calyx, part of the
fruit, and that Bannerman would have to pry them away. He felt sorry
for his friend. Though there was too much flesh to Bannerman, it did
not barricade him in, but seemed rather to be porous ... to leave him
more exposed than others. And he tried to carry it off so gallantly,
his head ticking from side to side when he walked, a light
accompaniment to the major lilt of his body. It struck Levine for
the first time, when he saw his friend sitting there with the apple,
that he had always to be holding something; and after the core had
been slowly and analytically consumed, he observed how Bannerman sat
and rubbed his finger-tips lightly against each other, the
auto-erotic play of his fingers when there was nothing to hold. But
at length Bannerman rose and gathered his bath-robe around him. He
announced that he would take a bath, in a tone of finality which
seemed to indicate that this would solve everything. Soon sounds of
splashing and singing emerged from the bathroom.
Left alone with the pictures, Levine was able to look at them more
carefully. None of them had names, he noticed, and only one bore a
signature almost illegibly scrawled ... Leopold Crayle. Another, the
profile of a woman with dark flowing hair and protruding teeth, had
writing on it: Hold this upside down. He did this, and so regarded,
the profile took on a strange quality, the teeth growing out of the
flesh like shining white petals. Levine stared at it for a long time.
Besides this there was a picture of three oranges floating against a
black background that might have been a curtain; their surfaces were
of a bright unnatural yellow, and in one there had been an attempt to
present a mottled skin, but all that it looked like was a rash of
green dots. There was a boy leaning out of a window, his hair of a
fiery red; a landscape in the midst of which rose a mountain shaped
like a pyramid, sculpted into steps on one side, and a tall
white-robed figure standing on the third step. On the top of the
mountain a goat-like animal stood with one foot lifted, and at the
base three-quarters of a sun was visible, with rays of every bright
color. There was a strange animal floating through a rain of stars,
with five red-colored teats arranged between its dainty curved legs.
And the last picture showed a group of kitchen objects on a dazzling
white table-cloth. All these Levine looked at. He saw that the
drawing was bad and the paint laid on thick and uneven. Yet there
was something in the pictures that held his attention. In the
darkness of the room a dazzling brightness of color radiated from
them, it seemed that all the yellow in the world had converged on the
three oranges. Though he could not guess at the meaning of the
mountain and the goat-like animal on top, or the strange creature
with floating legs that went through the sky, he saw that the artist
had caught the brightness of things, seeing as a child does, perhaps
... dazzling color before shape or meaning can be discerned ... and
that the sense of this brightness had been so urgent and terrible
that he had forced his hand into drawing it. And then there was that
other picture which Levine had come specially to see, the one of
Marah Howard. Here too there was a brightness to be caught, but not
to be snared so easily by color. As Levine studied the picture,
holding it on his knees and peering at it in the dim light, he saw
that Poldy had faithfully remembered the small child-like features,
and faithfully traced the perfect oval of her face. But the eyes
looked out at him too brightly. He knew this was wrong, he knew by
heart the calm glance of those eyes, that always seemed to have just
alighted with the simple and indifferent movement of a bird. Her
hair was straight, falling away from each side of the swift part, and
curling up at the ends; and it had pleased Poldy to paint it in
separate sheaves, so that she seemed to be wearing long brown petals
drooping downward. Studying this caprice of the artist, Levine
realized how much more faithful it was to her than any literal
portraiture. In the formal yet child-like headdress, the two natures
in her were expressed ... that mixture of child and woman which
seemed to be reflected also in her body ... in the slight flexible
torso and the slow-moving limbs. It seemed always as if she had just
paused from swift motion, as if a heaviness were creeping into her
limbs, a transformation growing on her from the earth; her body, like
that of the maidens in mythology, always on the point of beginning
its tree-life. This too Poldy must have observed. But in the
picture there was no hint of that fluent motion which her body
possessed, whether still or moving; the figure stood heavily in the
canvas, with one hand needlessly, foolishly upraised. In an access
of anger at this gesture, Levine put the portrait from him, resentful
that Poldy had clutched at this brightness, feeling a sudden
revulsion for the pictures that stood before him. Decidedly Poldy
would not come back. There was nothing here to recall him, perhaps
he had even forgotten the paintings. And even if he remembered, yet
what was there to come back to? Here, for a moment, Poldy had tried
to possess the bewildering world in some way, to create a unity for
himself ... and there were only absurd fragments. His mind dwelled
in the shadowed periphery of things ... what center was sufficiently
bright to lure him and hold him? For a time, perhaps, he had seen in
Marah the central brightness of all things, he had probably come one
night in haste to paint her, to possess her in that way along with
whatever else dazzled him. Again Levine studied the portrait, with
its intently staring eyes and petal hair, and the grotesque
admonishing gesture, and his gorge rose with anger against Poldy.
And yet, he reflected bitterly, had he himself any right to
possession? Not, certainly, by that act which constitutes the
technical ownership of a woman, not by any token except his own
desire. That he should desire her physically! There was, to Levine,
something infinitely humiliating in this, a sense that he had been
tricked ... tricked into a wish that, by the profoundest standards of
his being, he knew to be false to himself ... yet from which there
was no escape until it had been fulfilled. And he knew that the
whole burden of it rested with him. She was too secure in herself
either to desire him or repel him. She would never give him a sign,
imprisoned as she was in the perfect balance of her nature ... the
balancing of mind and body against each other to the point of
complete stillness. He knew that she could only take him passively,
when the time came that he willed it.
Then why did he hesitate? What was it that caused him to hesitate,
torturing himself day after day, ashamed when he thought of it, and
unable to put it from his mind? It was a time for pairing off, he
reflected. There was nothing else to do in the world, of any
importance. It was a time when men and women paired off like
children playing on the shore, saying: "Here we will dig a hole and
see what comes into our cup." So that each couple caught from the
sea a tiny circle of brackish water. "It will be brackish..." Levine
said to himself, and the word satisfied him for a moment and seemed
to make things clearer.
Bitterly pondering these things, Levine walked back and forth in the
dark studio, taking a zigzag path through the statues and pictures.
Meanwhile he was conscious of a presence in the room, something
watching him with a cunning infinitesimal eye. He stooped down in
the dark and looked at Bannerman's man-doll. "Yes, complete..." he
said again, "terribly complete..." Holding it gingerly in his
fingers, he carried the doll to the mantle and turned it with its
back to the room. Tired now and bewildered, he sat down in an old
rocker and shut his eyes. And now he remembered Poldy again, and
what he had written ... hold this upside down. In those words he
beheld all the vastness of Poldy's dream. He heard also their
infinite pleading.
2
Early next morning Levine was awakened by the telephone. "Be up," a
voice commanded. "I'll be over in ten minutes with important news."
He recognized the voice of his colleague, a slight lisp in it that
always flashed before his mind the vision of a pink tongue struggling
against large teeth. Reluctantly Levine started to dress, feeling
stiff from a sleepless night, and unequal to the impending interview.
When he was ready he went to the door and unlocked it, then sat down
at the desk, his hands clasped patiently before him. And this
fore-handed unlocking of the door, this posture of waiting at the
desk, were strange to him. Strange also to find that he could not
bring himself to say come in, when he heard the knocking. Clandon
knocked several times, waited, coughed, rattled the knob and
discovered he could enter. "Don't you ever lock this door?" he asked
as he hung up his hat and sat down opposite Levine. He took a
newspaper from his pocket and laid it folded before him.
Unconsciously imitating Levine's immobile pose, he clasped his hands
over it.
"Levine," he said impressively, "the Eldridge case is cleared up.
Last night at 8:55 Smith confessed. Out of a clear sky ... suddenly
called for his lawyer and sat down on the bed and recited it from
beginning to end. Out of a clear sky, mind you, after he'd been
holding out so long that some people almost began to think he was
innocent. Look at that." He unfolded the paper and held it up
before him like a bulletin. "'Smith confesses under attorney's
cross-fire.'"
Levine looked at the headlines. "What of it?" he asked.
"What _of_ it! That's a silly question, it seems to me." Clandon's
face emerged above the paper with lifted eyebrows. "Can't you see
that if Smith confessed, Konig is likely to do it, too? They catch
it from each other. Why, it's--it's tremendously important," he
spluttered, his face reddening. "It will shorten the prosecution by
months."
Levine lowered his eyes, as if the headlines that Clandon held before
him were too bright.
"Shorten it by months, I say, a question of months. The best thing
that could happen just now. Once Konig hears of it, he'll tell, all
right. You see if the contagion doesn't get him. Yes ... nothing, I
repeat, nothing that we could think of could have been more fortunate
for us at this moment."
"Not that," he continued briskly, unfolding a packet of legal papers,
"I haven't just the right questions for the next grilling. Sat up
all night fixing them, and somewhere among them, you can be sure, is
_the_ question ... the one that always betrays them. You never can
tell which one it is, but it's always there. Remember, Levine, what
I always say when things begin to drag. Keep turning corners. Never
go straight ahead. Keep turning corners. Suddenly you'll turn the
right corner and find what you want. Keep asking questions.
Suddenly you'll find the right question. Read them." He handed the
packet to Levine, and waited with his head thrown back, studying the
ceiling. "Good, don't you think?" he asked, when the papers were
returned to him and he was folding them back in his wallet. Levine
did not answer, and midway in his manœuvers Clandon paused, his
head half turned away, looking at Levine with a coquettish smile.
"Good, don't you think?"
"I think they're quite good."
"Rather ... rather. Something there that's sure to trip him up.
We've got to make more of a to-do, I decided, over his failure to
mention the money he borrowed. The big question is, the crux of the
whole situation is: Why did he hide the fact that he borrowed money
from her?"
Levine mused. "Four dollars ... the sum was so small he was probably
ashamed of it."
"Ah, but that's where you're wrong," Clandon snapped. "Just where
you're wrong! _Because_ the sum was so small, why should he hide it?
Why? unless there was a pretty good reason for it. Now if he had
borrowed four hundred dollars, or forty, or even fourteen, let us
say--yes, even so small a sum as fourteen, then one could understand
a certain desire to conceal it. He doesn't want us to know how far
he was indebted to his victim. Now that's logical. But when a man
goes out of his way to conceal the fact that he borrowed four
dollars, out of his way, mind you..." he finished by shaking his head
solemnly.
"I'll tell you what," Levine said, rousing himself with too much
energy from the reverie into which he had fallen while Clandon spoke.
"We'll go over the questions again this afternoon. I'll be at your
office at three, how's that?"
"You just saw them."
"Yes, but I want to read them more carefully, that's all. Just now,
when you handed them to me, I merely glanced at them. The truth
is..." he paused and looked imploringly at Clandon, trying to placate
his fierce stare, "I merely counted them. Thirty, aren't there?"
"Thirty!" the word clicked. Clandon paused, his hat suspended above
him, arrested in its descent on the thin yellowish hair. In that
posture he stood and surveyed Levine, his eyes moving deliberately
from the bright hexagonal glasses down to Levine's red slippers.
"Nothing to change, I hope?"
"No, I think not. In fact I'm sure of it. I just want to look them
over when I'm less tired."
"As you say," Clandon answered with elaborate courtesy. "At three,
then, in my office. You might, however, read the account of Smith's
confession before that. Only for Smith read Konig. 'Konig confesses
under attorney's cross-fire.' How does that sound to you?" His
voice came back in an indrawn falsetto. "Try it over ... try it
over," he sang from the doorway.
Levine took the paper and began to read; but just as Clandon was
disappearing, he looked up as if reminded of something.
"Konig can't confess," he said sharply, "unless he's guilty."
The door was hastily shut and Clandon turned and stared at him. "Do
you doubt it?" he asked softly.
"I don't know..."
A perceptible time elapsed before Clandon spoke again, with
forefinger wagging impressively. "All I can say, Levine, all I can
say, is that such an attitude on your part makes the prosecution of
the case extremely difficult. Besides, it's unheard of. I might say
it foredooms us to defeat. It would be better to resign now, Levine,
than to go on in this spirit. But fortunately ... fortunately for
us, I _know_ he is guilty."
"How do you know?"
Again Clandon looked at Levine, curiously, as if his friend had
suddenly changed color before his eyes. "By the evidence," he
snapped, and stopped. The tip of his tongue struggled ineffectually
against his teeth, and above this struggle his eyes looked at Levine
with mute reproach. At last he turned and slammed the door behind
him.
* * * * * * *
Levine put the paper away from him with an expression of infinite
disgust. There was a tightening in his throat, as if each detail
that he had been reading had crammed him too full. He was not
interested in the confession, he read almost without grasping the
meaning of the sentences. What struck him was the routine of things
... how, once Smith had announced a desire to confess, one step
followed inevitably on the other. It seemed as if a machinery was
set in motion over which no one had any control, and that there was
no end or purpose to it, and yet the motions had to start at a
certain cue and could not stop themselves. It was this nausea with
the routine of it that Levine felt now, that made him put the paper
aside with the swift angry movement of one who has suddenly had
enough.
He rose to walk off his anger. Yes, Clandon was a fool, he
reflected, with his turning the right corner, his theory of the
question. In his own time a man confessed. Nothing that others
could do to him could hasten that time. Had there not been the case,
some time ago, of Edward Reddick ... who, a year after others had
been tried for his crime and acquitted, had written to the police
announcing himself as the murderer? And when they refused to heed
it, had he not come in person and proved to them step by step that he
was guilty? Because, Levine told himself, a man can be glutted with
his crime; he can have too much of it to keep to himself, and when
that time came he vomited it out, and then one said he confessed.
Glutted ... that was the word to remember ... and strangely enough,
with that word his irritation passed. He sat down on the bed, and
feeling calm again, began to take off his slippers and change into
his shoes. He remembered now how Clandon had looked just before he
turned and slammed the door. Those eyes glaring fiercely at him
above the struggling tongue and teeth ... what were they like? You
might think of the prow of a ship with a struggling of waves at its
base, and two lights staring steadfastly above them. Clandon's eyes
were the lights and his tongue and teeth churned under them. The
pity of it ... that Clandon had been unable to say what he wanted.
Levine smiled to himself as he finished tying his shoes, deftly
tightening the bows.
But he was still bending over when the telephone rang again. The
sudden anger that filled him projected him across the room, but there
he stopped as if paralyzed. He seemed to be trying to speak to the
instrument above the anger in his throat and the noise of the
ringing, and at last the words came harshly from him.... "What do
you want ... what do you want of me?" An expression of defiance
settled on his face, he stared at the telephone as if to show it that
he would brazen out the ringing. And not until it had stopped did he
turn away, to lie on the bed feeling ill and exhausted from his
paroxysm. For the time that he lay there his mind was a complete
void, until a question, sounding distinctly in the room as though
someone were speaking it, made him sit up again. Who is glutted? ...
the question said.
Yes, how strange that he had not understood before this that the word
applied to himself. And having found the word, one had, he
reflected, already found the solution. It was clear that he could
not go on with his work. The steps he must take were simple and
inevitable: first to see Clandon and tell him that he would resign
from the Konig case ... then he could reflect on the next move.
Perhaps to go away. That too was obvious. But where and for what
purpose? Well, later he could answer those questions. It was
sufficient now to know that he must go away, escape somewhere. It
was foolish, foolish to talk only of criminals confessing. There was
a time when everyone became glutted with what he was doing. Now it
was his own turn to confess...
Then he must call Clandon to cancel the three o'clock appointment.
With that the solution began immediately. But then what reason to
give? What could he say, so that Clandon would not come around to
protest? Why not go there at three and count the questions again?
Levine lifted the receiver, keeping his thumb on the hook. He held
it to his ear for a moment, and then put it back, softly, as though
someone might overhear him. Suddenly all his anger was concentrated
on Clandon. It was Clandon who bound him to everything, who stood
before him blocking the way to escape, with his tongue and teeth
churning foolishly in his face. Again Levine made an effort to call
him, clenching his hand around the stem of the telephone as if he
would crush it. A voice kept asking for the number, and he listened,
trying to think of the number, unable to recall it, though a moment
before it had been in his mind. Then very softly, in fear of being
overheard by the voice, he put the receiver back. He spoke out loud:
Sit down ... sit down, you fool, and think...
What was he doing ... what was happening to him? Think.... But he
did not think. He was only aware of himself sitting at the desk and
resting his head on his hands ... he could only recall everything he
had done since Clandon left, with a sudden sense of the strangeness
of his behavior and a realization of his loneliness--the loneliness
of his anger which no one saw. Now he felt like someone groping in a
dark room, who becomes aware, because of the darkness, of all the
gestures he makes ... stretching his arms in front of him, letting
his hand crawl along the table, frowning and pursing his lips. In a
dark room ... who could see him or hear? Twice he had spoken out
loud...
And only a moment ago the solution seemed so clear ... Then finding
the right word, Levine reflected bitterly, was not enough. Now,
having come to the end of all words, he longed for unconsciousness,
for a way to forget himself, even if it was only being absorbed in
some casual trifling thing that was near him. In his childhood, he
recalled, this had always been the solution ... the tired drifting
reverie that came when his passion was over. And now, remembering
this, he raised his head and stared before him, and let himself
become absorbed with the pattern of the wall-paper, tracing the
intricate winding of it ... until for a while he did forget himself.
Then he found something else ... the two gold oblongs in the wall,
each with its black electric socket; and for the first time he noted
that they were close to each other, one oblong put in vertically and
the other horizontally ... and merely noting this fact gave him a
curious indifferent pleasure. And then he seemed to see Bannerman
standing near them, as if it were a picture he had painted, and
Bannerman waved his hands at the electric plugs and said: "Well, what
do you think of _that_?" After which Bannerman stepped back and put
his head on one side and continued: "Good, isn't it! You see the
idea ... I'll explain it to you. There are two women and they're
both fat. Only one is fat latitudinally, and the other is fat
longitudinally. It is," Bannerman concluded profoundly, "the _idea_
of the picture."
Then Levine's reverie shifted to Marah ... He thought of her
sleeping; her dancing body, having taken all its poses while it was
awake, lying straight and still now in a negation of them ... in a
gesture that was an erasure of all dancing. He saw the straight
limbs with their perfectly carved cheek of muscle, blue-gold with
hair and veins; and the faint line of the thighs, where the thighs
are cupped in an ancient attitude of prayer. Her body lay immobile,
no other pattern to it than its own intrinsic lines. Her body lay
remote from him and unattainable ... and, having come to this word,
Levine knew that his thoughts had reached their completion. And
again he tried to assign the blame ... whether it was his own fault,
the fear--no, the _faith_--that it would taste brackish to him; or
whether it was the perfect circle of Marah's nature, as yet so
shut-in and complete that nothing could enter it ...
And again finding no answer to this question, he gave himself over to
the story of how they had met ... a story that he told himself often,
hoping to find some comfort in it, a little assurance that they were
in some way fated to each other, because of the strange and devious
way in which they had met. But here a voice said with sarcastic
inflection, "Strange and devious?" And Levine had to stop and
explain patiently that for him to have acted impulsively was indeed
strange and devious. "Over-emphasis, then," the voice said sharply,
adding, "she is merely the foil for your impulse." He smiled
bitterly in acknowledgment, admitting that it was true he had never
seen her clearly ... But rather than go astray any further in these
thoughts, he gave himself over to the story, beginning with that hot
crowded day when he had been walking through the streets ... so tired
that he seemed to move on the larger propelling motion of the crowd,
rather than by his own efforts.
Merely for a place to rest he had entered a theatre, and spent the
first numbers in accustoming his eyes to the dark, uneasy in the vast
auditorium until he could discern the balconies and arched dome; and
the faint outline of faces all around him, that looked so listlessly,
so somnolently at everything that passed before them. By an effort
he concentrated on the stage. Dancers were moving there, black
silhouettes that seemed intent on a business of their own,
indifferent to anyone watching. He found himself following one
dancer through all the intricate threading to and fro, because, he
thought, of something familiar in her gestures. And as this
conviction grew, a feeling of intense excitement rose within him, he
had the illusion that he could see her face and that he had known it
for a long time. He thought too he could see the expression of her
eyes, changing with the movements of her head.
Later he knew that this sense of recognition had been only a memory
... the composite memory of women which he had gathered all his life,
of all the women he had ever seen dancing swiftly and joyously in
pictures; and that now it was concentrated, suddenly and with the
terrific force of something too long diffused. But at the time
nothing had seemed strange to him. When he came in from the street
he was committed to a new world and to a mood of acceptance; and
nothing that he thought or felt at the time surprised him. Besides,
he knew that whenever he was too tired things like that happened.
Through the breach in his consciousness that tiredness made, old
sentimentalities flowed in ... feelings that he was inclined to laugh
at otherwise. And they came with a special vengeance, because he had
withstood them so long...
He had hardly noticed the rest of the performance, all his senses
dazed with a new feeling. And it had not occurred to him that he
would ever have to leave the theatre, until there was a concerted
movement of people going out. But, as he drifted out with them, he
had stopped, hardly aware a second beforehand that he was going to do
it ... and inquired the way backstage of one of the ushers. After
that, the moments of standing confused and self-conscious in endless
corridors, wondering which way to turn, while a young man in
shirt-sleeves stared at him, and shifted his pipe in his mouth to
stare better ... then asked Levine a question that demanded his
telling the whole story. Incredible it was to be standing in that
corridor telling what he wanted to the young man in shirt sleeves.
He was, perhaps, dreaming aloud and consciously; and a specially
painful moment in his dream came when the young man took the pipe
from his mouth and held it suspended in air, as if this was a sight
that required staring at with all his features.
She had not looked as he imagined. He was not even sure that she was
the one whose movements he watched in the theatre. Yet what did it
matter? Of its own momentum, now, the adventure went on ... she was
for all times identified with the dancing figure he had singled out.
He remembered also that she had not laughed. Recalling it now,
Levine pressed his hands to his forehead, pressed his eyes until he
could see them wavering in his palms.... trying to savor again the
wonder of that moment when he spoke and she had not laughed. But the
next moment something made his hands fly apart, he looked out at the
room, wide-eyed and thoughtful. Was it that which bound him to her,
then ... his gratitude for her not laughing? Somberly, his glance
transfixed, Levine considered ... It would be a strange thing if he
was bound all his life, only because of his gratitude for that
moment; if all along he had been deceiving himself, and only now the
mechanism of it was clear to him. The mechanism of it ... he smiled
at that word. How many words are coming to me today, he thought.
But he covered his eyes again, and something within him said wearily:
what of it ... what of it. People were bound to each other in
stranger ways...
At last Levine rose and went over to the mirror. He put his glasses
on and a new expression came into his face.. He leaned forward and
studied his reflection curiously. "You're a strange fellow, Levine,"
he said aloud. "You always think you have escaped, but something..."
he leaned closer, "something always overtakes you." And now it
seemed like a very easy thing to call up Clandon and say he would not
come.
3
At three o'clock that afternoon he was walking with Marah. The
morning was far away. Of all the morning turmoil only one question
remained, and this kept going through his head with a rhythm that was
part joyous surprise, part reproach. The question was: did you
believe in this ... Because it was so good to be walking with her, he
knew that he should have believed in it that morning; he knew that if
he had only taken the time to believe it, nothing could have troubled
him from that moment forth.
Did you believe in this ... It was always his custom, he told himself
as he strode along ... conscious of Marah's quick and irregular steps
beside him ... never to believe in the next moment. When he
despaired there was no future time ... from the earliest years of his
life he remembered it was so. He remembered the long nights when he
lay awake, tortured by the conviction that his suffering would not
end; and how, strangely and unexpectedly, there had always been the
next day. How, also, the custom had developed of asking himself: did
you believe in this ... And now, with the same old ring of delight
and reproach the question long forgotten returned to him. "Fool ...
fool," he laughed to himself. "It was so simple."
He was walking fast, gaining momentum with each step, until he lost
the sense of movement and was aware of it only by the flight of trees
and bushes beside him. Though Marah tried to keep up with him she
had to make little running steps now and then, and she laughed softly
at this as if she were cheating him in a game. There was a certain
impersonality in the air ... neither sun nor wind, yet the air was a
sharp and definite presence. Behind them as they walked the
buildings of the city lost in height and distinctness, and one time
when Levine glanced back they seemed to have moved closer together
and to be crouching in ambuscade.
"Look, Marah," he cried with delighted surprise, "doesn't it seem to
you the buildings have moved closer together? Doesn't it seem as if
they had been watching us pass, and like people when they watch
something strange passing, they move closer together as the strange
thing goes farther away?"
They laughed together, and Marah had to study the effect with
narrowed eyes before they turned and continued on their way. But
they had gone only a short distance ahead when something darted from
the bushes and flew against her face, stinging with the impact of its
wings. She turned her cheek to Levine, fearful that there was a mark
on it.
"I don't think so," Levine answered, stopping to inspect it.
"They say," Marah observed, shutting her eyes, her face upturned for
Levine's inspection, "that if you take the honey away from bees in
winter, you must give them sugar instead."
"Yes, you have to make candy for them."
"And they say that if bees have no place to put their honey they
suffer terribly."
"Yes, I've heard that you have to build them a place to put their
honey. If you don't, they go elsewhere." He examined her cheek
carefully once more and released her. "Why, it's nothing," he said
gaily, "only the force of the wings that hurt you. Now you would
think that if you stayed twenty yards away from a bee-hive and
molested them from that distance, you would be absolutely safe. But
a friend of mine says he once shot into a hive twenty yards away and
they flew for him anyway..."
As they strode manfully ahead, echoes of their talk lingered in
Levine's mind. It seemed to him, after a while, that in speaking of
the bees they had just been speaking of a strange people, and he
thought this over, remembering that it had often been so in his
boyhood. In his boyhood, he remembered, they used to sit around
recounting to each other the habits of an animal ... saying, for
instance, they never attack; or, they spend most of their time in
water; or, they hide all winter. And then it happened that the
animal they were telling about became so mysterious to him, so much
like an eccentric person, that he used to think it was listening to
them, he had even been frightened of its presence while they talked.
But now it was good to have this feeling again ... the second time in
their walk that a definite gesture of his boyhood came back to him.
It made him laugh and catch Marah's hand as she ran her few steps to
keep up with him. "Very well, then, a little slower..."
But he could not go more slowly, he could not help striking the trees
as he passed or leaping for the low branches. Marah glanced at him
shyly and tried not to notice that he missed the branches every time.
She had never before known him to behave so much like a small boy, to
laugh so unreasonably; and because of this there was a heaviness in
her heart. In his strange gaiety she felt a subtle threat to
herself, she knew the heaviness in her heart for fear ... the fear
that today she would no longer be able to escape him. For a while
she smiled in response to his gaiety with an abstracted air, as
someone does who is busy and has to be companionable to a child. But
after a time his sudden irresponsible outbursts of laughter repelled
her, she found that she did not want to look any more at his huge
body leaping up for the branches. "Let's sit down," she said
sharply, and stopped short. "I'm tired." So they found a shaded
circle of grass, ringed in with boulders that served, as they rested,
for backs. But Levine, his gaiety suddenly at an end, looked at her
with a puzzled expression.
* * * * * * *
After a while Marah took off her hat and crushed it into her pocket.
She thrust her hair back so that it curled in a soft panel for her
face, against which the taut finely-modeled cheeks were more clearly
defined. Swiftly her mood changed. Lying flat on her stomach, her
feet waving in the air, she looked up at Levine ... at his glasses in
which the sun made bright prisms that shifted themselves like a
kaleidoscope whenever he moved. His serious stare she returned with
equal solemnity, and spoke in a solemn manner.
"Your eyes behind your glasses," she began, "look for all the world
like fish staring out of a bowl ... just as mournful. Tell me, what
do fish think about when they stare out so mournfully?"
Levine picked up a twig that lay near him, and began to rub a thin
rut into the earth. The twig broke under his hand and he threw it
away. "Shall I tell you what I was thinking about?" he asked slowly.
And in answer to her nod he said, "I was thinking, just then, that I
first fell in love with you on account of your shoes."
Her eyes widened incredulously.
"It's the way you lie there," Levine continued earnestly, "that
reminds me of the time when I found you asleep in my room. You were
lying with your face to the wall, and I remember that as I stood
there looking at you I noticed your shoes. They were very tiny, I
remember, with very high heels, and I saw how they were fastened to
your feet. I can't really explain the feeling I had at that moment,
Marah. But then I saw how your feet were imprisoned, and it made me
feel such tenderness for you, and pity..." He ignored her quick
impudent laughter. "I think I began to love you from that moment."
Her laughter arrested by the constrained tone of his last words,
Marah pondered this. She was about to speak when a party of ragged
little boys appeared in the clearing, held an excited conference, and
all but leaped over her as they continued on their flight. Later
came a straggler, who stopped to say breathlessly, "Which way ...
which way..." But before they could answer he too was off. Marah
looked after him. "So ... you pitied me," she said.
"But not in the way you think," Levine answered quickly, his eyes
pleading for respite from her mockery. "It was more understanding
than pity, Marah. In that moment I understood how many things bound
you ... how you were bound by your beauty. I saw then that you were
two persons ... the Marah that thought and saw, and the Marah that
men saw. And when I understood that I forgave you a great many
things."
"Oh, what did you forgive me?" she asked lightly.
Levine pondered in his turn. "I don't know ... I don't know," he
said slowly. "Perhaps," he added almost to himself, "I think there
is something to forgive because..."
She caught him up sharply. "Because of what?"
He looked away, and an involuntary bitter smile curved his lips.
"Because I feel hurt..." he said.
She did not answer and a long silence fell between them, in which
only the occasional clash of their glances betrayed the interplay of
their thoughts. In this silence they heard people talking and
laughing on the other side of the boulders, and after a while they
knew they were no longer thinking of each other, but only listening
to the words and laughter that drifted toward them. Levine stood up
without warning and spoke in a petulant whisper. "How many people do
you think there are on the other side?"
Marah listened. "I can distinguish only three voices."
"And someone who laughs all the time."
"No, the laugh belongs to the man with the deep voice."
"No, it belongs to another person who doesn't talk at all, but only
laughs."
She looked up at him wonderingly.
"I tell you there's someone there who laughs and doesn't do any
talking," he insisted irritably. "Laughs in a way that nauseates
me." He gathered their things and walked away, looking angrily in
the direction of the voices. His face was red when he sat down and
he did not look at her. "It wouldn't be so bad," he muttered, "if he
said something once in a while." And he seemed so unhappy that she
put her hand on his arm and tried to console him, patting it
awkwardly. "I'm sorry, Joseph. Let's go away from here. We can go
where it's altogether quiet."
"No, I'm quite all right here, thank you. It's fairly quiet here.
Let me put my head in your lap instead."
"Do you know what I wish, Marah?" he said after a while, shutting his
eyes against the bright blue of the sky. "I wish I could lie this
way all day, with nothing to do but listen. I wish I could hear the
wind at this moment. There would be something healthful in it...."
He paused, observing thoughtfully the fluted brown trunk of the tree
that shaded them, and the floating branches above it. "Sometimes I
amuse myself," he continued and smiled a little at his own words, "by
thinking of all the sounds that no one hears. When part of a glacier
cracks and rumbles away by itself ... to be present at such a lonely
sound. Or when it thunders, I should like to be alone in the hills,
listening to it. But I would be satisfied at this moment if only I
could hear the wind. It would be healthful for me. Or what do you
say..." he looked up at her, smiling and shading his eyes. "Is it
all because my head is in your lap?"
Though Marah touched his forehead and the arched line of his eyebrows
lightly with her fingers, in her expression as she looked down at
him, and in that gesture of her fingers, there was something
wondering and remote, something puzzled. She did not speak ... only
in answer to Levine's insistent look she smiled slowly. Then he shut
his eyes and was silent for a long time, she thought he must have
fallen asleep.
"Joseph ... Joseph," she called softly.
But he did not stir until a long time after, until the sun came
suddenly through the leaves and touched his face, and he opened his
eyes and looked up at her without surprise, as if she were part of
his dream. "Do I tire you, Marah?" he asked.
"No, I'm all right."
"Strange for me to sleep in the day-time," he mused, "and
out-of-doors too."
"I called to you."
"Did you? I thought I heard it from very far away, and I tried to
struggle back to you. But it was better to sleep."
"It's quiet here..."
"Yes..." He closed his eyes and listened for the quiet, feeling it
all about them, complete and authentic. On his face now was the
expression of a small boy who is content. He reached his hands up to
Marah and drew her face towards him, and kissed her gently. "_Now_ I
am happy..."
"But this morning," he continued, frowning a little, "do you know
what happened to me this morning, Marah? I was very unhappy, and I
heard a ringing in my ears, and it seemed that the only way I could
forget my unhappiness was to listen to that sound in my ears. But a
voice warned me, 'Don't listen to it.' Because this was like one of
the perils in the fairy-tale ... if you once listened to it, then you
would have to spend your whole life listening to it." He looked up
at her, and there was infinite fear in his eyes. "Marah," he cried
in a low voice, and it seemed as though he were calling to her from a
great distance ... "don't let me listen to it. Help me, Marah, not
to hear it."
"Do you hear it now?" she asked softly.
He sighed, as though something that had been troubling him for a long
time was settled at last. After a while he shut his eyes and spoke
with low halting words, seeming to listen for each word first before
he could say it aloud.
"When I was little, Marah," he said, "I had the dream of spending my
whole life alone on a hill, from which I could see both the rising
and the setting sun. Sometimes that dream comes back to me now ...
the earliest thing I desired, before I knew there were people in the
world. But now it seems sad to me, a little terrifying. And do you
know why it seems that way now? Because your presence has come into
the world ... because all that loneliness of nature that I used to
desire, is now only the loneliness of your not being there. And so
my earliest, my profoundest wish is lost to me ... the impersonal is
lost to me. Do you understand that, Marah? Do you know what I have
lost for you?"
"If you knew," he continued, looking up at her and smiling again at
his own words, "you would see how humble I am, how dependent on your
favor. Because there is this difference. I could have the other
thing that I desired whenever I wanted it, at my own pleasure. But
having you ... well that, you see, is entirely dependent on you.
Marah, do you see my humility before you?" But when she did not
answer again, he sat up and looked away from her. "You see, at any
rate," he said bitterly, "that I am not ashamed to parade it."
With a motion that was awkward and swift as a boy's she reached to
him; but Levine mistook the gesture, and she tried to ward him off
with outstretched arms, her eyes averted in terror. But all her
movements to release herself would not avail, and she shut her eyes
against him, waiting passively until he had finished, her face rigid
with its expression of secrecy and fear. He looked at her with
troubled eyes. "What is it, Marah?" he cried. "Dear child of mine,
can't you tell me what it is?"
But she sat for a long time with eyes half-shut and oblique, and
sighed deeply as if she were trying to awaken herself. From this
trance she turned to him at last, with a look in which there seemed
to be a profound and final understanding of things. "Yes, I think I
know what it is..." she said faintly. But seeing how Levine was
brooding in his turn, his face haggard with displeasure at himself,
she rallied and laughed lightly, and drew close to him with a
penitent gesture.
"But it's only a superstition," she said, "that occurred to me this
moment."
"Yes, tell me what it is..."
Marah folded her hands in her lap and looked before her, her eyes
darkened with their burden of unwilling knowledge. "I believe," she
said slowly, "in this: that nothing can happen to me unless I wished
for it in my childhood ... that everything that does happen to me is
in some way a fulfillment of a wish that I made as a child." She
paused, musing for the right words. "And these wishes," she
continued, "were made without my knowing it, and only by seeing what
happens to me now can I tell what they were. It _seems_ to me so,"
she added, frowning a little. "I can't tell why I believe it ... yet
it seems to me so, I think it must be so for everyone."
Pausing in his motion of feeling the blades of grass between his
thumb and forefinger, Levine pondered her words.
"Why, that must be true," he nodded gravely. "It seems so to me,
also. But tell me, Marah," he added smiling, "did you wish for me?"
"I don't know..." she smiled back to him.
"But it doesn't really matter," he retorted gaily, "because I know
that I wished for you, Marah. I know that."
"But in a way I did," Marah continued thoughtfully, laying her hand
on his arm and looking at him with steadfast eyes. "Because I
remember that one day in my childhood I made a pact with myself ...
that I must never forget myself, never lose myself in anything that
happened to me. Though why ... _why_ I made the pact," she mused,
"what happened that made me warn myself, that I can't seem to
remember at all. But I remember saying to myself: always _know_ what
is happening to you ... always be watchful..." She stopped and
raised her eyes to him with a swift appealing glance. "Do you
understand that, Joseph?" she asked sadly. "Do you see in what way I
wished for you?"
He did understand, and to hide from her the completeness and
bitterness of his knowledge, he turned away. Again he felt baffled
by the perfect balance of her nature, that security which kept her
apart from the world, content to be merely watchful. Though he
remembered such a time in his own life, he had also the bitter
knowledge of what followed ... how from being too watchful he had
grown weary, and come to desire forgetfulness ... a way to forget
himself the one thing he had never achieved. "It's not true, Marah,"
he said harshly. "It's not true that you don't want to forget
yourself..."
But she did not answer, and they sat for a long time in silence,
until, like the swift change of mood in a song, Levine's anger and
bitterness left him, and a sudden happiness assailed him, in which he
knew all their words for nonsense. "Marah..." he called from his
happiness, "Marah..." But she watched him sprawling grotesquely over
the earth, his hands caressing the grass, his lips pressed to the
ground, and again there was something remote in her expression,
something slightly puzzled. She saw him tearing the grass and
cupping it in his hands, and lifting it to his lips as though he
would drink it. And she discerned in it the pantomime of possessing
her. For a moment there seemed to be in her body the gesture of
submission, a feeling of paralysis before Levine's will ...
simultaneously she felt disgust for what she saw.
"We'd better go," she said sharply, "it's late."
"Why ... what has happened, Marah? What have I done?"
"I don't like this ... this smelling under the armpits."
"Oh, I see..." Levine sat up and looked at her angrily. He gathered
their things and they rose and walked for a long time without
speaking.
* * * * * * *
They came at last to a place where there were many small birches
standing as in a stockade, with the skeletons of large trees lying
among them. Where one birch had started to grow along the ground ...
its trunk horizontal with the earth ... and then turned sharply
upwards, they sat down to rest. The place was very quiet. Once a
large bird started from the ground with a snort of wings, and Marah
looked for it with startled eyes. But otherwise nothing moved. When
the sun broke through the leaves it was as if a group of dancers with
one motion had turned up the bright side of their fans. When the sun
went away it seemed that the fans were being slowly closed. Levine
looked up at a large maple that stood near them, and saw through the
leaves a dark lightning of branches. He noticed the dappled effect
of the leaves and saw what made it ... because on the edge of each
bright leaf there was a dark segment, where the shadow of another
leaf showed through. He noticed, also, that one of the stones in the
earth was glistening wet. "Spittle of snakes," he said to himself,
and he was surprised that these words came to him. Things occurred
to him to do. He thought of swinging on one of the branches of the
maple tree, his knees curled up, and then jumping down and letting
the branch rebound. He wanted to feel the smooth bark of the birch
trees with his finger-tips ... or take a twig and probe the soft,
damp-looking lumps of moss. Yet nothing of this was necessary. It
was not necessary to talk, or to touch Marah in order to feel her
nearness. All their words, he felt, had been spoken; and there was
nothing left now but the drift of impressions ... the lazy backwash
of his mood, like a wave that had broken in its full height. He felt
this rhythm, he felt the recession of his troubled mood. He was at
peace in this moment, and his peace would not be troubled again for
all the time that he was with Marah. He turned to her. "Now I have
you both," he said softly.
She was sitting with her chin on her hand, looking thoughtfully
before her; but rousing herself once and glancing around she caught
sight of a tree that had the first red leaves of autumn. Her gray
eyes rested on it with startled delight, and she touched Levine's arm
with a gesture as if the tree were swiftly moving away. "Do you know
what I have to say to myself when the trees turn color?" She laughed
to herself with sheer pleasure at the sight ... "I'm almost afraid of
it ... and so I keep saying to myself: is it any different from their
being green..." To see the childlike delight in her eyes, and to
hear her laughter and words, was for Levine an exquisite moment of
forgetfulness.
But now it was growing darker, and with one accord they rose and
stood uncertainly confronting each other. "Are you tired, Marah?" he
asked. She smiled to him, as if she had not understood the question,
yet wished to show that she had heard. "Shall we lie in that little
open space and look up at the sky?" and she nodded silently. They
lay down where they could see a stretch of sky fretted at its edges
with the dark silhouette of leaves, and listened for a long time to
the silence gathering around them, to a distant and ominous murmur
that seemed to come from a great distance.
"Trucks on the state road...." Levine observed drowsily. It seemed
to him that he was sleeping. The patch of sky that he saw between
the trees, the faint sprinkle of stars, the fantastic shape of the
leaves against the sky ... here what seemed to be the head of a
gigantic horse rearing up from the earth ... all this was a scene
such as only a dream could put together. It was too perfect, he said
to himself, too allegorical.... If only he could consciously will
that the dream should continue, and that Marah should always be in it
... part of the allegory, the meaning and core of it. If only he
could lie forever in his waking dream, that seemed to rest him more
profoundly than sleep.
After a time Marah sat up and clasped her hands round her knees. In
the dark she looked lonely and child-like, and she put her head down
on her knees as if she was very tired. "I had such a strange feeling
just this moment," she said. "I was looking up at the sky and I lost
all sense of looking up. I had the feeling that I was on board ship,
looking at very still blue water all around me. Is it true, do you
think, that you can forget you're looking upwards, and think you're
looking down on the sky?"
"But it should be true..." Levine said, speaking softly and
reluctantly, unwilling to break his waking dream with speech ... "Yes
... why shouldn't we be able to look upward long enough, until all
our senses are accustomed to it, and it seems no different from
looking down?"
"And the sky is really all around the earth," Marah continued in a
drowsy voice. "You see it going down to the horizon..."
She lay down again, sighing. The darkness moved closer about them,
and a single mournful cry of some animal came from the woods ... a
note hoarse and bird-like. A long time after, when the cry had been
forgotten in the silence, Levine spoke. "Didn't it sound as if there
was an idiot boy in the woods..."
"Because animals cry out that way," he mused to himself, "like idiot
boys. They open their mouths and a sound comes out, and you can't
tell whether there is joy or sorrow in their souls..."
The cry was repeated, and Marah drew closer to him. Now it was so
dark that they could not see anything beyond the place where they
lay, and only the white outline of Marah's arms circling her head in
an attitude of complete relaxation relieved the shadow. Almost
palpably they felt the silence and darkness deepening around them,
like stealthy water in which they were being slowly trapped. They
rose, knowing that this time they were not to part, and they looked
into each other's faces and saw confirmation of it. Marah drew
towards him with a quick confiding gesture, and he could only guess
by her words at the sweet and child-like fear in her heart. "Oh,
where shall we go now," she cried softly, "where shall we go now..."