Morning light anxiously pinched the cheeks of these poplar trees. The
silver blood rushed to their faces and they blushed. The garden walls
forgot their stolidity for a moment and seemed inclined to leap away,
but became sober again, resisting the twinkling trickery of morning
light. Airily suspended tales in light and colour, of no importance to
philosophers, hung over the scene. Only a snail underneath the trees,
steeped in a creeping evening, lived apart from the crisp medley of
morning lights. Laboriously, the snail moved through his explanation of
the universe. But, to blades of grass, their lives tersely centered in
green, the morning was a mysterious pressure.
The morning glowed over the garden like an incoherent rhapsody. It
lacked order and thought, and the serious eyes of teachers and jesters
would have spurned it. But Halfert Bolin, walking between rows of cold
peonies, regarded the morning with harsh approval and spoke.
“You have the brightness and flatness of a distracted virgin but your
eyes are mildly opaque. The tinseled swiftness of a courtesan’s memoirs
is yours but your heart is as shy as the clink of glass. You glow like
an incoherent rhapsody over the peonies in this garden!”
A woman whose painted face was a lurid snarl tapped Bolin on the
shoulder. Her red hair was brushed upward into a pinnacle of burnished
frenzy; her blue serge dress cast its plaintive monotone over the body
of a sagging amazon; a pink straw hat dangled from her hand. Bolin
allowed his admiration to bow.
“A babyish lisp slipping from you would make your grewsomeness perfect,
madame,” he said.
“I don’t getcha, friend,” she responded. “I’m a sporting lady from the
roadhouse down the way an’ I’m out for a morning walk. Who planted you
here, old duck?”
“I’m a cow browsing amidst the peonies,” said Bolin seriously. “Without
a thought, I feed on light and colour.”
“You don’t look like a cow,” said the woman, dubiously. “Maybe you’re
spoofing me, you funny old turnip!”
“No, I only jest with the morning,” Bolin answered, unperturbed.
“It ignores me with soaring colours and I prefer this to the minute
antagonisms of human beings. You don’t understand a word I say--you
bend beneath tepid apprehension, so I find a pleasure in speaking to
you--it’s like humming a love-song to a mud-turtle.”
“Don’t get insultin’,” said the woman with disgruntled amazement. “I
think you’re crazy.”
Bolin turned, with a smile like a distant spark, and walked away
between the peonies. The woman regarded him a moment, while a
fascinated frown battled with her painted face. Then she strode after
him and gripped his arm.
“Hey, watcha leavin’ me for?” she said in a piteously strident voice.
“For the peonies in this garden,” answered Bolin, mildly.
“Listen, don’t get mad at me,” she said. “I don’t care whether you’re
crazy or not. I like your face.”
Bolin gazed at her while sorrow loosened his face and made it glisten
spaciously.
“Can you become as spontaneously tranquil as these peonies?” he asked.
The woman tendered him her dazed frown, like an anxious servant.
“Walk with me and be quiet unless I ask you to speak,” said Bolin with
sudden harshness.
Obediently she laid a hand on his arm and they strolled down the path
between the peonies. She sidled along like an inspired puppet--she
seemed a doll touched to life by some Christ. Upon her painted face a
nun and a violinist grappled tentatively and her lips made a red scarf
fallen from the struggle. Bolin left the peonies and wandered down the
road. They came upon a boulder clad in an outline of smashed spears.
Queen Anne’s Lace grew close to its base, like the remnants of some
revel.
“This is the head of a philosopher,” said Bolin.
The woman jerkily turned her body, while pallid perplexity ate into her
paint and made her face narrow.
“You can speak,” said Bolin.
“It looks like a rock,” she answered in the voice of a child clinking
his fetters.
“We have both spoken words,” said Bolin mildly.
The shy blindness on her face glided to and fro, like a prisoner. As
she strolled with Bolin she still seemed a puppet dragged along the
dust of a road by some Christ. Bolin’s middle-aged face whistled, with
limpid chagrin, to his youth. His high cheek-bones were like hidden
fists straining against his sallow skin.
They came upon a dead rabbit stiffening by the roadside.
“Bury him,” said Bolin, gravely.
The woman clutched at her habitual self.
“S-a-a-y, what’s the idea?” she asked in a shrilly lengthened voice.
“Bury him,” repeated Bolin gravely.
With a dazed giggle she picked a dead branch from the ground and jabbed
at the loose black loam. Then she gingerly prodded the dead rabbit with
the branch, shoving it into the depression she had made. She scooped
earth over it with her foot.
“Now we’re both crazy,” she said uncertainly, and her nervous smile was
the juggled wreck of a silver helmet.
“You have buried your meekness,” said Bolin, calmly amused. “Now walk
beside me and do not speak unless, being brave, you desire to leave me.”
The woman stood gaping at him, like a vision poignantly doubting
the magician who has created it. Sullenness made her lips straight
for a moment, then faded into twitching awe. She slid her arm into
his and once more seemed a doll dragged along the dust of a road by
some distracted giant. Bolin retraced his steps; he and the woman
passed by the garden of cold peonies and came to a bend in the road.
Late afternoon blundered sedately through shades of green foliage
beneath them. Below the hilltop on which they stood, a barn-like house
crouched, its tan cerements repelling the afternoon light.
The woman tapped her chin with two fingers in a drum-beat of reality.
“Gotta get back to work, old dear,” she said, amiably squinting at
Bolin.
Bolin’s sallow face shook once and became chiseled apathy.
“So do I,” he answered, his voice like the accidental ring of light
metals. “I’m the new waiter Foley hired last week. You’ve been too busy
to notice me much.”
For a full minute the woman stood staring at him, her hands upon her
hips, her slightly bulging gray eyes like water-drops threatening to
roll down her shattered face.
“You’re the guy they call Nutty Louie,” she said at last, as though
confiding a ludicrously startling message to herself.
Then for another full minute she stood staring at him.
“We’re bughouse,” she said in a mesmerised whisper. “Bughouse.”
Bolin walked forward without a word. The woman gaped at him for a
moment and then ran after him as she had in the garden of peonies.