German could be so thorough? And she’s a negress. White blood yes ...
but it dilutes, that’s all, the mellow flow of her life. O you superior
Lucy! Yet she’s colored.
Fanny thought of the ugly prejudices which still lay rooted in her mind.
She could praise Lucy if she patronized her too. Take away the
condescension and at once she looked into a pool, misted by childhood
fears and girlish passion, of black distrust.
--No use thinking of all that. I believe I had a mind: it might have
amounted to something, too. A woman’s mind at work ... as a woman’s mind
... not as a lawyer’s or a doctor’s ... like some men’s minds: what’d
the world have said to that? Well, it’s too late. My mind is a wreck
also. It keeps on going, like an engine, broken and off its track,
ploughing the earth and itself. Going ... and going. Who knows though?
Perhaps it is not off its track. Perhaps my way is not a two-rail track
over a flat plain land. There are other dimensions.
--O I must have faith! That is the terrible thing ... how in my weakness
my faith went also. Faith and strength seem to go together. That’s a
good sign, is it not? Proves faith is not born of weakness. My faith
takes _power_. It’s hard work. Come back!
--There is nothing else. It is inevitable. Like a tree that grows. And
has its seasons. What does it know about them? ‘Now I burst into
blossoms ... now I am in leaves ... now I am stark and cold.’ I am
ashamed. Weak failure! Rescued by Clara, living on Clara, in a flat some
man gave Clara. Shame!... Well, it is Winter. Didn’t Leon know that it
all meant something?... Did he foresee a thing like this? What would he
say?... Harry was wrong. O I am sure of that. I am the answer to Harry.
What did he know of Scripture ... of Jesus? We have taken Christ and his
name. What have we done with him? What more than the Jews who refused
him? Are they Christ, themselves?... Why do I think so tenderly of Jews?
--Leon? One man.... If Edith were his, not Harry’s, would she love me?
You are nine years old, my beloved. I can see you. I can see you so
clear because I see you naked. What clothes have you on today, going to
school?... Mrs. Parker’s School. That wouldn’t change. Motherless child,
you have a mother. Can’t you feel ... O you must _feel_ your mother!...
--Suppose she could see her mother! No ... not with your young eyes. How
could they understand? Fanny shrank in her chair....--Thank God, I am
hidden away.... But my name? Let it stand. Some day perhaps, since she
is my own, she may have eyes that can see me....
--No. Never! That is all past.
She knew that this was past. She knew there was in her still living,
that which could not bear that it was: a part of her that held the
memory and hope of her child close to her breast, sucking yet giving
her warmth.
--My little girl! As you grow, you become smaller beside me. For I grow
so much faster. My little girl! Will you catch up with your mother?
The mother saw her naked. She was willowy supple, tender like a flower.
Her flesh was cream and crisp, it was like the meat of a fresh peach.
The mother saw her clothed. She stands in a blue gingham frock, almost
hidden away by a blue and white checked apron. But the black stockings
were there and the tight sleeves and the loved white neck. A dark braid
fell across her shoulder, tied with a stiff blue bow.--Her hair is not
dark! Mine ... mine is black. Smile at me. _Where is her face?_
Fanny was troubled: she saw her child again. She wore an apple green
mulle dress very clear and clean as it hung straight from her shoulders.
The loved white neck! pulsant with breath of her child. She curtsies.
There was a flounce at the hem: and at the end of the puffed sleeves was
a ruffle. Edith’s bare arms! She wore white stockings, little canvas
pumps.--She is thin!--_And her hair? and her face?_
Fanny shut her eyes and her hands waved with pain before them. She knew
these dresses were her own! She saw her child in her own girlish
frocks.... And her hair? It was golden ... but it would get dark.--As
dark as mine?
--Does she have my frocks and my hair? Through Fanny’s mind passed
dresses she had worn: for romping and for dancing, for lessons and for
parties.--I have forgotten not a single one. Are Edith’s really the
same?
She was moved. She moved against her emotion.--I do not see her! _Your_
dresses--not her _face_! Has she the same frocks? Fanny knew this could
not be.... She knew there still lived within her that which needed to
play with the sweet fancy that it was.
“But no,” she murmured. “In no way be like me! Edith ... to save you
from that ... come, look at your Mother!”
With her daughter’s eyes, Fanny beheld herself.--I am not hateful. She
was a little woman, breaking and bewildered with flood of a world within
her heart. She was a little woman tortured in the uses of a Hand that
would not leave her alone.
--But I don’t see an end.... _There is no end._ I do not see a
growth.... _There is no growing._ ... Let me rest here quiet. I am still
weak. Too weak to assemble my thoughts. What if the room is Clara’s ...
Clara’s lover’s (is there at least love here?) What do these things
mean, beside the truth that I am quiet?
The sun sent a sudden shaft under the cornice of the opposite house. It
lay in a cold glare, gradually milding, on her.
So Fanny gave up thinking.--Why am I so hungry, having done nothing?
Lucy cleared the table ... folded it.
“O it was good, child!”
“Thank you, Mis’ Fanny.”
“No, Lucy: leave the table. Bring me the cards.”
“Yes, Mis’ Fanny.”
Fanny played _Canfield_. And even this was beyond her. She was amazed to
find that she had placed a red Jack under a red Queen: over there was a
black Three under a Five! “I am skipping chances and making horrible
mistakes.”
She shook her head. “How dull I am!” She was helpless against
it.--Stupider than Lucy. Duller than the stupidest person in the world.
She smiled. She knew that the reason was that she was filling with a
Light.
--When I was pregnant with Edith, sometimes I was like this.
She fell back in her chair, and shut her eyes.--What is it this time?
She slept....
The bell awoke her. Her nerves jangled bright and disparate like the
three tones of the electric bell. Lucy appeared.
“Why Mis’ Fanny ... it’s some frien’s o’ Miss Clara--“
Fanny’s words were swift action. “Did you send them away?”
“No ’m, I didn’t yet. Ah--Ah tole ’em ter wait. Should Ah--?”
“Let them come in. Tell them Miss Clara’s friend is here and will be
glad to receive them.”
Lucy stood suspended in the unheard-of formal words of this lady whose
value she sensed. By her face, she understood. She went out.
Fanny’s awareness was sheer above the drowse of her chair. Her eyes
commanded her face: they were suddenly young.
* * * * *
The door opened. Two women ... Lucy shut them in, and they were three
together.
One was a girl, short in her coat of black velours, all black except the
gleaming face under black eyes, black toque: all round and yet her eyes
watched Fanny sharply. Hostilely. Beside her a tall lank woman, very
blonde, rose like the embodiment of the strange stroke in the round
girl’s eyes.
They stood, Fanny got up.
“You must come in. Clara’s away for the day. But I’ve been so eager to
meet Clara’s friends.”
The taller one nodded.
--What does she recognize, that she nods, in my words?
“My name is Sennister--Susan Sennister. This is Miss Liebovitz.”
Fanny took a hand, white in its feel beneath the long glove, and took a
hand small like a child’s, warm and ruddy: gloveless.
“Do sit down.”
Miss Sennister looked at her companion. “Guess we got time, Tessie?”
“Sure we have,” she smiled. “We really came to have a glimpse of you.”
Her smile was rounder.
“I’m glad,” said Fanny. She looked at Susan Sennister, to make her also
smile. It would help matters. Miss Sennister smiled. But the smile did
not help. It hurt.
“I have been sick.... Probably you know. And Clara’s been an angel.”
“She is an angel,” said the tall woman, as if Fanny had not meant it.
“O ... she’s a good thing,” said Tessie Liebovitz. Her black eyes lay on
Fanny’s.--There is no misunderstanding! They were soft. “We love Clara,”
she said. “We say yes ... just automatically ... to Clara’s friends.”
“Thank you,” Fanny looked sternly at Susan Sennister. “That’s a
beginning at least.” She wanted to smile. This woman was so very stiff.
She must be very stern.--How can I tell? What are they?... She went on:
“I say Yes to the friends of Clara--but with all my heart.”
“Have you been here long?” asked Tessie.
“Very long!”
“We heard her speak of you, before she brought you here,” said Susan.
Then she settled back in her chair. Something within her was released.
She pulled off her gloves. Her shoulders slackened. “That don’t prove
anything, of course.” Her smile was different ... sweeter in its hurt.
“Clara’s like all of us. We are good pals. We have a lot of secrets ...
trade secrets we chew over. That gives us an air of being close. But a
real confidence ...? Not us!”
“O I don’t know,” said Tessie.
“That’s just it--you don’t.”
There was a pause. Fanny was in the sun ... feeling herself within it
strangely, unfairly warmed against these two. She wanted to warm them.
“Won’t one of you take this chair? The sun’s so good.”
“We’ve had more of it than you,” said Susan Sennister. “Stay where you
are.”
There was another pause filled now with three smiles that were
unstrained.
Fanny’s head was light.--My! I am weak. There was a dim strip weighing
above her eyes, on her brow. Beyond, in back of her head, she was light.
So that her head seemed tilted toward her eyes. She saw these women.--I
can be comfortable with them! They are strong: they could comfort her.
Tessie Liebovitz chatted. Her own lips moved. She said nothing. But they
were moist....
Then she saw: Long black earth. A man was standing still. He had gnarled
hands, all else of him was young. He had clear-grey eyes, he had bronzed
hair and beard. His cheeks were hardened by hot winds, but his lips that
were free of the beard were soft and red against the showing of white
skin.
She saw him clear upon the long black earth.--_He is Jesus!_
Many people passed him. She did not see them. But she saw the eyes and
hands of Jesus go forth quietly to each.... They passed. The eyes and
the hands of Jesus came back to themselves. The earth was harder and
harder. The earth passed by him. Villages and cities passed. Altars were
shut against his hands. Priests were shut against his eyes. The houses
of the great passed him shut. And the earth grew blacker....
The earth was very black. A tree, blasted by lightning, thrust its ruin
against a purple sky. The earth was very black. And Christ stood on it
underneath the sky, and far from the solitary tree that twisted leafless
over the horizon. Christ raised his arms, but his eyes looked down upon
the barren earth. He was changed. He was twisted like the tree. He was
shaped like the tree. Like it he was broken and bent from stanchioning
purple sky above a barren earth. But he was white. And his beard was
red. He had no hands, he had lost his hands even as the tree its leaves.
His feet were buried underneath the ground.
A woman was before him. In a scarlet robe, against her breast, she held
a boy.
“Lord,” she said, “this is my child. He drives me each day into the
Marketplace with paint on my lips.”
“Why do you call me ‘Lord’?”
“Are you not Lord of us all?”
The black earth bloomed. Jesus was gay, he was a clear young man. With
his two hands he touched the shrouded hair of the woman and it streamed
like chrysoprase.
“Your child has blessed you,” he said.
She parted her robe, it was green also: it fell away and she was naked
before Jesus. Her belly was silken smooth, her breasts thrust up like
buds in a new Spring: she had born no child and she had known no man.
Before Christ her body was sweet like a lily at dawn.
Fanny pressed her brow with her two hands, and saw the quiet women. They
had stopped talking. They looked at her deep, and their voices had
lagged away.
“O ... you will have tea!”
“Thank you, No. I’m afraid--we tire you. We’d better go. You’re not too
strong yet.” Susan Sennister got up.
Fanny was warm in their understanding, and was ashamed. “O don’t go! You
make me feel--I’m a bad substitute for Clara. Please!”
Susan sat stiffly, then she relaxed.
“You know,” she said, “it seems to me I’ve seen you before.”
“And I’ve seen you!”
“When was that?”
“O ages,” said Fanny.--Am I mad? “Before we were born? And you too,
Tessie Liebovitz. You were singing.”
“No,” said the girl, serious. “I was playing the violin.”
“Your fingers were singing, then.”
“They were too small,” said Tessie.
“Too small to sing?”
“Too small to sing ... too small to sing,” the girl whispered rapt. “So
I work--my body, see? It works for my fingers that were too small to
play.”
“What was I doing?” Susan leaned forward.
“Your hands are frightful. One of them clasping, clutching ... one of
them thrusting away.” Fanny’s hands were before her in a frantic
dumb-play.
Susan laughed. “How right you are!”
“I am a fool,” cried Fanny.--Am I mad? I do not seem to mind. They seem
to understand--_something_. Am I a fool?
“She is wonderful,” said Tessie.
“Clara told us--“
“What?”
Susan got up. She held Fanny’s face gently in her hands. She kissed her
brow. “--that we would love you.”
Lucy came in with tea.
“Clara saved my life.”
“She’s a good thing,” said Tessie....
They drank their tea in silence. No hand trembled.
Susan and Tessie got up.
“You must not get up!”
They came close to Fanny. Her eyes were almost parallel with Tessie’s
red mouth which had spoken. She looked up at the straight lips of Susan.
On Susan’s neck she saw a birthmark, black like a footprint. Against it,
all she was white.
“We’re going to come again--“
“When you’re better--“
“I _am_ better,” Fanny smiled.
Tessie said: “You are a woman.”
* * * * *
Clara was there, and she still vibrant from it all.
“You had visitors,” Fanny said. “Miss Sennister and Miss Liebovitz.”
Clara studied the face of her friend.--What have they left upon her?
within her? She saw the face of Fanny glow: it was aquiver and alive,
her face, as not for a long time.
“I gave them tea. That was right, was it not? The little girl’s a dear.”
“Yes.”
“When she left, she threw her arms around me and kissed me.”
“You had a good time together?”
“Yes. And you, Dear? Your sister?”
“She is worse. But she won’t die. Not that sort of thing. Just pine away
and eat up her husband’s money and nag her children.”
“There’s nothing to do, I suppose?”
“Of course not. You liked Tessie? Not Susan.”
“I did not understand her?”
“Do you think you understood Tessie?” Clara was eager. She did not
challenge. She wished to be assured.
“I think so.... All except those hands--“
“Hands!”
“That is: that is what I understood the best: they’re the key, so little
and so terrible. You see, I know that. Only, I haven’t used the key.”
She smiled in the amazed eyes of Clara.
“Fanny, you sometimes frighten me.” Clara took her hand and held it long
and looked at it. Then she squeezed it and smiled also.
“You don’t mean to say: this very first time she told you her _story_!”
“No. Why did you think so, Clara?”
“What you said about her hands.”
“Who couldn’t see that? They are so small and tortured--plump perverse
hands. She had no gloves. Her hands, Clara--her hands have--“
Fanny stopped. She could not go on.
“Yes?”
“Well,” she whispered half to herself, “ ...something ruins all of us, I
suppose.”
She was blanched as if she had walked leisuredly upon a strange
outlandish road, forgetful it was so: and sudden there was a precipice
below her feet. Mind held back her almost plunging body with the
plunge’s horror. She recoiled.
“I know what you were going to say,” Clara’s voice was hard, “her hands
it was, that _ruined_ her....”
“Clara!”
“We are ruined, for you. I know it. You are right. We are bad women ...
ruined....”
“Clara!”
Fanny jumped up. She faced her friend. She sought her eyes, sad and
rebellious, and held them.
“Clara, you have saved me, you are sound. It is I who am broken. When
one is broken, Clara, one does not always quickly understand. One lacks
words. One falls back, Clara, on words that for today are lies.”
She clasped the wrists of her friend. They stood tense, against each
other: so. In a taut silence.
“We are all ruined,” came Clara’s voice. “But you still love.”
“Then none of us are ruined.”
Clara’s head tossed in anger. “No sentiment!”
“There are no ruins I tell you,” Fanny met her.
* * * * *
Fanny lay quiet in bed. She was relaxed at last. The vibrance of these
many hours had run out into a Space beyond her, where the sharp thrusts
through her nerves lay lost in a pool of glow.
She lay in this glow in bed: Clara beside her, responsive to her
friend’s new peace but unaware of its synthesis of warring parts meeting
beyond her.
“Should I read?” she asked.
“Tell me about your friends.”
“They are friends of mine.” Clara raised her head as if her words were a
challenge. Fanny lay still, with her eyes shut, waiting.
“There’s Tess. Poor Dear,” at last.... “Her story’s not hard to tell.
That’s why I was wondering how you knew. Didn’t she hint? Well, I don’t
wonder after all, Dear. _You_ are so wonderful O I am glad to have you
here. I want to keep you forever. If only I could.... Well: Tessie was
born in some mudhole South--Carolina, I think. Her Pa kept a general
store ... does still I suppose. He’s a Jew, you know. Tess says he never
was no good as a business man. But a dear! He’d sit in his room back of
the store, holding some old Bible in his hand ... or a prayer-book ...
and sing it out, half-aloud, with his head and his shoulders swayin’,
keepin’ time. Tessie says that is what Music meant to her.... When the
poor old man learned she was musical, Tess says, he fell on his knees. I
can just see him, his thin old knees half worn through the black pants,
creaking and cracking on the dirty floor. And he thanked the Lord who,
if he _had_ taken away his wife, had given him a daughter who loved
music. There were other children, but they simply didn’t count. He
didn’t have more than enough to keep ’em all in food, but Tess got a
violin. And soon the Dame that taught violin, piano, French and artistic
sewing in the Town told the old man Tessie knew more than she did about
music. She was a wonder, she said. She ought to study in a big City and
go in for concerts.
“Well ... the old man got down on his shakey knees again: and this time
he didn’t pray: he swore he’d get the cash to send Tess to Richmond or
New York, if he had to starve for it ... even if he had to sell--O I
forgot. The old man had one proud possession. He was a poor old ignorant
man, but one of his ancestors had been Wise and a Rabbi. He kept a
mouldy store and kept it badly: but this Thing he still had from the
wise old Rabbi ... and it shone in their home like the sun. Tessie gives
it a name I can’t remember ... but I can see it. A sort of breast-plate
it was ... a breast-plate of some holy Priest of their religion: square
and in gold. And set in it, in four rows of three each, were oblong
gems. Each was different--camelian and ruby and lapis and topaz and
jasper and amethyst and agate: I don’t remember them all. On each was
carved a holy word in ancient Hebrew. Well, there was the mouldy store
and this thing of glory shinin’ in it. But there was the daughter who
could make Music. So she could make it right, the old man sold his
treasure. He was religious. Keeping that Relic was part of his religion
... but giving it up was also part of his religion. Tessie got a first
class violin ... they cost like fury, you know. And then everything went
well. I don’t know the particulars. Some big guy from New York who was
down in Charleston gave her a hearing and next year Tess bought a new
dress and a bag and took the train to New York. Her Dad had even
mortgaged the store. But there was Tess gettin’ ready to earn thousands
in New York ... while the rest of the Liebovitz clan in mudhole, South
Carolina, lived on water and hope.”
Fanny lay still, with her eyes shut. In the pause:
“Then it happened,” she murmured.
“Yes,”
--As always.
Lord, why is it always?
Why do you break the soil
In which you plant the seed?
“--the old master, Tessie says she loved him, waved his hands and pulled
his beard. ‘You have talent, Fraulein. O you have genius. You are music!
But those hands. What are we going to do about that hand?’ They were too
small, Fan. You saw ’em. They were too small. You got to do all sorts of
stunts on a fiddle before you go in for concerts. And her fingers simply
were too short. Not too short for playin’ in an orchestra or somethin’
... but for a concert, where you stand up all by yourself.... Well,
Tessie hadn’t come to New York and put the Liebovitz clan on bread and
water and made the old man sell part of his religion for another part,
just to play fiddle in a restaurant. She went to a doctor or something
of the sort who told her he could stretch her fingers. He stretched ’em
alright--“
Fanny raised herself on her arms from the pillow, her eyes still shut.
“--till something tore.”
“Till something broke.”
“It was all over.”
“I know the rest,” said Fanny. She sank back in her pillow. Both of them
were quiet....
Each was conscious of the other’s breathing. The room was heavy.
Clara stirred. “Shall I open a window?” she asked.
“What about the other?” Fanny held her.
“O I can’t say much about Sennister. I have known her for a long time
... nearly four years I think. She just is: she has no tale of woe.”
“You are good friends?”
“Yes. I have learned a lot from Susan. She is wise. She has a brain,
I’ll tell you. She thinks a lot ... and reads.”
“What does she read?”
“O books you’ve never heard of. But I don’t think she gets her ideas
from them. They’re _hers_, you bet.”
“Tessie, I guess, has learned a lot from her also.”
“She’s our Sunday school teacher,” Clara smiled.
“I see.”
“She has a religion. She believes--shall I tell you what she says?”
“Why not?”
“She says: ‘I believe in the power of Hate,
I believe in the truth of Sin.
I believe in the failure of Truth.’”
Fanny was silent.
“One day she made us learn all that by heart. Don’t take it too serious,
Fan dear. She’d had a drop too much. She was jolly. So were we all....
It’s a joke, of course....”
“Clara, you know it’s no joke. You know it’s a religion.”
“I suppose so. It don’t fit in very well, though, does it? with the
religion of the Bible.”
“There are so many religions of the Bible. Perhaps it fits in right
well.”
Clara’s nervous laugh: “You and Susan’ll get on well together. You are
both philosophers. But you’re both _good_--though you’re better, Dear,
and deeper. I know that. Susan talks awful bad. But you know, Dear, what
she says _has_ something to do with Christianity. Sort of twisted like.
But it _has_. You wait and see. When you know her. Susan ... she’s like
a saint....”
--Christ, you must loose your buried feet and your arms without hands!
Christ, you must not be twisted like that tree!
Christ, you must not be rooted like a tree!
Walk the earth, brother.
Fanny’s eyes shut once more. She saw the white neck of Susan Sennister:
on its side the little birthmark like the print of a black foot ...
clear because her neck was white. She heard her voice: the resonant low
voice of one who speaks often with herself. She saw the black eyes of
Tessie upon her: the full lips, redder than rouge, the crowded
high-pressed brow, the child-hands....
Clara sat still.--She will go to sleep now.
* * * * *
Fire in Clara’s eyes. The desperate embrace together of her life and of
her love for Fanny rose lucent in them. She said:
“Well, if you want to meet my friends, you shall meet them. I’ll give a
party to celebrate your being here, and your getting well--and the hope
that you’ll stay on.”
“That’ll be fun!”
“Then there’ll be more than just me to do the hoping.”
“You’re a dear.”
Fanny saw a party of eighteen years ago. She met Harry there. They
walked the verandah ... walked back and forth three dances.
The espagnols are open. The music flutters through into the purple night
like cherry-colored ribbons.
“Let’s go on the lawn,” he said. “Let’s dance on the lawn.”
“We can dance here.”
“No. Let’s dance on the lawn.”
“Then we won’t dance.”
But at last she yielded. He clasped her waist. He sprang with her
through the elastic night. The grass was moving crystal sea under their
silent feet.