think. Carla waited, watching him.
“Are you going to live in Florence?” he asked finally.
This was not going at all well, she thought. “I think I may live there
part of the year. I think I shall travel first.”
“Where? Where do you want to go?”
“Some place in the Near East, some place like the _Arabian
Nights_--you’ve read it, haven’t you?”
“I read it once.”
“I always wanted things to be like that, to be enchanted.”
“And you’ve been disappointed?”
She nodded. “Sometimes I’ve been very disappointed but, you see, sooner
or later it’s all right. I’ve great faith in things being right.”
“You’re a curious girl,” he said. He looked at her and she could see
her own face twice reflected in his eyes. “You don’t,” he said, “really
like Bankton, do you?”
The words were making the proper patterns now. She turned so that he
would see all her face when she spoke. “Yes, I like him very much but I
don’t love him. I can’t love anyone without having it complete, without
having ... the other thing.”
“What we had.”
“Yes, what we had.” She felt that now he was coming back again.
“It was so long ago, wasn’t it?” She wasn’t sure now that he was coming
back: “so long ago.”
“I’ve remembered it,” she said. “It doesn’t seem long ago to me.”
“I don’t mean that,” he said. “I meant that ... well ... so much has
happened to us since then. You’ve been married and I left the army....”
“We’re not much different, are we?” She looked out the window now and
watched different lights go out in the tall buildings; for each light
that went out, though, someone else turned on another. “You know,” she
said, concentrating on the lights, “you know you were really the first
for me.”
He was awkward now. “Yes, I guess I was. I didn’t....”
“There were probably a lot of others for you in Europe. You know, I
haven’t really wanted any man since then.”
This had to surprise; she wanted this to be her strongest weapon. She
looked at him now. He had put down his drink and he was looking at her.
“Is that true?”
She nodded. “I don’t know why I shouldn’t tell you. I couldn’t keep
from telling you.” She tried not to look at him.
“You mean what happened to us in Italy was the only time...?” He was
confused.
She turned then and looked at him, at the troubled eyes and the boy’s
mouth. “My dear, when something means a lot to you I think it’s hard to
take a substitute. You see, I made an object for myself. I was upset
when you left, naturally, because you’d become my object. I never heard
from you and so I married Bankton in London. I never lost my object,
though. It never changed.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Carla smiled. “I understand it now. You had so many women and I was
only one. I think that’s all right, I think that’s natural. I hoped
you might have felt the way I did. One always wants to be loved and
it’s not easy to find a lover. I never had another man--not because I
couldn’t, but because I didn’t want to. I was waiting all that time,
hoping to see _you_ again.” She had said everything now. He had
listened and there was nothing else she could do.
He ran his hand through his hair. “I was very close to you,” he said.
“I thought you were.” She was waiting.
“You’re right, there were a lot of others, but I don’t think I loved
any of them.”
“No one at all?”
He didn’t answer. He stood up and walked across the room. Then he came
back and stood looking down at her.
“I don’t know what to say. We were very close once and then I came back
here and made myself forget everything about Europe, everything that
had happened to me there.
“It hasn’t been easy to do. The only way I could get by, though, was to
do what I’m doing: become a broker. I can’t be the way I was; I can’t
afford it. Of course I can still have all the girls I want and I can
have a good time. I suppose I can fall in love sometime ... again, but
I have to be a conventional person and I don’t mind.
“Tonight those people were examples of freedom....”
She interrupted him. “Not really freedom, self-indulgence perhaps.”
“Whatever it is, they call it being free. I don’t want that. I couldn’t
have that kind anyway because I’m not talented; I don’t do anything
well and I know it.”
“You can be a free person, though.”
“How?”
She sighed. “I’ve already told you and you already know. You can love.”
“You think that’s the answer?”
“I don’t know any other. It’s been important to me.”
He sat down beside her, sat close to her. “I don’t know if I could love
someone,” he said. “I don’t know if I could love you the way you’d
want.”
“You can,” said Carla. “You can do whatever you want.”
His hand touched hers. She sat very straight then, her eyes on the
window, on the white lights. He put his arm around her shoulders and
kissed her and she closed her eyes upon the lights outside.
For a long time they were like that on the couch. Then they separated
and stood up, self-conscious and shy, newly discovered. He motioned
with his hand toward the bedroom. She nodded and they went into the
bedroom together and met finally in the middle of the bridge.
* * * * *
Robert Holton held Carla from him at arm’s length and looked at her.
She was pretty, at this moment quite beautiful, her face white and her
greenish eyes glittering.
“I’ve been waiting, Bob,” she said. “I’ve waited such a long time.” He
pulled her to him then, her body against his. A part of him was given
up entirely to making love but another part was still detached, still
watching.
He helped her to undo her dress. Modestly now, with the reserve of
strangers, they stood back to back as they undressed.
She was beautiful and he had forgotten that. She was not really pale:
her skin was gold. She was slim and cleanly made and her breasts were
small. They faced each other and looked at each other, the detached,
the lonely part of himself memorizing every detail of her.
Carla walked slowly toward him and touched his shoulder. Tears were in
her eyes.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
She shook her head and smiled: nothing was the matter now.
He took her slowly then, pressing her against his body gently, every
nerve vibrating in both of them; hearts beating quickly.
They stood like this in the middle of the room; then she broke away and
walked over to the bed and pulled the cover down.
“Turn out the light, Bob,” she whispered. It was a ceremony now:
neither of them spoke out loud in the presence of the miracle taking
place. He turned out the light. The room was dark except for the
lighted dots of windows in the buildings opposite and, over the
buildings, like unorganized window lights, cold stars shone clearly.
He turned and walked to the bed. Carla lay on her back, her arms
behind her head. He got in beside her and they lay there together, not
speaking, hardly breathing, and he felt the blood pounding in his head
while, next to him, Carla was shivering, was waiting. He turned over on
his side, barely touching her.
They did not speak now. Words were discarded and no surface was needed.
Instinct guided them finally, made them a separate world together;
there was only a dream existence outside of themselves.
And Robert Holton became the lover and ceased to be himself; his
detached awareness was, for the time, submerged and forgotten.
He ran his hands over her, feeling the smooth skin of her shoulders,
her thighs.... They kissed and began the act of completion.
To Holton it became a battle and a surrender, a taking and a giving; it
became a fusion. He was no longer himself, he was enlarged; a giant in
a world of giant sensations. He was no longer alone or incomplete.
Then the rhythm was found and the wild twistings and strugglings
stopped. He was conquering now and, in the conquering, giving.
He entered her and to the rhythm of their fast-beating hearts, with
a rush of sound like wind in his ears, he discovered the single
world. Lights whirled inside his head, behind his eyes: they came in
series--circles of sharp lights.
He was choking then, barely breathing, able only to cough and gasp.
Sweat covered him; his hands clutched at her shoulders as though they
were the only remaining solidity in a world rapidly disintegrating into
sensations and fast-moving lights and a quick wind.
There was no time now. There was no memory. There was no reason. The
struggle stopped and the moment came like fire.
Carla’s face was buried in his shoulder; she stiffened and then became
relaxed, the battle finished and won.
Like fire it came and the wonder was achieved; a world was glimpsed and
lost in a moment. Then, tide-like, the emotion stopped and withdrew.
The ecstasy was gone and only two people were left in its wake, left on
a high shore, exhausted, shipwrecked.
Robert Holton lay for a moment upon Carla’s still body, supporting
himself with his elbows so that he would not crush her; he breathed
deeply, taking in the air with great sobs. Beneath him Carla was quiet,
at peace, her shuddering stopped.
He kissed her very gently then and they separated, without words; they
lay quietly side by side, touching each other, yet apart, the trace
of their fire still inside of them, and exhaustion brought with it no
sadness, no loneliness.
Robert Holton put his arm under her head; then he looked out the
window, looked at the real stars, not nearly as bright as the ones in
his head, the ones they had made together.
Silence and darkness protected them.
Part of his mind became detached again and he saw himself in relation
to the world. He saw himself in a darkened room of a large hotel, lying
exhausted beside the wife of a painter. He frowned in the dark and he
fought the vision of the outer world.
Carla moved her hand over his chest, twisting the hairs; he felt a
spasm of tenderness shake him and he took her and held her close to
him. This was the moment when he felt he was not alone, felt that he
was not a single particle lost in a void. The half of him lost in the
womb had been regained and he was finally complete: he was God and
earth and other stars, so great was this fusion.
They slept quietly in each others arms. They slept unaware of time for
they _were_ time.
Carla woke first. She gave a start and Robert Holton opened his eyes,
wondered where he was; then he saw Carla beside him, saw a vague figure
by the light of stars.
“_Caro mio_,” she murmured, saying the first words either had
spoken.
“Darling,” he whispered.
“It’s so perfect,” she said and he put her head on his shoulder again.
Then they were still, looking at the uncertain outline of their bodies
on the whiteness of the bed.
He felt her smooth legs. They were cool, like dreams half-remembered.
“I love you,” she whispered into his ear, “so much more than you know.”
He kissed her for answer and his detached self almost fused with hers,
almost made a union, almost died and made him free.
Carla turned on the light. It was two o’clock and they had been asleep
for almost an hour.
Robert Holton lay quietly on the bed, his eyes closed, his breathing
regular, one arm over his forehead as though to defend himself. She
leaned over and kissed him lightly, then she got out of bed and went
into the bathroom.
Her face shocked and pleased her. “How depraved I look,” she murmured
to herself. Her face was glowing and her eyes shone and glittered.
There were red marks on her white skin. His beard had scratched her and
made her usually white face pink. With a sudden gesture she swept her
hair back out of her face, held her dark curling hair captive.
Holton appeared behind her then and he put his arms around her waist
and kissed the back of her neck. She shuddered and closed her eyes. She
could not look at light with so much inward light behind her eyes. They
stood like that. Then he let her go. They looked at each other: two
people now, so recently a single world.
“Happy?” she asked.
He nodded. “I’ve never had it like this before,” he said. “It never
meant as much to me as this.”
They walked back into the bedroom and sat down side by side on the
bed. Modestly Holton drew the sheet over their laps. They sat quietly
without speaking, their bare arms around each other. When Carla looked
at the window she could no longer see stars and lighted windows; she
could see only their reflection on black glass.
“What are you thinking?” he asked and she saw that he’d been watching
her.
“Nothing, Bob. I don’t think all the time, you know. I was only
feeling.”
“Feeling what?”
She smiled. “Feeling all the world.”
“I think I felt that, too ... to live in a big way....”
“Yes, I know.” She sighed. “You have to break all your little patterns.
You have to expand now.”
But there was resistance to this. “I don’t see why you can’t have
everything and still have that, too.”
“No, everything must be the richest and the fullest. Have you that?”
He stretched, the muscles moving under white skin. “Maybe it is; I
don’t know.” He took her then and they fell back together onto the bed.
For several minutes they were together and then he rolled over on his
side. She opened her eyes.
“What’s the matter, Bob?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. He was looking at her, his dark hair in his
eyes. He pushed it back.
“You’re not sad?”
“No.” He ran his hands over her hips. “I was only wondering what’s to
happen next. You’ll go back to Europe.”
She had been waiting for this. She had been waiting for him to ask
this. Now she could say what she felt but the words did not come
easily. “I don’t have to go back,” she said. “I can stay here as long
as I like.”
“Then your husband’ll come over here.”
“I can leave him.”
He shook his head. “I couldn’t marry you.”
She was lost. She was falling now. It seemed as if the room had become
cold and foreign and she had come to a hostile country. There was no
longer an answer to make: the answer had been made. She tried not to
let her face show what she felt.
“Why couldn’t you marry me?”
“I haven’t any money.”
“I have.”
“I wouldn’t want that. You wouldn’t want to be married to a broker and
live in New York.”
“Why do you have to be a broker?”
He sighed then and she saw for the first time that he was the one
trapped, the one who would not escape. “What else can I do?” he asked.
“You can break with all this.” She was fighting.
“But what could I do? I have to do something. I have to be something.”
“Why do you have to be something? Why do you have to do things that you
don’t want, that make you unhappy?”
“Everyone has to. Besides, I’m not sure that I am unhappy.” She was
defeated at that moment. The dream she had been fashioning disappeared
and there were no traces of it left, only a lingering sadness and an
open wound.
He went on talking and she answered him but there was nothing left for
either of them to discuss.
Then after a while they both stopped talking. They sat side by side
looking out the window, or rather looking at themselves reflected in
the black mirror. Holton turned out the light and Carla was able to see
the stars again.
“That was funny, wasn’t it?” chuckled Holton.
“What? What was funny?”
“Lewis tonight and all those people talking about religion and art.”
“I don’t think it was funny; I think it was sad.”
“Why sad?”
“They were lost, I think. Just like us, Bob.”
She could feel him looking at her. “Are you?” he asked softly.
She would not let herself cry. She would not give way. She would have
to be strong now. Her voice carefully controlled, she said, “No more
than you. We could be complete, I think.”
“I think we could,” he said and she knew that he felt nothing the
way she did. Carla had the feeling of coming into a stranger’s house
expecting friends, expecting familiar things. She was with an unknown,
a man who did not feel what she did.
“I had hoped,” said Carla, “that we could.” She was going to be
accurate in what she said. She used each word like the cut of a knife
to sever the relationship, to kill her own love. “I don’t think we can
now. You want to live a certain life. You want what you know and though
you don’t like it you think it’s the safe thing. I don’t understand
you, I’m afraid. I’ve tried to see all this through your eyes. I
didn’t want it to be just another one, another woman. I wanted it to
be important to you: it was so important to me. I think I was wrong. I
think I was selfish and I’m sorry.” She wondered when her voice would
break.
Then Holton tried to reconstruct at last. “No, you don’t understand.
I feel very close to you. I’ve liked this more than any other time,
more than with anyone else. But you see I can’t leave what I’m doing; I
couldn’t live on you for the rest of my life.”
She sighed. “That’s such a superficial thing; that’s all the surface.
When you feel something for another person those things don’t matter.”
“Someday they might. Of course I’m lonely and not very happy. You have
to accept that. In a few years I’ll get married and maybe that’ll make
it better. I could,” he was speaking slowly now, “marry you. I could do
that but you wouldn’t be happy.”
“How do you know I wouldn’t be happy here?”
“You’re different, that’s all. I can’t tell you what the difference is.
I don’t know.”
And she couldn’t tell him what the difference was. There was no way to
tell.
He put his arms around her in the dark and they relaxed on the bed and
she tried to give herself to the moment but she could not: too much had
been given already.
“It’s a temptation,” said Holton suddenly.
“What is?” They separated.
“To go to Europe with you, to live with you.”
“It could be done.”
“Maybe.... No, it wouldn’t work.”
“Why?”
“It just wouldn’t be practical.”
No, she thought, it wouldn’t be practical.
Then the passion came back to them and she almost forgot his
withdrawal. She fell back onto the pillows, his body over hers.
He whispered in her ear, “You know I really have to leave after this.”
“Of course you must,” said Carla, dying gently.
3
THE YELLOW WOOD
_Chapter Thirteen_
The early morning was cold and Robert Holton shivered as he left the
warm lobby of the hotel. He stood outside on the sidewalk and wondered
where he was. He turned to the left and walked a few steps and then he
remembered the street he was on, remembered where east and west were.
He turned to the right and walked rapidly toward Fifth Avenue.
The streets were almost deserted. Occasionally a taxicab would clatter
by. Occasionally a tired couple looking for a room would pass him on
the sidewalk. As he walked, his own footsteps made sharp regular noises
on the pavement.
He came at last to a subway entrance. He breathed deeply, took a last
breath of clean air and went down inside the ground.
Pale lights burned in old sockets and a sleepy Negro sat within the
money-changer’s booth. A sailor stood vomiting in a corner; he was very
quiet about it and the Negro paid no attention to him.
Robert Holton put his nickel in the turnstile.
On the platform several people were waiting for the train. They were
all tired. Another sailor had a girl and he was standing very close to
her. They were both drunk and made strange little movements with their
heads and hands, slow-motion movements, as though they were flying.
Robert Holton stood against an iron pillar. He felt exhausted but
physically serene. He rested his head on the hard rough surface. It was
pleasant to stand like this, underground.
The uptown train stopped with a jolt, the doors opened and Robert
Holton stepped into the lighted train. The doors closed and the train
started again.
Everyone in the car was weary or drunk or both. Papers and cigarette
butts covered the floor. A pair of dirty gloves lay at his feet,
forgotten by the owner, unwanted.
Robert Holton tried to sleep but the glare of light through his eyelids
was distracting. His physical exhaustion was lessening, too, and he
began to feel a return of energy.
He would not think of Carla, though; he would not think of her for a
little while. He would wait until he was in his room.
After a long time, after ten minutes, the train stopped at his station
and he climbed out of the ground and stood on the concrete surface of
the earth; a suggestion of morning was in the sky and the wind blew
fresh and cold from the river. He walked to his hotel.
“Evening,” said the clerk behind the desk.
“Good evening,” said Holton.
“Is it getting colder out?”
Holton nodded. “Probably be a real cold day tomorrow.” He walked over
to the counter. “Have I got any mail?”
“Let’s see ... that’s...?”
“Holton.”
The clerk looked, then shook his head. “No mail, Mr Holton.” He paused.
“You was in the army?”
“Yes, I was in the army.”
“So was I.” The clerk was lonely and wanted to talk and Holton was
still tired and nervous and wanted to think. “It sure is nice being
out,” said the clerk.
“Yes, it’s good to be out.”
“I was with the 82nd; you remember the 82nd, don’t you?”
“Of course I do.”
“We had a good group of guys.”
“I know you did.”
“Nothing like being a civilian, is there?”
“No,” said Robert Holton, “there’s nothing like being out. Good night.”
“Good night.” The clerk who had been with the army was sad to see him
go.
He turned the light on in his room. It was all just the same, the
troubling painting and the crowded dresser. Sometimes he would come
into his room and have a feeling that everything would be changed when
he turned on the light, that something exciting would have happened to
change his room. It was always the same, though; always the way he left
it.
Holton went into the bathroom. He should take a bath; he wanted to take
a bath but he was too tired. In the morning; there would be time for
that in the morning.
He undressed and put on the bottom of his pajamas; he never used the
tops. Then he looked at himself in the mirror for a long time. He did
not see himself in the mirror; he saw no image; rather he was trying to
find an image, an explanation in the glass. But he found nothing and
as he realized his failure the reflection of his face appeared in the
mirror and he looked at it without interest because it was familiar and
because he could see nothing behind it.
He turned and went into his room. He sat down on the bed and wondered
whether he could sleep or not because his mind was uneasy. Holton
turned out the lights and stretched out on his bed. He would make
himself sleep; he would not think of Carla or of the day ended.
But his mind was too active now for him to sleep. He tried to hypnotize
himself, tried not to hear the odd words and conversations in his ears.
He gave up finally. The barriers went down.
George _Robert_ Lewis’s voice sounded in his head and the clashing
colors of the fairy night club glittered in his head. Lewis’s voice,
flat and nasal, became articulate.
“I do feel that religion is merely a substitute for the loss of a
personal vision.” His sharp little laugh sounded and the words repeated
themselves over and over again in Robert Holton’s ear: loss of a
personal vision ... a vision ... and elision.... The words became a
refrain. The repetitions went on until Holton felt himself losing
control. He was angry. He made the repetitions stop.
George _Robert_ Lewis began to talk again.
“I feel that we can find some way through the morass of life, some way
to be serene and not sterile, not static. I think probably art is the
way for the sensitive. If one has talent one can practise a medium;
without talent one can appreciate.
“Love? What _does_ that word mean, darling? I’ve tried so awfully
hard to be sincere about it and I’ve had some delicious attempts at
it. Did you ever know Philip?... No, of course you wouldn’t have known.
But as I was saying ... what was I saying?”
Holton tried consciously to recall what Lewis had said. But when he
tried to hear speeches again he could not. Lewis’s voice began again, a
disembodied voice speaking among colors in a place where all emotions
were in a minor key.
“I think one must really barricade oneself against the world. One
must retreat. Now don’t tell me it’s cowardly to retreat. Nothing in
this world should be put on such a superficial basis as that. We are
talking on different planes. That’s why communication is so difficult.
Every argument is true and false and can be argued rightly from either
side. To have any agreement those discussing should decide right away
on what plane they want to talk. On a superficial and obvious one
the terms bravery and cowardice and right and wrong have a certain
meaning. On a deeper plane they have different, sometimes opposite,
meanings--sometimes no meaning at all.