More Miracle Than Bird

by Alice Miller

  The eyes looked out of her own body, out to the mountains closest to the boat, and identified a particular cleft between them, a dark ravine, a woman’s shape. A name had repeated in her head—Dorlowicz, Dorlowicz—she had seen the word, scrawled in red ink—and in the moment the feeling left her, Georgie leaned against the railing, grasping to get the voice back. For a terrifying minute the map of her brain seemed wiped pale, as if it had taken her own personality with it. She’d looked out over the railings of the ferry, and there had seemed to be a relationship between the creamed white foam in the boat’s wake and the point where the smoke was gulped by the calm sky’s blue. There was a relationship, she thought, between her own face and the face of the Madonna in the tiny church she had seen earlier that day, golden-cloaked and staring out, who lacked the usual Madonna’s sleepiness. This one had stared straight, unafraid, her mouth half turned up, as if she were a little cruel. A moment later, as she pressed up against the ferry’s railing, she had seen one of her cousins waving to her, and all her own feeling had flooded back. It had not happened to her again.

  Ever since she had looked for this word Dorlowicz, but so far, she had not found it. But she was sure it must be connected to their teachings at the Order, and that she and Willy might find it together. She could mop a thousand floors, listen to a thousand jeering officers, if only she could get a glimpse of what it meant.

  And yet, now she had arrived at the library and sat at a narrow desk with her books in front of her and her notebook open to a blank page, all she could do was stare. It was as though heaviness were stacked on top of her. Her brain was full of the hospital. The news from the front was the same; at Verdun the Allies were launching yet another counterattack. It was generally understood that what was reported was only the good news, and that this was always exaggerated. Most of the officers had stopped reading the news and asked the nurses not to bother with the wireless. A nurse by the name of Sanderson, whose fiancé and brother were both fighting, had developed a red, crisp rash between the bridge of her nose and the corners of her eyes.

  Georgie found Harkin’s notes from the Order’s last lecture and scanned the loose pages. Ever since Willy had sponsored Georgie to join the Order, she’d risen up the ranks faster than any neophyte in its history. She had memorised the elements, the patterning of the stars; she had drawn her own major arcana cards. She cast the most accurate astrological horaries. She also attended any meeting that Willy missed and took notes for him. They had intended to go to séances together, but so far the hospital had kept her too busy and Willy had been often away from London. She was also secretly relieved, because the Order did not allow its members to attend séances, and she was worried that Harkin could find out. This never worried Willy, who did as he pleased.

  At the bottom of the page of notes, Harkin had drawn a coloured picture, the thin black outline roughly sketched. It showed a person’s arm, bent at the elbow, forearm raised and palm facing outwards. The hand had two fingers and thumb raised, with the other two fingers curled down. The gesture of benediction. A blessing. The arm was wrapped in a white sleeve, with the hint of a red cloak at the shoulder. She had no idea what Harkin had meant by drawing it here. Perhaps it connected to George Mead’s theory of the migration of souls. But when she thought of Mead, she thought also of Pico and Swedenborg and Plotinus—and for the moment all these texts seemed to combine, all interlinking and knotting together and referencing one another, and she could not connect them to the world. She saw each idea as a string or a rope, so in her mind the library became a series of tangles, all doubling back on one another and tied together to form a giant knot. In the past it had seemed she could see each silky strand so clearly she could separate them cleanly with her hands, she could see a point where she would weave herself a long, slender rope, with which she could do what she liked. But today she felt as if the job she had set herself was not to untangle this knot but to eat it, in a huge hairball that would choke her.

  She heard a light tap on her desk and looked up. Standing there was Dorothy, pretending to survey the books in front of Georgie. For a second Georgie thought she was hallucinating. She often saw other members of the Order here, or writers like Ezra or Willy or lately Hilda Doolittle, but it was unusual for Dorothy to come. She had never joined the Order, never again showed any interest in the idea, and these days she mostly spent her time painting and helping Ezra. Shouldn’t she be down in Sussex with him and Willy now?

  “Study break?” Dorothy whispered and held up a large silver flask, which certainly didn’t contain tea. Georgie almost laughed. It was barely two o’clock in the afternoon. She gathered her books together and followed Dorothy to the museum cafeteria, and after the waiter had served them tea, Dorothy, without any pretense of hiding what she was doing, poured a generous slug of brandy into each delicate teacup. Georgie, who had lately found herself very critical of Dorothy, felt a surge of great warmth towards her kind, clever friend. She had always loved her, it seemed now. Both Ezra and Dorothy were staying with Willy at Stone Cottage, the poets working on their poems, Dorothy working on her paintings. As she smiled, Dorothy’s eyes dragged Georgie’s in. Dorothy was beautiful; her cheeks pale and glowing, her profile like it belonged on a coin. Georgie reflected that she desperately needed more sleep.

  They drank to each other’s health.

  “You look awful,” Dorothy said, and Georgie’s feelings cooled somewhat. She took another sip.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Dorothy’s small teeth showed for a moment. “We were worried about you.”

  It was clear to Georgie that we did not refer to Ezra and Willy. It meant Nelly had sent her. At the thought of her mother, Georgie stiffened. So Dorothy had not come to see her voluntarily after all. She wrinkled her nose and took another gulp of tea.

  “How is the hospital?”

  “It’s great.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. It’s good to be helping. The men are interesting. The matron has good control of the place.”

  “I can say whatever you like to Nelly. You can tell me how it really is.”

  “I just did.” She felt weak enough without telling anyone about it. Dorothy reached over and refilled Georgie’s teacup with brandy. The drink had already started to do its work; Georgie’s head had become fuzzier and easier. Dorothy was looking around languidly at the waiting staff, who had definitely seen her with her flask but would not come over to bother them. Like any extremely attractive woman, Dorothy was accustomed to getting what she wanted. Georgie was never sure if it was because of Dorothy’s looks or because of her unshakable confidence, but in any case, she had never seen it fail.

  “You are getting your work done, then?”

  “Of course I am.” Georgie realised she now sounded standoffish, and softened her voice. “Has Willy said something?”

  “Willy who?”

  “Willy Yeats, of course.”

  Dorothy frowned. “Why?”

  “It is possible we might have some kind of future together.”

  “You and Willy?” Dorothy gave a half laugh, half cough. “Don’t be daft.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “You can’t be!” Dorothy was laughing now, and Georgie took another sip and wished her head were clearer.

  “Why not?” When Ezra had come over from America, knowing nobody and with no money, he had spent months elbowing his way into soirées and readings until he’d won himself a winter alone with the great poet, out on the waste moor. Now Ezra had a beautiful wife to take there with him for the poets’ winter retreats. Not for the first time, Georgie reflected on how Ezra was exceptionally good at getting what he wanted.

  Dorothy’s laughter had evaporated when she realised that Georgie wasn’t joking. She held up one slender, pale hand and started to count items off on her fingers. “Because. He’s a hundred years old. He had an affair with my mother. And many more since. He’s completely, utterly cuckoo”—she paused, her little
finger hovering in the air—“and, of course, Maud Gonne. He’s still in love with Maud Gonne.”

  “He is not.” She was irritated. Willy was old, yes, but that wasn’t his fault; he’d had an affair with Olivia, but Olivia was wise, an excellent novelist, witty, and beautiful—how could that count against him? And the accusation that Willy was still in love with Maud Gonne! Of course he wasn’t. Yes, he had been in love with her for decades, everyone knew that, just as everyone knew the poems praising her beauty like a tightened bow. But that he wasn’t in love with her now was just as obvious. His poems said as much, and besides, he had told Georgie so himself at one of their late-night Order meetings. She was naive, Dorothy, refusing to embrace the supernatural, determinedly, unimaginatively placing herself only in the world she could see.

  “Georgie, he is; surely you see that. I’ve spent weeks with him and Ezra and he is definitely still mooning after Maud. What could you possibly like so much about him?”

  She considered. “He understands the contradictions. He doesn’t give in to the abstract. He doesn’t stop; he’s always asking. Why are you smiling?”

  “You sound like you’re describing yourself. You don’t need him, you know.”

  “I never said I did. I didn’t say I needed anyone.”

  Dorothy tilted her head. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “I’m tired.” The brandy was bothering her, her woozy brain lunging at nothing. She was supposed to be working, for heaven’s sake; why had she let Dorothy interrupt her? She stood up from the table, putting out a hand to balance herself.

  Dorothy looked up at her. “So I can tell Nelly—you’re tired? But all right?”

  “You can tell her whatever you please.” She was stung that Dorothy would come only on Nelly’s instructions, stung that she would reject so heartily Georgie’s notion of Willy as a suitor, would make mindless claims about Maud Gonne. She wished she were the one who could spend the winter at Stone Cottage with Willy and Ezra. Dorothy was tucking a loose strand of dark hair behind her ear. She seemed as bad as the worst members of the Order, who repeated the same sentences without any kind of reflection or revision. They were all like gramophones, playing the exact rendition of the same song when life required variation, adaptation. Willy never spoke this way—he was always improvising, testing his theories; even in a formal setting, he was still straining for new, unlikely connections. His thoughts played out as if he had discovered a foreign instrument, and rather than touching one key timidly to see how it sounded, he pounded the keys, trying every note, unafraid of the resulting music. She couldn’t begin to explain this to Dorothy, who would never understand.

  “Perhaps you could come down and visit us?” Dorothy had stood up, fussing now that she realised she had said something wrong, upset her.

  Georgie nodded. “I’d like that.” She kissed her friend and felt something cold pressed against her hand; Dorothy was handing her the flask with the rest of the brandy. Georgie took it and thanked her. Out on the street the late afternoon was glorious, last light grasping the buildings, forcing the windows into gold. Once she got back to the dormitory, Georgie opened the window a finger’s width and lay down on the narrow bed to sleep.

  NINE

  Georgie had been summoned to the Order for a meeting with Dr. Harkin that evening. She had never had an audience alone with the Order leader before, and she couldn’t imagine what he might want. Because she had a spare two hours, on a whim she decided she’d walk to the Order. Perhaps, after all, the walk would do her good. She went walking often enough in the country; why not in London? Turning away from the gardens, she cut through the old cream-walled alley and out onto Mount Street, with the buildings balanced around her.

  She walked quickly, cursing at the muddy straw that had blown up from the road, leaving curls of wet dirt up her skirt. It was just after six, but it felt much later with the streetlights out. Dark London was an entirely different city. Through the low cloud Georgie could hardly see the jagged line where the blackness of the buildings met the dark blue of the sky. She often wondered what a shock it would be, when the war was over and they turned the lights back on, whether the streets would be blinding.

  Closer to the park, a man tipped his hat to her. In his left hand he held a child’s knitted hat, but there was no sign of a child. Georgie walked faster. The countries of Europe seemed themselves like children, stuck in a tug of war, and all falling over together because they held the same rope. It felt so much better to be moving, to walk everyone’s words out of her. She moved faster under dimmed and dead streetlights, past the buildings of orange brick, peach brick, scarlet brick, all with their narrow balconies. She passed a drooping Union Jack, its folds tremoring in the slight winter breeze. A pair of men walked past her, each with a furled umbrella tapping at his ankle, each glancing at her as he moved on. She crossed into Hyde Park. These men, looking at her, would not see any kind of hero, nothing remarkable in her. Dorothy more closely resembled a hero; although, then again, it was men who were heroes, really: wanderers, magicians, politicians, generals. What quest did Anna Karenina or Emma Bovary ever have? What grand plan did the world have in store for them? Was that why she was drawn to Willy, because he was heroic, in his fame, in his public standing as a poet, in his Irish rejection of an English knighthood? It wasn’t that exactly—it was more that she admired his work—and she liked how fallible he still was.

  A month after she had sent a draft of some of her Pico translation, he had sent her a note to say that he thought their souls were bound together. He sent her letters about séances he’d been to, and she looked up facts for him in the library. She was accustomed to being well liked but not needed, and there was a part of Willy that seemed to need her; he admired her learning, her diligence, the meticulousness that contrasted with his own more haphazard approach to study. Wasn’t this what mattered? What did Ezra see in Dorothy? The magnetism of a beauty, a clear, discernible charm and a mind to go with it; but how much did he truly admire her beyond her low voice, the smoothness of her cheeks, the flash of her teeth when she smiled that lazy, clean smile?

  She occasionally worried that Willy might not come through, but she didn’t worry that she wouldn’t. It was as her father had suggested; it was a luxury to have found something she didn’t second-guess. She knew marriage was difficult, knew that marrying someone twice your age would be even more so. But what a luxury to have found herself asking why she loved him, not whether she did. That was a gift.

  Along the park’s dark lip, plane trees tangled into one another. Time had erupted an unexpected pocket, where she might walk and walk as the world fell still around her. The thin branches might be the contorted limbs of Swedenborg’s angels. She turned away from the trees and headed up through the web of streets to North Kensington.

  A servant ushered her through to the cloakroom, where she hurriedly put on her robe and went through to the meeting room, but she found no one there. She kept on walking, through the meeting room and out a tall oak door and back into the cool air. She entered a small, untidy garden. The grass grew up past her ankles.

  Dr. Harkin was standing beside a small tree out in the garden. The tree was the same height as he was, and for a moment in the dimness they seemed like similar creatures. She was surprised to realise he was wearing his civilian clothes, a navy suit with a wide lapel, and he had a lit cigarette which he held loosely. She felt self-conscious that she was wearing her robe.

  “Nemo.” This was her Order name—Nemo Sciat, meaning “let nobody know.”

  “Hello, Doctor.” Having his eyes on her made her nervous. He offered her a cigarette, but she shook her head. “I’m sorry I’ve missed so many meetings lately.”

  “I know you have other commitments.”

  There was a pause while they both stood there, and he took an occasional draw from his cigarette. She knew that he could take a long time between sentences. The Order was his life’s work. There was a sense in which it had become her
work too; while Willy only dipped in and out of the core texts of the Order and read only in English, Georgie read every text from cover to cover more than once, and she read in Italian, French, German, and Latin, and was teaching herself Sanskrit. This year she would sit an examination that would allow her to rise to the rank of 6=5, the same rank as Willy.

  With his free hand Dr. Harkin reached up to smooth his moustache with a finger and thumb. He had all the Order organised in his mind, each level, each element you’d passed and all those yet to pass; he knew the system and its long history, and where each of the present members belonged in the hierarchy; presumably it all took time to sort through. But tonight she was anxious to know what he wanted.

  “Is everything all right?”

  He nodded. “And you? You are—well?”

  “Quite well.” She waited, directing her gaze at the few strands of hair that lined his throat.

  “I have heard—” he started, paused, solemnly eyed his cigarette. He didn’t seem to breathe between puffs, but when he inhaled he did so in loud breaths. She stood very still, in the hope he’d get the words out. “I’ve heard that you have been going to séances. With a Miss Radcliffe.”

  “I don’t know anyone of that name.” This was technically true. Willy had seen the Radcliffe girl and had asked Georgie some questions about the scripts from her séances. But when Willy urged Georgie to make an appointment to see her, the lady’s calendar had been so full that she couldn’t get a slot for months. She had made an appointment, but it was not until April, meaning she didn’t know Miss Radcliffe, per se.

  “I have heard—that you and Demon est Deus Inversus—”

  “People say all sorts of things about Mr. Yeats. Almost none of it true.” She looked at Dr. Harkin as he lowered his cigarette, a gleam of silver at his wrist. What did he care about Nora Radcliffe? Some girl claiming to channel ghosts—how could this possibly affect an organisation as powerful as the Order?