“Tell Oz,” I wrote to Deacon Hill that evening in reply, “that I am already an integral member of a harem in Barrytown and have no intention of giving my heart to Oz—even though he has apparently (reading between the lines) offered me a hut of my very own and, as I gather from the photograph, my very own bowl of porridge, and even though it is all too true that my own Bambola has his harem packed together in one small room—two or three to a perambulator!”
That night I was plagued by a peculiar ringing deep within my left ear—or, perhaps, the brain. It was impossible to tell although I concentrated on it for hours. The absurd question how many angels can dance on a pin came to mind although it was easier to imagine infinitesimal devils wearing tin shoes and crashing cymbals any which way. Once I had that idea—of devils cavorting within my inner ear, or tucked away in a corner of my brain—I was submerged by anxiety and unable to sleep. Turning on the bedside light, I was further dismayed by the sight of Mrs. Livesday’s dolls, their porcelain eyes smoldering in the shadows.
When at last I slept—and this thanks to a summer shower, soothed as I was by the patter of rain upon the roof and the windowpanes—I dreamed unpleasant dreams apparently, for I awoke troubled, my temper frayed, the strange words Time’s flies buzzing in my mind. I recalled that the old cemetery was just beyond Mrs. Livesday’s garden and what else could Time’s flies be but the things that swarm about a cadaver? I feared I breathed a tainted atmosphere and got out of bed to take from my travel case a bottle of fine cologne. I dabbed at my temples, deeply inhaling, before, exhausted, falling back upon my pillow, thinking to catch a few minutes’ repose before breakfast. And then I heard it again and it came to me that I might be the aural witness to the wheels of my own thought—the genesis of thought, so to speak. But were this the case, those wheels needed greasing, for the brittle clashing was chaotic—no rhythm discernible at all. Yet it was persistent—busy and incalculable as bacilli. This noise was a poisonous thing, demanding all my attention. I sent my mind ranging through the week’s occupations: tasks performed, books read, conversations with my sister, et cetera, and yet always came back to that infernal chamber music. And whether my pulse stilled or quickened, the clatter had a life of its own and paid my pulse no mind.
* * *
—
The sun had long been up and I had arranged to meet my hostess at seven-thirty for breakfast. I chose a white linen blouse and a beige linen skirt—both in need of pressing—scrubbed my face until it shone pink, pulled a comb through my hair, and put on a pair of comfortable shoes as it was a habit of Mrs. Livesday’s to take a long walk after breakfast.
Breakfast was always sumptuous—Cobb bringing out a great silver platter of eggs scrambled with oysters, piping hot coffee, and fresh bread. When Mrs. Livesday noticed that my appetite was not equal to her own, I described for her as best I could the wee cacophony plaguing me. I was mortified when, as Cobb returned with a freshly made compote of summer apples, she asked him to fetch the ear syringe, for she supposed my discomfort was the result of accumulated wax. I thanked her curtly, informing her that I was not accustomed to having men aware of or engaged in my intimate affairs. Just then Cobb returned with the thing—bright red it was and seemed far too large for the office with which it was to be entrusted.
“Warm salt water,” said Cobb. “I’ve placed a basin in the upstairs lavatory.” I blushed. Once he was gone, Mrs. Livesday, with an odd bark, said, “Well! I never thought I’d see the day when Cobb—poor old Cobb!—would make a woman blush! And over an ear—It’s not as though he’d handed you an amorous proposal!” I was shocked. Never in all our time together had I ever heard Mrs. Livesday suggest a vulgarity. In more soothing tones she continued: “Do give it a good flushing, and then we will take our walk and I will tell you about Freud and you will tell me about your sister and Deacon Hill’s latest letter, and all the things that have transpired since we were last together!”
Enraged with her, I kept an outward appearance of calm and did as she asked. The cymbals were clashing and the little hooves clattering, and when I reached the lavatory I dropped the basin to the tiles, where it shattered, bringing Cobb at once with another basin, a large mop, a dustpan, and a broom. As he bent over the small mess I had caused, I thought that, indeed, he was not much of a man. One could not imagine him in any function other than the one he had—that of butler, cook, and companion to an old, an eccentric woman.
“Cobb!” I said. “Do you do the ironing, too?” And as his answer was satisfactory, I gave him what I had brought but for the clothes I wore—everything horribly creased despite the care I had taken, packing it all between sheets of tissue paper.
* * *
—
It was later, on our walk together, that I heard a trill of peculiar intensity, a series of notes sweetly piercing. Next I saw close by the path a remarkably beautiful bird, slender-beaked, its wings a velvety black with emerald markings as though embroidered there, its breast a glittering steel blue, its tail velvet. Indeed it seemed to me so lovely that I imagined it had flown directly to Barrytown from Paradise. Again it called and then, spreading its wings, was gone with such celerity I was astonished.
I cried out to Mrs. Livesday, who at that moment was off the path examining a clump of wild asparagus with the intent to pirate it for lunch, and who came running—too late to see the marvelous bird. She had no idea what it was I had seen and supposed it was a raven: the velvety black, the metallic reflection…Once again I felt myself flush with anger.
“But,” I insisted, “the song was superb!”
“I don’t disbelieve you,” she countered. “However, the raven imitates the cries of other birds—a marvelous thing in itself.” And she was off, as was her wont, this time telling of Dr. Franklin’s raven Jacob who could imitate the cries of infants, the crowing of cocks. As she spoke, the ringing in my ear, until then blessedly absent, thrust me into an agitation impossible to conceal.
* * *
—
My sister Abigail had been a flapper and when she returned home at dawn dressed in what looked like a slip our family dissolved. Mother, who had been waiting up for her, slapped her as soon as she walked through the door. This fact was the one major event that undid everything, for rather than burst into tears, or run to her room and lock herself in, or implore forgiveness, or attempt the impossible: to justify the levity (and that is putting it politely), she turned on her heel and vanished (and she was wearing a pair of silver shoes such as I had never seen). We had no news of her for years.
Once she was picked up downtown for vagrancy and if Father paid her bail he did not attempt to see her. That week he removed her from his will. A few years later when both Mother and Father were carried away by influenza, I was sole inheritress of a modest allowance that has enabled me to live comfortably—if carefully—the life of a gentlewoman of an earlier time and not have to scrounge for a living teaching other people’s brats—the work for which I was trained—or to submit to the banalities and indignities of matrimony.
After Abigail vanished, Mother, Father, and I did our best to fill the hole she had left behind—“with good, black earth,” Mother said, “a heavy stone on top.”
At first we entertained a hushed silence—never speaking of her, nor for that matter, of much of anything. We kept busy at our separate tasks, although I must admit I often pretended to be busy. But then little by little we began to speak together again and—as if by silent consent—to re-create the past sans Abigail. This involved a great deal of concentration and imagination. It became a game as well as an act of faith, or I should say: love. For in this way we were able to reassure one another and to prove that our affection was real, somehow legitimate (as if that needed to be proved!) and that we were worthy of being called a family. The unexpected effect of all this tender subterfuge was that I learned to speak convincingly and with eloquence on just about anything and so to contribut
e to important causes—such as Deacon Hill’s charities. And if Mrs. Livesday has chided me about what she calls my “antiquated manner” and “eccentricities of speech,” I pride myself upon this capacity. I see myself not only as Christ’s spokeswoman, but a servant of Good English. Before Abigail vanished, her conversation rattled and belched with absurdist “slang.”
“What news,” Mrs. Livesday asked as we returned the way we had come up the path, “have you of your sister?”
“Abigail is beyond repair,” I answered her, and with such acidity that Mrs. Livesday, if she frowned, did not dare ask me about my sister again. Perhaps because of my curt reply, lunch was eaten in silence, and after coffee Mrs. Livesday retired.
Sometime in midafternoon as I lay in my chamber in an attempt to refresh my brain, I heard her depart with Cobb for town (a salmon had been ordered from the city for our supper) and overheard the following; it stabbed me to the quick:
Cobb: Is Miss Hubble coming with us?
Mrs. Livesday: Good gracious, no! She’d spoil our fun. Let’s steal away, Cobb. Now!
Well what of it if I had been brusque. She was, after all, an intrusive busybody who had no right, no right whatsoever, to bring up family matters out of the blue. And now the dreadful poppets were all gazing at me, or so it seemed, with eager eyes. “Tell Oz,” I continued the letter to the Deacon in my head, “that the Barrytown harem is beginning to test my temper.” I closed my eyes.
The trilling was deeper now; it had gathered energy and speed. Overtaken by exhaustion, it seemed to me that a blizzard of sound was raging in my skull, so that when I slept I dreamed of ice. In my dream I was struggling along a narrow isthmus hemmed in on all sides by ice. I knew that I needed to head south, else die, and prayed for the sun to guide me. And then I saw it blazing before me beyond a veil of snow and sleet. As I battled on I could hear the ice falling with a fearful distinctness, but the sun was fuller now; it began to blaze with such intensity I feared as much for my life as before. The sun’s shape was strange—more like a vertical mouth—and I knew with rage and horror that it was not the sun at all but Abigail’s vulva burning above my face.
I awoke then, shuddering and drenched with perspiration. The sun was sinking; low on the horizon it had, for an instant, flooded the room. I lay panting until it had set, until I lay in shadow, until the first crickets began their chirping—so shocked by the vision in the dream that I prayed: Let me be turned to stone this instant! For that is precisely what I thought I deserved—to be rendered blind and deaf and mute. But instead of turning to stone, I lay hot and heavy on the bed until I heard a sound beyond those of evening, beyond, even, the ringing of my mind, a sound akin to the rustle of dry leaves in the wind or the sensuous rasp a taffeta gown makes on the body of an actress as she moves across the stage; a sound of such intense sweetness that my heart was at once throbbing with a rare delight. A delicious sound and captivating—and yet chilling because so feral. A wild, extravagant murmur unlike anything I had ever heard before. I raised myself from my pillow then and stared at the door expectantly. I should not have been surprised had Pan himself walked into the room. I waited. Nothing out of the ordinary occurred except that once the moment had passed I felt an acute sense of loss, or longing—I cannot say which—as though something offered had been taken back.
Because I had to, I next bathed and dressed, did my hair, and, succumbing to a rare moment of vanity, pulled out some silver by the roots. I thought: My eyes are still quite fine. Opening the lavatory door I heard a familiar domestic clatter, the table being set deep within the house, the oven door opening and closing, and made my way down two flights of stairs to the first floor, which was brightly lit and submerged in the fragrant smells of Cobb’s excellent cooking.
I found Mrs. Livesday in the music room sipping sherry.
“And have you rested?” she asked with what I feared was forced cordiality.
“I have, thank you,” I replied, “and I must apologize to you. Please accept my apology, Mrs. Livesday. You have always shown me nothing but generosity and have been a constant friend now for over a decade—”
“That long! Of course I accept. What a relief! Dear Gertrude, you have been testy. But now that’s over and forgotten. Have some sherry and begin to think about the feast Cobb has prepared.” Indeed, as I had lain thrashing in my little room, they had been to the train station to fetch a large, boxed fish packed in ice and sent from Nova Scotia. It was a beautiful salmon, its recent history revealed on a small square of cardboard Cobb had found tucked playfully in its smiling mouth. There were lemons in the box also—an extravagance in those days—wrapped in white paper. And they had also brought back flowers—something I wished I had thought of myself. Instead of stewing upstairs, I chided myself, I might have been out gathering flowers. Entering the dining room with Mrs. Livesday on my arm and seeing them throbbing at the table’s center I said as much: “I intended to bring you some flowers, dearest Mrs. Livesday!” (I had not thought to bring her anything!) “But I promise to make up for my ill temper and the rest.”
“Dear Gertrude!” she replied. “Will you please cease to torture yourself! Now. Sip this wine and look! Here comes Cobb with our fish.” Baked in cream, it appeared to swim in a dish the size of a small pool. Cobb brought out scalloped potatoes next, a spinach souffle, corn bread. “Attempt to discover the nature of our dessert,” she continued, “although I doubt you can!”
Cobb sat down then and smiling shyly echoed her: “I doubt she can!”
I could not. As it turned out, Cobb had baked a tarte Tatin—and a perfect one, I should add, gilded with caramel and served with a small glass of brandy, followed by a smaller cup of Turkish coffee.
“Mine shows a face!” Mrs. Livesday cried, peering into her cup. “The world is full of delights.” She gave Cobb her brandy glass to be refilled, repeating as she took it back: “To delight!”
Again I felt stirring that irresistible rage. I believed she was chiding me for my spinsterhood and Spartan ways and so set to scowling, muddling over a thousand things, as the eerie buzzing started up again—or I became once more aware of it.
She: It seems the word delight has offended you, somehow.
I: Not at all! Delight! How could it? That would be silly! I blushed. It’s only…my ear is still ringing…a strange affliction…hard to describe. Imagine a hive, Mrs. Livesday, filled with bees made of tin. Bees the size of…atoms. Their wings…cymbals of brass. Imagine that! Deep in your brain! I wonder: Could I have picked up some malady on the train?
She: Poor Gertrude! I had completely forgotten. So you are still afflicted with this odd malaise. I hope it is not tinnitus! Or Meniere’s disease. My God! That would be terrible! Do you feel dizzy? Nauseous? Your appetite is good. That is a promising sign. Shall we call in a doctor? I’ve a competent one just down the road.
Astonishing us both I blurted out: “But I do not wish to be cured! What if this is…is intentional?”
“Intentional?”
“A summons of some sort.”
“Gertrude! A summons! Forgive me but I cannot follow your reasoning here. A summons from whom?”
“But I have no idea!” I cried out, my irritation rising once again. Why was she always demanding that I justify myself? “You are worse than my mother!”
“That I doubt.” Had I hurt her? She looked more perplexed than hurt.
“How horrid I am!” I said then. “How horrid to you my dearest friend and the sanest. Yes, Mrs. Livesday, the sanest creature I know!”
“A sane creature!” She laughed. “I like that. It makes me feel like a thing from fairyland. Something Alice might have met on the train in Wonderland. A sane creature! What you need,” she continued, “is a second glass of brandy. This one therapeutic. You are frazzled—that’s clear enough, but surely not beyond repair. This will cause you to sleep and to dream,” she said as she filled my glass,
“and to awaken refreshed and lively, full of good spirits. Tomorrow is the flower show—do you remember? And we will enjoy a marvelous time in Rhinebeck. I’ve heard that the displays this year are unlike anything they’ve done previously. You know: the rarest blooms. It will be a treat.” As she spoke I sipped my second brandy dreamily and when it was time for bed, went upstairs feeling tipsy and happier than I had in a very long time. In fact, when I reached my little room I felt so buoyant that had there been a party going on in the music room, I would have returned there and joined in the dancing, a thing I had not done for ever so long—or rather, a thing I, to be honest, had never done. The one who had danced was Abigail. “One too many,” said Father.
For a time I stood upon the threshold staring out across the little bed, the dolls in their perambulators, and as the window was wide open to the night, out across Mrs. Livesday’s south lawn flooded as it was with moonlight. The sight was so inviting, the room so small, so stifling, that I stole back down the stairs and, unlocking the music room’s French doors, out into the night. For a time I stood in the center of the lawn beneath the moon, painfully aware of my unbecoming behavior. The buzzing in my ear had ceased and the only sound the gentle rustle of leaves agitated by the merest whisper of a breeze. Until I heard again, briefly, that sweet trilling, and again—preceded by a hush—that strange, troublous sound.
It was then that I saw what had been haunting me. They moved toward me precisely, inexorably, and gently also, like naked truth I thought; yes, there was something flawless about the way they moved across Mrs. Livesday’s moon-soaked lawn: two tall, beautiful young men, redheaded and pale, moving with a species of subtlety, a rigor, a—I have difficulty finding the words—a meticulousness so that I was held in thrall. And they had wings—enormous, velvety wings of tawny brown and deepest black with spots of blue and green so dark and rich-looking in the moonlight. So stately were they as they moved toward me, their great wings rustling and sighing, that they might have been bishops.
The Big Book of Modern Fantasy Page 118