The woods tilted steeply and turned end for end. Leasing was beyond surprise as he fell away, spinning and whirling through darkness, falling farther and farther from Clarissa in the woods. Leaving Clarissa alone in the embrace of her god.
When the spinning stopped he was sitting in his car again, with traffic pouring ‘noisily past on the left. He was parked, somewhere. Double-parked, with the motor running. He blinked.
“I’ll get out here,” Clarissa told him matter-of-factly. “No, don’t bother. You’ll never find a parking place, and I’m so sleepy. Good night, darling. Phone me in the morning.”
He could do nothing but blink. The dazzle of her eyes and her smile was a little blinding, and that haze still diffused all his efforts to focus upon her face. But he could see enough. They were exactly where they had started, at the curb before her apartment house.
“Good night,” said Clarissa again, and the door closed behind her.
There was silence in the office after Leasing’s last words.
Dyke sat waiting quietly, his eyes on Leasing’s face, his shadow moving a little on the desktop under the swinging light. After a moment Leasing said, almost defiantly, “Well?”
Dyke smiled slightly, stirring in his chair. “Well?” he echoed.
“What are you thinking?”
Dyke shook his head. “I’m not thinking at all. It isn’t time yet for that—unless the story ends there. It doesn’t, does it?”
Leasing looked thoughtful. “No. Not quite. We met once more.”
“Only once?” Dyke’s eyes brightened “That must be when your memory went, then. That’s the most interesting scene of all. Go on—what happened?”
Lessing closed his eyes. His voice came slowly, as if he were remembering bit by bit each episode of the story he told.
“The phone woke me next morning,” he said. “It was Clarissa. As soon as I heard her voice I knew the time had come to settle things once and for all—if I could. If I were allowed. I didn’t think—He—would let me talk it out with her, but I knew I’d have to try. She sounded upset on the phone. Wouldn’t say why. She wanted me to come over right away.”
She was at the door when he came out of the elevator, holding it open for him against a background of mirrors in which no motion stirred. She looked fresh and lovely, and Lessing marveled again, as he had marveled on waking, that the extraordinary drunkenness of last night had left no ill effects with either of them this morning. But she looked troubled, too; her eyes were too bright, with a blinding blackness that dazzled him, and the sweet serenity was gone from her face. He exulted at that. She was awakening, then, from the long, long dream.
The first thing he said as he followed her into the apartment was, “Where’s your aunt?”
Clarissa glanced vaguely around. “Oh, out, I suppose. Never mind her. Jim, tell me—did we do something wrong last night? Do you remember what happened? Everything?”
“Why I…I think so.” He was temporizing, not ready yet in spite of his decision to plunge into these deep waters.
“What happened, then? Why does it worry me so? Why can’t I remember?” Her troubled eyes searched his face anxiously. He took her hands. They were cold and trembling a little.
“Come over here,” he said. “Sit down. What’s the matter, darling? Nothing’s wrong. We had a few drinks and took a long ride, don’t you remember? And then I brought you back here and you said good night and went in.”
“That isn’t all,” she said with conviction. “We were—fighting something. It was wrong to fight—I never did before. I never knew it was there until I fought it last night. But now I do know. What was it, Jim?”
He looked down at her gravely, a tremendous excitement beginning to well up inside him. Perhaps, somehow, they had succeeded last night in breaking the spell. Perhaps His grip had been loosened after all, when they defied the pattern even as briefly as they did.
But this was no time for temporizing. Now, while the bonds were slack, was the moment to strike hard and sever them if he could. Tomorrow she might have slipped back again into the old distraction that shut him out. He must tell her now—Together they might yet shake off the tightening coils that had been closing so gently, so inexorably about her.
“Clarissa,” he said, and turned on the sofa to face her. “Clarissa, I think I’d better tell you something.” Then a sudden, unreasoning doubt seized him and he said irrelevantly, “Are you sure you love me?” It was foolishly important to be reassured just then. He did not know why.
Clarissa smiled and leaned forward into his arms, putting her cheek against his shoulder. From there, unseen, she murmured, “I’ll always ‘love you, dear.”
For a long moment he did not speak. Then, holding her in one arm, not watching her face, he began.
“Ever since we met, Clarissa darling, things have been happening that—worried me. About you. I’m going to tell you if I can. I think there’s something, or someone, very powerful, watching over you and forcing you into some course, toward some end I can’t do more than guess at. I’m going to try to tell you exactly why I think so, and if I have to stop without finishing, you’ll know I don’t stop on purpose. I’ll have been stopped.”
Leasing paused, a little awed at his own daring in defying that Someone whose powerful hand he had felt hushing him before. But no pad of silence was pressed against his lips this time and he went on wonderingly, expecting each word he spoke to be the last. Clarissa lay silent against his shoulder, breathing quietly, not moving much. He could not see her face.
And so he told her the story, very simply and without references to his own bewilderment or to the wild conclusions he had reached. He told her about the moment in the park when she had been drawn away down a funnel of luminous rings. He reminded her of the vanishment of the summerhouse. He told of the dreamlike episode on the hallway here, when he called irrationally into the mirrored dimness, or thought he called. He told her of their strange, bemused ride uptown the night before, and how the pattern swung the streets around under their wheels. He told her of his two vivid dreams through which she-yet not she—had moved so assuredly. And then, without drawing any conclusions aloud, he asked her what she was thinking.
She lay still a moment longer in his arms. Then she sat up slowly, pushing back the smooth dark hair and meeting his eyes with the feverish brilliance that had by now become natural to her.
“So that’s it,” she said dreamily, and was silent.
“What is?” he asked almost irritably, yet suffused now with a sense of triumph because the Someone had not silenced him after all, had slipped this once and let the whole s-tory come out into open air at last. Now at last he thought he might learn the truth.
“Then I was right,” Clarissa went on. “I was fighting something last night. It’s odd, but I never even knew it was there until the moment I began to fight it. Now I know it’s always been there. I wonder—”
When she did not go on, Leasing said bluntly, “Have you ever realized that…that things were different for you? Tell me, Clarissa, what is it you think of when you, when you stand and lock at something trivial so long?”
She turned her head and gave him a long, grave look that told him more plainly than words that the whole spell was not yet dissolved. She made no answer to the question, but she said.
“For some reason I keep remembering a fairy story my aunt used to tell me when I was small. I’ve never forgotten it, though it certainly isn’t much of a story. You see—”
She paused again, and her eyes brightened as he looked, almost as if lights had gone on behind them in a dark room full of mirrors. The look of expectancy which he knew so well tightened the lines of her face for a moment, and she smiled delightedly, without apparent reason and not really seeming to know she smiled.
“Yes,” she went on. “I remember it well. Once upon a time, in a kingdom in the middle of the forest; a little girl was born. All the people in the country were blind. The sun shone so brightly that
none of them could see. So the little girl went about with her eyes shut too, and didn’t even guess~ that such a thing as sight existed.
“One day as she walked alone in’ the woods she heard a voice beside her. ‘Who are you?’ she asked the voice, and the voice replied, I am your guardian.’ The little girl said, ‘But I don’t need a guardian. I know these woods very well. I was born here.’ The voice said, ‘Ah, you were born here, yes, but you don’t belong here, child. You are not blind like the others.’ And the little girl exclaimed, ‘Blind? What’s that?’
“I can’t tell you yet,’ the voice answered, ‘but you must know that you are a king’s daughter, born among these humble people as our king’s children sometimes are. My duty is to watch over you and help you to open your eyes when the time comes. But the time is not yet. You are too young—the sun would blind you. So go on about your business, child, and remember I am always here beside you. The day will come when you open your eyes and see.”
Clarissa paused. Leasing said impatiently, “Well, did she?”
Clarissa sighed. “My aunt never would finish the story. Maybe that’s why I’ve always remembered it.”
Leasing started t~ speak. “I don’t think—” But something in Clarissa’s face stopped him. An exalted and enchanted look, that Christmas-morning expression carried to fulfillment, as if the child were awake and remembering what many-lighted, silver-spangled glory awaited him downstairs. She said in a small, clear voice.
“It’s true. Of course it’s true! All you’ve said, and the fairy tale too. Why; I’m the king’s child. Of course I am!” And she put both hands to her eyes in a sudden childish gesture, as if half expecting the allegory of blindness to be literal.
“Clarissa!” Leasing said.
She looked at him with wide, dazzled eyes that scarcely knew him. And for a moment a strange memory came unbidden into his mind and brought terror with it. Alice, walking with the Fawn in the enchanted woods where nothing has a name, walking in friendship with her arm about the Fawn’s neck. And the Fawn’s words when they came to the edge of the woods and memory returned to them both. How it started away from her, shaking off the arm, wildness returning to the eyes that had looked as serenely into Alice’s as Clarissa h-ad looked into his. “Why—I’m a Fawn,” it said in astonishment. “And you’re a Human Child!”
Alien species.
“I wonder why I’m not a bit surprised?” murmured Clarissa. “I must have known it all along, really. Oh, I wonder what comes next?”
Leasing stared at her, appalled. She was very like a child now, too enraptured by the prospect of—of what?—to think of any possible consequences. It frightened him to see how sure she was of splendor to come, and of nothing but good in that splendor. He hated to mar the look of lovely anticipation on her face, but he must. He had wanted her to help him fight this monstrous possibility if she could bring herself to accept it at all. He had not expected instant acceptance and instant rapture. She must fight it—
“Clarissa,” he said, “think! If it’s true…and we may be wrong…don’t you see what it means? He…they won’t let us be together, Clarissa. We can’t be married.”
Her luminous eyes turned to him joyously.
“Of course we’ll be married, darling. They’re only looking after me, don’t you see? Not hurting me, just watching. I’m sure they’d never do anything to hurt me. Why darling, for all we know you may be one of us, too. I wonder if you are.
It almost stands to reason, don’t you think? Or- why would
They have let us fall in love? Oh, darling—”
Suddenly he knew, that someone was standing behind him. Someone—For one heart-stopping moment he wondered if the jealous god himself had come down to claim Clarissa, and he dared not turn his head. But when Clarissa’s shining eyes lifted to the face beyond his, and showed no surprise, he felt a little reassurance.
He sat perfectly still. He knew he could not have turned if he wanted. He could only watch Clarissa, and though no words were spoken in that silence, he saw her expression change. The rapturous joy drained slowly out of it. She shook her head, bewilderment and disbelief blurring the ecstasy of a moment before.
“No?” she said to that standing someone behind him.
“But I thought—Oh, no, you mustn’t! You wouldn’t! It isn’t fair!”
And the dazzling dark eyes flooded with sudden tears that doubled their shining. “You can’t, you can’t!” sobbed Clarissa, and flung herself forward upon Leasing, her arms clasping his neck hard as she wept incoherent protest upon his shoulder.
His arms closed automatically around her while his mind spun desperately to regain its balance. What had happened? Who—
Someone brushed by him. The aunt. He knew that, but with no sense of relief even though he had half-expected that more awesome Someone at whose existence he could still only guess.
The aunt was bending over them, pulling gently at Clarissa’s shaking shoulder. And after a moment Clarissa’s grip on his neck loosened and she sat up obediently, though still catching her breath in long, uneven sobs that wrung Leasing’s heart.
He wanted desperately to do or say whatever would comfort her most quickly, but his mind and his body were both oddly slowed,as if there were some force at work in the room which he could not understand. As if he were moving against the momentum of that singing machinery he had fancied he sensed so often—moving against It, while the other two were carried effortlessly on.
Clarissa let herself be pulled away. She moved as boneleasly as a child, utterly given up to her grief, careless of everything but that. The tears streaked her cheeks and her body drooped forlornly. She held Leasing’s hands until the last, but when he felt her fingers slipping from his the loss of contact told him, queerly, as nothing else quite had power to tell, that this was a final parting. They stood apart over a few feet of carpet, as if inexorable miles lay between them. Miles that widened with every passing second. Clarissa looked at him through her tears, her eyes unbearably bright, her lips quivering, her hands still outstretched and curved from the pressure of his clasp.
This La all. You have sewed your purpose—now go. Go and forget.
He did not know what voice had said it, or exactly in what words, but the meaning came back to him clearly now. Go and forget.
There was strong music in the air. For one last moment. he stood in a world that glittered with beauty and color because it was Clarissa’s, glittered even in this dark apartment with its many, many mirrors. All about him be could see reflecting Clarissa’s from every angle of grief and parting, moving confusedly as she let her hands begin to drop. He saw a score of Clarissa’s dropping their curved hands—but he never saw them fall. One last look at Clarissa’s tears, and then…and then—
Lethe.
Dyke let his breath out in a long- sigh. He leaned back in his creaking chair and looked at Leasing without expression under his light eyebrows. Leasing blinked stupidly back. An instant ago he had stood in Clarissa’s apartment; the touch of her fingers was still warm in his hands. He could hear her caught breath and see the reflections moving confusedly in the mirrors around them—
“Wait a minute,” he said. “Reflections—Clarissa—I almost remembered something just then—” He sat up and stared at Dyke without seeing him, his brow furrowed. “Reflections,” he said again. “Clarissa—lots of Clarissa’s—but no aunt! I was looking at two women in the mirror, but I didn’t see the aunt! I never saw her—not once! And yet I…wait…the answer’s there, you know…right there, just in reach, if I could only—”
Then it came to him in a burst of clarity. Clarissa had seen it before him; the whole answer lay in that legend she had told. The Country of the Blind! How could those sightless natives hope to see the king’s messenger who watched over the princess as she- walked that enchanted wood? How could he remember what his mind had never been strong enough to comprehend? How could he have seen that guardian except as a presence without shape, a voice w
ithout words, moving through its own bright sphere beyond the sight of the blind?
“Cigarette?” said Dyke, creaking his chair forward.
Leasing reached automatically across the desk. There was no further sound but the rustle of paper and the scratch of a match, for a little while. They smoked in silence, eying one another. Outside feet went by upon gravel. Men’s voices called distantly, muffled by the night. Crickets were chirping, omnipresent in the dark.
Presently Dyke let down the front legs of his chair with a thump and reached forward to grind out his unfinished cigarette.
“All right,” he said. “Now—are you still too dose, or can you look at it objectively?”
Leasing shrugged. “I can try.”
“Well, first we can take it as understood—at least for the moment—that such things as these just don’t happen. The story’s full of holes, of course. We could tear it to pieces in ten minutes if we tried.”
Leasing looked stubborn. “Maybe you think—”
“I haven’t begun to think yet. We haven’t got to the bottom of the thing, naturally. I don’t believe it really happened exactly as you remember. Man, how could it? The whole story’s still dressed up in a sort of allegory, and we’ll have to dig deeper still to uncover the bare facts. But just as it stands—what a problem! Now I wonder—”
His voice died. He shook cut another cigarette and scratched a match abstractedly. Through the first cloud of exhaled smoke lie went on.
“Take it all as read, just for a minute. Unravel the allegory in the allegory-the king’s daughter born in the Country of the Blind. You know, Leasing, one thing strikes me that you haven’t noticed yet. Ever think how completely childish Clarissa seems? Her absorption in trivial things, for instance. Her assumption that the forces at work about her must be protective, parental. Yes, even that glow you spoke of that affected everything you saw and heard when you were with her. A child’s world is like that. Strong, clear colors. Nothing’s ugly because they have no basis for comparison. Beauty and ugliness mean nothing to a child. I can remember a bit from my own childhood—that peculiar enchantment over whatever interested me. Wordsworth, you know—’Heaven lies about us in our infancy,’ and all the rest. And yet she was adult enough, wasn’t she? Past twenty, say?”
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