by Jane Langton
Homer’s mind fuzzed over. After an hour of his own increasingly befuddled questions and Grandison’s increasingly amorphous replies, he emerged from the office in a daze, nodded vaguely to Abigail Saltonstall and fell to the earth in the glass elevator, closing his eyes in terror. As he drove home to Concord he was troubled by a humming in his ears. Feeble phrases undulated in his head, tumbling over and under, and under and over.
By the time he got home he was in a state of frantic deprivation. He wanted nouns, short Anglo-Saxon words like ax, rake, dog, horse; he wanted meaningful prose. He went to Thoreau’s journal as to a medicine cabinet and opened the second volume at random.
As I climbed the hill again toward my old bean-field, I listened to the ancient, familiar, immortal, dear cricket sound under all others, hearing at first some distinct chirps; but when these ceased I was aware of the general earth-song, and I wondered if behind or beneath this there was not some other chant yet more universal.
Ah, that was speech. That was English speech.
Mary was not at home to complain to. Warmed by the tonic of Thoreau’s language, Homer got back in his car and drove to the parking lot at Walden Pond. Striding across the road into the woods, he found his way to the place that had once been the beanfield. It was covered now by the successors of the trees Thoreau had planted when he left the pond.
Homer leaned against one of them and listened. Above him he heard the creaking of the trunk, the wind in the leaves making a sound like the sea. There was no birdsong, no thrilling unfamiliar note that might be a wood thrush. But the crickets were making their midsummer chant, their strong mutual pulse, all in the same rhythm. It was older than he was, older than Thoreau, older than Walden Pond, older perhaps than the great chunk of ice that had hollowed out the basin and filled it with water. In the broad sweep of geologic time, the small human turbulences afflicting these few square miles of Massachusetts were nothing. Someday all the people shouting so angrily at each other in the woods around the pond would be gone. But the crickets would still be there, singing their earth-song, telling of antediluvian and everlasting things, praising the brightness of the moon, the light of the stars, the survival of insects.
As the door closed behind Homer in Jefferson Grandison’s office, a buzzer sounded on Grandison’s desk. He picked up the phone.
The voice was familiar. It belonged to Archibald Pouch, of Pouch, Heaviside and Sprocket, a firm of attorneys hired to intimidate Grandison. As usual Pouch was vulgar, imperious and threatening, demanding the instantaneous removal of Lot Seventeen. The conversation was disagreeable. Grandison threatened court action in return.
When he put down the phone, he stalked into the reception lobby to dress down his secretary-receptionist, Martha Jones, for putting the call through. Martha complained that Pouch had been so insistent, threatening her personally with litigation, she had had no choice.
Back in his office, Grandison made a call of his own. This time he used a pattern of speech totally unlike the tormented language he had inflicted on Homer Kelly. There were no parenthetical remarks, no elliptical parameters, no aforementioneds, no supplementary conditionalities or affiliated relationships.
The exchange was short and sharp.
“Get on with it,” said Grandison.
“Right you are,” said Jack Markey.
39
There is no remedy for love but to love more.
Journal, July 25, 1839
Hope Fry didn’t know what to do about Ananda Singh. Here he was in her own house, sleeping in the room across the hall. He was exquisitely courteous, but he seemed more like a colleague of her father’s than someone her own age.
And he was so shy and old-fashioned, so conservative in his behavior with girls! And yet, Hope knew, there were temples in India covered with sculptured images of love-making. She had seen pictures of them, exotic female deities with narrow waists and swelling hips and breasts as round as melons. Oh, it was so difficult, falling in love with someone from another culture, not knowing what things meant, perhaps making awful mistakes.
He would not allow her to do anything for him. Was it insulting to have a woman do your laundry? Ananda washed his own clothes and hung them on the back porch. Sometimes Hope went out on the porch and put her face against one of his shirts when no one was looking, except the owl with its ferocious yellow eyes.
Most of the talking at the supper table was between Ananda and her father. It was all Thoreau, Thoreau, Thoreau, alternating with Oliver Fry’s angry denunciation of the town boards, his rage at the callow ignorance of the citizenry, his sorrow at the fate of prophets without honor in their own country. The prophet was supposed to be Henry Thoreau, but it was plain he was thinking about himself at the same time.
And Ananda would nod and smile and look down at his plate.
Privately Hope slipped a copy of Walden out of the bookcase and took it to her room. She had read some of it before, in high school, but it had seemed odd and cranky, and she had given up. This time she would try, she would really try. Solemnly she turned to page one.
When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond. …
As for Ananda, he was equally disturbed by the presence of Hope Fry. Seeing her in her flannel bathrobe and fuzzy slippers crossing the hall in the early morning, her hair flooding down over her shoulders and the sunlight slanting in upon her from the window on the landing, he was captivated. It was so odd that the first girl he had spoken to in the United States should be keeping him awake at night, thinking of her lying softly in her own bed across the hall. As usual Ananda was ashamed of his thoughts, which had become more intense as he grew older. It seemed hypocritical to dress so circumspectly in the morning and exchange so few words with this girl at breakfast, after the wild visions of the night. He remembered that Thoreau had written of his own “rank offenses.” Had he been troubled in the same way?
There was to be a dance at the Concord Armory. Hope had seen the poster. It was too good a chance to miss. Casually, as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world, she invited Ananda.
He was delighted. He could imagine no pleasure greater than holding this statuesque girl in his arms. “I’m afraid I don’t know anything but the steps they used to dance at the club in Simla,” he said apologetically.
“The club?” said Hope. “That sounds so British.”
“I did not go there often.”
The armory was only a few blocks away. Together they walked down Everett Street. Hope didn’t care how Ananda danced. In the noisy immensity of the enormous room she closed her eyes as he held her carefully and maneuvered her across the floor in a sort of two-step while the band crashed and smacked and everybody else gyrated and swayed without any body contact at all.
And then, suddenly, it was over. Bonnie Glover moved right in. She came running up as Hope and Ananda sat between dances at one of the tables arranged along the wall.
Bonnie wore a skinny black dress held up with narrow strings over the shoulders.
“Hello again, you two,” she said cheerfully.
Ananda looked at her vaguely, as if she were a stranger. At once Bonnie pulled him to his feet and steered him out into the seething middle of the floor.
Hope gave up. She followed them and yelled at Ananda, “I’m going now. Do you know the way home?”
Ananda looked at her blankly. Bonnie saw her chance. “I’ll take him home,” she shrieked. “I’ve got my car.”
Then Ananda pulled himself away from Bonnie. “Don’t go,” he said, coming to his senses. Ananda was not a fool. It was plain to him that Bonnie belonged to a cruder order of being than Hope Fry. Hope was like the girls he had grown up with, the kind his mother was always writing him about, trying to entice him home.
But Bonnie, grinning, took his arm again, staking a claim.
Weakly, full of shame, Ananda watched H
ope battle her way to the door.
Hope, looking back, caught a glimpse of his green face looking at her anxiously. As she slipped outside, it changed to purple.
Lying in bed at home, she couldn’t sleep. She turned and tossed. When at last Bonnie’s headlights shone on the ceiling, Hope sat up, waiting for the slam of the car door and Ananda’s step on the stairs.
Oh, God, there was no slam, no step on the stairs. Hope fell back on the pillow and closed her eyes. For half an hour she lay still, picturing them entwined on the front seat, kissing, groping, perhaps even—
She had never been so wretched in her life. What a fool she had been to think Ananda too pure and high-minded to be obsessed with sex. If only she had exploited her opportunities like Bonnie! If only she had crushed herself against him, too! Let him compare Bonnie’s endowments with her own in the melon department, she thought bitterly.
At last the car door slammed. Bonnie drove away. Ananda ascended the stairs. Lying rigidly in bed, Hope heard him stop outside her room. There was an electric pause, then a light tap.
With her heart throbbing, Hope got out of bed and opened the door.
They stood looking at each other, two dark shapes.
“I just wanted to be sure you got home safely,” whispered Ananda.
It’s taken you a while to worry about it, Hope wanted to say, but she didn’t. “Here I am,” she whispered instead.
“Well, good night.”
“Good night.”
Next morning Hope and Ananda sat silently eating their bowls of cold cereal while Oliver talked excitedly about the new bee in his bonnet.
“I’m going to run for selectman,” he announced, beaming at his daughter.
Hope was shocked. “Selectman! Who would you be running against?”
“So far, it’s just Roger Bland. This is his last term on the planning board. There’s going to be a special election in October to replace people who have resigned in midterm.”
Hope stared at her father in dismay. “But you’ll never beat Roger Bland.”
Her father looked at her defiantly. “Why not?”
Hope didn’t know how to reply. Her father would make a fool of himself, that was what she wanted to say.
“But we will help,” said Ananda eagerly, looking at Hope for support.
Hope tried to explain. “It’s just that Mr. Bland is a fixture in town government. You know, for years and years.”
The phone rang. Hope jumped up.
“Hi!” said Bonnie Glover. “Is Ananda there?”
Wordlessly Hope held out the phone to Ananda. He was astonished. He raised his eyebrows and pointed to his chest. No one had ever telephoned him before in the United States. Flustered, he stood up and took the phone and turned to the wall and stared at the toothed gears of an eggbeater that had hung on the same hook since 1937.
Hope couldn’t bear to listen. She left the kitchen and ran upstairs.
Later she had a phone call of her own. It was Jack Markey. He was coming out to Concord to show the revised plans of Walden Green to Roger Bland and Judy Bowman. “So how about we have dinner and see a film?”
“Well, okay,” said Hope stiffly.
So when Ananda asked her shyly if she would like him to prepare for supper a couple of special Indian dishes, rajma and keema, she answered airily, “Oh, sure, that’s great. I won’t be here, but I’m sure Father would enjoy it.”
Ananda’s face fell. He had never actually cooked a meal in his life, but he thought it was merely a matter of mixing together the proper ingredients and heating them on the stove. But the pleasure had gone out of it, if Hope would not be there.
The restaurant chosen by Jack Markey was cunningly mock historic, mock regional. Waitresses in mobcaps ran to and fro. Big cutouts of comic-book minutemen lined the walls. Hope toyed with her scampi in marinara sauce, wishing she were eating Ananda’s Indian specialties instead.
The phoniness of the setting irritated her. While Jack talked enthusiastically of the improvements to his design for Walden Green, a passage from Walden kept running through Hope’s head. “I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, I grew in those seasons like corn in the night.”
At the theater she tried to forget herself, to be swallowed up in the film, but the words kept running through her head—“like corn in the night, like corn in the night.”
It was a Finnish film, artistic and full of sex. During one heavy-breathing episode Jack put his arm around Hope and reached under her shirt.
“Oh, Jack, for Pete’s sake.”
“Oh, Hopey, come on.”
Hope stared at the screen. It pulsed and throbbed. In spite of herself she was excited by the groping hands, by Jack’s lips on her neck.
A tall silhouette moved past them, walking up the aisle. Hope could feel the brilliant light of the screen bouncing off her own face in the dark. The reflection of the Finnish actress’s bare skin flooded her, it flooded Jack.
The man in the aisle was Ananda Singh. His head turned toward her, then turned away. Without a word he went on up the aisle.
Hope pulled away from Jack and shook herself angrily. Through the rest of the film she sat beside him, no longer paying attention to the flashing images on the screen. She kept turning her head, looking up the aisle for Ananda, but he didn’t come back.
Life was a lie, really, thought Hope bitterly. It was all false. Look at the way people carried on their ordinary lives, going to school or working at their jobs or shopping or getting supper, while underneath it all was this shaky foundation, sex, this volcanic, titanic force. Everybody knew it, but nobody said anything.
40
… in dreams we never deceive ourselves,
nor are deceived.…
Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers “Wednesday”
Homer Kelly would have put it differently, but he might have come to a similar conclusion. Looking out at the shining surface of the river, he saw it as a screen for a different reality. Hidden beneath the slow-moving water a battle was forever taking place, a continuous savage fight for life—the perpetual craving of the carnivore for its prey, the shrinking recoil of the victim. The beauty of nature, all this plenteous multiform glory that meant so much to him, was only part of the story.
It was an old dilemma for Homer, the lovely variousness of natural forms on the one hand and their menace on the other. And Jefferson Grandison, that august carnivore, was a similar enigma. There he sat, presiding over his glittering high rise, seventy stories of gossamer glass—what was hidden behind that blinding surface? What lay buried in the mud and slime in which its foundations were imbedded?
Homer meant to find out. Climbing into bed at midnight on the day of his swooping ascent and plunging fall in the glass elevator, he ran over in his mind the names of the elements of Grandison’s empire—the names on the list given him by Abigail Saltonstall on the seventieth floor of the Grandison Building. The first fifteen were obviously building projects—Egret Country, Woodland Mall, and the like. If something wasn’t done to stop it, Walden Green would soon be added to the list.
The rest were more mysterious:
Breathe Free
Serene Harbors
Seashores Unlimited
Mountain Lake Environmental Services
Blue Skies
Ah Wilderness
Dreams of the Maine Coast
What exactly did they represent, all those poetical adjectives and nouns? Drowsily Homer went to sleep, gathered into one curve with his sleeping wife.
But instead of dreaming of serene harbors and mountain lakes, he was circling in a crepuscular darkness, dancing in a slow, heavy-footed ring with shadowy people he could dimly recognize. They were Jefferson Grandison, Jack Markey, Ananda Singh, Oliver Fry and his daughter, Hope, Roger Bland and his wife, Marjorie. And who was that shapeless woman whose hand was so limply clasped in Marjorie’s? It was the homeless woman he had seen in Copley Square. And look at al
l those others, the residents of Pond View—Julian Snow and Charlotte Harris and Stuart LaDue and Honey Mooney. The big-shouldered woman was Mimi Pink. What a clumsy ring-a-round-rosy! There was no music, and even the tramp of their feet made no sound. Homer shuffled around clumsily, shuddering as he made room for two more. They were Alice Snow and Shirley Mills, wrapped in fluttering grave cloths, awakened into lethargic life. Around and around they all went in a sluggish gavotte, the alive and the dead together.
Homer woke up in the airless room and lay in the dark, staring at the ceiling. In a moment the languid figures of his dream were gone, leaving only an image of their joined hands, all those lumpish fingers clasped in a ring.
He turned over and whispered in Mary’s ear, “A ring is a ring is a ring.”
“What, Homer?”
“Nothing.” Now even the shreds of his dream were gone, leaving only something about a ring. A ring? Homer closed his eyes again. It was strange the way dreams seemed so important when you were having them and so meaningless when you woke up.
Next morning Homer ate his breakfast, worrying about Julian Snow and his friends at Pond View. It had been days since he had spoken to Julian. Perhaps no news was good news. Perhaps the succession of violent events at the trailer park was over.
Homer stirred his coffee and looked at his wife with an expression of pathos. “My dear, you’re so good with the telephone.”
The toaster went pop and tossed up a blackened piece of bread. “Damn,” said Mary, jumping out of her chair. Dropping in another slice, she glanced at him warily. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“It’s just that I really admire the way you hold the phone to your ear with such a wonderful iron clasp.”
“Come on, Homer, tell me what you’ve got in mind. You want me to call somebody?”
“Not just somebody.” Eagerly Homer whipped out his list. “Look, you see all these high-sounding foundations and grandiose charities and bighearted companies? They all belong to Jefferson Grandison. I want to find out what the hell they really are.”