Cartesian Sonata: And Other Novellas

by Gass, William H.

  He knew why one normally didn’t look. There were too many things to see. Every feature was a forest where you’d get lost in leaves, in their serrated edges, their dim red veins, to fall through the small holes eaten by insects.

  In front of his couch sat the oval glass-topped coffee table he’d leaned over while replacing the pillow, its color a light green like some goblets he’d seen, but partially covered by a white cloth with many tiny sewn-on flowers. A good-sized green glass vase containing real lilies and leaves and wearing a white ribbon wrapped around it like a string for remembrance—the girdle of the Queen of the May?—was, for all its considerable presence, not the predominant element, because it was clear that tabletops in this house were there to bear objects up to the eye, to serve as surfaces for the display of collections, and this table was no exception, since Riff would have had to have more adeptness with coffee cups than he felt he presently possessed in order to find a ready place to put such a cup down, or to pick one up, without dipping his fingers perilously between spires of vase and candle glass, like the steam shovel’s claw in its transparent case which he tried to get to grab novelties and candies for a dime when he was a kid.

  So around the base of a pair of white art-glass sticks, holding pale green twisted candles, with forever unlit wicks, Riff saw twined a bunch of white plastic roses. Next to them sat a large seashell containing smaller though similar shells in its maw, while nearby a stuffed russet bird with a tan breast and long dark tail appeared to be approaching a basket basin’d with white lace and filled with … he knew this one … poe … pose … poury … and piles of the burnt purple petals of roses.

  Where had the petals of his own rose ended? Ended.

  Whew, said the soul of Walter Riffaterre. Aromas. He’d better put his things away. This room seemed to call for order. Try to be somebody for a change, his soul said. At the end of the bed, where his case lay, was a trunk painted to look paneled. It had a humpbacked lid like one of those French roofs. Across the top sailed a wooden representation of Noah’s ark. At one end a plant sat in the center of a doily like a cat; at the other lay two Siamese candles joined by one wick.

  Curiosity bit him like a snake. What was in the chest? But the objects which stood upon it said: do not move me or open this lid. Did they mean that? He felt the venom tingle at his finger ends. Not exactly to ransack, just to peek.

  Next to his closet (from whose door hung a huge puffy tablecloth-covered wreath, wrapped with a narrow white ribbon that nevertheless managed to be dotted down its middle by a row of dinky red roses, the wreath sorrowful as though resting from a funeral) stood the familiar suitcase sling with its crossed legs and standard straps, as out of place as Riff was, who had lit here like some bird blown off course. But it was also a busy place—what wall wasn’t?—because in the space above the radiator a wide round mirror reflected Riff and many of the room’s wonders. Next to it was nailed a bird in a hoop of needlepoint, then a bamboo oval surrounding a rose, and on brackets a wooden tray which contained another candle lying at length and—wait a minute—a note—it looked—it looks like a … Riff read: “Thank you for being considerate. You are welcome to smoke on the porch or on the patio.” From a corner of the tray, which was decorated with wood strips, two further candles were suspended from the loop of their common wick. Candles came in pairs like twins who shared the same cord. A lone candle—like a sentry, say—signified some family catastrophe, and a fallen candle?…

  The door knocked. Riff was entranced. There was a straight walking cane with a knurly knob squeezed between the wall and the radiator, and leaning against them both at an angle on either side were two decorated panels, the first of a gaggle of geese honking away at a boy (in the other) who was carrying a gosling off in his arms. The radiator was topped by a white embroidered runner and a basket full of weed fluff and maybe Christmas cards. Coming. Yes.

  It was Mister Vest. Only he wasn’t sporting it. He had on a cabled cardigan sweater instead, which Walter recognized immediately because it was the kind his father used to wear before everything went blooey, the wool worming its way up his front to where his tie would tuck. He’d come home from peddling his atlases and change from his suit coat to that sweater, stained with pipe ash or darkened by washless wear—who knew what else?—over years. So Walter inferred that Mister Ambrose was off-duty, though not quite. Not to pry, but if you’re going out to dine and intend to be a while, please pick up a door key before going out. All these words were slowly whiskelated in phrases parted by puffs and wheezes. Ah, sure, Walter said. So you won’t need to wake us when you come in. Ah, sure thing. We gets early to bed ’cause we’re early to rise. Walter bet that his host had cranked out this sentence on many other occasions. Mister Ambrose coughed, but delicately this time, fist to his lips.

  How are you feeling, Walter heard himself ask, holding open his door as if wide.

  Punished. Punished, Mister Ambrose repeated after a pause. As mother says, he says, turning as if on a spindle, justice gets done whether Tuesday or Doomsday.

  Walter returned immediately to the basket where a card with a button sewn on it lay among others which, he discovered, all carried religious messages of the sort one was awarded at Sunday school, always accompanied by bright-colored images in thematic harmony. He picked up the button-bearing card and read: “There is a message inside.” Indeed, it did unfold. Inside he found a handwritten note dated 6-16-92. Walter became terribly excited. He couldn’t peekaboo the keyhole, he didn’t dare open the chest … yet … Once he had watched a woman widdle in the woods … still …

  Dear Bettie,

  Just a little thank you for letting me share the Thursday Bible Study. It has been a blessed time for me this year as you have shared so many special things from God’s word. I’ve enjoyed all the gals who come and will miss you and them and the support you all have been.

  I’ve just enjoyed getting to know you & love the Bed and Breakfast. It was such fun helping you out.

  Emery is special, too! I wish we had had more time, time just gets away doesn’t it! Your thoughtfulness to us has meant a lot and so has knowing you! Pray for us! Thank you!

  Keep us in your prayers and thanks for being a special friend.

  Love,

  Alma

  This took some digesting, this did. Emery? Was the Vest—Mister Ambrose—Emery? Walter tried it: Emery Ambrose. Had a certain ring. Then, on the back of the folded sheets, he saw the rest:

  When with my note you are through,

  you will still have this button to pin on you.

  Filled with admiration for the cleverness of this couplet, Riffaterre looked up to see, then to remember, finally to realize, that the back of every door—closet, bath, bedroom—had been rendered useful by the addition of a milk glass coat hook—heavens—how could he have missed it?

  And did this mean that Missus Ambrose was a … a Bettie? Bettie and Breakfast? Come on … come on. On top of a plastic rose, and tented beside the basket full of cards, its spiral on high like a roof tree, was a friendship sampler. Picking the notebook up, Riff read a message about the holiness of friendship written by another guest. The thought didn’t sink in, however. Walter had become distracted by events. There’d been some lines on friendship from whatzhizname—Stevenson. Who wrote—right?—Treasure Island. Emery … was his tinny mechanical voice the result of some vice? suppose he smoked or chewed tobacco? but if he paid the price now maybe he’d have a clean slate ready for the hereafter? was that the idea? Not bad. In that case, life was purgatory. You’d better use it wisely.

  But what of Walter Riffaterre? What about his sleazy little sins, his slippery inks both out and in? His worried eyes on the street-side wall, more objects he hadn’t noticed when he’d first come in began to solicit his attention. But God, he said sort of seriously, hadn’t he led a life of minor-league misery for as long—well, almost—as he could remember? No one would shout “fun!” while Riff went round from town to town tarnishing his already t
arnished reputation with winks. Don’t let it get you down. But it had … it had got him down. Hey, he had a breakfast-in-bed tray made of bamboo—that must have come from far away—Samoa, Singapore, Stevenson, someplace east—and sitting on it waiting for morning were an egg-blue candle in a brass holder, a teapot shaped like some sort of fall gourd in company with three gold-rimmed, so very frail looking white teacups you could see the shadow of your fingers through, all on a crocheted circular doily with a sunburst border, boy!

  The tray and its appointments were only for show, though, because he was expected to eat breakfast downstairs, in the Memorial Room. Scones. No … Heritage Room. Boiled eggs. Balanced atop a holder. Unless he had a temperature. And were confined. Then in bed: coffee and cream, berries and cream, rolls and butter. Maybe jam. Sliced bananas covered with cream the same color.

  Weren’t these wonders a sign? Near the last window stood a small dark wooden table rugged by yet another doily, and topped by a phonograph in a portable case with its crank—yes, let’s dance—still in operative place and a record ready on the platter. Player is a Superphone, record is a Supertone. He felt better. Performed on a pipe organ, “The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise” by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Walter carefully lifted the record to examine the flip side: “Indian Love Call.” Below, on a shelf, there was an odd selection of out-of-date contemporary magazines like Victoria, and leaning against the legs of the table was the image of an owl protected by bubble glass in a round wooden frame. Grandfather disapproved of dancing. Excuse to get close, I’m sure, he thought. Or to wiggle and shake and rub. Eleanor.

  He couldn’t sit on his sofa, the coffee table was too close. No leg room. Instead he was supposed to contemplate the composition of white cloth and green glass, of flowers, feathers, wax, and ribbons, Bettie had arranged. Bettie. And learn what? About the luxuriance of life. About shades of gray and grades of cloth and twists of glass and candle wax and ribbon. About spices and herbs. God’s plenty. Yes, Walter thought, looking around at all his wealth: God creates, and then man creates, in God’s image, things of love and harmony and service. A leaf, a seed, the wood of trees, the metals of the earth, which God made and placed where God wished to put them, were taken up by devoted and skillful hands and transformed into frames and stands and cloths and lamps, and put in their place in their turn: chests in rooms, drawers in bureaus, china in closets, beads in boxes. And on the clay the potter incised lines and painted flowers, and on a petal put a drop of translucent dew after the manner of the morning. Walter’s mind had at last managed to move his emotions.

  History was here, too. History. Not a life lost, not a thought gone, not a feeling faded, but retained by these things, in the memories they continually encourage, the actions they record, the emotions they represent, not once upon a time, but in the precious present, where the eye sees and the heart beats, and where you clear gutters of leaves whose trees you know and recognize, and you furthermore remember when the soldered copper shone and the roof’s slates were reset and how the kitchen will any moment smell of bread like the brightness of the day and where the ladder’s shadow falls as though it were a sun clock striking three. Not the work-weary world Walter went around in: his old roads and weedy berms hadn’t a single memory pressed in the macadam, or reflected from the splotchy counters of greasy spoons or sensed like an odor out of dirty-bowled gas stations where, in back, bent tin signs in cast-off heaps collected—Mail Pouch Tobacco and Royal Crown Cola and Black Jack Gum—or down the dim smeary halls of his motels had some imagination passed like a worried ghost … no … where he was it was never how it ought to be: redolent … relaxed … reflective … rich … Where one dined or supped. Where one, of a p.m., tea’d. Where one went to bed early and read.

  Walter’s hungers were of another kind; he had no desire for dinner; and the idea of putting on some loud pomade to drive about looking for familiar logos, or even of crossing into Davenport, where there were doubtless decent places, upset him. His appetite was in his eyes. In the morning—he remembered with a smug smile one of his mirrors immediately made him appreciate—he’d breakfast on scones. But then he thought he’d have to pay his bill and leave. Perhaps he could prolong his stay one day, those bozos in Mendota wouldn’t cop the diff. He could call ahead for another B&B. Where was his book?

  On the seat of his car. These were really painful thoughts … painful thoughts should be put behind him, but the fact was there was no place appropriate for pain here, it hurt to have hurts in this—sure, material—sure, commercial—although transient—heaven. Well, haven, anyway. On his way to pee he wandered a few steps, drawn to the connecting door, and noticed nearby it a white ceramic birdhouse with two green ceramic birds. Around the neck of one was hung a “Sweet Bouquet Calendar for 1994.” All the months, printed in a bell which pretended to be suspended from a nosegay of violets, were laid out on one flat sheet, each day as small then as real days must be. A key continued to block any view.

  In the bath he might choose to sit, not on the john, but in a rocking chair placed almost facing it. Made of maple, shellacked for a high shine, with a brown seat and backing for comfort that was all of a piece and tied on like a straightjacket. At the end of the tub, a wine basket which he hadn’t seen. In the holes where the bottles would normally be, Bettie had stuffed rolled washcloths and small towels. Walter bent down near the swan’s reflective wings and saw his face in slivers. Attached to the wall above the washstand was a wooden rack with hand towels and odd magazines in it: the magazines are Readers’ Digests, the towels are draped. With the door closed to do his business, he could see a strange basket made of spent buckshot casings glued together, and into each hole some cloth has been stuffed so the whole thing looked like a sick creature’s furry tongue. In his head, Walter praised human ingenuity. What could beat it? But were there any towels you’d dare to dry your hands on?

  About now, he bet, Bettie and Emery were having supper in the Family Heritage Room, the table set with splendid china from his or her grandma’s stock. Candlelight, he thought. Covered dishes leaking the scent of sweet potatoes and ham, a nice mess of greens. It was harder for Walter to imagine what they’d be saying to one another, although the character of Emery’s voice box wouldn’t alter. And the dents at the ends of Bettie’s small mouth would fill with shadow, and the narrow eyes in that long face would seem even more intense in the glow of the candles. Then her teeth, so small they seemed set in multiple rows: they’d be intermittently bright too. Flatware from the old country, cider in mugs. Well, maybe not mugs for supper, just for luncheon. Walter would have rolled out the ornate lace cloth over the walnut table, the wood shining like a snowed-on lake through the filigreed cloth.

  What he could do: he could ask to stay on, and commute to Mendota, it wasn’t so far, a drive of what? maybe seventy miles, out of here on 80, easy, up on 34. He’d want the same room though. He’d have to have the same room. He’d have to make that plain. Where were all the other guests? those in the back? not a creak of course on account of workmanship and devotion.

  Walter was careful on the stairs, its steps were a bit variable, and the light was low, Ruth’s window as dark and featureless as a paneled wall. He saw Missus Ambrose—Bettie—but he mustn’t let on—in the dining room in a small pool of electric, reading a book while eating alone. He began his apologies in the parlor and let them precede him to her table. She looked up at last. It’ll be available, she said, but at a weekend rate. Walter said he didn’t mind paying a mite more. It’s lower—the rent is—for weekends, Missus Ambrose said rather severely as if he ought to have known. Less custom, fewer traveling men, on ends. I see, Walter said, I should have known. Going out now, Bettie inquired brightly, as if a change of subject required a change of expression. Ah, nah, I thought I’d just stay in. Well, sit and have a bite with me if you like, Bettie said, a second grace goes well in God’s ear. Walter made sounds which suggested second thoughts without any coming first. Mister Ambrose didn’t feel up to eating t
his evening. His evils were at him, so he’s in his room resting. Walter, after some hesitation, and a glimpse of chicken breast and cooked spinach, slid into Emery’s seat with a grateful sigh. Emery’s plate did not reflect a face. The fork and knife had bamboo handles. Bettie selected a piece of chicken from a platter. So, she said, with as wide a smile as she was willing, tell me about yourself. Only—was that a chuckle?—be truthful, the Lord is always listening. Ah … well … me? ah … The tines of Walter’s fork went deeply into his piece of chicken. He saw, with appetite, a bit of juice ooze.

  5

  Early to bed. Early to rise. Early on the road. Out 80. Up 34. Above a headboard of old oak, Walter read a cross-stitched saying borne by a wide pine frame which was peppered with pin-sized wormholes: God grant me the serenity to accept my lot in life. The pinworms did their job; they accepted their lot in life, he was sure; and a piece of pine which might have passed from mill to floorboard to kindling was given character, even charm, and saved for a saying. A nightcap hung from one bedpost, a bed jacket from the other. They weren’t meant to be worn. He hadn’t lied to Missus Bettie exactly, but he had left out a lot. He’d asked what she was reading, and she’d replied, thumb to mark her place, the Life of Pastor Kneemiller, something similar. Very edifying. Brave noble man. You know him. When the priests were cowering in their coops like pigeons, Missus Bettie said with some heat, he stood up, he stood firm. Ah, yes, admirable, I’m sure he did, Walter agreed, and the spinach is perfect, so fresh, a second crop is it? plant your own? how wonderful! iron up to here, and good for the blood’s color, makes it red as ripe tomato.

  Missus Bettie removed her thumb and the volume fanned slowly open to the place she’d been reading as if she meant to go on. I’m an accountant, Walter said. I travel about between businesses, like now, and help them with their figuring. Helping is a holy thing, Missus Bettie said. Saint Peter keeps God’s. His keys? His accounts. Saint Peter has God’s list of ins and outs. Income and outgo, Walter joked, is what I watch. We are all accountable, Missus Bettie said, not a fork of food goes unnoticed, how it’s chewed, how it’s swallowed. The chicken’s very good, tender as— Tea? Tea, oh, well, thank you, very kind, just a spot, it hits it though, the spot, I mean. How do you keep accounts, Mister Riffytear, Bettie asked, fixing him in her look as if holding both his ears. I look at lists, Walter managed, receipts and bills of sale and lading and such. Overhead, you know. Well, I’m sure it’s over mine, what you do, Mister Riffytear, she said, wholly unaware of any witticism. Do you know a book, he said, do you know a book by Boris de Tanko called The World’s Orphan? Bettie’s head drew back into the dark. It made a better man of me. It made a better man.