by Eudora Welty
Bertie Junior was up front and on the lookout for what he might miss, of course—Eugene took a chance. Bertie Junior's thumbs bent softly back, he had little ducktails at the back of his head, he looked privileged as well as young. He'd put a chip diamond in his Army discharge button, for the hell of it—he said. Even in the dark rear of the shop his gleam and his eagerness could be detected from the street, and there was an equal chance he might detect Eugene going by, his target on any occasion. But he came to the door with head lifted high at that moment, watching a fist fight come out of a barber shop. He gleamed even to the sideways glance, wearing two fountain pens, their clips forking tongue-like out of his still-soldierly breast. Eugene got by.
He was not called back, either, or discovered pausing so near, at the market. The fish windows were decorated like a holiday show. There was a double row of salmon steaks placed fan-wise on a tray, and filets of sole fixed this way and that down another tray as in a plait, like cut-off golden hair. When Eugene set his eyes on an arrangement of amber-red caviar in the shape of a large anchor, "They are fish eggs, sir," a young, smocked clerk said, "and personally I think it's a perfect pity that they should be allowed to take them." He stood arms akimbo in the market entrance and did not recognize Mr. MacLain who had repaired his watch at all, that little drudge. A yearning for levity took hold of the little drudge, he tipped his hat and bowed like a Southerner, to the fish eggs.
There was a soft gleam. Above, blue slides of sky were cutting in on the fog. The sun, as with a spurt of motion, came out. The streetcars, taking on banana colors, drove up and down, the line of movie houses fluttered streamers and flags as if they were going to sea. Eugene moved into the central crowd, which seemed actually to increase its jostling with the sunshine, like the sea with wind.
A little old tramp woke up on the street, and rubbed his eyes. He began scattering crumbs to the descending pigeons and sea gulls. They walked about him fussing like barnyard chickens, and he stood as if flattered by their transformation and their greed, pressing his knees together in the posture of a saint or a lady of the house and looking up to smile at the world. Eugene walked among crumbs and pigeons and crossed over the wide trashy street and when he looked to the right he could see, quite clearly just now, the twin brown-green peaks at the end of the view, the houses bright in their sides, while the lifted mass of blue and gray fog swayed as gently over them as a shade tree.
The lift of fog in the city, that daily act of revelation, brought him a longing now like that of vague times in the past, of long ago in Mississippi, to see the world—there were places he longed for the sight of whose names he had forgotten. And while now it was doubtful that he would ever see the Seven Wonders of the World, he had suggested to Emma that they take a simple little pleasure trip—modestly, on the bus—down the inexpensive side of the Peninsula; but it had been his luck to mention it on the anniversary of Fan's death and she had slammed the door in his face.
It was womanlike; he understood it now. The inviolable grief she had felt for a great thing only widened her capacity to take little things hard. Mourning over the same thing she mourned, he was not to be let in. For letting in was something else. How cold to the living hour grief could make you! Her eye was quite marblelike at the door crack.
There had been a time, too, when she was a soft woman, just as he had been a kind man, soft unto innocence—soft like little Fan, and he saw the child at bedtime letting her hair ripple down and all around, with it almost meeting under her chin like a little golden rain hat, and he wanted to say, "Oh, stay, wait." Just as the other thing was there too: Fan from the age she could walk to it was standing with her back to the fire (they kept an open fireplace then) and with that gesture like a curtsey was lifting up her gown to warm her backside, like any woman in the world.
Now, too late, when the city opened out so softly in beauty and to such distances, it awoke a longing for that careless, patched land of Mississippi winter, trees in their rusty wrappers, slow-grown trees taking their time, the lost shambles of old cane, the winter swamp where his own twin brother, he supposed, still hunted. Eugene looked askance at a flower seller: where had the seasons gone? Too cheap, bewilderingly massed together, the summerlike, winterlike, springlike flowers tied up in bunches made him glance disparately at the old man marking down the price on a jug of tulips, and at three turbaned Hindus who bought nothing but in calm turn smelled the bouquets until they stood there with all their six eyes closed, translated into still another world.
"Open the door, Richard!" sang a hoarse voice from a pitch-black bar. A small Chinese girl, all by herself, with her hair up in aluminum curlers, went around Eugene, swinging a little silky purse. He all but put out a staying hand. When a stocky boy with a black pompadour went by him wearing taps on his shoes, some word waited unspoken on Eugene's lips. His chance for speaking tapped rhythmically by. He frowned in the street, the more tantalized, somehow, by seeing at the last minute that the stranger was tattooed with a butterfly on the inner side of his wrist; an intimate place, the wrist appeared to be. Eugene saw the butterfly plainly enough to recognize it again, when this unfamiliar, callused hand of San Francisco put a flame to a bitten cigarette. In blue ink the double wings spanned the veins and the two feelers reached into the fold at the base of the hand; the spots were so deep they seemed to have come perilously near to piercing the skin.
It was then that Eugene—withdrawing one step in his thoughts, to where old Mr. Bertsinger Senior in his jeweler's glass doddered around, the most critical and slowest to appraise of men, and Bertie Junior waited, knowing without being told (nobody surer than a young man)—felt sure in some absolute way that no familiar person could do him any good. After the step he had taken, the thing he had done, he couldn't stop at all, he had to go on, go in this new direction. Friends: no help there.
In panic—and, it struck him, in exultation—seek a stranger. Hi, mate. Just lammed the little wifey over the puss.—Hooray!—That's what I did.—Sure, not a had idea once ever so often. Take it easy. They would be perched up at a bar having a beer together. And the other man would turn out to have done a whole lot worse; in fact, something should be done about him.
A tortoise-shell cat pillowed in apples gazed at him from a grocer's window. She pulled her round eyes closed as on little drawstrings. Eugene recollected that one street back a plaster bull dog, cerise with blue rings around the eyes, which ordinarily sat in the ground floor window of a hotel between the drawn shade and the glass, had this morning been taken away. Eugene had missed it—been cheated of it. As the cat opened her eyes again he had a moment of believing he would know anything that happened, anything that threatened the moral way, or transformed it, even, in the city of San Francisco that day: as if he and the city were watching each other—without accustomed faith. But with interest ... boldness ... recklessness, almost.
III
Eugene proceeded down Market, his stride as brisk, businesslike, and concealing as though he had not already left Bertsingers' far behind. Bright mist bathed this end of the street and hid the tower of the Ferry Building; but as he walked he saw, going ahead of him and in the same direction, a tall and distinct figure that he recognized. It was the Spaniard he had heard play the guitar at Aeolian Hall the evening before. Imagine him walking along here! And as far as Eugene could make out over the heads of people intervening, he was walking along by himself.
Eugene had no doubts about that identity. Last night—though it seemed long enough ago now to make the recognition clever—Emma had come out with Eugene to a music hall, and it had turned out that this Spaniard performed, in solo recital. (No, she would not go with him to Half Moon Bay, but she would consent to a little music in one of the smaller halls, she said, and added, "Though you don't appreciate music." He patted her shoulder; they must have been thinking it together: his failure to respect music was part of the past, a night with little Fan at the Symphony, her treat. When the music began the child had held out her little
arms, saying Pierre Monteaux came out of Babar and she wanted him down here and would spank him. Emma, honestly shocked, had pulled down her daughter's arms, and Eugene had laughed out loud, not then but in the middle of the next piece.)... He could not think of the Spaniard's name, but it was pretty observant the way he recognized the man at this distance and from the back, after seeing him only the one time and then over the bird of a lady's hat.
He was alluring, up ahead—the perfect being to catch up with. Eugene walked steadily and looked steadily at him, a stranger and yet not a stranger, going along measuredly and sedately before, the only black-clad figure on this Western street, head and shoulders above all the rest.
And the very next moment, something terrible almost happened.
The guitarist reached the curb and in entering the traffic—really, he was quite provocatively slow, moving through this city street—he almost walked beneath the wheels of an automobile.
With the other's sudden danger, a gate opened to Eugene. That was all there was to it. He did not have time to think, but sprang forward as if to protect his own. His paper flew away from him piecemeal and as he ran he felt his toes pointing out behind him. This did not surprise him, for he had been noted for his running when he was a boy back home; in Morgana, Mississippi, he was still little old Scooter MacLain.
He seized hold of the Spaniard's coat—which had him weighing it, smelling it, and feeling the sun warm on it—and pulled. So out of breath he was laughing, he pulled in the big Spaniard—who for all his majestic weight proved light on his feet, like a big woman who turns graceful once she's on the dance floor. For a moment Eugene kept him at tow there, on the safe curb, breathing his faint smoke-smell or travel-smell; but he could not think of that long Spanish name, and he didn't say a word.
Well, what did that matter, when he was so relieved, so delighted, that he had reached the big old person in time—as delighted as with the surprise of a gift? Eugene drew both hands away lightly, as if he were publicly disclosing something, unveiling a huge statue. But in the next moment, rescuer and rescuee shook hands, and even in that self-conscious greeting Eugene discovered something that made him want to turn his back and say "Damn it all!" The Spaniard could not speak English.
At least he smiled and did not. Proof, wasn't it? Eugene felt overwhelmed, cut off—disappointed in the man's very life. He pumped the substantial arm, taking an extra moment to recover himself, not to appear quite this disconcerted, or so rejected; he had entirely surprised himself.
Then the order of things seemed to be that the two men should stroll on together down the street. That came out of the very helplessness of not being able to speak—to thank or to deprecate. As he walked, Eugene sent out shy, still respectful glances, those of a man not quite sure his new pet knows who has just come into possession. Now that he thought back, the big fellow had walked out in front of the automobile almost tempting it to try and get him, with all the aplomb of—certainly, a bullfighter. There was another kind of Spaniard! Eugene looked up at his prize again, quite closely. The artist, who now smoked a cigarette, was wholly as imperturbable, if not quite as large bodily, as he had seemed on the Aeolian Hall stage the evening before.
At that time, he appeared carrying ahead of him a guitar, majestic and seeming in his walk years older than his thick black hair would show. He walked across the stage without a glance at the audience—an enormous man in an abundant dress suit with long, heavy tails. As he reached the center front of the stage and turned gravely—he seemed serious as a doctor—his head looked weighty too, long and broad together, with black-rimmed glasses circling his eyes and his hair combed back to hang behind him almost to his shoulders, like an Indian, or the old senator from back home.
He lowered himself to the straight chair that was the only furnishing of the stage except for an oblong object covered in black cloth that had been placed before it. Then he sat there like a mountain. This was just the sort of preliminary to-do that Emma liked; Eugene felt her draw herself up in the kind of bodily indignation that was her quickest expression of pleasure when she was out in public.
The guitarist began to play only after many tender and prolonged attentions to his instrument. He tuned it so softly that only he could hear. Then he gave some care to his extended right foot, which the black oblong object was there to accommodate as a rest, and care most of all to his fingers—flexing all ten of them, stretching them leisurely upon his thighs like a cat testing her claws on a cushion.
His face in the stage light, dark-skinned, smooth, with two deep folds from his nose down the sides of his mouth, was unmoved or even affronted in its stage expression. It did not change while he played or during the applause that came after each song. Only at the very last of the applause after the last song, a smile was seen to have come on his face—and to be enjoying itself there; it had the enchanted presence of a smile on the face of a beast. It lasted just so long, like an act of strength—as long as a strong man might hold a lifted weight. Yet it had been as clear and gradual a change as the light goes through at sunset. It hinted of ordeal, but the smile showed that like the audience, after all, he loved the extraordinary thing. His fingernails were painted bright red.
"Red fingernails," Eugene had whispered, just at the moment when Emma turned her head and gave him a look. It was meant to be a meaningful look from under the brim of the blue hat in which she had that night emerged from public-mourning.
The blueness of the hat even in the light of the dim hall ("Emma's blue," her sister called it) and the blank shine of her new glasses which hid her eyes, and her cheek with a little tear offered on it, all held his head turned toward her as though she had bidden it, but did not distract him from a deep lull in his spirit that was as enfolding as love. He turned his head gently back toward the stage, where an encore was being played. A most unexpected kind of music was being struck off the guitar.
He felt a lapse of all knowledge of Emma as his wife, and of comprehending the future, in some visit to a vast present-time. The lapse must have endured for a solid minute or two, and afterwards he could recollect it. It was as positively there and as defined at the edges as a spot or stain, and it affected him like a secret.
Now out here in the everyday and the open, Eugene was aware, as at the racing of the pulse, of the dark face by his, the Spaniard going beside him, his life actually owing to him, Eugene MacLain. Again he felt fleet of foot, at the very heels of a secret in the day. Was it so strange, the way things are flung out at us, like the apples of Atalanta perhaps, once we have begun a certain onrush? With his hand, which could have stormed a gate, he touched the Spaniard's elbow. It responded like a swinging weight, a balance, in the calm black sleeve. Eugene's touch, his push, now seemed judicious; and he pushed forthrightly to propel the old fellow across the street at the next crossing.
Once, waiting for a traffic light to change, they stood beside a woman on whom Eugene let his gaze rest. There was such strange beauty about her that he did not realize for a few moments that she was birth-marked and would be considered disfigured by most people—by himself, ordinarily. She was a Negro or a Polynesian and marked as a butterfly is, over all her visible skin. Curves, scrolls, dark brown areas on light brown, were beautifully placed on her body, as if by design, with pools about the eyes, at the nape of her neck, at the wrist, and about her legs too, like fawn spots, visible through her stockings. She had the look of waiting in leafy shade.
She was dressed in humble brown, but her hat was an exotic one, with curving bright feathers about her head. Eugene felt an almost palpable aura of a disgrace or sadness that had to be as ever-present as the skin is, of hiding and flaunting together. It was so strong an aura that by softly whistling Eugene pretended to people around that the woman was not there, and tried to keep the Spaniard from seeing her. For he might pounce upon her; something made him afraid of the Spaniard at that moment.
After a little it seemed something of a favor, a privilege, to be unable to communicat
e any more than by smiles and signs. They strolled along together. The Spaniard appeared content enough to walk along in the soft, mild sun with the little man who undertook to pull him out of the way of wheels. He did not object. He neither hurried nor revealed a plan.
Three pink neon arrows flickered toward a bar. Where were they going, thought Eugene, he and his Spaniard? They were still walking down Market Street past the shoddy, catch-eye stores. And just now they were approaching a shabby spot only too familiar to Eugene; he had to pass it every day, since it was between Bertsingers' and the cafeteria where he daily ate lunch.
A side-show had opened to take its turn in the rundown building where previously some gypsies had been telling fortunes. There were posters in the dirty windows and a languid, enthroned man offering tickets and intoning all day long the words, "Have—you—seen—Emma?" in a voice so tired it gave the effect of downright menace. Bertie Junior thought it was terribly funny, with old MacLain's wife being named Emma. He came along with Eugene to lunch now, so he could hear it, and every morning he too asked, "Have—you—seen—Emma?" as Eugene came in, before he could get past.
An enlarged photograph showed the side-show Emma—enormously fat, blown, her small features bunched like a paper of violets in the center of her face. But in the crushed, pushed-together countenance there was a look; it was accusation, of course. The sight of a person to whom other people have been cruel can be the most formidable of all, Eugene thought as he was ready to pass it again. And it is so recognizable, the glance that meets all glances and holds, like a mother's: they done me wrong.