The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty

by Eudora Welty

  The steepness increased, the path after a certain point appeared entirely out of use. Here and there a boulder had lately fallen and lay in their path wet within its fissures as if it began to live, and secrete, and they had to climb around it, holding to brush. Where there were not rocks it was sandy and grassy and very wild. A fault of course lay all through the land.

  Sometimes Eugene was aware that he jerked like a pigeon or rocked like a sailor, going down, or sagged like an old poodle, going up; it was all the same. Once he leaped, and almost without a care. His tiltings, projections, slidings, working to keep up, all were painless now, and a progress he kept to himself. When pain did not hurt, and the world did, things had got very strange—different.

  The sun was low, and some of the fog bank had detached itself in narrow clouds thin and delicate as bone, with the red light beginning to come through. The Spaniard went as sedately as ever along the edge he walked; had he been here before too? When he jumped in his slick black shoes, his footing was sure. It was he who took the choice of paths, and the choice was always a clever and difficult one. Paths ran everywhere now, a network of threads over waste and rock, with dancing, graybeard bushes to hold to. Below, the wet boulders were now faintly covered with light. Bathers in the distance, or porpoises, rose and sank sky-colored; there are always strangers who swim at sunset time.

  Eugene went where the Spaniard went, but not always everywhere he went. There were caves where the paths dropped to the sea, and the Spaniard went on his own to inspect them. Eugene ceased crying directions, for it made him feel like a lost lamb bleating. The huge fellow let himself down the steep rocks and with hands and knees peered into the caves, like a dentist into alluring mouths. Rats ran up the bald surfaces. They were big rats—a size not of any habitation anywhere but of away out here, of unvisited geographical parts—as the world's wild dogs and wild horses are unseen and sizeless. The Spaniard glanced after the rats with his head inclined to one side. Even he could not light his cigarettes in this wind.

  As it grew later the men made their way on, and piercing the sound of the wind the little dark birds that lived for neatness about the edge of the sea began to fill the air with twitterings, like birds ready to nest in leafy trees in a little springtime town. There had evidently been, without their knowing it, a loss of the wish to go back. Perhaps this wish had expired. Eugene, who had once nearly drowned, remembered his discovery of the death of volition to stay up in the water. Such things were always found out no telling how long after it was too late.

  The sun was dropping. It looked wetter than water, then not so much a bright body as a red body. It dropped and was gone in the blue mist that was coming in over the sea. For a brief period the water, brighter than air, turned smooth and calm and the fog with wings spreading sank over it and was skimming at Eugene's face.

  "You heard me, all the time," he said.

  But the Spaniard bent over with his back to Eugene, and was peering at some blotched wild lilies that grew in the coarse grass there. He touched the tips of his fingers deliberately under the soft pale petals and examined their hairy hearts. Eugene was waiting behind him as he turned with a flower in his hand. All at once the Spanish eyes looked wide awake, and the man smiled—like someone waking from a deep dream, the sleep of a month. He put up his little flower, and regarded it.

  "Mariposa," he said, making each syllable clearly distinct. He held up the little wild waving spotted thing, the common mariposa lily.

  "Mariposa?" He repeated the word encouragingly, even sweetly, making the sound of it beautiful.

  "You assaulted your wife," Eugene said loudly.

  The Spaniard still held his eyes open wide. If the staring smile was a slight, at the same time he was presenting his stupid flower.

  "But in your heart," Eugene said, and then he was lost. It was a lifelong trouble, he had never been able to express himself at all when it came to the very moment. And now, on a cliff, in a wind, to...

  Eugene thrust both hands forward and took hold of the other man, not half compassing the vast waist. But he recognized the weight that was so light on its feet, and he had only to make one move more, to unsettle that weight and let it go. Under his watchful eyes the flower went out of the other's loosening, softening hand: it lay on the wind, and sank. One more move and the man would go too, drop out of sight. He would go down below and it took only a touch.

  Eugene clung to the Spaniard now, almost as if he had waited for him a long time with longing, almost as if he loved him, and had found a lasting refuge. He could have caressed the side of the massive face with the great pores in the loose, hanging cheek. The Spaniard closed his eyes.

  Then a bullish roar opened out of him. He wagged his enormous head. What seemed to be utterances of the wildest order came from the wide mouth, together with the dinner's old reek. Eugene half expected more bones. He could see everything more than plainly. The Spaniard's eyes also were open to the widest, and his nostrils had the hairs raised erect in them.

  Eugene suddenly lost his balance and nearly fell, so that he had to pull himself back by helplessly seizing hold of the big man. He listened on, perforce, to the voice that did not stop.

  It was a terrible recital. Eugene drew back as far as possible and presently began to glare at him—a man laying himself altogether bare like that, with no shame, no respect.... What was he digging up to confess to, making such a spectacle? To whom did he think he prayed for relief? Eugene's hands waited nerveless moment after moment, while his ears were beaten upon, his whole body, indeed.

  Abruptly—and causing silence as with a stopper—the Spaniard's broad-brimmed hat shot up in the wind and was blown—to sea? Landward. Eugene felt compelled to: he let go the Spaniard and ran hurrying to catch the hat and bring it back. Now it lifted ahead, turned over, clung to a wall, flew up again. Eugene had to climb a rather difficult part of the cliff. He saw the hat, and reached it where it danced about a bush, and got it in his hand.

  Eugene lost his own hat in the chase; but inspiration was with him now, and he put on the Spaniard's. Knees bent on the pinnacle, raincoat whipping, he reached up and set it on his head. It stayed on, and at the same time it shadowed him. The band inside was warm and fragrant still. Elation ran all through his body, like the first runner that ever knew the way to it. His hands shaking with extreme care, as particularly as if he could see himself again in Emma's mirror with the little snapshot stuck in the corner, he set the brim just so.

  He returned over the rocks and placed himself and looked back at the other man, eyes protected. It was in all confidence that he took fresh hold of him, but this time—how cruel!—he could not move him. He could not budge him an inch. He stood there with his hands in appeal on the Spaniard's silent arms. But this time the Spaniard had hold of him. It was a hold of hard, callused fingers like prongs.

  And the Spaniard would have looked small down there, all the way down below. Suppose there were a little guitar, no bigger than a watch. Eugene stood waiting there as if he listened to sirens. Then within himself he felt a strange sensation, strange in itself but, alas, he recognized it. He had felt it before—always before when very tired, and always when lying in bed at night, with Emma asleep beside him. Something round would be in his mouth. But its size was the thing that was strange.

  It was as if he were trying to swallow a cherry but found he was only the size of the stem of the cherry. His mouth received and was explored by some immensity. It became more and more immense while he waited. All knowledge of the rest of his body and the feeling in it would leave him; he would not find it possible to describe his position in the bed, where his legs were or his hands; his mouth alone felt and it felt enormity. Only the finest, frailest thread of his own body seemed to exist, in order to provide the mouth. He seemed to have the world on his tongue. And it had no taste—only size.

  He held on to the Spaniard and once more, feebly, with an arm or a leg, he tried to move him, to break away. The fog flowed into his throa
t and made him laugh. His laugh was repeated, an uncertain distance away. Eugene heard, then by chance saw, a man and girl moving along by their own light, a flashlight, skirting the brink just above, ahead of the night falling. They circled near. He heard them laugh, and in the dusk he flung back his head and could look up into the gleam of their teeth—was that happiness? Teeth bared like the rats, the same as in hunger or stress?

  As he gasped, the sweet and the salt, the alyssum and the sea affected him as a single scent. It lulled him slightly, blurring the moment. The now calming ocean, the pounding of a thousand gentlenesses, went on into darkness and obscurity. He felt himself lifted up in the strong arms of the Spaniard, up above the bare head of the other man. Now the second hat blew away from him too. He was without a burden in the world.

  Pillowed on great strength, he was turned in the air. It was greatest comfort. It was too bad that circling in his mind the daylong foreboding had to return, that he had yet to open the door and climb the stairs to Emma. There she waited in the front room, shedding her tears standing up, like a bride, with the white curtains of the bay window hanging heavy all around her.

  When his body was wheeled another turn, the foreboding like a spinning ball was caught again. This time the vision—some niche of clarity, some future—was Emma MacLain turning around and coming part way to meet him on the stairs. Still like a rumble, her light and young-like tread, that could cause his whole body to be shaken with tenderness and mystery, crossed the floor. She lifted both arms in the wide, aroused sleeves and brought them together around him. He had to sink upon the frail hall chair intended for the coats and hats. And she was sinking upon him and on his mouth putting kisses like blows, returning him awesome favors in full vigor, with not the ghost of the salt of tears.

  If he could have spoken! It was out of this relentlessness, not out of the gush of tears, that there would be a child again. Could it be possible that everything now could wait? If he could have stopped everything, until that pulse, far back, far inside, far within now, could shake like the little hard fist of the first spring leaf!

  He was brought over and held by the knees in the posture of a bird, his body almost upright and his forearms gently spread. In his nostrils and relaxing eyes and around his naked head he could feel the reach of fine spray or the breath of fog. He was upborne, open-armed. He was only thinking, My dear love comes.

  He heard a loud, emotional cry—a bellow—from some other throat than his own, and heard it sink to the deepest rumbling. That was his Spaniard.

  And the next moment—"Oh, is he going to throw him over?" a feminine voice with some eagerness in it was crying. The sweethearts were coming, on a lower road. "Aren't you ashamed of yourself, teasing a little fellow like that, scaring him?" the girl's voice continued. "Put him down and pick up one your own size, or Billy will teach you."

  Then, or even before then, Eugene was lowered and set down again. His dangling heels, one of which had gone to sleep, kicked at the rock and then his feet stood on it. In the purple of night there was struck a little pasteboard match. Two big common toothy sweethearts stood there in its light, and the next moment vanished in the fog looking pleased with each other.

  The mask face of the Spaniard, with hair swirling about it, was left shining there by matchlight. It turned one way and the other, looked up and down. It exuded sweat.

  VII

  So now, the Spaniard took hold of Eugene's arm and guided him carefully by the instant's light of one match after another and the emergent light of the wreathed, racing moon. The world was not dark, but pale. The mist flowed from their fingers and rolled behind their heels. They looked together for the thread of the way back. They seized hands at perilous places and took mistaken hold of streaming thorn bushes with a chorus of outcries. They retreated at points and tried the way again. They both jumped at scuttling sounds, though the Spaniard made some inimitable Spanish noise that sounded as though it might have, before now, made rats go back. When was it they came to the easy part of the path, then to the road? Next, the whole sound of the sea faded behind the windbreak of trees, which in the wet fog smelled of black pepper.

  When the trees opened out and they reached pavement, some city corner and its streetlight, they were so cold it was foregone they should go in the nearest café for coffee.

  Eugene pulled away, combed back his hair, and led the way now.

  "Two coffees!" he said loudly to the bare room when they were seated at the counter.

  It was warm here. The Spaniard began to smoke, and sat with eyes shut, even when the waitress came out.

  Large, middle-aged, big-boned, she moved up in a loose, grand style. Her face was large. All her features were made to seem bigger than life by paint, a pinkish mouth painted over her real mouth, eyebrows put on with brown grease in bands half an inch wide with perfect curves. Her eyes were small, so that with the mascara and the shadows painted on their lids they looked like flopping black butterflies. She had hennaed hair, somewhat greasy. She wore jewelry worth about eleven dollars and a quarter all together, Eugene saw—hoops of gold in her ears, a lavalier around her neck, four bracelets, and rings on both hands. There on her one body the illusions of gold, of silver, and of diamonds were all gone.

  "One coffee with milk," Eugene said to her, "one black," and she turned from him. Her way of response was dramatic—soliloquy, and with an accent.

  "Meelk, meelk, there is one who wants meelk," she said, striding up and then down behind the counter but not going away or looking at her customers or consulting further.

  "And pastry."

  "Oh, no. Pastry is no more." She had a resonant, brooding voice—there was something likeable and understandable about her, with her unbelievable accent. "A long time too you will wait for sandwiches." She shook her head. "All people here tonight waiting, waiting.—If sandwiches, what kind of bread, too? It is imporrrtant for me to know this."

  "Two coffees. One with milk," Eugene said. He nodded at her.

  When the waitress brought the coffees, cups swimming in their saucers, she marched off without bringing any sugar. Eugene, remembering the three lumps the Spaniard used, glanced at him.

  The Spaniard met his glance, and his great black brows slowly lifted and his eyes implored like the eyes of a dog. The shell-rimmed glasses, sanded and smeared, he took off and held in his hand a moment, then put back on. He gave another imploring look. But Eugene only sat there. The Spaniard tried to bring back the waitress with his Spanish, then with a wave of the arm. And at first she only looked at him dreamily without moving, there at the back with her arm propped against the curtain. But then, swinging her hips weightily, she came. He had clapped his hands together; it woke her right up, like applause. She brought in a sugar jar with a spout.

  "It was sugar you wanted," she said to the Spaniard, with baby-talk on top of her accent, as though it had been sugar, sugar for a long time. She patted him on the head. "Go to hell," she said resonantly to Eugene. "In my country I have a husband. He too is a little man, and sits up as small as you. When he is bad, I peek him up, I stand him on the mantel-piece." She held out her palm; Eugene could not help but peek in it. He paid—his last penny; there was a streetcar token left—one.

  "Well, that will be all," Eugene said, to nobody.

  The Spaniard had crumbs, sand, sugar, and ashes on him. Outside, back on the corner, the two men turned to each other almost formally. Eugene could only think, in their parting moment, Suppose there had been pastry, would the Spaniard finally have lowered himself to pay? Then he flew out to catch a streetcar.

  The Spaniard was left waiting, for what one never would know, alone in the night on a dark corner at the edge of the city. Perhaps he was not so proud now! At the last glance, he seemed to be looking in the sky for the little moon.

  Eugene raced up the stairs to the flat and opened the door. There was the smell of strong hot chowder. Emma was in the kitchen but there was feminine talking-away—her great friend, Mrs. Herring from next
door, had evidently come to stay for supper. Right away he thought he might as well not tell them anything.

  "You've left your hat somewhere," Emma told him. "I'll be burying you next from pneumonia." Then, with a stamp of her foot, she showed him—and also Mrs. Herring, who was evidently seeing it for the second or third time—where the hot grease had splattered on her hand today.

  There couldn't have been a peep out of Mr. Bertsinger, it occurred to Eugene as he threw off his raincoat. Maybe he was dead!

  They sat on at the table after the big meal. Sawing idly at the cheese and to interrupt Mrs. Herring (in honor of Mrs. Herring, who had returned from a trip, they even had a little wine), Eugene felt called on to make one remark.

  "Saw Long-Hair, the guitar player, today, saw him walking along the street just like you or me. What was his name, anyway?" he asked, as if he wondered now for the first time.

  "Bartolome Montalbano," Emma said and popped a grape onto her extended tongue. She added, "I have the feeling he suffers from indigestion," and drummed her breast while she swallowed. "... He's a Spaniard."

  "A Spaniard? There was a Spaniard at early church this morning," Mrs. Herring offered, "that needed a haircut. He was next to a woman and he was laughing with her out loud—bad taste, we thought. It was before service began, it's true. He laughed first and then slapped her leg, there in Peter and Paul directly in front of me home from my trip."

  Eugene tilted back in his chair, and watched Emma pop the grapes in.

  "That would be him," said Emma.

  THE WANDERERS

  "How come you weren't here yesterday?" old Mrs. Stark asked her maid, looking up from her solitaire board—inlaid wood that gave off pistol-like reports under the blows of her shuffling cards. It was September and here in the hall she imagined she could feel October at her back.