Ilsa

by L'Engle, Madeleine;

  If time and tide waiteth not, God knows man waiteth not; man and woman waiteth for no man.

  I tried to stretch, but my legs only bumped into the seat in front of me. Vague snores and restless shiftings and twistings sounded muted through the night turning of the wheels and the dark rattling of the coach. I wished I had kept enough of the money Papa had sent me for the trip home to be able to take a Pullman, instead of giving most of it to Telcide, and having to make the long journey south in the day coach.

  I peered out the window, but the landscape was bleak and unfamiliar. It would be a long time before we began to pass through pine scrub, through rice flats, over rivers where the water ran dark, by thin rut roads where the sand was as white and fine as ocean sand. It would be a long time before we began to pass the little square cabins, with small black children peering from the doorways, and chickens scrabbling in the yards.

  Time and tide waiteth for no man. Man and woman waiteth for no man. I had been gone for eight years, gone from home for eight years, gone for eight years, eight years, eight years.…

  Everything that came into my mind ground around in my head with the wheels, ground around in my sleep and fatigue-fuddled mind.

  Ilsa Brandes, Ilsa Brandes, Ilsa Brandes.…

  That had gone around in my head, just the disembodied name—when my mind was busy with other things, that name had gone around in my head how many millions of times during the past eight years?

  Ilsa Brandes, Ilsa Brandes, Ilsa Brandes.… WOOLF.

  —Did she ever, did she ever wonder—I thought—Did she ever think once during those years: where is Henry, what is Henry Porcher doing now, Henry Randolph Porcher?

  How would she think of me, why would she think of me, with a husband and baby, husband and baby, husband and baby.…

  Silver wrote me about the baby. Silver wrote me about Ilsa’s daughter. Silver wrote me about her own marriage to Eddie. Silver wrote me about her own three babies, the three little boys, and one named for me, one named for Henry Porcher. Only you must remember it is not pronounced Porcher, the way it is spelled, it is pronounced Puhshay.

  “I never write letters, Henny,” Ilsa had said—but she did come to the station to see me off; that she did do. “I never write letters, so don’t expect to hear from me.” But she hadn’t known it would be eight years, We hadn’t thought it would be that long. Eight years is a long time—and never a word, a word.

  “I’ll think of you,” she had said, “and you must have a good time, Hen, and be happy! For heaven’s sake, be happy! You’re always so serious—it isn’t good.”

  —I can’t help it, I can’t help it, I can’t help it.…

  —Oh, why was it so long, why was it eight years! How can she be expected to remember I exist!

  —Well—I had thought once—this seriousness is like a venom, this obsession is like a poison. When you are poisoned you take an antidote; you take milk, or brine, or soapy water; anything to make you throw up and wash out the toxin.

  Telcide was my antidote, Telcide was my soapy water, but the poison remained to devour me and it was not a poison, it was a burning, searing coal.… If only the coal could burst into flame and burn me to ashes—I thought—so that I could be born again.… But I knew that this ember could never become a fire.

  At first I had wondered rebelliously why Papa kept me away, why he sent me off to school, why he kept me from coming home during vacations. And then I was glad; when the war came I was glad, because I thought that perhaps I would die. But I didn’t die. Then when I wrote Papa and asked him if I could stay in France, if I could study in Paris, he said yes. Yes, I could. I think he was a little proud that I wanted to. I was the first in the family to live in Europe since our forefathers had come to the Americas. He sent me letter after letter to look up the French branch of the family, and finally I did write to some distant cousins who lived not far from Paris. After several weeks I received a postcard from the curé saying that the couple I had written to had both died in the flu epidemic, but that there was a daughter, Telcide, singing somewhere in Paris. He gave me the name of the place—somewhere on the Left Bank—almost as though he were ashamed to do so; and out of curiosity I went to hear her sing. It was a long time before I made myself known to my cousin Telcide.

  It seemed that I could never get away from my family. It was like one of the heavy mullet nets with the little iron weights around chem. Even in my one futile splash for freedom I was caught in this net. Telcide was a Porcher. Neither Porcher, pronounced as it is spelled, nor Puhshay, but Porcher with a Parisian accent; a Porcher with short sleek black hair and a sardonic grin. “A Porcher is always a Porcher,” Papa had said before I left for the North. “Never forget that, Henry.”

  How could I?

  Even Ilsa.

  Ilsa was inextricably mixed up with the family. Ilsa was family.

  So now that at last I was returning to my home and to the people I had left with such reluctance, I wished to be able to blot out the past eight years, to make them nothing, make them not have happened.

  But I couldn’t blot them out; time that is passed is inexorably past, perhaps not for oneself, but for others. All that I could do was to take my part of the eight years, my part only; this I could fold and pack, like eight years’ accumulation of goods and chattels into one trunk and valise and an empty violin case; sorting, discarding, throwing away as much as possible, so that when I got home there would be room for me to assimilate and hold what had happened while I was gone, so that somehow everything that had happened to Ilsa would become part of my experience, too.

  You would think that I should have had enough pride to refuse to allow someone, into whose pattern I could never really break, to become so intrinsic a part of my own.

  But I didn’t.

  I never did.

  It was toward the end of June when I got back, and hot. I had forgotten our heat. When I climbed down from the train my sopping clothes clung to me; there wasn’t a dry stitch on me; but I looked joyfully at the flushed, perspiring faces about me the men rubbing their foreheads and necks with their handkerchiefs, linen and seersucker coats dangling over their arms; the women corsetless, hair pulled high up off the napes of their flushed necks, stockingless feet pushed into loose sweat-smelling pumps.

  I didn’t expect a brass band. I didn’t expect the whole family, but I had hoped there would be someone to welcome the prodigal home after eight years. I saw an occasional face I knew, but I wasn’t recognized, and I felt too shy and strained to speak, with little inclination to do so, anyhow.

  I got into one of the ten-cent taxis and started for home. It took a good half hour instead of the usual ten minutes because we kept picking people up and dropping them off here and there. In a way I was glad, because I was still frightened of Papa and welcomed the extra minutes to get used to being home. I sat on the sticky leather seat, peering out the taxi’s windows, streaked from a recent rain storm, and looked at the dusty white houses on the burned-green lawns, at the gray tangled skeins of Spanish moss, the hot glare of flowers in the gardens, green shutters pulled to at the windows, rattan porch blinds lowered. The slurred nasal speech of the taxi driver and the people crowded moistly in beside me, sounded strange to my ears; I had forgotten the laziness of it, the carelessness, and the shrill uncontrolled whine that crept into the higher notes. It sounded untidy and slipshod to me; the hot perspiring faces were ugly; I was filled with a kind of despair because I knew I had made a mess of the life I had tried to make away from home, and to return and find that I was not only critical, but didn’t even want to come back, was unnerving. I didn’t want to come home, yet there was no place on earth to go.

  I was so lost in misery that I didn’t notice when the taxi turned into our wrought-iron gates. I gave the driver his dime and got my bag and violin case out of the back. Then I climbed up the white steps and pushed in through the screen door.

  The house was filled with that peculiar summertime dusk we create to k
eep the hot light out. Shafts of yellow came through the bars of the shutters and caught on the motes of dust. Sunlight coming through the heavy foliage quivered with a yellow-green, under-water look. I could hear the ticking of the big clock in the parlor, but no other sound. The place seemed to be deserted.

  “Hey! Silver!” I called, and then remembered with a shock that, of course, Silver wouldn’t be there. She had married Eddie before he went to officers’ training camp, and they were living with their three little boys across the river a few miles down from Violetta and Dolph.

  I looked around the dining room. The picture of Aunt Elizabeth was gone from its place above the mantelpiece, and instead there hung one of the refined still lifes Aunt Violetta had painted—a dead bird, a green bowl with mangoes, and a silver candlestick. Somehow this added the last touch to my forlornness. I was filled with utter panic at actually finding myself home at last. I knew I couldn’t face Papa yet, and I was afraid to go to Ilsa’s, so I compromised by going to Cousin Anna’s instead, on the off-chance that Ilsa might be there.

  She wasn’t, but Cousin Anna was sitting in her usual place under the magnolia tree. She surprised me by taking me in her arms and kissing me with real tenderness; I felt infinitely happier; the lostness that had enfolded me ever since I stepped unwelcomed off the train evaporated like the sultry early morning mists that the sun burned off on a hot day.

  “You’ve changed,” Cousin Anna said. “I don’t mean that you’re just eight years older. You’ve grown up inside, too. And how tall and thin you are, Henry boy, and look at the color of you, white as cotton. Barbara would say it was because you’ve been eating that northern rice, all gooey, with milk and sugar. She says if you eat it that way it makes you all white and pasty.” She laughed up at me.

  I was surprised and grateful for the effort she was making, though she talked leaning back against the tree, not moving, her voice coming low and slow. I think somehow she understood that I had come running to her for comfort, like a disappointed child.

  “We didn’t expect you till the evening train,” she said after a while.

  “But I wrote!” I cried indignantly.

  “I guess your writing hasn’t improved with age. Your father couldn’t make head or tail of your letter and finally decided you were coming on the evening train.”

  “Oh,” I said, relieved to know why I had arrived apparently so undesired. Then I remembered something I wanted to ask her. “Cousin Anna, the portrait of Aunt Elizabeth is gone from the dining room. Do you know where it is?”

  As usual when Aunt Elizabeth was mentioned, a veil seemed to drop over her eyes, but she answered unemotionally, “Silver has her. Eddie asked if they couldn’t have the portrait for a wedding present because of the resemblance between Silver and Elizabeth.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Well, Henry”—she turned her head slightly to look at me—“why did you stay away so long? What kept you in foreign parts all these years? There must have been something. Or someone.”

  I shook my head. I couldn’t explain it to Cousin Anna, because I couldn’t explain it to myself. I thought perhaps if I could talk to Ilsa about it I might understand. It was because I had to prove something to myself, but what it was I had to prove I didn’t know, and I certainly hadn’t proved it. I think I felt, perhaps, that I had failed because I had been too young; because Ilsa had married Monty; and I couldn’t come home until I had proved that I wasn’t a failure.

  But how could I prove it? More than a year before I left Paris I had pawned my expensive violin. I had learned to love music, to understand it a little, and I had learned at the same time that making a toy violin when you are ten years old does not make you a musician when you are twenty. I looked well with a violin tucked under my chin; I would make a fine showing in the drawing room at home; but I was no musician. I wasn’t an artist of any kind.

  And now I was afraid to see Papa because I had pawned my expensive violin to buy presents for a French diseuse called Telcide, who was incidentally my cousin. I thought—only Ilsa would understand this, only Ilsa can I talk to.…

  Cousin Anna was looking at me. She shook me gently.

  Wake up,

  Jacob,

  Day’s a-breaking.

  Peas’ in the pot

  And hoe cake’s a-baking—

  she said laughing, using Nursie’s old rhyme.

  I blinked. “How’s Silver?” I asked quickly.

  “Silver’s fine,” she answered. “I think you’ll be very happy when you see her. She loves Edwin and she worships her children, and I must say they’re three of the finest little boys you’ve ever seen.”

  “And how,” I asked, my voice hardening, “is my dear Cousin Monty?”

  The corners of Cousin Anna’s mouth twitched into a half-smile. “Your dear cousin Monty is as to be expected.”

  “How is that?”

  “Well, just what did you expect?” She seemed suddenly to withdraw into herself, and we fell into a long silence.

  After a while I asked, trying to subdue my eagerness, “How’s Ilsa?”

  “She’s Ilsa,” Cousin Anna said.

  “But how is she?”

  “I told you she was Ilsa. Isn’t that enough?” Her welcoming flow of words seemed to have dried up. I was home now. I had been properly greeted. She evidently felt that she had exerted herself enough in my behalf.

  “Well,” I said. “I guess I’d better go see Papa.”

  “Haven’t you?”

  “No. You’re the first person I’ve seen.” My voice drooped.

  She laid a hand gently on my knee. Her face softened. “Sorry you came home?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It’ll go in a few days,” she said. “You’ll slip back into the old groove.” Then she added, as though to herself, “That’s the trouble.”

  “Thank you for talking to me,” I said.

  She gave my knee another small pat. “I’m fond of you for some reason, Henry boy. You have a strange way of making people fond of you, though you’re not worth it. I think you were born out of your time. You should have been a charming little page boy for a handsome Renaissance noblewoman, and when you grew up you should have been kept pleasantly and uselessly at court for the rest of your life, as a kind of background, a decoration.”

  “A delightful picture.” I tried to laugh. I bent down and kissed her good-bye, then walked back up the cypress paving blocks of the garden path, through the gray coolness of the house, and slowly home through the heavy, still heat of the streets.

  24

  Papa seemed amazingly glad to see me. I stood with my hand in his and noticed how gray his hair had gone, how old he seemed for his age. We talked for a little while, shyly, each embarrassedly fond of the other; then he asked the question I knew inevitably must come.

  “Well, Henry, when are we to hear you perform on your violin?”

  “I’m afraid I haven’t my violin with me, Papa,” I said.

  “Where is it?”

  “In Paris,” I said bluntly. I didn’t add, as I was tempted to, “But I have the pawn ticket in my wallet.”

  “What do you mean?” Papa asked, in a rigid voice.

  “I’m afraid I’m not a musician, Papa,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “I worked hard and I enjoyed my Work but I just don’t have enough of a gift, and we both of us might as well face that fact, because fact it is.”

  “So you decided you didn’t want to be a musician after all and left your violin in Paris, is that it?” Papa asked, still quietly.

  “That’s just about it.”

  “That was an extremely expensive violin. You will cable for it right away.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that. I didn’t exactly just leave it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I sold it. At least—that is—I pawned it.”

  “Pawned it?” A dark mahogany flush began to rise in Papa’s checks.

  “Yes, Papa.�
��

  “A Porcher has never sunk to the depths of pawning his personal property.”

  “I pawned my violin,” I said, taking out my wallet and putting the ticket on the desk in front of him.

  “Why did you do this?” Papa asked.

  “I needed the money.”

  “I thought I sent you sufficient every month.”

  “You did, Papa. You were more than generous.”

  I knew that I could get around him by telling him about Telcide. Not the truth, of course, but that she was one of our French relations, working hard, and desperately poor. But I couldn’t use that way out; I knew Ilsa would think it cowardly.

  Papa picked up the pawn ticket and held it with disgust between his thumb and forefinger. “And this is all the gratitude I get?” He was shouting now.

  I stood perfectly still and tried to make my mind as blank and blind as a cloud. When I spoke my voice was devoid of life. “I don’t mean to be ungrateful, Papa.”

  “Why—why—why the devil did you come home?”

  “I thought it wasn’t right to live in Paris any longer and take money from you under false pretenses.”

  “Oh, so you have a sense of right and wrong, have you, sirrah! And what do you intend to do now, if I may ask?”

  “I don’t know, Papa. I thought perhaps you might advise me.”

  “How old are you?” he said, in a loud voice.

  “Twenty-four.”

  He seemed to gasp for breath. “Get out of this room!” he spluttered at last. “Keep out of my sight as much as possible! The family is going to the dogs and I don’t want to see any more of it than necessary. Go on! Get out!”

  I left hastily. He would calm down by the time I had to meet him across the table in the dining room.

  I climbed the stairs and paused on the landing for a moment, kneeling on the hot brown-plush seat and looking across the garden. Then I went up to my room. It looked exactly the same. One of the servants was unpacking my bag.