The Self-Enchanted

by David Stacton

  “Christopher,” she whispered. “It’s me.”

  He could not stop shuddering, and in the darkness a last piece of glass fell to the pavement, cracking sharply. He clutched on to her, trying to pull himself up out of darkness. She sank down beside him on the floor, in the obscurity of the church. He clutched her tighter and tighter.

  “Oh, God,” he sobbed. “Take me home. Take me home.”

  “I will,” she said. He lay there, with his head on her shoulder, while the darkness fluctuated round them, the vigil lights smashed.

  XXII

  The trip back was not exactly easy. They began by taking the boat to Hong Kong. She watched the wake, as they pulled out of the harbour of Macao. In a short time the town was only a clutter of disreputable tenements rising crazily against one another. Over them wheeled the gulls. They reached Hong Kong, where they were to stay overnight.

  The next morning, from the narrow windows of the plane, she watched Asia drop behind her, oppressive and clogged with fear. Before them stretched the endless reaches of the Pacific. And at last they sighted, far ahead, the islands of Hawaii, rising from the wilderness of the sea. Below her she could watch the shaded geography of the water, its shadow and shoals. She sighed with relief. She could not get rid of the feeling that there was not much time left, and now only a few hours separated them from the mainland. They descended and then were on their way again. She gazed out of the window as the flying boat rose in the air. In Hawaii she had been aware of something in the air, a fresh vivacity that made her the more anxious to reach the States. As the plane rose, the scene vanished in the distance, a world she had not seen, but merely touched.

  Hour after hour they flew over the reaches of the Pacific. Christopher had changed: she could sense that he had reached some decision. In a few hours they would sight the California coast.

  “We missed the autumn,” he said. He hesitated. “I’ve made up my mind,” he told her. “I’ll try the operation.” He looked out the window. “I don’t care what it’s like. We’ll do things together. I’ll win back everything I’ve lost. They have good hospitals at home.”

  It was noon on the ocean. The shadow of the plane was directly beneath them. Far away she saw, beyond the wing, a vague shadow growing more and more distinct. Then, in the distance, as they both watched, they saw the coast of California, fading in mists and thin lines of fog. She looked at her watch: in an hour they would land. She could scarcely keep from crying.

  Soon they were over the Farallones. She looked down and could see the lighthouse and the stone houses with their tin roofs. Ahead of them was the Golden Gate, angry, windswept. In the thin mist the trees were green and the great humps and slabs of Tamalpais poured down, brown and dusty, to the bay. The towers of the city echoed the declining sun on every window, and around the bay the towns backed up into the golden hills. A fog billowed over the city, swathing the apartment houses in draperies of white mist. Beyond lay the Great Valley and, obscured by heat haze, the Sierra. She was home.

  They landed, and after being cleared through the authorities, took a limousine to town.

  “We’ll get to the mountains as soon as we can.”

  “You’ve got to see a doctor first.”

  “I will. But as soon as we can, we’ll go.”

  The city was clogged with traffic. They drove off the bridge and up through the slums. She was glad to get inside their hotel.

  The appointment with the doctor was for Monday. She had wired for the name of a specialist. He was busy, but an appointment had been arranged. The diagnosis took a week.

  Christopher was nervous as a cat. The night before the final interview he did not sleep. She woke up and saw him sitting by a window in the bedroom. They did not talk. He went grimly to keep his appointment and she sat down to wait.

  She waited for a long time. She had expected him back in an hour. He did not come. She phoned downstairs for cocktails to be sent up. When they came she sat fingering the frosted glass, and pulling at the cherry. She ate the cherry and realized that she had been snapping its stem into little bits. The clock was striking six when at last he came in. He sat down on a chair, letting his hands hang idle.

  “Why didn’t you phone?” she asked. He did not answer, and she asked then about the diagnosis.

  “I’m not having the operation. I won’t lie in a room.”

  “But Doctor James said …”

  He took up the glass she had not drunk and swallowed it, reaching for the shaker. “It’s too late,” he said. “It’s inoperable, or whatever you call it.” He smiled at her wryly. “I have the word of four specialists. I’m afraid they weren’t lying.” He sat down beside her and put his head in her lap. “Get me back up there before it’s too late.”

  She sat motionless for a long time, looking at nothing, until the telephone began to ring. It rang on mercilessly, and she moved to answer it.

  “Let it ring,” he said.

  “I can’t do that.”

  “What the hell difference does it make now?” he demanded, but he sat up and reached over to the table to answer it. He listened and then put the receiver back on the hook, his lips tight, and sat for a moment frowning in silence. “It was Nora,” he said. “She certainly finds out fast. She wants us to go round.”

  “Christopher, you won’t!”

  “No,” he said. “I won’t. I just hung up, didn’t I?”

  But he did insist upon going down to dinner. He didn’t want to stay in the room. And after dinner they went to the Top of the Mark, where he could look out over the city. The Top of the Mark was the reconverted penthouse of a Copper King, on the top floor of the highest building on Nob Hill. Now it was a cocktail bar, with a view on all four sides. Everyone who ever came to the city, came also to the Top of the Mark, to say good-bye. More than any other place, it was a symbol of the ultimate romantic city no one may ever know. And it was a symbol also of that city’s heart-broken luxury. Even the natives went there sometimes, when they fell in love again. Christopher sat there and looked out at the town. The fog blurred everything. Across the darkness its streets and bridges shimmered with indifference, more beautiful at night and in obscurity, than ever they were by day. He just sat there, with an unfinished drink, looking at it and thinking it over, without saying much. Then they went back to the hotel.

  She woke twice. The first time it was to hear water running, and she turned on her side. The bathroom door was open. Through it, with sleep-clogged eyes, she could see Christopher. He was standing at the medicine chest, and she saw that he was holding a bottle of morphine in his hand. He put it back in the chest and reached for the toilet things. He used a straight razor to shave. He had a set of them in a velvet case. She saw him open the case, take out a razor, and test it with his thumb. He stood there for a long time with the razor in his hand, while she held her breath. Then he relaxed, put the razor back, and turned the taps on full. With a sigh of relief she closed her eyes and pretended to sleep.

  When she woke again the light had changed. That quality of sharply etched nightmare, of everything moving in slow motion, had gone. He was lathering his face quickly, his movements shaky. She sat up in bed, and hearing her, he glanced into the bedroom.

  “Can you pack?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “Phone the airlines. The desk can give you the number. Get reservations on the first plane you can.” He dried his face on a towel. “Or never mind. I’ll do it. You get dressed.”

  His eyes were frightened, and he felt the razor in his hand. With a shrug he snapped it shut and threw it on the bed.

  *

  She knew he was relieved to leave the city, and certainly she was. She could not get out of it fast enough. Once the plane was in the air she felt an immeasurable relief. Nora and their failures were behind them and they were going home, The valley loomed before her as their only hope. And Christopher too, she felt, believed that if they could once reach the valley they would be safe, if only for a little
while.

  They were soon above the mountains. Miraculously the early winter clouds had cleared, except where here and there they jammed angrily in some fosse between the higher peaks. Even in the plane she could feel the change in the atmosphere, as the cold air swept through the ventilators, that high air that froze pain and cleared the head, making the world bearable again.

  The steady motors took them over the hump of the Sierra. Beneath them she could see the tree line, and above the tree line, those wastes where no one ever went, flat moraine meadows covered with green lichen and dotted with an occasional dead tree. Rise after rise she saw the mountains pass rapidly beneath her, standing out against the blue. Christopher leaned forward eagerly.

  “We’ll have to wire down from Reno and have the house opened,” he said. “And charter a plane.”

  She looked down as they passed over the Eastern Escarpment, and saw the country surrounding Reno. She looked east, to the edge of town. That was where she had first decided to go back to him. She caught the gleam of the river. The plane circled lower. She could see, to the north, the university opposite the cemetery, its buildings lost in a haze of trees. She looked down on the brown and yellow countryside, vast, desolate, but altogether beautiful, and felt safe.

  They taxied along the runway, the door was opened, and they stepped out into their own country.

  “I’ve got to make a phone call,” he said. “Will you see to the bags?”

  He handed her the stubs and she went into the waiting-room and fought her way to the baggage counter. She at last managed to arrange to have the bags sent to the hotel. She found Christopher waiting for her outside. He looked thoughtful.

  “Unfinished business,” he explained. “I was trying to get Curt. I think I should, don’t you?” She looked at him with surprise, and he avoided the look. “Will you get him for me?” he asked. “He’d come for you.”

  She went into the booth and put through the call. From inside she could see Christopher walking restlessly around the waiting-room. Curt’s voice shocked her. She did not quite know what to say.

  “When did you get in?” he asked.

  “Just a few minutes ago. Christopher is with me.”

  “Oh!”

  “He wants to see you.”

  Curt did not answer.

  “I wish you’d do it. He’s very ill, Curt. I think it would make him feel better.” She could hear him hesitating at the other end of the line. She could almost see his expression.

  “Very well,” he said at last. “Where are you staying? I could come after dinner and meet you in the bar, at about nine.”

  She told him where they were and he rang off. She went outside to tell Christopher.

  “How did he sound?”

  “Reluctant.”

  “Oh!” Christopher thought that over. “I got a private plane for to-morrow at ten. Have you any idea how he’s getting on?”

  “None at all.”

  They went to the hotel. She did a little shopping, and when she came back Christopher was out. He had left a note to say he had gone to the bank. She looked at her watch, and saw that the bank had been closed for hours. She sat down, lit a cigarette and waited for him to return. He came in at about seven, looking tired, but tried to cheer up for her. They went downstairs to dinner. By the time they had finished dinner it was a quarter to nine.

  “We’d better go up,” he said. In imitation of The Top of the Mark in San Francisco, the bar was a sky room. In the elevator he took her hand. When they stepped out, Curt was already in the bar. He looked shabby. He smiled when he saw them, and she realized how glad she was to see him. It was a long time since she had seen anybody she felt was even remotely trustworthy.

  “Glad to be back?” he asked.

  “Very glad,” said Sally. Christopher seemed depressed and ill at ease. He asked Curt how business was.

  “Not so bad.”

  It went like that. Sally glanced around the lounge. The windows were of blue glass. The air was close. Through the open venetian blinds she could see the stars indistinct in the velvet sky, and the bulk of the mountains to the west. She forced herself to talk, to make things easier. Curt was still being hostile, and though she could not blame him, she felt sorry for Christopher.

  “I should be getting back,” said Curt, after only two drinks.

  Neither Sally nor Christopher asked him to where.

  “Are you building anything?” Christopher asked.

  “A church.” Curt got up, and they parted at the elevator. There was nothing for them to say, and if there had been, the elevator was not the place to say it. “If you need me, give me a ring,” Curt said to Sally. “I’m settled permanently here now.” He said good night and the elevator doors closed after him.

  Back in their room Christopher sank down into a chair. “It didn’t go so well, did it?” he said. “I guess I can’t blame him for that. But he didn’t have any business liking me that much, did he?”

  She did not answer. Christopher sat in the shadow, watching her. He cleared his throat. “I didn’t go to the bank,” he said. “I went to the lawyers’. I had them draw up a will.” He hesitated. “I’ve left him something, do you mind? I also drew up a power of attorney in your name.”

  “Don’t talk about it, Christopher.”

  “It had to be done,” he said. He tried to smile at her, and she tried to smile back, but it didn’t work out very well. Yet he looked healthy. A little older, a little graver, but essentially the same. She ran her fingers through his hair.

  “You’d better go to bed,” she said. “We’ll have to be up early.”

  He did not move. Lying back, he closed his eyes, and she undressed him and got him to bed.

  In the morning they went out to the airport. The plane was a small silver monocoupe, like Christopher’s own. Christopher ran his hand along the surface of it, and when they were inside, watched the pilot. She could understand that. Probably he would never fly again, and he knew it.

  They followed the mountains southward. In less than an hour she saw the landscape open out into the great plains east of Mono Lake. The plane swept over the valley itself, and she caught a glimpse of the house on the cliff. Smoke rose from its chimneys. She swallowed hard, a constriction in her throat, and wiped her eyes with a handkerchief, as the pilot set down on the lake.

  PART FIVE

  XXIII

  She stood at the window watching the snow falling. It had begun an hour ago.

  She was alone in the living-room, with a fire in the fireplace casting long flickering shadows across the floor. She had seen the black storm-head pour out of the break in the mountains and had watched it with regret. For a week it had been oddly sunny, with that hard, cold, comfortless sunlight of winter which can burn but not comfort. All nature was scraped clean, ready to receive the snow. But until now there had been no snow: there had only been a whirring in the air.

  She rubbed her arms and leaned her forehead against the window. She heard the crackling of the air, and sliding open one of the windows, looked out over the edge of the terrace and caught sight of the broken balustrade below. For a moment her father’s figure flashed across her memory and then faded away.

  The snow, which had been falling with a purring grace, thickened, dashing edgewise towards the house. Suddenly it was all around her, on her hands, her dress, and her hair, dissolving as it touched her flesh. The flakes were small and pure and white. Reluctantly she turned and went back to the room, pulling the sliding window shut behind her. The snow had darkened the room. Outside the world was a twisting white blur.

  Christopher was sitting propped up beside the fire, and he had dressed. She asked him what he was doing out of bed.

  “I felt better. I wanted to watch the snow.”

  “You should have called me.”

  She went over and sat down beside him, curling up to him, and he put his arms around her. They watched the snow billow up and down, whirling about in space, but always falling, t
hicker, thinner, faster, slower, dissolving, falling. Behind them a log sank into the fire, in a shower of red sparks.

  “You should have a doctor and a nurse,” she said.

  “There’s nothing they can do for me.”

  “But when you get worse….”

  “I won’t get worse. I feel better up here.” He sighed and reached out for a poker to poke up the fire. He jabbed at it with short, vicious stabs.

  They sat there for a long time. At about five the snow began to thin out. Slowly, too slowly, the mists drove into one another and suddenly broke, blown two ways by the wind. The mountains towered into the blue sky.

  Christopher got up. “Come out on to the terrace,” he said.

  She rose and followed him. He pushed back the door and stepped outside. She saw him glance briefly at the broken balustrade, and then he shifted his gaze to the mountains. In that cleared air they seemed breathtakingly close and they were dusted with the winter’s first snow, that clung on their ridges and shelves. Only the evergreens provided a bluish-green touch of colour. The rest of the world was granite, snow, and sky. The mountains looked alive. Christopher stared up at them, almost as though in prayer.

  “Is it very difficult to get up there?” he asked.

  “It’s not a good idea in winter.”

  “But it can be done?”

  “There’s an easy trail, but a storm may blow up at any time.”

  He sighed wistfully. “I’d like to get up there just once.”

  “We could do it in the spring. You can rent packs in the valley,” she said soothingly.

  “What is it like?”