by David Miller
It was certainly most unfortunate that Johnnie should have been invited to tea on that Thursday, for the Misses Swindale had been drinking heavily on and off for the preceding week, and were by that time in a state of mental and nervous excitement that rendered them far from normal. A number of events had combined to produce the greatest sense of isolation in these old women whose sanity in any event hung by a precarious thread. Miss Marian had been involved in an unpleasant scene with the vicar over the new hall for the Young People’s Club. She was, as usual, providing the cash for the building and felt extremely happy and excited at being consulted about the decorations. Though she did not care for the vicar, she set out to see him, determined that she would accommodate herself to changing times. In any case, since she was the benefactress, it was, she felt, particularly necessary that she should take a back seat; to have imposed her wishes in any way would have been most ill-bred. It was an unhappy chance that caused the vicar to harp upon the need for new fabrics for the chairs and even to digress upon the ugliness of the old upholstery, for these chairs had come from the late General Swindale’s library. Miss Marian was immediately reminded of her belief that the vicar was attempting secretly to blacken her father’s memory, nor was the impression corrected when he tactlessly suggested that the question of her father’s taste was unimportant and irrelevant. She was more deeply wounded still to find in the next few days that the village shared the vicar’s view that she was attempting to dictate to the boys’ club by means of her money. “After all,” as Mrs Grove at the Post Office said, “it’s not only the large sums that count, Miss Swindale, it’s all the boys’ sixpences that they’ve saved up.” “You’ve too much of your father’s ways in you, that’s the trouble, Miss Swindale,” said Mr Norton, who was famous for his bluntness, “and they won’t do nowadays.”
She had returned from this unfortunate morning’s shopping to find Mrs Calkett on the doorstep. Now the visit of Mrs Calkett was not altogether unexpected, for Miss Marian had guessed from chance remarks of her sister’s that something “unfortunate” had happened with young Tony. When, however, the sharp-faced unpleasant little woman began to complain about Miss Dolly with innuendos and veiledly coarse suggestions, Miss Marian could stand it no longer and drove her away harshly. “How dare you speak about my sister in that disgusting way, you evil-minded little woman,” she said. “You’d better be careful or you’ll find yourself charged with libel.” When the scene was over, she felt very tired. It was dreadful of course that anyone so mean and cheap should speak thus of anyone so fine and beautiful as Dolly, but it was also dreadful that Dolly should have made such a scene possible.
Things were not improved, therefore, when Dolly returned from Brighton at once elevated by a new conquest and depressed by its subsequent results. It seemed that the new conductor on the South-down, “that charming dark Italian-looking boy I was telling you about, my dear,” had returned her a most intimate smile and pressed her hand when giving her change. Her own smiles must have been embarrassingly intimate, for a woman in the next seat had remarked loudly to her friend, “These painted old things. Really, I wonder the men don’t smack their faces.” “I couldn’t help smiling,” remarked Miss Dolly, “she was so evidently jalouse, my dear. I’m glad to say the conductor did not hear, for no doubt he would have felt it necessary to come to my defence, he was so completely épris.” But, for once, Miss Marian was too vexed to play ball, she turned on her sister and roundly condemned her conduct, ending up by accusing her of bringing misery to them both and shame to their father’s memory. Poor Miss Dolly just stared in bewilderment, her baby-blue eyes round with fright, tears washing the mascara from her eyelashes in black streams down the wrinkled vermilion of her cheeks. Finally she ran crying up to her room.
That night both the sisters began to drink heavily. Miss Dolly lay like some monstrous broken doll, her red hair streaming over her shoulders, her corsets unloosed and her fat body poking out of an old pink velvet ball dress – pink with red hair was always so audacious – through the most unexpected places in bulges of thick blue-white flesh. She sipped at glass after glass of gin, sometimes staring into the distance with bewilderment that she should find herself in such a condition, sometimes leering pruriently at some pictures of Johnny Weismuller in swimsuits that she had cut out of Film Weekly. At last she began to weep to think that she had sunk to this. Miss Marian sat at her desk and drank more deliberately from a cut glass decanter of brandy. She read solemnly through her father’s letters, their old-fashioned earnest Victorian sentiments swimming ever more wildly before her eyes. But, at last, she, too, began to weep as she thought of how his memory would be quite gone when she passed away, and of how she had broken the promise that she had made to him on his deathbed to stick to her sister through thick and thin.
So they continued for two or three days with wild spasms of drinking and horrible, sober periods of remorse. They cooked themselves odd scraps in the kitchen, littering the house with unwashed dishes and cups, but never speaking, always avoiding each other. They didn’t change their clothes or wash, and indeed made little alteration in their appearance. Miss Dolly put fresh rouge on her cheeks periodically and some pink roses in her hair which hung there wilting; she was twice sick over the pink velvet dress. Miss Marian put on an old scarlet hunting waistcoat of her father’s, partly out of maudlin sentiment and partly because she was cold. Once she fell on the stairs and cut her forehead against the banisters; the red and white handkerchief which she tied round her head gave her the appearance of a tipsy pirate. On the fourth day, the sisters were reconciled and sat in Miss Dolly’s room. That night they slept, lying heavily against each other on Miss Dolly’s bed, open-mouthed and snoring, Miss Marian’s deep guttural rattle contrasting with Miss Dolly’s highpitched whistle. They awoke on Thursday morning, much sobered, to the realization that Johnnie was coming to tea that afternoon.
It was characteristic that neither spoke a word of the late debauch. Together they went out into the hot July sunshine to gather raspberries for Johnnie’s tea. But the nets in the kitchen garden had been disarranged and the birds had got the fruit. The awful malignity of this chance event took some time to pierce through the fuddled brains of the two ladies, as they stood there grotesque and obscene in their staring pink and clashing red, with their heavy pouchy faces and blood-shot eyes showing up in the hard, clear light of the sun. But when the realization did get home it seemed to come as a confirmation of all the beliefs of persecution which had been growing throughout the drunken orgy. There is little doubt that they were both a good deal mad when they returned to the house.
Johnnie arrived punctually at four o’clock, for he was a small boy of exceptional politeness. Miss Marian opened the door to him, and he was surprised at her appearance in her red bandana and her scarlet waistcoat, and especially by her voice which, though friendly and gruff as usual, sounded thick and flat. Miss Dolly, too, looked more than usually odd with one eye closed in a kind of perpetual wink, and with her pink dress falling off her shoulders. She kept on laughing in a silly, high giggle. The shock of discovering that the raspberries were gone had driven them back to the bottle and they were both fairly drunk. They pressed upon the little boy, who was thirsty after his walk, two small glasses in succession, one of brandy, the other of gin, though in their sober mood the ladies would have died rather than have seen their little friend take strong liquor. The drink soon combined with the heat of the day and the smell of vomit that hung around the room to make Johnnie feel most strange. The walls of the room seemed to be closing in and the floor to be moving up and down like sea waves. The ladies’ faces came up at him suddenly and then receded, now Miss Dolly’s with great blobs of blue and scarlet and her eyes winking and leering, now Miss Marian’s a huge white mass with her moustache grown large and black. He was only conscious by fits and starts of what they were doing or saying. Sometimes he would hear Miss Marian speaking in a flat, slow monotone. She seemed to be reading out her fath
er’s letters, snatches of which came to him clearly and then faded away. “There is so much to be done in our short sojourn on this earth, so much that may be done for good, so much for evil. Let us earnestly endeavour to keep the good steadfastly before us,” then suddenly, “Major Campbell has told me of his decision to leave the regiment. I pray God hourly that he may have acted in full consideration of the Higher Will to which …”, and once grotesquely, “Your Aunt Maud was here yesterday, she is a maddening woman and I consider it a just judgment upon the Liberal party that she should espouse its cause.” None of these phrases meant anything to the little boy, but he was dimly conscious that Miss Marian was growing excited, for he heard her say, “That was our father. As Shakespeare says, ‘He was a man take him all in all’ Johnnie. We loved him, but there were those who sought to destroy him, for he was too big for them. But their day is nearly ended. Always remember that, Johnnie.” It was difficult to hear all that the elder sister said, for Miss Dolly kept on drawling and giggling in his ear about a black charmeuse evening gown she had worn, and a young donkeyboy she had danced with in the fiesta at Asti. “E come era bello, caro Gabriele, come era bello. And afterwards … but I must spare the ears of one so young the details of the arte dell’ amore” she added with a giggle and then with drunken dignity, “it would not be immodest I think to mention that his skin was like velvet. Only a few lire, too, just imagine.” All this, too, was largely meaningless to the boy, though he remembered it in later years.
For a while he must have slept, since he remembered that later he could see and hear more clearly though his head ached terribly. Miss Dolly was seated at the piano playing a little jig and bobbing up and down like a mountainous pink blancmange, whilst Miss Marian more than ever like a pirate was dancing some sort of a hornpipe. Suddenly Miss Dolly stopped playing. “Shall we show him the prisoner?” she said solemnly. “Head up, shoulders straight,” said Miss Marian in a parody of her old manner, “you’re going to be very honoured, my lad. Promise you’ll never betray that honour. You shall see one of the enemy punished. Our father gave us close instructions, ‘Do good at all,’ he said, ‘but if you catch one of the enemy, remember you are soldier’s daughters.’ We shall obey that command.” Meanwhile Miss Dolly had returned from the kitchen, carrying a little bird which was pecking and clawing at the net in which it had been caught and shrilling incessantly – it was a little bullfinch. “You’re a very beautiful little bird,” Miss Dolly whispered, “with lovely soft pink feathers and pretty grey wings. But you’re a very naughty little bird too, tante cattivo. You came and took the fruit from us which we’d kept for our darling Gabriele.” She began feverishly to pull the rose breast feathers from the bird, which piped more loudly and squirmed. Soon little trickles of red blood ran down among the feathers. “Scarlet and pink very daring combination,” Miss Dolly cried. Johnnie watched from his chair, his heart beating fast. Suddenly Miss Marian stepped forward and holding the bird’s head she thrust a pin into its eyes. “We don’t like spies round here looking at what we are doing,” she said in her flat, gruff voice. “When we find them we teach them a lesson so that they don’t spy on us again.” Then she took out a little pocket knife and cut into the bird’s breast; its wings were beating more feebly now and its claws only moved spasmodically, whilst its chirping was very faint. Little yellow and white strings of entrails began to peep out from where she had cut. “Oh!” cried Miss Dolly, “I like the lovely colours , I don’t like these worms.” But Johnnie could bear it no longer, white and shaking he jumped from his chair and seizing the bird he threw it on the floor and then he stamped on it violently until it was nothing but a sodden crimson mass. “Oh, Gabriele, what have you done? You’ve spoilt all the soft, pretty colours. Why it’s nothing now, it just looks like a lump of raspberry jam. Why have you done it, Gabriele?” cried Miss Dolly. But little Johnnie gave no answer, he had run from the room.
THE LAST MOHICAN
Bernard Malamud
Bernard Malamud (1914–1986) was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Russian immigrants. He wrote eight novels and sixty-five short stories – his novel The Fixer winning the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. He once stated, “Life is a tragedy full of joy.” His advice to writers: “Write your heart out … Watch out for self-deceit in fiction. Write truthfully but with cunning… . Teach yourself to work in uncertainty … Write, complete, revise. If it doesn’t work, begin something else.”
Fidelman, a self-confessed failure as a painter, came to Italy to prepare a critical study of Giotto, the opening chapter of which he had carried across the ocean in a new pigskin leather brief case, now gripped in his perspiring hand. Also new were his gum-soled oxblood shoes, a tweed suit he had on despite the late-September sun slanting hot in the Roman sky, although there was a lighter one in his bag; and a dacron shirt and set of cotton-dacron underwear, good for quick and easy washing for the traveler. His suitcase, a bulky, two-strapped affair which embarrassed him slightly, he had borrowed from his sister Bessie. He planned, if he had any money left at the end of the year, to buy a new one in Florence. Although he had been in not much of a mood when he had left the U.S.A., Fidelman picked up in Naples, and at the moment, as he stood in front of the Rome railroad station, after twenty minutes still absorbed in his first sight of the Eternal City, he was conscious of a certain exaltation that devolved on him after he had discovered that directly across the many-vehicled piazza stood the remains of the Baths of Diocletian. Fidelman remembered having read that Michelangelo had had a hand in converting the baths into a church and convent, the latter ultimately changed into the museum that presently was there. “Imagine,” he muttered. “Imagine all that history.”
In the midst of his imagining, Fidelman experienced the sensation of suddenly seeing himself as he was, to the pinpoint, outside and in, not without bittersweet pleasure; and as the well-known image of his face rose before him he was taken by the depth of pure feeling in his eyes, slightly magnified by glasses, and the sensitivity of his elongated nostrils and often tremulous lips, nose divided from lips by a mustache of recent vintage that looked, Fidelman thought, as if it had been sculptured there, adding to his dignified appearance although he was a little on the short side. But almost at the same moment, this unexpectedly intense sense of his being – it was more than appearance – faded, exaltation having gone where exaltation goes, and Fidelman became aware that there was an exterior source to the strange, almost tri-dimensional reflection of himself he had felt as well as seen. Behind him, a short distance to the right, he had noticed a stranger – give a skeleton a couple of pounds – loitering near a bronze statue on a stone pedestal of the heavy-dugged Etruscan wolf suckling the infant Romulus and Remus, the man contemplating Fidelman already acquisitively so as to suggest to the traveler that he had been mirrored (lock, stock, barrel) in the other’s gaze for some time, perhaps since he had stepped off the train. Casually studying him, though pretending no, Fidelman beheld a person of about his own height, oddly dressed in brown knickers and black, knee-length woolen socks drawn up over slightly bowed, broomstick legs, these grounded in small, porous, pointed shoes. His yellowed shirt was open at the gaunt throat, both sleeves rolled up over skinny, hairy arms. The stranger’s high forehead was bronzed, his black hair thick behind small ears, the dark, close-shaven beard tight on the face; his experienced nose was weighted at the tip, and the soft brown eyes, above all, wanted. Though his expression suggested humility, he all but licked his lips as he approached the ex-painter.
“Shalom,” he greeted Fidelman.
“Shalom,” the other hesitantly replied, uttering the word – so far as he recalled – for the first time in his life. My God, he thought, a handout for sure. My first hello in Rome and it has to be a schnorrer.
The stranger extended a smiling hand. “Susskind,” he said, “Shimon Susskind.”
“Arthur Fidelman.” Transferring his brief case to under his left arm while standing astride the big suit
case, he shook hands with Susskind. A blue-smocked porter came by, glanced at Fidelman’s bag, looked at him, then walked away.
Whether he knew it or not Susskind was rubbing his palms contemplatively together.
“Parla italiano?”
“Not with ease, although I read it fluently. You might say I need the practice.”
“Yiddish?”
“I express myself best in English.”
“Let it be English then.” Susskind spoke with a slight British intonation. “I knew you were Jewish,” he said, “the minute my eyes saw you.”
Fidelman chose to ignore the remark. “Where did you pick up your knowledge of English?”
“In Israel.”
Israel interested Fidelman. “You live there?”
“Once, not now,” Susskind answered vaguely. He seemed suddenly bored.
“How so?”
Susskind twitched a shoulder. “Too much heavy labor for a man of my modest health. Also I couldn’t stand the suspense.”
Fidelman nodded.
“Furthermore, the desert air makes me constipated. In Rome I am light hearted.”
“A Jewish refugee from Israel, no less,” Fidelman said good humoredly.
“I’m always running,” Susskind answered mirthlessly. If he was light hearted, he had yet to show it.
“Where else from, if I may ask?”
“Where else but Germany, Hungary, Poland? Where not?”
“Ah, that’s so long ago.” Fidelman then noticed the gray in the man’s hair. “Well, I’d better be going,” he said. He picked up his bag as two porters hovered uncertainly nearby.