Asphodel

by H. D. (Hilda Doolittle)

  But this is worse than anything I have ever done or seen or thought of. Sitting quite still and as if something back of me were just simply using me, using me to get to Walter. Walter with his head bent in the dusk and Fayne sobbing (yes she’s actually crying) and Mrs. Rabb, poor Clara, sitting white and still and getting more white and being braver than Fayne really who was crying. I have to endure. It’s almost as if you, Clara, understood what I was, am going through. No, its no use. Things just don’t happen anyhow. Walter’s grandfather invented the Morse code and my father is the Gart formula and poor Bertrand. Things don’t just happen. There is a sort of aristocracy of the spirit. But you are stronger than I and O Walter poor little Walter they started you when you were three. Things don’t just happen. Art is sweating and going blind with agony. If I weren’t so sorry, didn’t feel you so much Walter, I couldn’t myself sit so still here, not saying anything afraid lest for some little breath I might move in some way, get out of key with something and the message wouldn’t get through. Morse code. I am a wire simply. But one doesn’t really choose casual instruments. But you Walter, they put you to school when you were three and don’t you see, all my life it’s killed me, this that they didn’t teach me something when I was three. But it doesn’t matter. Things don’t just happen and if I can’t play it makes it better for you, for just this moment. I am crucified for you and you for the thing beyond me that is getting through to you. Is this your own music Walter? But it isn’t music. Light outside, still able to see, glim and glim and another glim for someone was lighting up and they called Walter (the little children in the street—he said) le forgeron—laughing so charmed when he said it “they call me the blacksmith here.” Blacksmith that was what Walter was to ordinary people. O white and strong and powerful like great white breakers. Your face is alabaster. You are more beautiful than anything one could ever have imagined. It’s rather terrible Fayne crying like that. I couldn’t think she’d do it. But it’s worse, much worse, much more triumphant for us, quiet, who have Morse codes and Gart formulas to fall back on, Walter . . . “Are you tired?” “Walter.” “Are you tired?” “Walter.” “I just thought for a moment—” “What did you think, Walter?” “I don’t know. That second movement. I wish you would come to Norway with me in the summer.” “Walter.” “I got the last bit and of course I’m going to get tea. No. Don’t move. I have everything. In the dark. Hermione. I thought you might like the other half better. Which movement did you like better? Debussy liked the andante but you said it was the sea grinding at low tide and got (did you say?) on your nerves, felt (you said) wrecks and didn’t you say it was like the little Mermaid. I have a drawing a friend of mine made. A man in London. Rallac. He is French. Likes London. Does fairy tale illustrations. Everyone knows him. I have a concert there next winter. Will send you to see them. I have done more work lately.” “Walter.” “I should get up and light the candles. Lights. We have electricity. Are your friends still here? What’s happened to them?” “They went looking for your little bathroom. Fayne Rabb has been crying.” “Crying? Whats she been crying for? What’s the matter with her? You’re not crying?” ” “O no, Walter.”

  Of course the thing is terrible but it isn’t your fault and it isn’t my fault and it’s got to be borne. Windows facing east, west and south. Southern windows. No, there is no southern window in this music. Giving us little cakes and calling downstairs in exquisite French and someone running up, his old concierge he said, going out again, coming back with a beautiful shiny loaf like a loaf in a Rallac drawing he said. He is fond of the Rallacs and says we must see them in London. Fairy tales and going on now, having made the tea himself and some little radishes appearing with butter on a leaf and calling it supper with red wine afterwards. We had forgotten he had strips of white chicken and lettuce leaves, always had something on hand and started calling it tea. But it was supper now with the candles making blood chalices of the deep wide goblets that must do, he said as he hadn’t any proper wine-glasses. He didn’t (he said) really live here, just worked here. He had—friends up the road. Would she come to see them, some friends of his. Yes, she would be glad to come to see them, glad to see any friends of his. What kind of friends? A man who made blue, blue sea drawings and drew illustrations (for pot boilers, Walter said) for Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. Midsummer. But it was winter. It was winter when Walter played. Cold and chill and the sound of the notes was the last drop of an icicle that started to melt in the spring, melting, it must melt but it decided not to melt and broke off a little crystal bead and fell down, down, down and broke with an infinitude of sound, the lightest sharp cold ice note at the top of the piano, making the whole world vibrate. Red wine. The wine was like a frozen ruby, everything static where Walter was. Morse code, going on and on and on. Everything he did was written carefully away somewhere in a big book. There was a huge book that God turned to. “Ah this was Walter playing. It’s all written down here. It was the (what was the date?) about the middle of July, end of July. Late peonies. Lilacs all gone. Must have been about then for there were cherries on carts and the rabbits along the Seine on the left bank were chewing full headed lupin grass. Must have been there. Lucky to have books. My books. I am God. Look, here the candles blew askew in the wind and Walter went on and on and people collected on the pavement outside but he didn’t mind even when a small boy shouted (till he was suddenly quelled by the little crowd that had collected) ‘forgeron.’ He is certainly writing things for me, dots and dashes, things that I and only a few people (Hermione) can read. And there is Hermione knowing all about it. Something to have a Hermione, a negative instrument. May find later use for it. Fayne Rabb? Something gone wrong? How did I make that mistake? Clara better Whet.” Go on and on and on. What would God make of the page he would read, turning back, summer 1912 (was it?) long ago. Walter is still playing in the mind of God. Hermione is still sitting stiff and fearing lest she fall forward or fall sideways. Not backward. Nice little room wall with nice paper. Freshly papered. He told them all about it and how he had hesitated. He seemed to care so much about his wall paper, a sort of rose grey and his tumblers that weren’t the right ones for the wine that is frozen forever. That is Walter. Fire frozen. Suppose you melt the fire that is frozen. But you can’t. The thing is simply fire-frozen, frozen fire and no one can help the thing. It just is. There’s no use Clara your asking him to play Chopin but he will if you ask him. Why does he do the things we ask? It seems so odd, as if suddenly you should take it into your head to ask an ocean breaker to stop for a moment and play something, say Chopin. Well, there it would know how to do it. The ocean breaker would understand Chopin. It would fall at the right moment and make of itself a miniature little lake and you would see in a miniature little lake just all that. All that, that Walter was playing. Still he was too big for this; the breaker remembered, chafed all the time that it had plunged over a rock, got caught and was now the tiniest and most perfect little play lake. It would remember that it was part of the sea suddenly and when the tide came in it would flow out again and be lost again. “Would you rather have the window shut? Perhaps we’d better. Sometimes the gendarme complains that we collect too many people.” He shut the window, but Hermione was sure the thing that Walter was, still went through the window. He said he hated people but he closed the window softly, apologetically almost you might have thought. He said he loathed people and he smiled with his Byronic charm when he said the little boys shouted “forgeron” at him always. Going on and on and on. O it’s so late Walter. Why did you start again. Couldn’t you have let us off, let us somehow go home somewhere? Where is home? Eugenia wouldn’t understand this but Clara is bearing up beautifully. Clara has something “home” about her, making Walter’s little supper so sweet, presiding like an elderberry bush, Clara. Really rather like a flowering stiff wooded bush. Strong underneath. Clara. Clara not breaking. Clara even a little impatient with Fayne Rabb. Did Fayne think they were going to think of her when before
their very eyes, an ocean breaker took form and white and white and white with its coat off and its sleeves rolled up and looking absolutely right with its collar loosened about its beautiful Byronic face. This is how beauty can look when God thought, “well, Helios, Apollo might take form again. Who for a father? Well someone in the background. That old Morse code fellow might do for a grandfather.” God thought it all out, thinking carefully. Sometimes He made mistakes. Fayne should have been—who? What? Did it matter. The candles blew straight up now that Walter closed the window. “You must be tired.” “I? I’m never tired.” Why did he say that, brushing back his hair (short hair) a little loosening, pulling at his collar. God. What fingers.

  What a nice little house. What a dear little lady. What an odd little lady looking so smart and somehow not at all the sort of thing you would ever in your mind remotely (ever and ever so remotely) associate with Walter. “O Mademoiselle Raigneau. It was ever so kind of you—” “Then you are—with—friends?” “Yes, Mademoiselle Raigneau. A girl and her mother—” “O, and her mother?” “O yes, Mademoiselle Raigneau.” Then did Walter live here? It was all so mysterious. “Walter will be coming later.” (She just couldn’t say Walter. It evolved into something that sounded like the frrr of the flap-flap of an old water wheel that is going in a pond but is no good but we won’t have the old thing broken up, its so picturesque. Vrrralter.) “O but I came to see you. To talk to you. It was kind of you to let me come to talk to you.” “Walter,” (but you couldn’t write the way she said it) “says you—help him.” “O how could I help him, ever, ever dream of helping Walter.” And before Hermione could finish the half bite of the excellent croissant she had begun to bite before the second half of the bite was over, Mademoiselle had begun, begun to pour out something, a long, long story, long, long story, what was it all about, her sister and another sister who had a child and how they were together in the country and how Walter was fond of her brother-in-law and how her mother was not dead but still living in their old château (which was really a farm though they called it a château) in the Pyrenees. They were part Spanish. Not really Spanish, only part and she and her sisters had played Walter’s violin concerto, she herself (had Walter told her?) played the violon cello. O how odd. No, Walter hadn’t told her. What a sunny small little lady to be grappling with a violon cello. Like a little lady bird climbing up, up, a huge, enormously huge sort of shiny chestnut. Great horse chestnut. France was all chestnut trees, châtaignes, they called them but it was marron glacé. Rather like a chestnut, like a marron glacé. Small compact and brown. How different from anything one could ever, even so remotely associate with Walter. And now she was plunged on with a history of her family. “You understand my English?” “O everything.”

  Tiny exquisite room. This was the “friends” up the street. All arranged. Fayne Rabb and Clara rather hurt. “But he wants me to see them alone.” “Them? Are there others?” “Others than what?” “Why than this—some woman I suppose he’s got entangled with?” “No. Friends of his. The Raigneaus. I don’t know who exactly. People who do things.” “Obviously.”

  “You didn’t bring your friends?” “Walter thought there would be too many. I will, if I may sometime. I don’t suppose you’d care to come to see—us?” What was the etiquette on these occasions? One couldn’t imagine little Mademoiselle Raigneau in their rue gauche little bedrooms. “We live in such a funny part. But you see being Americans, we love it.” “O yes. I know many Americans. My pupils. Girls who have har-mon-y with Walter.” “Does Walter teach?” “Well not really—much.” Dear little Mademoiselle Raigneau, smiling and such an entente all at once flaming up between them. A big fire in the autumn burning rubbish that was the smile between them. O, don’t scatter the leaves, pile them in, don’t let the wind blow them about. They’ll blow up—you know (they said we mustn’t and set fire to the roof). Roof on fire, a little danger somewhere, being very careful with the slightly illicit pleasure of poking the fire. That was the smile between them. O yes that was the smile between them. They were being something funny together, not the horror, the blank starkly insane horror that stared at one with white sea-eyes out of Walter’s music. Let’s forget Walter. They didn’t talk at all about Walter. They were playing illicitly with garden rakes, at a little barn fire, don’t let the leaves scatter. They’ll find out and stop us. O they were so méchantes, all the time and began talking about clothes and did Mademoiselle—O but let me call you Hermione, Walter does—like dresses? What colours? Yes. She (now you must call me Vérenè—what a heavenly name, it sounds like verbena) herself sometimes liked very pale bois de rose, you know a sort of sea shell rose, do you understand? And Walter though you might think he never cares, sees everything. “Does he see ever? Doesn’t he—feel somehow. I can’t describe it. Isn’t Walter a sort of moth that has frozen, frozen—it’s all very inexact—a sort of moth whose feathers are snow crystals—O dear it sounds like a Christmas tree ornament—dear Vérenè—don’t let’s talk about him.”

  Now they were playing together. Candles on the Louis something or other table burning with round little blobs of light. The candle flames looked round blobs of light like dandelion puffs with the sun shining on them, not clear and cold or turned knife edges away from a breeze like in Walter’s studio. The very quality of people determines the way their candles burn. This was a discovery. The walls melted away and were broken and cut with heavily framed rather over-luxurious paintings. Certainly French school, good paintings, might have been in some little obscure room of the Louvre. Very late French. Vérenè’s father had a picture in the Luxembourg. This was really people who do things. Something in Vérenè that though she was little and dumpy couldn’t have happened anywhere else. How odd it was her notes on the out of proportion cello that were making the background for Walter though naturally you would think Walter with his height and his Byronic splendour would be making the background for her, too small, little legs really too short, chubby efficient little wrist. Vérenè must have climbed trees in the Pyrenees when she was a child. Vérenè, not the sort of child really of Hermiones preference and somehow wrong with Walter yet somehow filling in a gap as if lonely pine woods should be inappositely filled with rose trees or rambling peonies, great bushes, half wild, with too much sun on them and the sun above smiting down to the low bushes though really loving the pine trees. The shaft of Walter’s poignant allegrettissimo was the sun far up in trees and the cold water running in, swift, swift, but water from an iceberg. Walter was water from an iceberg running in and in and in and the cello keeping up its buzzzzzz underneath was the inapposite hummmmm of many bees, bees, bees, in chestnuts filled with rose spike of pink wax flower. Chestnuts, roses gone a little riot. Low bushes not one’s own kind of bushes. An odd jungle. Walter went on playing but he was quieter, more human, his face not strained, torn and white. Walter would go mad if he hadn’t this stretch of low bushes, rose coloured bushes and small compact low growing trees to rest in. Walters genius was high, high in the trees and Vérenè was actually reproving him like a child. Vérenè was older, she had told Hermione. “Did it matter” Hermione had asked, seeing that she wanted her to ask it. How could it matter? “I feel I’m too—old.” “How mad. How silly. How could he want you other?” “Did he say anything?” O now what was she to answer? Walter hadn’t said anything, only he had—friends up the road. “He didn’t exactly say—anything. It was—in—the—air.” Vérenè accepted it. “But he spoke of—you.” “Well that’s different. We hardly know one another.” “No. He said so. He said he wanted your advice. Do you know music?” “O, no, no, no, no, no. Mademoiselle Raigneau. I write—a—little.” Music. Writing. What could one say or how could one say it? “Don’t worry at me.” That was the only thing to say but Hermione couldn’t say it. Walter has, O it’s so odd, a sort of brain. I have too. That is even more odd. It’s the Gart formula and the Morse code between us. One couldn’t say that. She had hardly formulated it. But there was something of a butterfly
rimed with frost between them. Little Vérenè would die at the first breath of frost. Walter (it was obvious) would kill her.