A glimmer of greenish spittle like a miniature jewel at the corner of Father’s mouth.
Horace!—kiss your dear father.
Wanting to kick, scream. Claw at the hands that gripped him.
Did these adults not see that Father was only pretending to be dead, with quivering eyelids?
No choice. Could not resist. The Scots nanny gripped him hard beneath the arms. Forced to brush his lips against the ravaged cheek, the inflamed boil of a birthmark.
Screamed, kicked, writhed like a demented fish squirming out of the restraining hands, fallen senseless to the stone floor of the chapel.
“And are things well at home, Horace?”—Mr. Burns, instructor of English at the Providence Academy for Boys, spoke in a kindly and cautious way to the seventh-grader who stood before him with hooded, averted eyes.
Of course. Very well. Thank you, sir.
“It was very sad about—about your … But your mother is bearing up well, I hope?”
Of course. Bearing up very well. Thank you, sir.
Horace Love, Sr. had died years ago! It was nothing short of preposterous that the subject was being brought up now by this well-intentioned fool.
“You have seemed distracted lately in class, Horace. And your work—your grades—have not been …”
An awkward pause. Mr. Burns would have wished to touch the boy’s arm, lightly; just a gesture, fatherly, concerned. But of course, better not. Always better to err on the side of caution than act on an impulse that might be regretted.
“Has anyone—threatened you, Horace? Harmed you?”
A curt murmur, a shake of the head. No, sir.
“You are sure, Horace? You can trust me, you know. If …”
Now the boy’s eyes lifted to Mr. Burns’s face, glaring, indignant. He was not a shy boy at all, it was revealed, though indeed he was a taciturn boy, and might go for weeks without speaking in class, unless his instructor drew him out; his face was long and narrow, as if his very skull had been squeezed, his cheekbones were sharply defined, his lips thin and pursed. He had been nervously picking at his face, at a small blemish or birthmark on his left cheek, that Burns had not noticed before, which was now oozing blood.
Seeing then the futility of such an interview, and perhaps the cruelty of it. For the child, tall for his age, with a slightly curved spine, spindly arms and legs, and those glaring sunken eyes, was both meek-seeming and rigid in opposition; in later years Burns would say of Horace Love, Jr., his most famous, indeed his only famous ex-student—I did not quite realize, Horace was not to be fathomed. Not by me. Not by anyone who knew him. Not ever.
On an obscure path in Prospect Terrace Park it lay motionless.
A small creature with dark feathers, stunted wings. A bird? A bat?
“Poor thing! What has happened to you?”—feeling a rush of pity and tenderness the boy stooped over the fallen creature.
The boy did not always like living things. Dogs with wagging tails that might succumb suddenly to a spasm of fierce barking, and lunge forward to nip and bite; sleekly beautiful cats that might suddenly hiss with bared, very sharp teeth. He disliked and feared aggressive birds like crows, ravens. Particularly he disliked and feared, in Prospect Park, the contentious waterfowl inhabiting the pond—Canadian geese, trumpeter swans. He did not especially like children including even his own young cousins whom (fortunately!) he saw rarely.
But injured creatures, ill or sickly like himself—for these he could feel a rush of emotion, near-overwhelming.
Stooping to pick up the wounded creature. Not a bird but possibly a bat, he thought it, wondering if it might be dangerous, for he’d heard of rabid bats and knew that it was dangerous to be bitten by one of these, and infected.
The little creature, that weighed virtually nothing, he held in the palm of his hand. Its wings fluttered—it appeared to be a large moth, with graceful wings, minutely detailed pearlescent markings. As if a miniature artist wielding a miniature brush had created a delicate lacework of beauty.
Gently he breathed on the moth, as if to suffuse it with life. Its wings began to quiver more rapidly, then to pulsate.
Lifting it to eye-level, that he might see it more clearly in the hazy light. He has saved the moth! But then suddenly he sees that the moth has a rudimentary face. A jeering face, a face of terrifying familiarity—even as the creature stings his fingers.
“No! Get away!”
He flings the moth down. Kicks at it furiously. The fluttering convulsing wings he brings his foot down hard upon. Oh, the sting hurts his fingers! Like a wasp’s sting, so sudden, painful. He had not known that a moth could sting …
Running all the way back home, to steep Charity Street. Wrought-iron fence, gate. Out of breath he slips into the house by a side door used by tradesmen and servants, to discover that the Scots nanny has not yet missed him, has given no thought to him at all, as his aggrieved mother has not given a thought to him in—hours, days?
In the sky above the house on Charity Street the Titans were near-visible.
For long minutes enraptured Horace, Jr. gazed out from an octagonal window on the third floor where no one could sneak up on him and surprise him.
Even night-gaunts did not often appear on the third floor of the house. Perhaps because the father had not ever climbed the steep uncarpeted stairs to this floor which was comprised of small rooms—servants’ rooms (most of these empty)—and a large storage room, an attic.
Here was a smell of dust, cobwebs, mice. A comforting smell for it meant seclusion, secrecy.
At the octagonal window Horace could gaze into the depths of the sky. A night sky, illuminated by the moon. For life, significant life, was not of the day but of the night. Life was not of the surface like the glossy skin of an apple, but deep inside the fruit where seeds are harbored. Fascinating to him, as clouds shifted, borne by the wind, and deeper dimensions opened, like windows, or mirrors, to infinity. The Titan ancestors had departed into the sky even as (somehow, the boy had not yet determined how) they had descended into the earth. They were very ancient, before Time began. For there could not always have been Time—(the boy reasoned)—not as Time was measured in clocks and calendars. In the debased, ignorant twentieth century the ancient gods had become unknown even as they manifested their power in unpredictable seismic ways: earthquakes, great fires, war, pestilence, moral confusion among humankind. If Horace, Jr. stared very hard and breathed with enormous care he could make out their heroic/terrible figures in the clouds overhead that replicated to an uncanny degree the illustrations to certain ancient texts in his grandfather’s library.
Ah!—his fingers twitched with the wish to write of his revelation taking up the black ebony Endura pen secretly kept in a pocket of his shirt against his heart.
“You know, dear child—it is not your fault.”
Not his fault—what?
“Your father had an illness, that has not been yet diagnosed. His illness made him think wrong things about you, his son—but it was not your father who thought such things but the illness …”
Kindly, awkwardly Great-Aunt “Bunny” Cornish assured him when no other adult was near. Why such words were uttered to a five-year-old child already paralyzed with fear must remain inexplicable.
Unhappy is he to whom memories of childhood bring only fear and sadness.
In the high-ceilinged reading room of the Athenaeum library these words would erupt from his grandfather’s pen onto the lined pages of his notebook like the water of an underground spring suddenly liberated, in sunlight.
In the master bedroom, he saw.
Barefoot in his flannel nightgown. A mischievous night-gaunt had led the boy into this forbidden place by the hand.
Averting his eyes. Eyes flooding with tears.
At first not knowing what the hideous thing could be atop the large canopied bed creaking like something in a windstorm: coiled serpents—in a ball?
Thick-bodied glittery-scaled serpents with diamond-sha
ped heads, tawny-glaring eyes with black, vertical pupils like slits, quick-darting red tongues—writhing, squirming, uttering small hissing cries: an obscene hideous ball, in spasms atop the canopied bed, in stupefied horror he backed away to run, run.
No escape. For where can you run.
Strangle you in my coils. Squeeze the mutinous life from you.
In lower Market Street where he oughtn’t have gone.
A circuitous route to Charity Hill in the waning afternoon after school is a danger for always in the wrong quarters of Providence there is the danger of them.
Dark-skinned beings. Gypsy. Slant-eyed Asians—Chinee not to be trusted. As in a later decade Japs not to be trusted.
Native-born Negroes—descendants of slaves.
Well, some of these—colored people—are good upright Christian people, the women especially. Very good servants.
(In fact it is rumored that Obadiah Cornish’s great-grandfather Ezra Cornish owned two slaves. Whom he’d called “indentured servants.” Living right in the house on Charity Hill, in those quarters like rabbit hutches at the rear. In time, Ezra’s abolitionist neighbors shamed him into releasing his slaves though [in fact] shrewd Ezra had not released them but sold the couple south.)
But others—those others.
… soon slash your throat as look at you. Animals!
He had known. He’d been warned. His mother’s family—his relatives. Nor had his father been known to utter a kind or conciliatory word about Negroes to whom he referred by another word too coarse to be uttered.
And so now, in the very shadow of the historic old Market House (1773) Horace, Jr. has come to a halt. Cradling schoolbooks in his arms as street urchins (gypsies?) pluck at him emitting sharp cries he cannot decipher.
A young girl-urchin, scarcely ten, opens her soiled dress—bares her white, scrawny chest—tiny breasts, with small pinpoint-nipples—twelve-year-old Horace is astonished—he has never seen anything like this except in certain of the illustrations in his grandfather’s library and then never of children so young. It is horrible to see, it is hideous, the aghast boy feels no sex-desire but only pity and sorrow, and fear.
No, no!—the urchins continue to pluck at him. Poke between the legs. The girl is squealing as if he has hurt her. (If a crowd gathers? If a police officer is summoned?) He begs them, no. Reaches fumbling into the pocket of his Norfolk jacket for the coin purse his mother has given him, a handful of fifty-cent coins, quarters, dimes in case of rain he needs to take a trolley to the foot of Charity Hill. With shaking fingers he snaps open the purse to give a few coins to the squealing girl and in that instant another of the urchins grabs the purse, beautifully stitched pigskin purse just the size to fit in the palm of the boy’s hand, and all the urchins run away hooting with derisive laughter.
Long he will recall, the almost unbearable excitement of pressing coins into the girl’s tiny hand just as—so rudely!—as he’d deserved—a crude boy-urchin yanked the entire purse from his fingers.
What do you mean, Horace—you lost your change purse?
Lost—where? “Downtown”—?
And why is your jacket torn? And why are you looking so—so white—as if you’d seen a ghost?
A night-gaunt has gripped his hand. Several night-gaunts like large bats flutter about his head. Leading him up the staircase in his stocking-feet, to the (shut) door of the master bedroom.
Father is but half-dressed. He is wearing a white smock so short, his bony knees show. There is something comical about a man, even a gravely ill man, in a short white gown, barefoot. On his wasted legs, tufts and whorls of dark hairs. On his cheek, the birthmark has become a lurid inflamed boil exuding heat.
With tremulous hands Father grips the son’s head, to peer into his eyes. It seems that his eyesight has deteriorated—“Is this you, son? Has the woman been hiding you from me?”
And, “Open my trousers, son. On your knees.”
… allowed then when it was (at last) finished to crawl away to safety coughing and choking.
To hide beneath the covers licking my wounds.
Devastated, ashamed! But knowing my story that had been taken from me was now mine.
Here is the explanation: Horace Love, Sr. had not been physically ill, or rather not only physically ill. His illness had been primarily mental.
A mental case. Precipitated by alcohol, alcoholism.
The term was flippant, disdainful. The boy had had the occasion of overhearing it—“mental case”—when adults hadn’t realized that he was listening.
You were made to know that anyone who was a mental case was not genuinely ill, but only malingering.
Like soldiers who’d suffered from shell shock in the last war—the Great War.
Only a coward, weak and duplicitous.
Horace, Jr. hears, and resolves to not ever succumb to such weakness. Neither mental nor physical. No.
In desperation Mother barricades the master bedroom from inside. Every night. Perhaps aware that it is “over-caution.” Father laughs gaily, kicking at the door. Sometimes he has a bottle of whiskey, or champagne, in hand; it is revelry he is offering to his frightened bride. Often gives up within a few minutes, with a shouted curse, and finishes the bottle himself. Sometimes he curls up on the carpeted floor just outside the door like a large slovenly drooling dog that shudders and twitches in its sleep, yet may well be dangerous. The barricaded bride will have to push the door open, pushing with her shoulder, to move Father’s inert body, to get free of the master bedroom.
Or, the barricaded bride never pushes free but eventually, or perhaps soon, allows Father to take possession of the room, and of the bride.
“You see, Horace. You must never marry.”
And: “It is very wicked, to even think of marrying. My mistake must not be repeated. Our diseased lineage must die out with your generation.”
Through the attic window the child could see glittering rivers—the Providence, the Moshassuck. In a dream it was promised to him that he would one day sail with his Titan ancestors along a river, into the vast Atlantic Ocean and to the very horizon where the earth meets the sky.
How does he know, how does wisdom come to him?—out of the nib of the grandfather’s ebony Endura pen that pulses with its secret energy.
Finally then, the mother has died.
A mild shock, to realize that her name was Gladys—Gladys Cornish Love.
The woman he’d known as Mother. And all along, it was Gladys she’d been born, whom he’d never known.
On the marble grave marker in St. John’s Episcopal Cemetery Gladys Cornish Love Beloved Wife and Mother. And beside her Horace Phineas Love Beloved Husband and Father.
There were not many mourners at the funeral service in St. John’s Episcopal Church. Most of the mother’s relatives had died or were too elderly and ill to attend; the very atmosphere of Charity Hill had changed, for the old Providence families who’d once lived in the mansions had disappeared also, their heirs had sold the properties or, in some egregious instances, boarded them up and abandoned them, or sold them at auction, for taxes. The riffraff is at our very door—Horace’s mother used to say; and so it was true, or nearly. But Horace had paid little heed for it was the siren call of his own writing that filled his head like a howling of Antarctic winds even at the hour of his dear mother’s demise.
Here was a surprise following the funeral service at the church: an elderly woman hardly more than five feet in height, but stately in bearing, with a fine-creased face, and faded blue eyes, came to him to touch his wrist and to proffer condolences in a voice that made Horace feel faint, for it was so familiar.
“Horace? D’you remember me?—Adelaide MacLeod.”
Adelaide MacLeod. He had never heard the name before, he was certain.
“I was your ‘nanny,’ when you were a boy. And for some years afterward, your mother’s companion. But, you know, your mother was not so easy to get along with, in later years, and so—we became estrang
ed, and I was no longer welcome at Cornish House. Only by chance did I hear of her death, which is very upsetting to me as I’d hoped that, one day, Mrs. Love might have summoned me back …”
With slow-dawning recognition Horace listened. Could this be—this elderly white-haired woman, so much shorter and frailer than he recalled—the Scots nanny?
“I—I—yes, I—remember you … Of course, you are ‘Adelaide …’”
Even as an adult it was very difficult for Horace to enunciate the name which he’d never spoken as a child. As for “MacLeod”—he was sure he’d never heard it.
With an air of reminiscence and perceptible reproach the Scots nanny continued to speak; for it was wounding to her, Horace gathered, that his mother had sent her away in an outburst of temper or spite, as she’d often done in recent years with other servants, acquaintances and relatives; lashing out even at her only son Horace, screaming at him to Get away! Get away to Hell and leave me alone.
He would grieve for Mother as he recalled her, many years before. Or rather, as he’d wished to recall her, when he had been a young child and she had seemed to love him, if but in the interstices of her anguished love for his father.
Badly wanting now to escape Adelaide MacLeod, who was revealing herself with every minute as desperately alone, lonely and (no doubt) impoverished; for Horace could see that the clothes the white-haired little woman was wearing were shabby, if genteel; and her kidskin boots were soaked through.
“It would mean much to me, Horace, if—if we might …”
These words Horace pretended not to hear, turning from his former nanny with a smile of forced heartiness, and waving goodbye to her—“Very good to meet you! Mother would be grateful to know that you remembered her.”
Night-Gaunts and Other Tales of Suspense Page 25