Bude. The newspapers are busy picking her bones today. They bang like the vultures over the ghats. The Ganges of ink flows down.”
“Yes, it was rather a strange happening...” Nicholas paused. “You seem rather interested in things like that—I mean the part of life you can’t get down in black and white...”
“The black and white, Mr. Bude, is only marginal comment on the empty page. I should say, at a guess, that the approach of the full moon disturbed the Scylla and Charybdis in her eyes...”
“The doctor said...” Nicholas continued, and Mr. Elder listened as the sun came below the blind.
“No. I do not think the idea of experimenting with letters to yourself childish. If it needs the mad person to prove the world sane, why not the sane people prove the odd person mad?”
“I thought it a bit silly myself, but Miss Coleman took me at my word and put it down here.” He handed the diary to Mr. Elder. “Didn’t know she had a sense of humor, Mr. Elder!”
Mr. Elder smiled at the entry. “Yes, Miss Coleman’s beauty is like an Atlantis. You go down in it—and drown.”
Nicholas felt his hands clench. The door opened and Miss Coleman walked in.
“I am sorry, Mr. Bude, but I must get these signed to get the post.”
Nicholas started up. “Oh, yes.”
Mr. Elder took up the money and bowed as he said good evening. The door closed in a noiseless way behind him like a curtain.
Nicholas grunted. “Damned extraordinary conversation.” He picked up the Chinese letter.
“Hum, suppose you can read this, too!”
“Yes, Mr. Bude.”
Nicholas stared at Miss Coleman. There was no smile on her face.
He took up his pen and signed his name in black and white. He felt outside on the margin.
FIVE
Old Charndale bit the end off his cigar, got a large match out of his waistcoat pocket, struck it on the sole of his boot, and lighted up.
“Cigar, Mr. Bude?”
Nicholas nodded, and Glynde holed the end for him and handed him the lighted taper.
“Too damned fussy for me, Bude. Like torpedo ones. Bite ‘em off...Hum...”
Old Charndale squeaked in his leather chair and picked up his paper again. Nicholas went on counting. Nineteen heads, of which eleven were bald.
“Barrington at nine of the clock, Mr. Bude?”
“Yes, Glynde.”
Doubtless when the club tapers had burned themselves out old Glynde would give up saying “of the clock.”
“Dammit, why do they shove your picture in, Bude? You didn’t commit suicide. Old girl wanted a bit o’ love I suppose?”
“That’s it, Charndale.”
“You ought to go into the Lords, Bude, and get something done about all this. Introduce a bill for compulsory marriage. Ha, ha I Compulsory marriage. Good subject for a maiden speech.”
Old Charndale dandered on. Nicholas counted the heads backwards. Nineteen, eighteen, seventeen...”Barrington, Mr. Bude?”
“Thank you, Glynde.”
Nicholas went out and into the cubicle and picked up the elaborately mounted telephone that had a horn attachment for deaf members.
“Nick, whenever you speak to me from your club, even your voice comes right out of the middle of Queen Victoria’s age. You’ve had too much port!”
“No, it was brandy. Everything quieted down?”
“Yes. Old Fuidge has taken to bed after the funeral. If he’s not better in the morning I’ll send for Dr. Saluby.”
“Yes. Good idea. Fine night, Muriel?”
“Lovely. Just looked out at the moon. Why don’t you go out and see!”
“Too lazy. When you get stuck in these old leather chairs you just doze until Glynde wakes us all up at eleven and puts us to bed.”
“Nick, if you don’t give up this Monday-night habit, you’ll find yourself an old man!”
“Don’t you believe it! Keeps me young. If I were twenty years older, I’d still feel a chicken among the old Methuselahs here...”
“Well, good night, Nick.”
“Good night. See you tomorrow.”
He came out of the cubicle and was amused to see the wagon of great cheeses coming by itself along the corridor. The waiter at the top had given it a push and it rolled down the slight slope. Old Charndale had come out to distill some of the Chambertin he had for dinner, and gazed at the wagon.
“Marvelous thing, cheese! Goes under its own power. Night, Bude.”
“Good night.”
“Your coat, Mr. Bude.”
Nicholas put it on and walked out into the moonlight of St. James.
Old Charndale said to Carraway: “Wonder where he goes?”
“Upon his own pleasure, m’lord.” Carraway spoke in a cold and formal way and walked unsmiling to his porter’s desk.
Old Charndale muttered to himself. “Damme, the snub royal from old Carraway! Hum, deserved it.”
Nicholas scarcely glanced up at the moon over London. He could never feel any communion with the moon in a city, and walked quickly, as if he would be glad to get out of its sight. He wondered if there was a kind of spirit or something which had detached itself from Sarah and gone up to the moon. He had noticed a greenish vapor of light about the silver disk.
Nicholas turned into Mayfair and walked toward Park Lane. Even in the dwindling light, he noted, the geraniums looked fresh in the crescent of Pytchley Court. The commissioners bade him good evening without using his name. When he got into the elegant vestibule, the hall porter merely called him “Sir,” and Nicholas felt they must both know who he was by this time, and marveled at the tact in fashionable London. The porter took him up in the lift, and Nicholas walked along the corridor and paused, as he always did, before he rang, to let his mind, as it were, get its breath. He drew in a great nervous sigh and pushed the bell. She opened the door to him, said nothing, and, leaving him in the hall to take off his hat and coat, returned into the sitting room.
When he went in, she was seated at the flat table desk in the corner of the room and continuing to work on whatever engaged her when he came in. Nicholas was used to this, and it gave him a feeling of being at home. He lighted a cigarette and looked around the room. It was the only room furnished in a modern style that he liked, and he wondered if it was some quality in her that made everything come alive. Even that black-and-white design by Ben Nicholson, that he could never think of as a picture, as it seemed more like a proposition in Euclid, now had a queer human feeling, as if it wanted to say something to you. The globes of marble fashioned by Barbara Hepworth, and the shapes of wood like the boles of scale by Henry Moore, had something corporal in them. And all those moons, if they were moons, in that conglomerated sky, if it were a sky, in that painting by Miro, besought one like the eyes of lost children. The Matisse, he realized suddenly, had become as clear as a photograph to him. He looked from the Nicholson design to her, as if he wanted to compare a portrait to the sitter. How strange that it was in that empty white square he saw her face I Good Lord, how very odd! It was like his habit of seeing faces on the white blotting pad!
He knew that she was pondering some calculation of lines and figures as she sat isolated within her mind at the desk. He went to the bookcase and studied the line of books with care. He had never bothered much about her literature. Like the hobby of mathematics, he had accepted these foreign books as part of her total mystery, that he had long given up trying to understand. But now he took down a book with ornamental characters which he recognized as a volume in Chinese. He sat down and opened it, but he found his eyes on her. She was so lost in herself that one could muse upon her now as on a painting. She wore boudoir pajamas of a greenish Oriental silk, a rope of antique crimson, and slippers of Venetian red. He was always fascinated by her elegant slippers, and never had seen her feet bare. He wondered if anybody so beautiful could have ugly feet. These slippers were made like gondolas, and one could almost see them gliding on moon
light canals. It was an enchanting idea, and probably she had designed them herself.
At last, as if a sigh passed in her mind, she moved and then put away her paper and pens, the triangles and squares. She lighted a black cigarette with a scarlet tip and closed the green box. Her fingers were like ivory as they stayed a moment on the marble.
He glanced at the book on his lap and said: “I didn’t know you could read Chinese.”
“Well, I can.”
“I thought you might have been joking today in the bank.” That needed no reply; she made none. “Did you manage to work out your problem?”
“Yes, and created another.”
He smiled. She did not smile. She hardly ever smiled. Nicholas began to sense a fidgeting in his hands. He wished to God that she would not go on sitting there in solitude, calm, immobile as the embalmed bride of a Pharaoh. His eye dropped on the book. Egyptian picture, Chinese script, something he could not understand. The beauty of a mummy in her face. Suddenly he felt that it would be quite simple to understand her if she were dead...
“Would you like a drink?”
“No. Later.” Suddenly he said, though he felt it might annoy her, “You are looking lovely tonight.” There was no motion in her face. My God, had she ever had a soul? He could not stand this intolerable sense of silence and got up and went over to her. He stood behind her and felt his hands coming up and fumbling in the air for her, like the hands of a baby trying to catch the moon. He could not prevent himself speaking.
“Sidonie, if you go on like this, you will soon have me killed inside as dead as I sometimes think you are.”
“The choice is your own. If you do not like me as I am, do not come.”
“You know that I must come.” He paused. “It is not because...”
He could feel the cold shudder of contempt in her. “Must you always explain yourself like A B C?”
“But you do not give me that part of you I come for.”
“Is that not mine to give?”
“You mean you are in love with somebody else...”
“Oh, don’t be a fool!” She paused. “Oh, how easily Elder would understand this.”
“Elder?” He paused. “I suppose I ought to learn Chinese!” She was silent. “I am sorry. That was a poor joke.” He paused again. “Well, I’ve known him for twenty-five years and I knew nothing about him until today. Perhaps I shall understand you one day.”
“Perhaps.”
“I can’t stand you holding me away like this. The other night, when Sarah was dead, there was a full moon, and I walked out under it, and I felt a kind of loneliness that made me tear up great sods of earth in anger...I am sorry, I shouldn’t have told you this. But I can’t stand being here almost touching you and being more alone with you than I am by myself. When you moved your fingers on the table now I could feel them touching my heart.”
A shudder went through her that he could not understand. Suddenly his hands came up and rested on her shoulders, and there was no longer any use in trying to keep his voice normal.
“I didn’t mind your telling me about going out under the moon and tearing up the earth in anger.” The warmth of her flesh came through the silk into his hands. He touched the coil of golden hair on her nape.
“Sidonie—just for once—let your hair down tonight.”
“I am sorry.”
“I know you don’t like me to ask that, but...It’s childish, I know, but somehow if all that hair came down I think the wall between us would fall.”
“No!”
The word shot into him like a cold arrow. He felt her flinch as his hands squeezed into her shoulder blades.
“Sidonie, kiss me anyway. I can’t bear it—the way you keep your mouth away...”
“No!”
He started from the noise of the tear as her silk jacket split in his hands down her spine. She did not turn around.
“Oh, God, I am sorry. I couldn’t help it. My hands...They just did it by themselves without my knowing. I...”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s got to come off anyway.”
He looked down at his huge laboring hands that now hung like contrite apes for what they had done. At last he got out the question. “Sidonie—you don’t like my hands? I—sometimes I can’t help their doing things.”
“I have never noticed them.”
He knew that was a lie, but it made a sympathy. Suddenly he pressed his face into her breasts. She fastened her teeth in his neck and kept them there until he had seized her and taken her into the bedroom. Then during the fierce, inarticulate conflict of their passion she would grip his shoulder with her teeth and never let go until the end.
When they had done, she was drained and exhausted of color, like a glass now empty of wine. He put on his clothes in silence, went out of the room, poured and swallowed a large whisky, left an envelope on the table, and went out into the night.
When he had gone, she got up, went out into the sitting room, closed the envelope he had left without looking at the contents, wrote the address of an orphanage on it, called the night porter on the telephone, and gave it to him to post as usual in the box opposite the block.
On Thursday, as usual, the anonymous donation of twenty pounds would be acknowledged in the Personal Column of The Times.
Then she drank a glass of cold water, did her ablutions in the bathroom, and went to bed.
SIX
Dr. Saluby, Nicholas felt, would never learn to forget about a cigar while smoking it. Perhaps it was impossible to smoke a cigar when wearing a Norfolk jacket. Nicholas pulled away at his old cherrywood pipe and wondered why it always seemed queer to smoke a cigar on Sunday. Saluby had wound himself up like an eight-day clock and was going on and on like a Shaw play.
“Yes, the human body is a complicated machine, but compared to the human mind it is as simple as a wheelbarrow. I suppose one gets something like banking, for instance, down in black and white, but I assure you, Mr. Bude, one cannot get down the riddle of human life in black and white.”
Nicholas knocked out his pipe. “You can, Saluby, and in one word.”
“Oh...” Saluby paused. “And what is that word?”
“Sex.”
Muriel gave a very slight laugh at Saluby’s disconcerted face. He had an uncomfortable feeling that Bude had thrown a squib at him.
“Well, that is a very simple way of putting it, but that one word hardly contains everything.”
“It does, Saluby.” Nicholas got up to fill his pipe from the jar on the mantelpiece. “Everything else, Saluby, is just the shopkeeping of life.”
“And death?” inquired Saluby, playing for time. “Just bankruptcy.” Nicholas paused. “You think Fuidge is getting along all right?”
Saluby took the hint and got up. “Yes. He ought to be up in a week. It was just...”
“Shock,” said Nicholas, as if to stop another long-winded theory.
Saluby smiled and thought better of what he was going to say. “Mrs. Bude can be thanked a lot for his recovery.”
“And so can his own good hard old countryman’s body, Saluby.” Nicholas looked at Muriel. “I didn’t mean by that you aren’t a good nurse!”
“Well, I must get along...Oh, I’ve got the things for Fuidge in the car, Mrs. Bude can leave them with the butler...”
“No, I’m coming down with you. I want to know all about those bottles myself. One case of poisoning is enough!”
When they had gone out, Nicholas lighted his pipe and smiled.
When they got out onto the steps, the sunset was gold and purple on the hills and the air had almost a reddish glow above the last embers of light.
“It’s still hot. I don’t think I’ve ever known hotter weather in England.” She laughed. “‘Hot an’ rutty weather, ma’am,’ as old Fuidge says.”
They walked slowly down to the car, and her whole body seemed in tension with the heat of summer.
Saluby laughed. “You know, he rather took the wind out of me
when he said sex was everything. Perhaps he was just pulling my leg.”
“I don’t know. Nick is sometimes unexpected. I was rather surprised myself at the way he said it. It sounded as if he meant it.”
They let that die vaguely on the air, and when he stooped in the car to get the bottles for Fuidge out of his bag she leaned over to look at the medical gadgets. There was a pause, and then he said without looking up: “God, I can’t stand it any longer! If you don’t move away I’ll kiss you even if he’s looking out the window.”
She did not move. “You laughed at me for being human! And now you just want to rush in like a schoolboy when you’ve known me only a week.”
He jerked himself up as if to get away from her body, his face darkening in anger. “Damn you...”
He looked at her and saw the blood gorging her face and he knew she had dropped her guard.
“I know. I can’t stand it either. I can’t bear—just kissing you down in the lodge with old Fuidge in the next room.” She paused. “Well?”
He looked over the lawn at the small village dozing under a blue haze. In a moment he spoke. “You know Dorminster?”
“Yes. I go there sometimes. I have an aunt who lives beyond it...Oh, a good way outside.”
“I’ve got a friend there. He’s a doctor, too. He goes away a lot as he’s got a lecturing job. He’s away now. I’ve got a key to his place. I can’t think of anything better than that. We’ve got to be careful, and Dorminster is nearly thirty miles away. Tomorrow afternoon?”
“Very well. Nick stays in London every Monday night.”
“I’ll ring you in the morning. How...”
“I’ll get Blake to drive me over. I can invent shopping.”
“All right.” He paused. “For God’s sake don’t wear that frock any more while Nick is there, or I just won’t be able to help myself.”
She paused, her eyes on the window of the room they had sat in just now. “It seems—Nick was right, about...”
“Yes. My God, I could eat you now. You’re all made of honey in this light...”
The Chinese Room Page 3