Conversation; or, Pilgrims' Progress: A Novel

by Conrad Aiken

  A newspaper lay in Enid’s chair. He saw with a start that it was today’s. Good lord, how extremely unfortunate, he had totally forgotten it. Ee must have gone shopping at Foster’s and been told that he hadn’t come for it! Damnation—Nora’s letter had put it clean out of his head. He glanced at the headlines without really seeing them, put the paper down again, decided to go upstairs. No use trying to work till after lunch. Always supposing there was going to be any lunch! It was all very peculiar.

  Enid’s door was open at the top of the stairs, and in the little north-lighted room, she was lying motionless on her bed, her arms limp and straight at her sides. Her face was so turned that her eyes, without having to move, were already looking at him, obliquely, endlong, but with a disinterested detachment, a narrowed indifference, that was at once disturbing. He stood still in the doorway, and for some reason suddenly felt himself to be growing angry.

  “Oh,” he said, “I was wondering where you were.”

  She made no answer for a moment, no move, merely looked at him. Then she said:

  “Is it so very surprising that I should want to lie down for a few minutes?”

  “Of course not, Ee, but I was surprised at not finding you anywhere, or apparently any preparations for lunch!”

  “You couldn’t trouble to remember that we always have a cold lunch on ironing days, I suppose!”

  “Oh. Of course. I’d forgotten. Has Buzzer been up here?”

  “She has not! I thought you were supposed to be looking after Buzzer?”

  “I can’t be in two places at once, can I? I found Ratio Binney waiting in the garden, and had to discuss the cesspool with him. He said he’d been here for some time, ringing the bell and knocking on doors. I had the impression that you were supposed to be attending to that. I think you might have taken the trouble to answer the door, especially as we were expecting him, and as it was you who had taken it upon yourself to ask him to come!”

  “I see. I’m to be reproached for that! It makes no difference that it was a simple necessity—just as it makes no difference that I felt really too tired to go down. Really, Tip, your egotism is sometimes a little staggering!”

  “Egotism! I think you might at least have conferred with me about it!”

  “Would you mind leaving me alone now please? I’ve got something I want to think out by myself.”

  “Time out for thinking! All right. But you could have chosen a more convenient moment for it, it seems to me!”

  “If you’re so desperate for your lunch you’ll find the cold tongue and potato salad in the icebox. And it would be a help to me if you could set the table and find Buzzer.”

  “Very well. Come down when you feel like it.”

  He turned angrily from the angry eyes, went slowly down the stairs, his heart beating, his hands clenched in his pockets. So it was going to be like that again, the pressure increasing—and how infuriating of her just to lie there like that, relaxed, pretending she was tired, listening indifferently to Binney ringing and knocking, punishing Binney merely because she wanted to punish himself! Just the sort of thing that always most enraged him about her, that damned female habit of venting her spleen on every Tom, Dick, and Harry, advertising it to the entire world—like an octopus. And egotism! Merely because he expected to be consulted about his own affairs! Well, she could go to blazes. And if she could keep it up, so could he. Two could play at that game. And if she wanted to sulk, and go into a silence, for her damned thinking, by god he’d show here what a real A-number-one brassbound steel-riveted silence could be. A silence with velvet knobs on it! Hmm—yes. But the trouble was—and he suddenly found himself grinning, despite everything—the trouble was, as he knew only too well from long experience, that she could outlast him. Pour rendre le silence en musique, il me faudrait trois orchestres militaires. But maybe this time—

  The twirled doorbell rang harshly—zring, zring—at the front of the house. Just as he was entering the dining room, it rang savagely again. Blast it, what next? Couldn’t be Binney—the engine had stopped, and he must have gone. Retracing his steps through the hall and into the studio, he opened the front door into the gray, dripping street, and then stood staring. It was a taxi. A real honest-to-god yellow taxicab, complete with its little metal flag—standing there in front of the house, under the fog-drip from the poplars, in this defunct village, where no taxicab had ever been seen before. The driver was in the very act of clinking down the flag, and turning to the very odd-looking young man, pale and unshaven—or was it a little blond beard?—who was grinning and counting out a huge roll of bills. The black velours hat and the dirty blue flannel shirt were all too eloquent of his occupation. A cardboard suitcase stood on the gravel sidewalk.

  “Twenty-eight, thirty. You said thirty, didn’t you, buddy? You know, I wouldn’t want to cheat you, after a miraculous expedition like that.”

  “Thirty bucks is right. Say, where’s the nearest hotel from here, where I can get some grub?”

  “Maybe this gentleman can tell you. I’m a stranger here. Is this Mr. Timothy Kane?”

  “Yes. About a mile down the shore road, toward the Point—the Naushon. You can’t miss it.”

  “Okay, thanks. And come again some time when you got nothing to do.”

  “I’ll be seeing you!”

  The young man, grinning and showing his bad teeth, dismissed the departing taxi with an effeminately wagged finger, looked after it with a sort of lascivious pride until it had turned the corner and gone out of sight, obviously pleased with his exploit—whatever it was—and then said: “All the way from Fall River, what do you think of that! Thirty iron-men worth of taxi! I suppose you never had a taxi here before? Did you?”

  “No, I doubt it. It’s a little out of the beaten track.”

  “The beaten track, eh? Ha ha. I guess you’re right. So this is Mr. Timothy Kane! Jim gave me your address here. My name’s Louis Bucholtz.”

  “Glad to meet you. And what can I do for you?”

  “Well, you see, I overslept on the boat. We had a party last night to see me off, so I missed the train at Fall River. Too bad! And no other connections for the Cape practically all day. I couldn’t wait all day in Fall River, could I? Fall River! My god. Have you ever seen Fall River? Have you ever seen the dump? Nothing doing. So, as I was Jim’s guest, so to speak, on a liberal allowance—the only thing I could do was take a taxi. Thirty bucks—boy, what a taxi ride. That driver was a nice feller, too. He enjoyed it. He said he’d never been out in the country before in his life. I guess he made a good thing out of it! Where’s Jim?”

  “He lives up the road a little. I’ll show you.”

  “You’ll forgive this spectacular intrusion, Mr. Kane? Jim told me the easiest way to find him would be to come to your house, as you were known here.”

  “Sure. It’s only a couple of minutes’ walk. Come along.”

  “Okay. So this is Jim’s little hideout—with trees and bushes and everything. Is that the sea? You know, I couldn’t believe it when he wrote me that he was going to live in the country. How do the girls like it?”

  “Kitty and Lorna?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Not a hell of a lot. I get the impression they don’t take much to cooking.”

  “Now, Mr. Kane, you wouldn’t kid me! Neither of them ever saw a stove before in her life, except maybe on the stage—or in a shop window—what do you expect! If you ask me, I think it’s a scream.”

  “Yes, but you may not think it’s so damned funny when you don’t get any meals. I think Jim’s a little depressed.”

  “Depressed! You’re killing me.”

  “Are you a painter?”

  “Me? No. I’m an artist. There’s a distinction. I write, and I paint, and I’ve done a little stage designing, and a little art criticism, but I haven’t decided yet what I’ll do. What’s the rush? I’ve got my ideas, but what can you do without a patron?”

  “So that’s where Jim comes in. He’s a won
derful fellow.”

  “That’s your opinion?”

  “Isn’t it yours?”

  “Are you being a little sly, Mr. Kane? A little oblique?”

  “Not at all.”

  “I get you. Yes, Jim’s all right.”

  “There’s the house, down there—at the foot of the road. By the river.”

  “House! My god! It’s a palace.”

  “I’ve got to go back, but will you tell Jim for me that I’ll try to get over this afternoon?”

  “Sure. Why not? Anything else?”

  “That’s all.”

  “Sure. And thanks for the good guidance!”

  The ironic effeminate voice turned away, the shabby and spindling figure, with its shiny blue suit and cracked patent-leather shoes, sauntered down the road, looking as conspicuous as a crow at a garden party, and somehow sinister, though lacking the strength to be sinister. Good god, how could Jim be so completely blind? The creature might be amusing, but that he was a fake, a first-class typical Greenwich Village fake and poseur, there couldn’t be the smallest doubt in the world. And obviously sponging on Jim—as, of course, others had done before him—without even the redeeming virtue of believing in him. An artist! Nothing so simple and honest as a painter. Naturally. One of those artists who would scorn to learn such humble essentials as the rudiments of drawing and perspective, and dismiss them as old-fashioned. The short-cut, every time!

  And that houseful of Jim’s, with this addition, and Kitty and Lorna not getting on with each other, and no food!

  And now this little twirp riding all morning in a taxi, thirty dollars’ worth, at Jim’s expense, and then just smirking about it, as if it were all nothing but a joke—which in a way, of course, it was!—and already thinking of nothing but his little boast about it, the exploit which could be reported to his epicene friends in New York, on a postcard, or more likely by telegram! Regarding the country, too, as a mere subject for the obscene pleasantries of the cosmopolitan lounge lizards and lounge Lizzies of his dirty little cafés, his dives and ramshackle studios—good god, how sickening it was, if it wasn’t all somehow so dreadfully inevitable! Exactly what would, and must, happen to Jim—the just fate of the generous and misguidedly good. Damn!

  He went in by the kitchen door, from the garden, not greeting Chattahoochee, who blinked up at him amber-eyed from under the dead plum tree. Enid went past him, ignoring him, carrying two plates up the steps to the dining room. The table, he saw, had already been set, and Buzzer, at her own table, was busy eating her lunch.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I was interrupted.”

  He sat down opposite her, and as she made no answer, merely frowned down at the potato salad which she was serving, he added, smiling: “By a visitor.”

  She sat back in her chair, looked at him quickly and fully, dropping her hands in her lap.

  “Yes,” she said, “I’m afraid I saw your visitor!”

  “Oh. I suppose you looked out of the window. And what exactly do you mean by ‘afraid’?”

  “I happened to be looking. I didn’t look.”

  “And I suppose of course you listened?”

  “I couldn’t very well help it, could I?”

  “Well, just what do you mean by ‘afraid’?”

  “Need you be so hypocritical?”

  “Hypocritical!”

  “You know quite well what I mean.”

  “Do I?”

  “I mean that this is the last straw. Absolutely the last straw. When it’s got to the point where our house is to be used as a convenience, and a sort of accommodation address for loathesome objects like that, and criminals, I draw the line. I’ve waited all morning for you to come to some decision of your own about this, Timothy. I’ve waited very patiently, but as you apparently prefer simply to evade your responsibilities I’ve had to come to a decision myself.”

  “Mummy—”

  “Yes, Buzzer, what is it?”

  “Daddy and I went to the secret place! And then we were Indians, with tomahawks—”

  “Wasn’t that fun.”

  “And I built a house, too—”

  “That was lovely. Now eat your lunch like a good girl.”

  “I am eating it!”

  “Ee, dear, I’m as sorry about that as you are, and I didn’t like the young man at all, and I regret as much as you do that Jim’s taste in friends is so peculiar; but even so, is there anything so very terrible in it?”

  “Nothing terrible in it! To have our house and name known in criminal circles in New York—”

  “Criminal circles! Good heavens, Ee—”

  “Criminal circles. Are you so afraid to face the fact?”

  “Of course I’m not afraid to face the fact. I simply see it in a different light. You’re wildly exaggerating the importance of the whole thing. Merely because a harmless little character drives up to our door in a taxi—what’s so awful about that? I think it was rather funny!”

  “Oh, you do.”

  “Yes, I do. Damned funny.”

  “Then I take it you’re not going to do anything about it.”

  “Do anything about it? Why should I?”

  “I see. It doesn’t matter to you that the neighbors should see these criminals coming to our door, or know that we’re associating with thieves, and those appalling women—”

  “Ee, darling, I regret some aspects of it as much as you do, but can’t we be a little more flexible and humane about it than that? Surely, we haven’t got to take our opinions from our neighbors!”

  “So that’s how you see it?”

  “It seems to me that view is not without its importance. We can’t model our lives according to what the Puringtons or Rileys think. Or is that what you propose to do?”

  “I simply propose to safeguard our good name and position, mine and Buzzer’s, that’s all—”

  “Of course. Even if you have to sacrifice my integrity to do it. Or my friendships.”

  “Integrity!”

  “Mummy—?”

  “Buzzer, darling, you mustn’t interrupt when Mummy’s talking—”

  “But I’ve finished. I’ve eaten all my potato, see?”

  “Have you, darling? All right then, come here and I’ll take your bib off, and then you can go upstairs and have your nap.”

  “And can I take kingy and queeny?”

  “Yes, you can take kingy and queeny if you like, but remember to be nice and quiet, won’t you?”

  “I’ll be as quiet as a mouse!”

  “That’s right. Run along, now.”

  She tiptoed quickly from the room, the shells tightly clasped in her hands. They listened with averted eyes to the footsteps slowly climbing the hall stairs, hurrying over the floor above, then Enid rose from the table. The preoccupied little hum again, the eyes hurt and angry. She took up her plate and went halfway to the kitchen with it, stopped stiffly, a little awkwardly, but with a kind of angry grace, too, turning her head curtly toward him, the green eyes flashing at him over the held plate, the plate held like a challenge.

  “I’ve come to my decision,” she said, “if you’d like to hear it?”

  “Well?”

  “If you don’t give these people up, while they’re here, I shall go back to New Bedford, and take Buzzer with me.”

  “Oh, an ultimatum.”

  “If you want to call it that?”

  She smiled brilliantly, triumphantly.

  “You’re going to force me to give them up.”

  “As long as they’re living here. I have no choice.”

  “And after that? Am I to be permitted to see them in New York? On neutral ground, so to speak?”

  “I think we can consider that later.”

  “Oh, we can, can we! That’s very kind of you.”

  “And I think you’d better come to your decision today. Otherwise I shall plan to go to New Bedford in the morning. I think it would be as well if you would come to your decision now. It seems to me you
’ve had quite time enough!”

  “You think—you think—you think—!”

  The bitter words, bitterer than somehow he had expected them to be, were addressed to the vanishing green back, the slight green shoulders, the self-consciously upright head, as she went down the steps to the kitchen. He was sitting rigid in his chair, the knife and fork held hard in his hands, and for a moment, staring towards the doorway through which she had just gone, it was as if he had suffered an eclipse, he saw nothing. So she had beaten him, had she—she was going to beat him, was she—she thought she was going to beat him! With that triumphant exit, too, that self-righteous all-conquering know-it-all air, that air of bristling virtue, in every line and feature of her! He felt ashamed, stifled, it was as if something in his breast had suddenly curdled, but as if, too, he must quickly find something to do, something for his hands to do, something violent. The shadow of defeat—it would be impossible to accept it like that, it would be unendurable, the whole shape of his life would be forever wrong and unbearable. Somehow, even now, today, some dark twist must be given to the shaping of the event, some neat knifelike turn, which would at least salvage for him a scrap of pride, a vestige of dignity and power. She must be hurt—she must be injured. And if he was going to be defeated in this, he must see to it—was that it?—that in other respects he was vindicated, justified. He would make her pay for it, by god, he would make her see that he wasn’t the only offending party. He would give her something to think about for the rest of her smug little life! Beautiful, yes, but there were limits!

  He sat still, staring now across the gray room and through the little window towards the Puringtons’, past the little dead plum tree, heard Enid pouring the hot water from the kettle into the dishpan, refilling the kettle under the tap, replacing the kettle on the oil stove with a clash. It was her clear suggestion to him that she was waiting, that he was late and delaying her, that he was sulking in defeat, or doing it deliberately to annoy her. Well, let her wait. He finished his potato salad meticulously, angrily, precisely, taking unnecessarily small bites. Yes, let her wait. But the oppressive ring closed in on him, he must do something, say something, or go somewhere—to sit here any longer would put him subtly at a disadvantage. He got up, carried the salt and pepper to the china cupboard in the corner—the silver-gilt salt cellar, the sworled silver pepper shaker—replaced the unused silver in the top drawer of the mahogany lowboy, and the two soiled napkins, looked slowly around the dining room to see if there was anything else he might do, then picked up his plate and tumbler and went down into the kitchen lean-to. The low-ceilinged whitewashed room was dark in the overcast light that came from the one window over the sink, and Enid, already washing the few dishes, looked up at him as if almost amusedly from the steaming dishpan, but he avoided her eyes, merely put down the plate and tumbler on the drainboard.