by Conrad Aiken
Yes, I heard you, she had said, yes, I heard you. And with what a voice, too—that stifled and averted voice, pity-demanding. Yes, by god, now that she was going to have her way, she wanted to be pitied, too—was that it? Well, let her look for it. Let her go and look for it!
But where did a picture come from?
From a dream perhaps: from the bloodstream perhaps: from memory perhaps: an observed trifle which touched down quickly and magically into the unconscious, like the rain-ringed water, the rain-seethed water, round the drifting canoe—its varnished yellow stem, like the stem of a gondola, nodding and notching against the deserted hulks of the fishing boats on the opposite shore, against the sand bar, against the granite pier of the two-spanned bridge. That curved stem, brightly swaying in the gray light, and beyond it the red iron girders of the bridge—to what did they not invite, to what did they not lead? To the bright open hand of childhood, the rain-filled eye of childhood—or tear-filled? A nucleus smaller and brighter than a tear; and how astonishingly more fecund and powerful—the infinitesimal droplet of wild rain, wild water, growing, whirling, expanding, until it should become an all-containing sphere of creative and whirling light, a microcosm of living shape! Yes, a feeling, first—more tenuous than shadow, tenderer and more elusive than light—less substanital far than tentacle or palpacle—softer than an ache, vaguer than a longing—the seed of a design that should be, or become, oneself, as if one’s heart were to begin all over again, from the very beginning of the world, and seek for itself a better and stranger, but at the same time more intimate shape, a shape deeply truer to oneself—was it something like that? And one’s love too, was that not there also? Must it not be there? As of the first leaf that one ever loved, the first sunbeam one ever saw on a wall, or on the coarse bark of a tree, the first rain that one ever walked out into alone. And the terrifying maternal dark, which filled so much of the world—that echoless or almost echoless dark, fathomless, tunneling everywhere, even through sunlight, tunneling between hour and hour, between one minute and the next, so that at last nothing at all seemed to remain solid, not even oneself: yes, it came out of this, or went into it, or both—the first leaf was seen against that dark, separate from it, and it was to the brilliant and beloved, and so isolated first leaf, that one attempted to return. It was a celebration, at one and the same time, of love and terror.
The piled granite blocks of the central pier were right before him, rough, whitely barnacled, the swift and silent current had borne him close, he could see through the deep clear water, green-wavering, the red fronds of sponge that grew at their base, combed by the tide. He remembered Buzzer’s extraordinary discovery, by the sea wall at the foot of the garden, that the barnacles were feeding, combing the tide with quick minute thread-like filaments, licking in their tiny morsels of sea food—he must turn back. He dipped the wet paddle, the flat blade cleaving the water with a powerful swirling chuckle, a slow skirling eddy of vortical sound, swung the canoe round and shorewards, careening, out of the main current and into the shallows. The Indian stroke, the hands turning inward and downward, so that the bow was driven straight—good lord, how long ago he had learned that, on the Assabet River! Now he could look up from the river to his own sea wall, and beyond this the terrace wall, the new lilacs, the white woodshed, the dormered windows of the cottage itself. The little wet garden was deserted. Not even Chattachoochee. Buzzer was still lying down, singing to herself over her shells. And, of course, Enid—
A car rattled quickly over the bridge behind him, going down the Cape; in the silence that followed he could hear again the faint whisper, the delicately needled seethe, of the fine drizzle on the water. Thunder, for the third time—Ratio Binney’s chuckle of thunder—ran somewhere behind the sullen clouds in the southwest, to which he lifted his eyes, but there was no lightning. It might rain all night, but there would be no “tempest.” The bare boughs of the silver-leaf poplars, above the low roofs of the village, were yellow, yellow-green, lizard-green—something might be done with them. They suggested something, reminded him of something—something urgent and lightninglike, but slow and cancerous, too. Was this the first leaf again? The first hand seen in the dark? The first grasp, first clutch, in the maternal nothing? Hands against the sky, claws against the sky.…
Karl Roth was standing on the fringe of beach, waiting there by the stone arches under the verandah, a dirty raincoat flung capelike over his round shoulders, the white face already sneering, the queer yellow head bare to the drizzle. He stood silent, disapproving, as the canoe rustled up past him on the sand, driven by the last powerful stroke, then said:
“Well, if it isn’t our Mr. Kane. And just when we thought he’d ratted on us.”
“Meaning what?”
“Oh, nothing. Nothing, gat-all, Mr. Kane! I just like to sneer.”
“Yeah? Well, you’d better save up your sneers, Karl, till you’ve got something to sneer at. You’ll have plenty. Is Jim inside?”
“Yes, sir, just when we thought he’d weaseled on us! Sure Jim’s inside. Where else would he be? It’s old home week, didn’t you know? And we’re having a housewarming.”
“I hope that means those gals of yours have got you a meal.”
“A meal! Don’t make me laugh. If you want to see something funny take a gander at our kitchen. Just take a peek when nobody’s looking. I’m not squeamish, but—! No, the girls have gone on strike. We’re having a stinko of a row. You’re just in time to give us a hand. Come on in, the water’s fine.”
Kitty’s voice, wailing, had just risen to a shrill “No!” as they opened the door. She faced them with open red mouth from the dinner table in the middle of the big room, where she was sitting—her black hair was disordered, the small dark eyes swollen as with weeping, she looked pale and distraught, harrowed. The sound of a piano came briskly through the open door from the room beyond, the verandah room—Lorna, no doubt, ploughing through a Chopin Etude—and Jim, obviously very tired, sat in a rocking chair by the littered fireplace. The cap was pulled morosely down over the brown eyes, he was smoking a cigar. He waved the cigar, without getting up, and said wearily:
“Hello, kid. I’m glad you came.”
“Sure, you are. Ain’t we all? Mr. Kane’s come slumming, he wants to see how the other half lives. He wants to see our kitchen.”
Kitty turned fiercely to Karl, shaking her hair, and said:
“Shut up, will you? Until you’ve got something to say.”
“Shut up yourself! It’s about time you cut the yammer. And telling me won’t make me, either.”
“Would you like a drink, Tip? There’s plenty of gin, and plenty of glasses there—all dirty. Take your pick.”
The combination living room and dining room was cold, and incredibly disordered—a fire of miscellaneous fragments burned sadly in the fireplace. a heap of wood from a broken box lay on the green-tiled hearth at Jim’s feet—newspapers and cigarette ends littered the floor, dead matches, a hairpin—and the dinner table, with the oil lamp standing in the middle, was covered, simply covered, with dirty dishes, stacked or single, except for a small space before Kitty, which she had apparently cleared. There, between her arms, she had placed—for no apparent reason—a sheet of paper and a pencil. She stared down at these, her sallow cheeks on her fists, her eyes almost closed. The piano in the next room stopped; for a moment they were all silent.
“Where’s your new friend?”
“Who? Louis?”
“Yes.”
“Aw, he’s gone for a walk. He said he wanted to see the sea!”
“He’s welcome to it! If I never see the sea again—”
“He’s probably hungry by this time.”
“Was that a crack?”
“Sure, it was a crack. Christ, if two females between them can’t start a fire without burning the house down, or think of anything to eat but canned corned beef—you’re a couple of dumb clucks.”
“Shut up! It was your idea, wasn’t it? You�
��re the one that wants to stay here, aren’t you?”
Karl, the raincoat still wrapped round his shoulders, stretched himself out on the wicker sofa at the other side of the fireplace, opposite Jim, and crossed his knees. The pale unshaven face, the lashless eyes, chicken-lidded, were turned long sufferingly toward the ceiling. He looked sick.
“Yes, kid, you certainly came at the psychological moment.”
“In the nicotine, as they say!”
“You’d think, Tip, with a nice house like this, and all these comforts, and the river, and this nice peaceful countryside, and even a canoe—”
“Yeah, tell him about the canoe!”
“—that four people could be happy, wouldn’t you? The nicest house in the town, with nice furniture, a real home—”
“How does it feel, Mister Kane, to be in a real home? Tell him about the canoe, Jim.”
Karl with his head back on a pillow, cackled obscenely.
“But I never expected anything like this. No, sir, I never expected anything like this. Look at it. Look at us. We no sooner get here than we start fighting. We come for a nice holiday and rest—”
“Who’s supposed to get the rest? Who, Jim Connor, I’d like to know? If it’s a fire in the fireplace you want, that’s all right, you can start that, but if it’s a fire in the kitchen stove—”
“That isn’t the point. We’re supposed to co-operate.”
“Co-operate! Co-operate! Oh, my gard—”
She laughed shrilly and briefly, reached for the half-filled gin bottle, poured gin rashly into a tumbler, added a little water to it, and took a drink. She set down the tumbler rather hard, and a little at random, and at the same moment the piano began again in the next room. This time it was a succession of scales, too fast, imprecise—the effect somehow viscous and slimy. A concert pianist! She certainly had a long way to go. Like Bucholtz, she probably regarded herself as an artist, not as a pianist—nothing so simple and straightforward as that. Did she and Jim occupy the same room? Perhaps that was the explanation. Poor Jim.
“Co-operation. Where do you get that stuff, Jim? You may have noticed, Mister Kane, that our friend Mister Connor is sometimes just a little naïve.”
“I mean it. Co-operation.”
“Yeah. And did you ever know women to co-operate? Since when. Women have only one idea. And that is—”
“What do you know about women, I’d like to know!”
“Plenty. I haven’t lived with you four years for nothing.”
“Lived with me! You mean on me. If I hadn’t worked my eyes out as a stenographer to support you—”
“You knew what to expect, didn’t you? You haven’t got any kick coming. You can quit any time, as far as I’m concerned. I got along all right without you, didn’t I? You give me a pain.”
“Women, women, women! You mean slaves, you and your theories about women. Somebody to work for you and go to bed with, that’s all you mean.”
“You get a position out of it, don’t you?”
“A position. Would you listen to that. Yes, the position of admiring your genius, I suppose. That’s all the position I get.”
“You thought that was good enough when you married me. You knew what the chances were. Why don’t you stick to your bargain? The trouble with you women is that you’re nothing but receptacles.”
“Receptacles! Oh, my gard—”
“Did you ever notice that, Jim? Nothing but receptacles. Yeah. You give, but you don’t get. You put things in, but you don’t get nothing back. No matter how you dig your toes in, you can’t satisfy those babies! No, sir, by god, you can’t. What’s their idea? Just security, just safety. And to get themselves all dressed up like a plush horse. Jesus Christ, they give me the pip.”
“Oh, cut it, Karl. Kitty means all right. I know how she feels about this—”
“If you do, why don’t you do something about it!”
“You see, Tip, old kid, I’m afraid the girls are a little upset by your friend’s warning. That’s what the trouble is.”
“It isn’t that at all.”
“Yes, and I’m damned sorry, Jim.”
“How is your conscience, Mister Kane? How does it feel to be carrying such a burden of responsibility. I hear that exquisite wife of yours has been blabbing where the blabbing does the most good.”
“Shut up! And you leave Enid out of this. Don’t pay any attention to him, Tip, Enid was perfectly right, he’s only looking for an excuse to start a quarrel. Maybe he’ll start something he can’t finish. Like the time the Hudson Dusters beat him up. Oh, my gard, will I ever forget it. The way they dragged him out of that bar by the feet, looking like a sick rabbit—a lot of fight you showed then, didn’t you? Like hell you did. It’s all right bullying women—”
“Take it easy, Kitty—”
“And, oh, boy, what a pair of black eyes! It did me good—and carrying on like a baby about it, afraid to go outdoors for a week. Oh, my gard, I wish I could get out of here, I’m so sick of this place. What is there to do here? I’m so tired of listening to these damned sea gulls and blackbirds—”
“Them ain’t blackbirds, you mental giant. Them’s crows.”
“And this sea gets on my nerves. I’m going to get out, I tell you—I’m going to get out, I’ve got to get out of here or I’ll go crazy. I can’t stand it!”
She pushed her chair back suddenly, jumped to her feet, the tears starting from her eyes, dashed a tear from one cheek with the back of her hand, then went quickly, hysterically, across the long room, and ran up the stairs in the far corner. A moment later a door slammed. The piano, undisturbed, continued its remorseless inaccurate scales, slurred, uneven, repetitive. There was a sort of vicious eagerness in the ascending notes, an ugly greed, as of an unappeasable appetite for sheer noise. The fire snapped and flung out a spark, all three were silent, listening, and then Jim Connor said:
“That’s the way it’s been, Tip. That’s the way it’s been all day.”
“I think you were a little hard on her, Karl.”
“Yeah, I know, I know. I was a little hard on her. But it’s the only way to treat her when she goes hysterical. And don’t I know it. She’ll get over it; she always does. You just have to spank her, and then she has a good cry and gets over it. She’ll come back as sweet as pie.”
“Maybe. But I think this is a little different. Maybe you’d better go up and talk to her.”
“No. Let her have her cry first.”
“By god, I’m so hungry! I wonder if there are any of those sardines left?”
“There was one in the kitchen, by the sink—I saw it with my own eyes. But Lorna may have got it, I wouldn’t be surprised. One little sardine. First come, first served in this house. What we need is the miracle of the loaves and fishes. I wish to god there was a delicatessen in this dump. What couldn’t I do to a wiener schnitzel! Boy. Or a nice big plate of spaghetti.”
“That’s what it’s been like all day, Tip—first Lorna, and then Kitty. They want to go back to New York. And I’ve got this place for six months, I’ve paid the rent for six months. And now your friend Paul’s sore about his canoe—”
“Tell him about the canoe.”
“Well, what about the canoe. I noticed there was a lot of mud in it.”
“Mud! You call that mud, Mister Kane? You can’t ever have seen any mud. You amaze me. Tell him about it, Jim.”
“I don’t really think it was our fault, kid, I don’t really think it was, but Paul seems almost to think we did it on purpose.”
“Yeah, and is Paul burned up! Is he frying! Go on, tell him the whole story.”
“What happened?”
“Well, kid, we were supposed to go up there yesterday in the canoe. Paul asked us to come up, and told us how to get there. And it seems there was a misunderstanding.”
“A misunderstanding! Am I laughing?”
“We don’t know anything about boats—so he gave us directions. He said when we got up to the
place opposite the golf links—you know, where the lagoon begins—there would be a little narrow place in the river, and then it would broaden out again. He said it would be too shallow on the left, or too much eelgrass—is that it, eelgrass?—or something, and so he told us to keep the canoe as close as we could to the right-hand shore. And then follow that shore till we got to his boathouse. See? Well, we did exactly as he told us—”
“I’m afraid Mister Kane will be a little contemptuous? I’m afraid he’ll think we’re just a pair of landlubbers—eh, Mister Kane?”
“We did exactly as he told us. But when we tried to keep as close to the shore as all that, well, there wasn’t enough water even for a canoe—so we had to get out.”
“You had to get out!”
“Yeah, we had to get out. We ran aground on the mud. So we had to get out and push it.”
“Push it! Good lord.”
“Yeah, push it. Karl took the front and I took the back. But we didn’t realize there was so much mud, that it would be as soft as that—gosh, we sunk in up to our knees. We had to pull off our shoes and stockings, then, and put them in the canoe—it took us over an hour. I should think it must have been damned near two miles.”
“Yeah. Two miles as the mud flies!”
“At the end, we finally got to some deep water again, and got back in, but by that time the damage was done. And your friend Paul was pretty sore. It seems we had misunderstood him—”
“And how. Oh, boy, this is killing me!”
“—and that he didn’t mean us to stick as close as all that to the bank, but just to follow it, for guidance, you see? But how could we know that? He said the other side was too shallow or something—by god, kid, but it certainly was a mess! And then we stuck our feet in the kitchen oven to dry—”
“And did Paul like that? Did your exquisite friend Paul like that? He did not. You’d have thought we were desecrating the place. I fear your friend Paul is just a shade dainty, if you know what I mean?”
“Dainty! I never knew it.”
“Yes, and it seemed to me too that he was just a little too curious, and asked just a few too many questions. He was exceedingly inquisitive. Did you notice that, Jim?”