Conversation; or, Pilgrims' Progress: A Novel

by Conrad Aiken

  She skipped out of the bathroom, her hands flapping excitedly against her sides, and scrambled barefooted up the darkening stairs ahead of him. He followed slowly, already feeling how that gaiety fell from him, fell away like something false—or could it be that it was actually truer than the other? No, they were both true—they were both true. The unhappiness with Enid was certainly no truer than the happiness with Buzzer—not a bit. It was only that the shadow of that made this so difficult. And as for the dreadful news about poor Miss Twitchell, which Terence had stopped the wagon to tell him—found drowned in Indian Pond—absent for two days, too, without even being missed—lying there in three feet of water for two days before anybody had so much as noticed that she was gone—

  “And wasn’t it lucky, daddy, that Chattahoochee wasn’t there!”

  “Yes, very lucky. I should say so. Now, in you hop—”

  “And tell me a story!”

  “Foo! What nonsense. And besides it’s late. Didn’t I tell you that the world was coming to an end? Well, it has—and with a bang. It’s burst into a billion, billion, billion little pieces.”

  “It hasn’t either. I know better! If it had burst, how could you stand there!”

  She skipped into the little cot, drew up the counterpane with its embroidered birds, holding it snug against her chin, gave a quick wriggle, and then suddenly lay still. The blue eyes softened, dimmed, looked farther and farther away past him, and as he stooped to kiss the wet golden curl on the forehead, she was already beginning to sing her night song—that odd tuneless little sing-song, so like Enid’s rhymeless humming, with which she always magicked herself to sleep.

  “Good night, my pet.”

  “Good night!”

  “Sleep tight.”

  “Sleep tight!”

  “Hope the bedbugs don’t bite.”

  “Mmmmm!”

  “And have a nice dream.”

  “Mmmmmm!”

  “And I’ll see you next year.”

  “Mmmm.”

  He touched the tip of her nose with one finger, straightened, went slowly back to the upper hall, and stood there under the sloping roof, listening to the gentle slithery sound of the rain on the shingles, the soft continuous patter mixed with the heavier occasional drip from the trees. Almost dark—the river barely visible, visible only as a dull gleam—mercury-colored. Diffused moonlight, of course—through the clouds, through the rain: the moon was all but full. Cut all things or gather, the moon in the wane; but sow in increasing, or give it his bane—where did that come from? A superstition? But it might be true, and if so the lilacs—

  Yes—and the lilies of the valley, which Miss Twitchell had promised to give them, from her garden, only two weeks ago—for the shaded corner at the front, by the street—the lilies of the valley, which now they would never have! Taken with her into the shallow waters of Indian Pond, the pickerel weed and pond lilies—what had happened, what in god’s name had happened? Lying face down, drowned, only a few feet from the rocky shore, bareheaded—and waiting there two days to be found by small boys! What could it possibly mean? Maybe Ee would know—she had been Ee’s friend, rather than his—or acquaintance, rather—but, in the circumstances, how could he tell Ee about it? Had it been money? Cancer? What could move a middle-aged spinster—and apparently perfectly happy—to such a thing, and so suddenly? An orphan, they said she had been, and adopted, living alone in that big house, with the beautiful pine trees, and the Tree of Heaven, and liked by everybody, and kind to everybody. It had been so characteristic of her to come and offer the lilies of the valley, noticing that dark little corner of the garden where nothing would ever grow—he could remember just how she had pointed, with those rather odd-looking chalky hands of hers, the quick and diffident gesture, and said, “Yes lilies of the valley, I’ll bring you some roots.” And now, dead for two days without anyone, not a soul, even noticing her absence! Ah, that was human nature for you, that was brotherly love!

  He felt a soft pressure against his leg, heard a little chirp—it was Chattahoochee, curling a striped tail ingratiatingly round his knee, and looking up at him with his slightly dishonest but very affectionate cat-smile.

  “So it’s you,” he said.

  “Prtrnyow,” said the cat.

  “And what, might I ask, do you want? Food, I expect.”

  “Prtrnyow.”

  “And I suppose the weather’s too much for you, so that the ramming is off, eh? Is that it?”

  “Prrrrt.”

  “Well, I’m afraid I can’t do anything about that. I’ve got troubles enough of my own!”

  The idea amused him, and he found himself grinning at it, in spite of everything—how shocked Ee would be, by god! The cat padded stiffly away round the corner, tail in air, towards Buzzer’s room, towards his favorite counterpane (it was Buzzer’s theory that he liked to sleep among the embroidered birds) and as he turned from the low window to go down the stairs he heard the first snapping of the fire in the studio—Ee must have come back. She must have come in quietly, without telling him, without saying a word—it was part of the silent treatment, of course. As dining at the Murphys’ had been. The silence before the storm.

  The fan of yellow lamplight fell across the hall floor from the half-opened door to the studio, and he found Enid crouched on the hearth before the fire, matchbox in hand. She looked up at him inquisitively, but otherwise without expression—except perhaps that the mouth seemed a little rigid, a shade too controlled. And perhaps she was pale.

  “That was ingenious of you,” he said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Going to the Murphys’ for supper, like that, so that I would come back to an empty house!”

  “You said yourself—”

  “And then sending Buzzer over for me to put to bed as soon as you saw me arriving! That was a neat touch, too. How did you manage to keep the house watched? Or did you get the Murphy kids to do it?”

  “You said yourself you wouldn’t be back.”

  “I said I mightn’t be back.”

  “And I’m supposed just to wait and see—”

  “You had no intention of going to the Murphys’ until it seemed to you to offer just one more chance of punishing me—had you?”

  “That has nothing to do with it. If you go out for supper, why shouldn’t I!”

  “You went there simply and solely to give me an empty house to come back to, and whether or not I stayed out to supper, didn’t you! The idea of the empty house, when you’d been blackmailing me with threats of leaving—”

  “I had a perfect right to do what I did.”

  “It was one of the meanest things you ever did—and I may say you’ve certainly been excelling yourself lately! Think it over. And perhaps, when I’ve finished foraging for the cold supper which you’ve so kindly not left for me, you’ll be ready to apologize.”

  Turning too quickly, lest he give her time to answer, he tripped over the hall rug, stumbled, kicked it from him violently—damn! And then in his haste to retrieve himself, miscalculating in the dark, struck his right shoulder, painfully, against the doorjamb of the dining room. How disgusting—how grotesque. To give her, on top of everything else, that opportunity! He reeled, the pain sickened him, he pressed his hand hard against the bone, and it was not till he had reached the dark kitchen, and was groping for the lamp chimney on the shelf behind the stove, that he realized how completely the two little accidents had changed his plans. He had meant to go first, a little ostentatiously, to the dining room, light the candles, lay out the silver on the table, make his preparations with every appearance of leisure and formality—he might have to dine alone, but, by god, he could at any rate dine in state, wife or no wife! Yes … But instead, the unforeseen shock had driven him straight out to the kitchen, as far from her as he could get, so that he could hug his pain in secret. Just the sort of unpredictable accident that ruins everything—the little element of last-minute comedy that turns a tragedy into a
farce. Like accidents on the stage—as when the tree trunk parted of its own accord, and Siegfried’s sword fell clattering out, before he had time even to get his hands on it. Yes. Damned funny! If one was on the right side of the curtain! But as it was—

  As it was, the kitchen had its points: it was nice in a rain, anyway, for the rain on the thin, low roof sounded so loud and so near, one felt so exposed, it was almost as if one were outdoors: and the shadows, cast across the peeling whitewashed rafters, were so spectacular: and besides, in the circumstances, the whole notion was perhaps agreeably forlorn. He found in the cupboard—sure enough, what a joke—a tin of sardines, miraculously complete with a key, and opened it—he found a box of crackers. He forked out the dovetailed metallic sardines with a leaden kitchen fork, laid them neatly across the white crackers, and perched himself on the corner of the kitchen table to eat.

  Dining at the Murphys’ like that—!

  And then pretending that she had no ulterior motive—!

  And knowing all the while that he would really be back for supper, anyway—

  He rubbed his shoulder and listened to the persistent rain. He remembered that tomorrow was Friday, and that Mr. Murphy would be calling for him early with the Ford (which meant no breakfast either, not till he had reached the South Station in Boston), and he was just thinking how extraordinarily a silence can put distance between people, or turn a small house into a big one—as now, for instance, with positively an Atlantic Ocean spreading its screaming wastes between the studio and the kitchen—when the front doorbell rang. Zring—zring—it rang twice, loudly, and he heard Enid opening the studio door, and shooting back the bolt of the front door, and a voice, a male voice. Who the devil—!

  He stepped up quietly into the dark dining room and listened.

  “No, I’m afraid I don’t know where Timothy is.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Well, I’m very sorry to disturb you, Enid—”

  (It was Jim Connor—the voice broke off, hesitating.)

  “—but I just thought I’d like to bring these little things over, these little toys, for Buzzer—if you didn’t mind—”

  “Oh! I see.”

  “They’re not very much. A couple of small things, all I could find here—Shall I put them down on the floor?”

  “Yes. That will be all right.”

  “Okay. There! Just a little pink cart—I thought, as we might be leaving for New York soon—”

  “Oh—”

  “—I’d like to give Buzzer something for her birthday. And to say good-by, Enid, and tell you how sorry I am about this mix-up.”

  “Yes. That’s all been settled, hasn’t it?”

  “Settled? Yes, I’m afraid it has! Well, good night, Enid, and no hard feelings.”

  “Good night.”

  “Good night!”

  The door closed firmly on the melancholy voice, the bolt shot sharply in its socket, and then there was silence. Was she looking now at the little pink cart? Standing there and looking at the pink cart—and perhaps belatedly discovering, and feeling, her shame? Good god, what a scene. There was time, and plenty, to run after him, of course—he could walk back with him, walk up to the post office with him—across the bridge, even—but what was the use? To do so would solve nothing, alleviate no feelings. The rehabilitation with Jim could well wait, couldn’t it? till next he went to New York, and met him on “neutral” ground—and meanwhile it would only serve, of course, to complicate still further the dreadful tangle with Enid. Or was it cowardice to look at it like that?

  Cowardice—yes.

  He sat down on the piano bench, in the half-dark room, struck a match, lit the green bayberry candle that stood on the piano, in the green-wax-smeared mahogany candlestick, and looked up at the Japanese print which hung on the wall above and behind it. Famous Place to See Moon. The dark, nocturnal mountain torrent, among black rocks, rocks hooked and horned, zigzagged its way downward under the moon, and in every pool, on every stone shelf where the night-blue water had gathered to spill, a full moon was reflected—it was a chorus of moons, among the dark mountains, to praise that other moon which sidled out from a frond of cloud. Famous Place to See Moon—he remembered when they had bought it in Boston—seeing it in the window—he remembered how they had looked at it then, how much they had seen in it, how magical it had seemed. And now, suddenly, it struck him that he had not looked at it in the same way—looked at it like this, with care, with love—for years. Yes, that was true. And it was true of other things, too. One forgot them, one took them for granted—but how could it be otherwise, how could it possibly be otherwise? The first leaf, again—yes, it was exactly like that, the freshness of the first vision—the freshness of the first love—and manifestly it would be absurd to expect that first freshness to last. As if an ecstasy could be permanent! How absurd. And yet, the thing itself was as beautiful as ever: the leaf, the Japanese print, or the woman one loved: it was only oneself that failed. The eye became fatigued, ceased to see—ceased to look—and instead of love, by god, marriage settled down to being just the terrible bed of habit—callous, careless, indifferent—but how else could it be? And all the w.c.’s—!

  Comic, yes—and an act of divination as well—for just as he was amusing himself with his own sudden vision of life, as symbolized in an endless vista of w.c.’s, which receded parabolically into the infinite, Enid went quickly across the hall, into the bathroom, and shut the door. At the same instant, too, a light switched on in an upper room of the Purington house, and he turned around just in time to see Gladys Purington, black-haired and handsome, reaching up to pull down the window shade. Intimacy—yes, how was one to compromise with intimacy? Now with this print, Famous Place to See Moon, it was just as obvious that a prolonged familiarity was in some degree deadening as with a person. He had forgotten how lovely it was, forgotten its precise virtue of naïve magic, its tenderness, its—yes, above all—love, and could not now, perhaps, so much love it again himself had he not forgotten it—it was all very odd!

  He struck a chord, and another, and a third—tried, angrily, to remember Schoenberg’s “mystic” chord, and what Paul had said about it—began to play Debussy’s Arabesque and stopped; and was beginning a fragment of a Bach toccata when Enid came and stood in the doorway. Her arms were folded across the green smock, she was lightly biting her lower lip. She looked angry, but unhappy as well. There was a curious awkwardness, half of aggression and half of retreat, in the way she leaned slightly against the doorjamb. Her head, tipped a little to one side, was just perceptibly swaying, and the steady green eyes—beautiful—looked for a long moment into his own before she spoke.

  “Don’t you think we ought to discuss this?” she said.

  He smiled cynically up at her, tapped a note, tapped it again, felt with his fingers for a little chord, and then suddenly hardened his gaze and looked beyond her, into the dark garden where the dead plum tree stood in the rain.

  “Why?” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “I’m afraid I’m becoming a little indifferent.”

  “Indifferent? To what?”

  “To you. I don’t think you can blame me if I feel a little bruised!”

  “I see. You become indifferent to me when I dare to stand up for my rights!”

  “Work it out for yourself—however you like! I don’t really much care, that’s all!”

  “Oh. And you just propose to let things go on like this?”

  “Why not? You started it, didn’t you? Can’t you finish it? I don’t mind, if you don’t. And as long as you intend to treat me in this fashion I’m quite happy without your society. A woman who can behave as you did just now to Jim Connor doesn’t interest me. Or only pathologically!”

  “There was nothing else for me to do.”

  “Nothing else for you to do! You could have been human. But that’s not your long suit, is it?”

  “Human—! What is there to make m
e human, in this life—!”

  “Oh, have you got to be made human? And I’m supposed to do it, I suppose—?”

  “You’re very clever, you can twist my words—”

  “I damned well need to be. If I’m clever, you’re hard! My god, the things you’ve been doing—how could you do that to Jim Connor, when he was actually bringing presents for Buzzer! Not to mention lying to him, and telling him you didn’t know where I was!”

  “I didn’t know—I thought you might have gone out.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Very well—I can’t make you believe me. I was abrupt with Jim partly because I was embarrassed—naturally I was surprised to see him when I thought the whole thing was finished—”

  “Embarrassed—I should think so! You ought to have been sick with shame. And I’d think a lot better of you if you had been. It’s not enough, is it, that you drive my friends away, cut me off from them, from the few people I find interesting and stimulating—you have to insult them on my very doorstep—”

  “I didn’t insult him—”

  “Not in so many words, no! But did I hear any thanks for what was really an extraordinarily nice thing of him to do? Did you even offer to take the things from him? Oh, no—you just stood there and let him put them on the floor. Where I suppose they still are! And this on top of everything else—driving him out of town, dictating that we aren’t to see each other—my god, and then you have the gall to turn around and try to pretend that it’s all in self-defense!”

  “Which is exactly what it is.”

  “Oh, yes, let’s hear all about that again—it’s bad for our precious names and social positions, and Buzzer’s future will be ruined, and all the rest of that snobbish silly nonsense—”

  “Do you ever think of anybody but yourself? For one moment?”

  “Never.”

  “I thought not. You never think, for instance, of the difference between a woman’s social position and a man’s—”

  “Oh? Let’s hear about it.”

  “It’s true. It’s the woman who stays at home, who has to face it, not the man—the man doesn’t know about it, and doesn’t care—he’s got his own separate life—but what about the woman? It’s all very well for you, with half your life spent in town, or on trips to New York—”