See Now Then

by Jamaica Kincaid

  And so too, without pause, then and now, the dead marriage grew into a loud, beastly entity that could be seen dancing on the lawn just within view of Mr. Sweet as he sat in the room above the garage, writing and rewriting the nocturne itself, its arms touching the tops of the Taconic range in the west, its legs mixing freely with the boreal forest in the east, hovering above the various waterways named Hudson, Battenkill, Walloomsac, Hoosic, Mettowee, that lay in between. The dead marriage occupied each empty space that was innocently bare in that village in which the Sweets lived, even in the post office, where the postmistress looked at Mrs. Sweet with pity and scorn before handing her a notice of an overdue bill; so too, it was alive in the country store, for when Mrs. Sweet entered the premises all conversation stopped, and everyone looked at her with pity and scorn and perhaps were sorry that none of them had an overdue bill to hand to her, and perhaps were happy that none of them had an overdue bill for her and Mrs. Sweet purchased some cheese and yogurt made by Mrs. Burley.

  That nocturne This Marriage Is Dead or The Marriage Has Been Dead for a Long Time Now, or the popular folk song Husband Left Her, brought such joy to Mr. Sweet and he felt, for the first time in his life, fulfilled; his whole life had been lived, all his suffering for his whole life had ceased just then, for he had suffered much: the life of a prince, when he was a child and lived in an apartment across from that specially arranged plantation of greenness in New York City, Central Park, overwhelmed his whole being and he reached into the pocket of his tweed jacket, which bore the label of J. Press, a haberdasher on Madison Avenue and East Forty-sixth Street and he found a piece of paper, a note and he read it with the surprise of the new and he read it with the familiarity with which you say to yourself, in whatever incarnation you find yourself: child, adolescent, twenties, thirties, middle age, old, in a hospice hours before your heart becomes still, yes! Tell now, Tell then, the note had nothing written on it and the note had this written on it: This is how to live your life, and it was signed, Your Father.

  Her hands now holding a pencil, Mrs. Sweet began to write on the pages before her:

  “It is true that my mother loved me very much, so much that I thought love was the only emotion and even the only thing that existed; I only knew love then and I was an infant up to the age of seven and could not know that love itself, though true and a stable standard, is more varied and unstable than any element or substance that rises up from the earth’s core; my mother loved me and I did not know that I should love her in return; it never occurred to me that she would grow angry at me for not returning the love she gave to me; I accepted the love she gave me without a thought to her and took it for my own right to live in just the way that would please me; and then my mother became angry at me because I did not love her in return and then she became even more angry that I did not love her at all because I would not become her, I had an idea that I should become myself; it made her angry that I should have a self, a separate being that could never be known to her; she taught me to read and she was very pleased at how naturally I took to it, for she thought of reading as a climate and not everyone adapts to it; she did not know that before she taught me to read I knew how to write, she did not know that she herself was writing and that once I knew how to read I would then write about her; she wished me dead but not into eternity, she wished me dead at the end of day and that in the morning she would give birth to me again; in a small room of the public library of St. John’s, Antigua, she showed me books about the making of the earth, the workings of the human digestive system, the causes of some known diseases, the lives of some European composers of classical music, the meaning of pasteurization; I cannot remember that I was taught the alphabet, the letters A B and C one after the other in sequence with all the others ending in the letter Z, I can only see now that those letters formed into words and that the words themselves leapt up to meet my eyes and that my eyes then fed them to my lips and so between the darkness of my impenetrable eyes and my lips that are the shape of chaos before the tyranny of order is imposed on them is where I find myself, my true self and from that I write; but I knew how to write before I could read, for all that I would write about had existed before my knowing how to read and transport it into words and put it down on paper, and all of the world had existed before I even knew how to speak of it, had existed before I even knew how to understand it, and in looking at it even more closely, I don’t really know how to write because there is so much before me that I cannot yet read; I cannot write why I did not love my mother then when she loved me so completely; what I felt for her has no name that I can now find; I thought her love for me and her own self was one thing and that one thing was my own, completely my own, so much so that I was part of what was my own and I and my own were inseparable and so to love my mother was not known to me and so her anger directed toward me was incomprehensible to us both; my mother taught me to read, she and I at first could read together and then she and I could read separately but not be in conflict, but then, to see it now, only I would write; after she taught me to read, I caused such disruption in my mother’s everyday life: I asked her for more books and she had none to give me and so she sent me to a school that I would only be allowed in and admitted to if I was five years old; I was already taller than was expected for someone my age, three and a half years old, and my mother said to me, now remember when they ask you how old say you are five, over and over again, she made me repeat that I was five and when the teacher asked me how old I was I said that I was five years of age and she believed me; it is perhaps then that I became familiar with the idea that knowing how to read could alter my circumstances, that then I came to know that the truth could be unstable while a lie is hard and dark, for it was not a lie to say that I was five when I was three and a half years old, for three and a half years old then was now, and my five-year-old self then would soon be in my now; that teacher’s name was Mrs. Tanner and she was a very large woman, so large that she could not turn around quickly and we would take turns pinching her bottom, and by the time she looked to see which of us had done so we would assume a pose of innocence and she never knew which one of us had been so rude and mischievous; and it was while in Mrs. Tanner’s presence that I came to develop fully my two selves, then and now, united only through seeing, and it happened in this way: Mrs. Tanner was teaching us to read from a book with simple words and pictures, but since I already knew how to read I could see things within the book that I was not meant to see; the story in the book was about a man who was a farmer and his name was Mr. Joe and he had a dog named Mr. Dan and a cat named Miss Tibbs and a cow who did not have a name, the cow was only called the cow, and he had a hen and her name was Mother Hen and she had twelve chicks, eleven of them were ordinary, golden chicks, but the twelfth one was bigger than the others and had black feathers and he had a name, it was Percy; Percy caused his mother a great deal of worry, for he always would provoke the anger of Miss Tibbs and Mr. Dan by attempting to eat their food; but his mother’s greatest worry came when she saw him try to fly up to sit on the uppermost bar of the farm’s fence; he tried and tried and failed and then one day succeeded but only for a moment and then he fell down and broke one of his wings and one of his legs; it was Mr. Joe who said, ‘Percy the chick had a fall.’ I liked that sentence then and I like that sentence now but then I had no way of making any sense of it, I could only keep it in my mind’s eye, where it rested and grew in the embryo that would become my imagination; a good three and a half years later, I met Percy again but in another form; as a punishment for misbehaving in class, I was made to copy Books One and Two of Paradise Lost by John Milton and I fell in love with Lucifer, especially as he was portrayed in the illustration, standing victoriously on one foot on a charred globe, the other foot aloft, his arms flung out in that way of the victor, brandishing a sword in one of them, his head of hair thick and alive for his hair was all snakes poised to strike; I then remembered Percy and I do now know Percy.”

  2

/>   To see then Mr. Sweet, a very small boy in short pants and short-sleeved shirt bounding across the green grass of a lawn, selling, in a boyish way, water flavored with lemon juice and sugar to friends of his parents, sitting in a chair and listening to jazz, eating peaches that had been poached in pineapple juice, speaking authoritatively of being and not being, traversing the island that was Manhattan, and at that time not being able to see at all the house in which Shirley Jackson lived, the house in which he would live with the fugues trapped in his head, murdering the young Heracles over and over again and that boy coming alive again and again; to see Mr. Sweet, the short pants and short-sleeved shirt being replaced by the brown corduroy suit that Mrs. Sweet had purchased at the Brooks Brothers outlet in Manchester; not being able to see his then now; to see Mr. Sweet then before he was Mr. Sweet, innocent of the small short-haired mammal that thrived in the Mesozoic era; Mr. Sweet who was often found lying down on a couch in an old house that had once been occupied by a woman who wrote short stories and brought up her children and whose husband had betrayed her and had behaved as if he were nothing more than a louse to her, so recorded in a biography of her life.

  Closing his eyes then, a long time ago now, there is Mr. Sweet, sitting at that ancient instrument, the harp, wrestling with that large triangle and holding it steady against his small, pretend manly breast; wrestling with a diminishing pitch here, a lengthening string there; gut in the middle, wire below; the flats and sharps, the major and minor keys, harmonic systems, double melodies, polyphony, monodists, melismata in the plainsong, the contrapuntal forms, allegro, concertos, not yet the nocturne—not now that but the ballad—oh yes, oh yes, all that flooded over Mr. Sweet as he sat before his ancient instrument, the harp, worshipping and worshipping, its holiness causing him to grow weak, he was so young, not yet Mr. Sweet and yet he was always Mr. Sweet as even he himself could see now then.

  Oh, but this is the voice of the monodist, and with the ancient instrument Mr. Sweet is on a stage all alone, the podium has even been moved to the side, the auditorium is full of chairs but no audience, and this pleases the young Mr. Sweet, young and full-size he is then, not old and the size of a mole as he is now, and he plays the ancient instrument with joy and love and earthly vigor, so much vigor, and breaks all the strings on the ancient instrument from which now, right now, at this very moment, comes no music at all. But then, then, the auditorium is full of chairs but no people, no one at all, and tugging on the strings of the ancient instrument, with its strings made of gut and wire, Mr. Sweet plays a song, for he is not yet a theorist and he plays a song, a complete song full of harmonies and melodies so simple anyone could sing it, even Heracles just after Mr. Sweet has beheaded him could sing that song. The Beheading of Heracles was a title Mr. Sweet gave to all the music he played on the ancient instrument Then, Sweet Night for Heracles is the name Mr. Sweet gives the music he plays on the ancient instrument Now. And at the end of each suite or sonata, for the young Mr. Sweet plays everything in every way, each kind then was the same, there being no audience to make a distinction, chairs are indifferent, came a deafening silence, applause yes, silence all the same. An immortal to empty chairs was Mr. Sweet then, but he was a boy with all those things hammering against the inside of his head, notes and notes of music, arranging themselves into every known form but never into forms not yet known.

  Oh, and this was the word Mrs. Sweet heard, that poor dear woman, mending socks upstairs. Oh, it was the voice of the monodist, her poor dear Mr. Sweet. Whack, came a sound from Heracles, as he made a putt, a basket, and a score and yet was under par or over par, Mrs. Sweet could never be sure. The boy’s head, free of his body with its entrails, filled up all the empty chairs in the auditorium of Mr. Sweet’s youthful recital. Not that, not that, cried the young Mr. Sweet and he made the chairs empty again. The strings of the harp, gut and wire, broke and he bent down and over to make the instrument well again, so ancient was this instrument. The Shirley Jackson house was not known to him then. Never did he imagine then—his youth was his now—that he would live in such a house, so big, so full of empty spaces that were never used, never filled up even in the imagination, the young Heracles with his endless tasks of hitting balls, large and small, into holes of all sizes; the young Heracles, growing in youth, not growing older, growing in his youth, becoming more perfectly youthful, his many tasks to perform, performing them more perfectly, at first performing them awkwardly, not right at all, but then becoming so good he could place any ball of any size in any hole, no matter its width or depth or height. Thwack, was a sound caused by the quick movement of Heracles’ hand sweeping a ball through the teeming air; whack, was the sound of his head sliced away from his body. Oh, was the sound that came out of the mouth of the monodist, Mr. Sweet, Mr. Sweet, as he saw Heracles pick his head off the floor and replace it on his neck, which was just above his shoulders, with such deftness, as if he were born to do only that, keep his head in that place just above shoulders.

  Young Heracles, his tasks, so many, so many: wash the dishes, put them away, clean the stables, walk the horses, fix the roof, milk the cows, emerge from his mother’s womb in the usual way, slay the monster, cross the river, return again, climb up the mountain, descend on the other side, build a castle on the top of a hill, imprison the innocent in a dungeon, lay waste to whole villages to the surprise of the villagers, trap and then skin the she-fox, eat his green vegetables and his meat too, kill his father, not kill his father, want to kill his father but not kill his father, keep his head on his shoulders, survive the threshold of night, await the dawn, take a pickax to the iris (his eyes, not the flowers growing in his mother’s garden), seize the sun, banish the moon, at every moment his skin so cold, the fire at his back, cross the road by himself, tie his shoelaces, kiss a girl, sleep in his own bed. Ah, gee Dad, said Heracles, as he raced to get a glass of water from the kitchen sink to quench the unquenchable thirst he had acquired after one of his many journeys, Sorry, Sorry. Heracles had then collided with Mr. Sweet, hitting him squarely in the head, causing starry lights to shoot out of his ears and nostrils and eyes, sending Mr. Sweet into a coma from which he emerged many years later and immediately he cut off Heracles’ head again. But that Heracles, blessed with a natural instinct to live that would never, ever abandon him, picked up his head and put it back on—again, where it rests to this day, in the rising just above his shoulders.

  Oh, was the sound of the harsh sigh violently escaping the prison that was Mr. Sweet’s lips, as he lay in the studio above the garage in the Shirley Jackson house. And he lay there on a brown couch, still, as if dead, but he was not dead, he only hated to be alive, with that wife, who now, now, knitted furiously, even with great vigor. Her heart raced with the effort, faster and faster and then even faster than that. Oh, so dangerously fast did her heart beat that it almost beat itself to death, but Mrs. Sweet said, gggggrrrrgghhhh, the sound of blood and oxygen combined as it simultaneously reached her throat. What the hell and oh shit, said Mrs. Sweet, and how surprised she was to hear these words catapulting out and around inside her head, for these were not her own words, these were the words of Heracles, Heracles spoke in this way when he thought no one could overhear him. But this (what the hell, oh shit) was in response to: the children—this would be Heracles and Persephone—won’t get out of bed in time to meet the school bus, the man who can repair the household appliances won’t come on a mutually agreed time, it will rain when the sun should shine, the fruit will rot on the bushes, Mr. Sweet will not emerge from the studio above the garage as Mr. Sweet, he will emerge from the studio above the garage inside a mauve velvet-covered coffin, an imitation of a jewelry box, Mr. Sweet will be dead. This last—Mr. Sweet being dead—if Mr. Sweet was dead what would happen to Mrs. Sweet, who would she be? Mrs. Sweet was a knitter and mender of socks, and she did that because while doing so she could delineate and dissect and then examine the world as she knew it, as she understood it, as she imagined it, as it came to her through h
er everyday existence.

  All that day, all that night, as the very thing called time collapsed within itself, Mrs. Sweet made socks and in that way marked off time, and in that way sought out the things that had not yet entered her mind. She mended and knitted away at the socks, repairing the holes, sometimes making just ordinary stitches, sometimes making a Christmas tree and a Santa Claus in the colors red and green to fill the holes, eventually undoing those to finally fill the holes with six-pointed stars and biblical scrolls in blue and white. Mr. Sweet hated this, how he hated this, the six-pointed stars and the biblical scroll in blue and white, the sight of it making him swear that he would be a deathbed Catholic, whatever could that mean, thought Mrs. Sweet, for she so loved Mr. Sweet and thought always that his contradictions were a source of laughter, whatever could that be or mean, a deathbed Catholic. But Mrs. Sweet loved Mr. Sweet without blinds.