Lessing was tinkling the ice in his third collins and enjoying the pleasant haze that just enough alcohol lent to the particular, shining haze that always surrounded Clarissa. He would not, he told himself, have any more. He was far from drunk, certainly, but there was intoxication in the air tonight, even in this little, noisy, second-rate nightclub. The soaring music had a hint of marijuana delirium in it; the dancers on the hot, crowded floor exhaled excitement.
And Clarissa was responding. Her great black eyes shone with unbearable brightness, and her laughter was bright and spontaneous too. They danced in the jostling mob, not feeling jostled at all because of the way the music caught them up on its rhythms. Clarissa was talking much more than usual this evening, very gayly, her body resilient in his arms.
As for himself—yes, he was drunk after all, whether on the three drinks or on some subtler, more powerful intoxication he did not know. But all his values were shifting deliciously toward the irresponsible, and his ears rang with inaudible music. Now nothing could overpower him. He was not afraid of anything or anyone at all. He would take Clarissa away—clear away from New York and her jailor aunt, and that shining Someone who drew nearer with every breath.
There began to be gaps in his memory after awhile. He could not remember how they had got out of the nightclub and into his car, or just where they intended to go, but presently they were driving up the Henry Hudson Parkway with the river sliding darkly below and the lights of Jersey lying in wreaths upon the Palisades.
They were defying the—the pattern. He thought both of them knew that. There was no place in the pattern for this wild and dizzying flight up the Hudson, with the cross-streets reeling past like spokes in a shining wheel. Clarissa, leaning back in the bend of his free arm, was in her way as drunk as he, on nothing more than two sherries and the savage rhythms of the music, the savage excitement of this strange night. The intoxication of defiance, perhaps, because they were running away. From something—from Someone. (That was impossible, of course. Even in his drunkenness he knew that. But they could try—)
“Faster,” Clarissa urged, moving her head in the crook of his arm. She was glitteringly alive tonight as he had never seen her before. Very nearly awake, he thought in the haze of his reeling mind. Very nearly ready to be told what it was he must tell her. The warning—
Once he pulled up deliberately beneath a street light and took her in his arms. Her eyes and her voice and her laughter flashed and sparkled tonight, and Lessing knew that if he thought he had loved her before, this new Clarissa was so enchanting that . . . that . . . yes, even a god might lean out from Olympus to desire her. He kissed her with an ardor that made the city whirl solemnly around them. It was delightful to be drunk and in love, and kissing Clarissa under the eyes of the jealous gods . . .
There was a feeling of . . . of wrongness in the air as they drove on. The pattern strove to right itself, to force them back into their ordained path. He could feel its calm power pressing against his mind. He was aware of traffic imperceptibly edging him into streets that led back toward the apartment they had left. He had to wrench himself out of it, and then presently the northbound way would be closed off for repairs, and a detour went off along other streets that took them south again. Time after time he found himself driving past descending street numbers toward downtown New York, and swung around the block in bewildered determination not to return.
The pattern must be broken. It must be. Hazily he thought that if he could snap one thread of it, defy that smooth, quiet power in even so small a way as this, he would have accomplished his purpose. But alone he could not have done it. The omnipotent machinery humming in its course would have been irresistible—he would have obeyed it without knowing he obeyed—had not Clarissa shared his defiance tonight. There seemed to be a power in her akin to the power of that omnipotence, as if she had absorbed some of it from long nearness to the source.
Or was it that Someone stayed his hand rather than strike her forcibly back to her place in the pattern, rather than let her guess—yet—the extent of his power?
“Turn,” said Clarissa. “Turn around. We’re going wrong again.”
He struggled with the wheel. “I can’t . . . I can’t,” he told her, almost breathless. She gave him a dazzling dark glance and leaned over to take the wheel herself.
Even for her it was hard. But slowly she turned the car, while traffic blared irritably behind them, and slowly they broke out of the pattern’s grip again and rounded another corner, heading north, the lights of Jersey swimming unfocused in the haze of their delirium.
This was no normal drunkenness. It was increasing by leaps and bounds. This, thought Lessing dimly, is His next step. He won’t let her see what he’s doing, but he knows he’s got to stop us now, or we’ll break the pattern and prove our independence.
The tall, narrow buildings shouldering together along the streets were like tall trees in a forest, with windows for motionless leaves. No two windows on the same level, or quite alike. Infinite variety with infinitesimal differences, all of them interlacing and glimmering as they drove on and on through the stony forest. Now Lessing could see among the trees, and between them, not transparently but as if through some new dimension. He could see the streets that marked off this forest into squares and oblongs, and his dazed mind remembered another forest, checkered into squares—Looking Glass Land.
He was going south again through the forest.
“Clarissa—help me,” he said distantly, wrestling again with the wheel. Her small white hands came out of the dark to cover his.
A shower of light from a flickering window poured down upon them, enveloping Clarissa as Zeus enveloped Danae. The jealous god, the jealous god—Lessing laughed and smacked the wheel in senseless triumph.
There was a light glimmering ahead through the trees. He would have to go softly, he warned himself, and tiptoed forward over the . . . the cobbled road. Without surprise he saw that he was moving on foot through a forest in darkness, quite alone. He was still drunk. Drunker than ever, he thought with mild pride, drunker, probably, than any mortal ever was before. Any mortal. The gods, now—
People were moving through the trees ahead. He knew they must not see him. It would shock them considerably if they did; he remembered the garishly dressed people of his other dream, and the young man with the whip. No, it would be better to stay hidden this time if he could. The forest was wheeling and dipping around him behind a haze of obscurity, and nothing had very much coherence. The ringing in his ears was probably intoxication, not actual sound.
The people were somberly clad in black, with black hoods that covered their hair and framed pale, intolerant faces. They were moving in a long column through the trees. Lessing watched them go by for what seemed a long while. Some of the women carried work bags over their arms and knitted as they walked. A few of the men read from small books and stumbled now and then on the cobblestones. There was no laughter.
Clarissa came among the last. She had a gay little face beneath the black cap, gayer and more careless than he had ever seen her in this . . . this world. She walked lightly, breaking into something like a dance step occasionally that called down upon her the frowns of those who walked behind. She did not seem to care.
Lessing wanted to call to her. He wanted to call so badly that it seemed to him she sensed it, for she began to fall behind, letting first one group pass her and then another, until she walked at the very end of the column. Several girls in a cluster looked back a few times and giggled a little, but said nothing. She fell farther back. Presently the procession turned a corner and Clarissa stopped in the middle of the road, watching them go. Then she laughed and performed a solemn little pirouette on one toe, her black skirts swinging wide around her.
Lessing stepped from behind his tree and took a step toward her, ready to speak her name. But he was too late. Someone else was already nearer than he. Someone else—Clarissa called out gayly in a language he did not know, and then t
here was a flash of crimson through the trees and a figure cloaked from head to heels in bright red came up to her and took her into its embrace, the red folds swinging forward to infold them both. Clarissa’s happy laughter was smothered beneath the stooping hood.
Lessing stood perfectly still. It might be another woman, he told himself fiercely. It might be a sister or an aunt. But it was probably a man. Or—
He squinted slightly—nothing focused very well in his present state, and things tended to slip side-wise when he tried to fix his eyes upon them—but this time he was almost sure of what he saw. He was almost sure that upon Clarissa’s lifted face in the dimness of the woods a light was falling softly—from the hood above her. A light, glowing from within the hood. A shower of light. Danae, in her shower of gold . . .
The woods tilted steeply and turned end for end. Lessing was beyond surprise as he fell away, spinning and whirling through darkness, falling farther and farther from Clarissa in the woods. Leaving Clarissa alone in the embrace of her god.
When the spinning stopped he was sitting in his car again, with traffic pouring noisily past on the left. He was parked, somewhere. Double-parked, with the motor running. He blinked.
“I’ll get out here,” Clarissa told him matter-of-factly. “No, don’t bother. You’ll never find a parking place, and I’m so sleepy. Good night, darling. Phone me in the morning.”
He could do nothing but blink. The dazzle of her eyes and her smile was a little blinding, and that haze still diffused all his efforts to focus upon her face. But he could see enough. They were exactly where they had started, at, the curb before her apartment house.
“Good night,” said Clarissa again, and the door dosed behind her.
There was silence in the office after Lessing’s last words. Dyke sat waiting quietly, his eyes on Lessing’s face, his shadow moving a little on the desktop under the swinging light. After a moment Lessing said, almost defiantly, “Well?”
Dyke smiled slightly, stirring in his chair. “Well?” he echoed.
“What are you thinking?”
Dyke shook his head. “I’m not thinking at all. It isn’t time yet for that—unless the story ends there. It doesn’t, does it?”
Lessing looked thoughtful. “No. Not quite. We met once more.”
“Only once?” Dyke’s eyes brightened. “That must be when your memory went, then. That’s the most interesting scene of all. Go on—what happened?”
Lessing closed his eyes. His voice came slowly, as if he were remembering bit by bit each episode of the story he told.
“The phone woke me next morning,” he said. “It was Clarissa. As soon as I heard her voice I knew the time had come to settle things once and for all—if I could. If I were allowed. I didn’t think—
He—would let me talk it out with her, but I knew I’d have to try. She sounded upset on the phone. Wouldn’t say why. She wanted me to come over right away.”
She was at the door when he came out of the elevator, holding it open for him against a background of mirrors in which no motion stirred. She looked fresh and lovely, and Lessing marveled again, as he had marveled on waking, that the extraordinary drunkenness of last night had left no ill effects with either of them this morning. But she looked troubled, too; her eyes were too bright, with a blinding blackness that dazzled him, and the sweet serenity was gone from her face. He exulted at that. She was awakening, then, from the long, long dream.
The first thing he said as he followed her into the apartment was, “Where’s your aunt?”
Clarissa glanced vaguely around. “Oh, out, I suppose. Never mind her. Jim, tell me—did we do something wrong last night? Do you remember what happened? Everything?”
“Why I . . . I think so.” He was temporizing, not ready yet in spite of his decision to plunge into these deep waters.
“What happened, then? Why does it worry me so? Why can’t I remember?” Her troubled eyes searched his face anxiously. He took her hands. They were cold and trembling a little.
“Come over here,” he said. “Sit down. What’s the matter, darling? Nothing’s wrong. We had a few drinks and took a long ride, don’t you remember? And then I brought you back here and you said good night and went in.”
“That isn’t all,” she said with conviction. “We were—fighting something. It was wrong to fight—I never did before. I never knew it was there until I fought it last night. But now I do know. What was it, Jim?”
He looked down at her gravely, a tremendous excitement beginning to well up inside him. Perhaps, somehow, they had succeeded last night in breaking the spell. Perhaps His grip had been loosened after all, when they defied the pattern even as briefly as they did.
But this was no time for temporizing. Now, while the bonds were slack, was the moment to strike hard and sever them if he could. Tomorrow she might have slipped back again into the old distraction that shut him out. He must tell her now—Together they might yet shake off the tightening coils that had been closing so gently, so inexorably about her.
“Clarissa,” he said, and turned on the sofa to face her. “Clarissa, I think I’d better tell you something.” Then a sudden, unreasoning doubt seized him and he said irrelevantly, “Are you sure you love me?” It was foolishly important to be reassured just then. He did not know why.
Clarissa smiled and leaned forward into his arms, putting her cheek against his shoulder. From there, unseen, she murmured, “I’ll always love you, dear.”
For a long moment he did not speak. Then, holding her in one arm, not watching her face, he began.
“Ever since we met, Clarissa darling, things have been happening that—worried me. About you. I’m going to tell you if I can. I think there’s something, or someone, very powerful, watching over you and forcing you into some course, toward some end I can’t do more than guess at. I’m going to try to tell you exactly why I think so, and if I have to stop without finishing, you’ll know I don’t stop on purpose. I’ll have been stopped.”
Lessing paused, a little awed at his own daring in defying that Someone whose powerful hand he had felt hushing him before. But no pad of silence was pressed against his lips this time and he went on wonderingly, expecting each word he spoke to be the last. Clarissa lay silent against his shoulder, breathing quietly, not moving much. He could not see her face.
And so he told her the story, very simply and without references to his own bewilderment or to the wild conclusions he had reached. He told her about the moment in the park when she had been drawn away down a funnel of luminous rings. He reminded her of the vanishment of the summerhouse. He told of the dreamlike episode on the hallway here, when he called irrationally into the mirrored dimness, or thought he called. He told her of their strange, bemused ride uptown the night before, and how the pattern swung the streets around under their wheels. He told her of his two vivid dreams through which she—yet not she—had moved so assuredly. And then, without drawing any conclusions aloud, he asked her what she was thinking.
She lay still a moment longer in his arms. Then she sat up slowly, pushing back the smooth dark hair and meeting his eyes with the feverish brilliance that had by now become natural to her.
“So that’s it,” she said dreamily, and was silent.
“What is?” he asked almost irritably, yet suffused now with a sense of triumph because the Someone had not silenced him after all, had slipped this once and let the whole story come out into open air at last. Now at last he thought he might learn the truth.
“Then I was right,” Clarissa went on. “I was fighting something last night. It’s odd, but I never even knew it was there until the moment I began to fight it. Now I know it’s always been there. I wonder—”
When she did not go on, Lessing said bluntly, “Have you ever realized that . . . that things were different for you? Tell me, Clarissa, what is it you think of when you . . . when you stand and look at something trivial so long?”
She turned her head and gave him a long, grave look
that told him more plainly than words that the whole spell was not yet dissolved. She made no answer to the question, but she said,
“For some reason I keep remembering a fairy story my aunt used to tell me when I was small. I’ve never forgotten it, though it certainly isn’t much of a story. You see—”
She paused again, and her eyes brightened as he looked, almost as if lights had gone on behind them in a dark room full of mirrors. The look of expectancy which he knew so well tightened the lines of her face for a moment, and she smiled delightedly, without apparent reason and not really seeming to know she smiled.
“Yes,” she went on. “I remember it well. Once upon a time, in a kingdom in the middle of the forest, a little girl was born. All the people in the country were blind. The sun shone so brightly that none of them could see. So the little girl went about with her eyes shut too, and didn’t even guess that such a thing as sight existed.
“One day as she walked alone in the woods she heard a voice beside her. ‘Who are you?’ she asked the voice, and the voice replied, ‘I am your guardian.’ The little girl said, ‘But I don’t need a guardian. I know these woods very well. I was born here.’ The voice said, ‘Ah, you were born here, yes, but you don’t belong here, child. You are not blind like the others.’ And the little girl exclaimed, ‘Blind? What’s that?’
“ ‘I can’t tell you yet,’ the voice answered, ‘but you must know that you are a king’s daughter, born among these humble people as our king’s children sometimes are. My duty is to watch over you and help you to open your eyes when the time comes. But the time is not yet. You are too young—the sun would blind you. So go on about your business, child, and remember I am always here beside you. The day will come when you open your eyes and see.’ ”
Clarissa paused. Lessing said impatiently, “Well, did she?”
Clarissa sighed. “My aunt never would finish the story. Maybe that’s why I’ve always remembered it.”
Collected Fiction Page 410