“I don’t know. I guess so. I mean, yes, of course.”
“Sometimes,” Mimi said in exasperation, “I wonder why I ever took you up. You’re incredible, you’re so backward. If I didn’t think there was somebody in there, behind that blank, I’d drop you like a hot cake. And your mother, too. She’s never grown up either, has she?”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, she has an aura of innocence about her, just like you. Almost as though she were asleep and waiting to be wakened, like Sleeping Beauty. I like her, you understand. I like her very much. But she’s nothing like Clare.”
“I don’t imagine many mothers are,” Virginia said a little tartly.
“Your mother likes Mr. Fielding a lot, doesn’t she?” Mimi asked, not accepting the reproof.
“Sure, I guess so,” Virginia said. “Mother and daddy knew him in New York. Pretty well, I guess. But they had lots of friends there. Not like here. We used to have sort of open house every Sunday night for faculty and students and anybody else who wanted to come. They were fun. Lots of times mother would play the piano for them to sing—all kinds of songs, even opera. But especially at Christmas, and then it was carols. She hasn’t played any carols this year.”
“Did Mr. Fielding come to the open houses?”
“Oh, sure.”
“And Sam?”
“Oh, Sam was usually away at school.”
“Well, thank God for the thé dansant at the hotel this afternoon,” Mimi said. “That’ll take your mind off your woes. A triangular date, wouldn’t you call it? Except Sam promised he’d try to fix us up with someone else. There’re quite a few kids at the hotel—notice them at dinner last night, and coming out of the cinema? So he ought to be able to grab someone halfway decent. I suppose he’s off skiing with his father this morning. Come on, Virginia, let’s go!”
Emily returned from the village with Connie, the child tired and dragging on her arm; and surely the weight of a roly-poly four year old could not be that great? With Connie following her with a dustcloth, she swept all the rooms, violently. She prepared a vegetable soup for lunch, went to the piano and started the Bach Prelude and Fugue in Eb minor.
“I want to play,” Connie said. “May I play, too, mama?” She clambered up into Emily’s lap.
Emily took the child’s fingers and picked out “Away in a Manger.”
“Now let’s sing it,” Connie said. “‘Away in a manger, no crib for a bed …’ You sing, too, mama.”
“I don’t think I can sing this morning, Connie,” Emily said.
“Why not?”
“You color mama a nice picture with your crayons,” Emily suggested. “Sit at the table in the dining room and make mother a picture while she plays the piano for a little while.”
“Sing me a song first. Sing ‘I Met Her in Venezuela.’”
Emily got halfway through the song. She got to “When the moon was out to sea and she was taking leave of me …” and then suddenly she knew that she must cry. It had nothing to do with her mind or her emotions; it was a purely physical sensation, like being sick, and that would have been preferable, because if she had rushed to the bathroom and heaved it would have been a natural thing, blamable on an upset stomach, on the rich food at the casino the night before; but if she burst suddenly into tears it would throw Connie into consternation and distress Courtney.…
She walked quickly down the cold back hall to Courtney’s office and knocked on the door. His room itself was warm from a small portable stove, and he was busy at his desk. “Court, I’m sorry to bother you,” she said. “I forgot some things I need in the village and it’s too cold to take Connie out again.”
“Can’t you put it off?” Courtney asked.
“No. I don’t ask you to keep an eye out for her very often and she won’t bother you. She’ll be at the dining-room table with her crayons. I won’t be any longer than necessary.” She could not help the sharpness of her voice. If she did not speak with this jerky definiteness she could not control the tears. She settled Connie at the table, then pulled on her coat and cap and went out, wearing spiked boots, not stopping for skis, and for a moment the cold brilliant air slapped the tears back, but she knew the lull was only temporary. She looked up at the mountains, blindingly pure in the morning sunlight, and remembered, as though it had been aeons ago, looking with Abe at the mountains the night before. And then the tears rushed on her once more and where could she go? Where could she go to get rid of this elemental weeping?
Between the sanatorium and the outlying chalets was a small Catholic church, and she pushed blindly towards it. For a moment she thought the heavy doors were locked, but then she managed to push one open, and she penetrated into the darkness that smelted faintly of incense and damp wool. A few of the candles in front of the Virgin were lit, but there was no one in the church, and she fell into one of the small back chairs and put her hands over her face and the sobs tore out of her. She tried to keep them quiet while all she wanted was to be able to howl out loud as custom permits only small children to do; but she was afraid that the curé might be somewhere about or that someone else would come in, so she tried to push the weeping back into her throat till it threatened to choke her. Once for an uncontrollable moment she heard with surprise a burst of noisy sobs, but her very astonishment at the sound helped her to control it. If a voice had come out of the dimness in the back of the church asking her why she was crying she would not have known. Her only thought was the fear of being discovered; the tears were still entirely a physical thing.
At last the sobs wore themselves out and she leaned her head on her hands in exhaustion.
Courtney.
Courtney. When she thought about Courtney she came to a terrifying mental block. It was Courtney she loved, Courtney who was part of her life as the children were part of her life.…
But what had happened the night before she would not give up in her mind any more than a wanderer lost in the desert could turn away from an oasis.
She left the church and climbed, on up past the chalets, past Kaarlo’s chalet, past the chalet that had been Gertrude’s and Henri’s, on up the whiteness beyond, through the dark shadows of the pines where for a moment the wind ceased to batter her, up into the naked snow fields above; for this swift climbing, pushing into the wind up the mountain, was the only possible solution to the sobs which threatened to rack her, rising like blood into her throat. If she exhausted her body by climbing, perhaps she would also exhaust this unbidden, incomprehensible need to cry; perhaps then she would be able to think only of Abe’s lips against hers, his hands against her body, be able to think of it only as an isolated moment, a single event in time, an island quite different from and unaffected by the waters of daily living which surrounded it.
A few sharp, icy flakes of snow fell, but it was too cold for snow; the sky seemed frozen lead above her with a faint sickly splotch of yellow where the sun skulked. At the foot of a high rock formation she passed a small, cold-looking figure of a saint, barely sheltered from wind and weather, with snow piled about her feet and touching the faded-rose hem of her robe. She passed a few solitary skiers, several groups of advanced students with their ski instructors; she did not see Abe and Sam.
Above her, like a charcoal drawing on the snow, were the dark outlines of the first hut; she paused a moment, her heart thumping heavily against her ribs from exertion, and saw a single skier coming towards her; it was Kaarlo. He hailed her and came skiing down to her, sweeping to a stop at her feet with a great spume of snow. “Emily,” he said, flashing her his quick shining smile. “How nice to see you! What are you doing all alone up here?”
“Just climbing,” she said vaguely, smiling at him.
“How long have you got?” (How quickly they learned about each other there in the small village—who was tied down by children or ancient furnaces or jobs or invalid husbands; who was free to come and go as he chose.)
“Till lunchtime.”
“W
ell, then, let us keep each other company for a while,” he suggested. “Or would you prefer to be alone?”
She knew that with Kaarlo it would have been perfectly all right and understood if she said that she did not feel like talking and had come up to be solitary, but suddenly she was glad of his presence. She seemed to dwindle in size while the mountains grew enormous and the expanse of snow stretched out to infinity on all sides, snow and snow-filled sky moving one into the other. She shivered in her warm ski clothes, asking Kaarlo, “How do you happen to be free?”
“I’ve been off with Abe and Sam since six, but the kid’s got a game leg and it started to bother him, so Abe took him back to the hotel. Abe and I are going off again this afternoon.” He sounded and looked completely happy and free, his eyes against the deep tan of his skin shining like two chinks of sky; then suddenly his face clouded. “I suppose I should go right down to Gertrude, but she’s in one of her moods and I think I’ll give myself a few more minutes of relaxation first. Let’s go up to the hut and I’ll light a fire and you can stretch out on one of the bunks and rest—you do look tired, Emily—and we’ll talk. Isn’t that an excellent idea?”
“A noble idea,” she agreed.
At the hut Kaarlo took off his skis and leaned them against the sheltered side where the roof extended deeply beyond the wall and long blue icicles hung, frozen hard as steel. Inside Emily sat on one of the bunks while Kaarlo took some of the kindling that was always ready and laid a fire in the stone fireplace.
“Put one of the blankets over you until the place warms up,” he said. “They’re in the lockers under the bunks.”
She leaned over and pulled out one of the blankets and wrapped herself up in it; it was rough and heavy and comforting and when it touched her cheek it reminded her flesh of the feel of Abe’s suit the night before. Kaarlo sat on an upturned bucket and fed the fire till he had a high, hot blaze.
“I find,” he said, speaking into the fire, away from Emily, “that when I’m looking into a fire or when I’m alone on the mountains, I do a good deal more thinking than I’d like to do.”
“I know, Kaarlo,” she murmured drowsily, exhausted by weeping and climbing, lulled by the warmth of the blanket and the fire and the lights and shadows of the flames shooting up over the ceiling.
If only she could talk to Kaarlo.
If she could say to him—Look, Kaarlo, I need help desperately. Something has happened that I didn’t want to have happen—no, that’s not right; I did want it to happen, but I should never have let it happen. Anyhow it did happen, and here I am with it, and I don’t know what to do. Oh, Kaarlo, I don’t know what to do. Help me, help me!
But none of this could she say to Kaarlo; they had already talked together too much; they knew too much about each other to let it be possible. In the first days of the winter when Emily had brushed up on her skiing by taking a few lessons with Kaarlo they had discovered immediately that they could talk; in the evenings, listening to records with Gertrude dozing on the couch, or, if Courtney were there, with Gertrude and Courtney playing chess, they had talked. So she could not talk to him now.
“Emily,” he said, breaking into her thoughts, “what am I to do with my Gertrude?” He pronounced Gertrude the French way, with the G softened and the whole rather harsh name suddenly become melodic and beautiful.
She did not answer, but lay there on the bunk, watching him, waiting for him to continue.
“I don’t know how to make her happy,” he said somberly.
“I think you do make her happy, Kaarlo,” Emily said gently. “As happy as Gert can be made.”
“If she is to get well,” Kaarlo said, “she should go back into the sanatorium. Clément has told her that again and again. But he cannot force her to go in against her will and she refuses. He has told me that several times he has almost given up her case. It isn’t money that makes her so stubborn about it. She isn’t wealthy, but I know there’s some that comes from America and there’s what Henri left her and whatever I have saved she could have, she knows that. But Clément told her she should have two years in the sanatorium and she cannot face it. She who faced so much cannot face that.”
“You can’t persuade her?”
“All she says is that I am trying to get rid of her. You see how hopeless it is. And this drinking of hers—she is so clever about it. I try to watch her but it’s far too often that she manages to get more than she should have. She is not a drunk, Emily, but she could be.”
“I imagine most of us could,” Emily said, “given the right circumstances.”
“We should not be living in the chalet together,” Kaarlo said. “She has strict orders from Clément, but I am a man and she is a woman and it is not always possible to obey.”
“I know,” Emily said softly, and shivered.
“We do not come from the same world, Gertrude and I,” Kaarlo said. “My mother was a Finn and my father a mountain guide before me. Gertrude and I have the resistance common to both of us but that is all. I don’t understand my Gertrude, Emily. I don’t understand her at all. All I can do is love, and love isn’t enough.”
“Of course it is.” Emily swung round on the bunk, keeping her legs still wrapped in the blanket, her feet on the floor, her elbows on her knees. “Do you think any human being ever understands another human being? I don’t know Courtney and I’ve found this winter that I know him even less than I thought I did. I don’t know what makes him tick and I never have. Even the people we love most we can’t know, Kaarlo, nor they us, and it seems to me that the better we know someone, the longer we’ve loved him, the less we’re able to understand him.”
Kaarlo nodded in assent. The big log on the fire had caught now, and he turned round on the bucket and faced Emily. “You will forgive me,” he said, “but Courtney doesn’t seem happy.”
“He’s not,” Emily agreed readily. “He’s quite desperately unhappy in a quiet sort of way. You say you can’t help Gert and love isn’t enough, and I though I think love ought to be enough, I know what you mean. I can’t help Courtney, either.”
Kaarlo looked at her thoughtfully for a moment; then he stood up. “I’m going to make us some coffee.”
Emily laughed. “When I think of this winter I’ll always think of coffee. It seems to me we do nothing but drink it.”
“It’s a companionable thing, to talk over a cup of coffee,” Kaarlo said.
Emily watched him hang the blackened pot over the fire, get the can of coffee from the shelf. “I wish you could know Courtney the way he really is,” she said. “He used to be a person of—of action. That’s hard to believe, seeing him just this winter, isn’t it, when we can’t even get him to put on skis except to go to Madame Berigot’s for a paper. And he had a—a tremendous strength.” They were silent, as Kaarlo dropped the coffee in the pot, then set it down on the great stone slab of hearth to brew. Emily said, “We lost a little girl, you know, two years younger than Virginia. Pneumonia after an appendectomy, and none of the drugs helped her. While she was so ill it was Courtney who kept me going, who made it possible for me to be brave. He was magnificent, Kaarlo. He was—he was completely Courtney. But after it was all over he wouldn’t let down for even a moment. He was too strong. And after a while it was as though he’d simply gone away. As though his body were there, doing the necessary things, but Courtney wasn’t there. It was a long time before he began to come back, to be himself again. After Connie was born—when she began to laugh and play, and she was an adorable baby, Kaarlo—he began to take an interest in her. And then he began reading the little verses Virginia was writing, and gradually he was all right. But now he seems to be withdrawing. He seems to be going away again. And I don’t know how to stop him.”
Kaarlo filled a mug with the steaming, fragrant coffee, and handed it to her, his blue eyes kind, concerned; but he did not speak. Emily got up and went to the window, carrying the hot, thick white cup, and stood looking out.
“It’s like a kind o
f death,” she said, and shivered. “No. I don’t really mean that. I don’t want to mean it.… I suppose” death will always be for me the white corridors of a hospital and the lights beginning to grow dim with dawn. I wasn’t even with her when she died. I’d gone out in the corridor to have a cigarette. I smoked, then. I suppose that’s why I don’t, now. It means death to me. And when I take a cigarette I’m somehow defying death, stamping on his toes, spitting in his face. But I have to be feeling very full of life to accept a cigarette.… I stood there at the end of the corridor smoking and trying to pray and watching the dawn come. One of the doctors had told us that if she could get through another night she might have a chance. I was trying so hard to pray that my body, the whole of me, was nothing but part of a prayer. Then Courtney came out of Alice’s room and came down the corridor to me and put his arm about me, and I looked round and saw his face.… We had to go home and tell Virginia.… We’d just abandoned Virginia in a panic, alone in a strange city—it was while we were in Washington—with no real friends to turn to, left her with a neighbor, a perfectly kind woman, too kind, and stupid, and unimaginative. And a smeller for death, a nose for death like a rat’s for garbage or a vulture’s for carrion. She knew before we’d-come up in the elevator, before we’d opened the door. She flung her arms up and cried, ‘God’s will be done!’ and burst into tears. Virginia as a child used to have quite frightening tantrums and she flew into one then, hitting the woman, and screaming, ‘It was not God’s will! How dare you say God would kill Alice!’ And I remember the woman saying, ‘God calls His own unto Him,’ and a cup of coffee got spilled—thrown—all over the rug and I remember trying to clean it up, and Virginia screaming and screaming.… So we didn’t have to tell her after all, and perhaps rage was the best thing that could have happened to her.…” She shook her head, turned away from the window. “I’m sorry. Death isn’t unique with me. There’s not a single person in the world who hasn’t had some kind of contact with it. I know you’ve had your share. I’m upset this morning. You know I don’t—I don’t like to talk about things. I’m sorry—”
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