Pitch Dark

by Renata Adler

  I go back upstairs to dress. I set off for the Waltons’ early, leaving time to drive very slowly, and even to get lost. There is a strong wind, and driving sleet. I can hardly see, with those thirteen-second wipers. I wonder again whether the Waltons are too frail, or perhaps too short of staff, to send someone to get me. I find the Exxon-Toyota station; exactly 1.9 miles later, the bridge, the end of the painted white divider, and the turnoff. Almost immediately, on this little side road, there is a fork. I had thought, and the expression is entirely uncharacteristic of me, that bitch, when Kathleen had sped off and refused to slow down, even when I slowed and she nearly lost me, but I’d also thought, no, maybe with her it’s just high spirits, and she doesn’t see the problem when someone is trying just to follow and to learn the way. But now, the fork, when she had only said, It’s up there, waving vaguely. I thought, well, it wasn’t just high spirits. I chose to bear left. After a long time, with a sense of the sea very close beside me, in that darkness, I approached a high wall, almost a fortification, with, behind it, a small house and one dim light. I wondered why the Waltons, expecting a guest, would not have lighted their place more brightly, decide they would have, pass along the fortification, reach another fork. There are, in addition to the two paved branches, two dirt roads, or driveways, one marked Cul de Sac, the other, perhaps more improbably, Danger Taureaux. I turn around. The sea is now on my left, on the passenger’s side. I enter the drive that leads into the fortification, park, walk to the house with the single lighted window, knock at the door. No answer. From inside, I can hear, muted, a television set. I am now quite loudly knocking. Finally, I try the door. It opens directly into a kitchen, where a man and a small boy are watching television. I apologize, ask for directions to the Waltons’. And the man tells me, in that crazy, unclear Irish way, just to follow the road I have been on and, at the nearest fork, bear the equivalent of straight. I turn in the driveway, which is narrow. The man stands in the doorway, making the sounds, and even the physical gestures, which men of all classes, the world over, seem to make to a woman, who is simply putting her car into reverse to turn or park it, when they say, as if this were a piece of arcane wisdom, never before heard by woman, Cut it, cut it hard. I say thank you. Then, not unlike Kathleen, yes unlike her, but because the car has now entirely lost its second gear, I roar off. A mile or two past the fork, I find a drive which I somehow take to be the Waltons’. This house has two lights, both dim. Since they are widely separated, it is not clear which marks the entrance of the house. I choose one. Again, I am in a kitchen. A woman, in her early forties, with straight blond hair hanging to her shoulders, comes in from a hallway, says, I’m Nicole Walton. Clem’s not ready. You must be Kate. I look at my watch, and realize I’ve left myself too much time. I am ten minutes early. I have recognized Nicole’s accent at once. It is Berlin. She is wearing a dark woolen skirt and sweater. She leads me to a very comfortable drawing room, with shabby pretty furniture and oriental carpets, seats me beside the fireplace. She offers me an Irish whiskey, which I accept. She says, I’ll bring some ice. I say, Thank you, no ice. She asks me where I am from. Before I can reply, she says, The ambassador has told us all about you. Then, she asks me why I’ve come to Cihrbradàn. I say, I was looking for somewhere beautiful and quiet, on the sea. To my surprise, I add, Where I can rest. Captain Walton walks in, very brisk, stocky and hearty, looking at his watch. I was just cutting my toenails, he says, its a very auspicious hour for cutting toenails. I take it this is his form of witticism, small talk, earthiness. We shake hands. Nicole says, Kate and I were just talking about all the places she must visit during the short time she is in Ireland. We had, of course, been talking of nothing of the sort. I say, No, actually, it’s Cihrbradàn I’ve come to, just for the quiet, and to rest. But somehow they do not seem to hear this. They immediately take up their own conversation about places I must visit. They agree that Clem will take me tomorrow, first thing in the morning, to a place he has loved since his boyhood, called, for reasons they now elaborate, Mummy’s beach. I ask Nicole where she is from. She says Chicago, with what is so clearly a German o that I’m taken aback. I just say, Really. She says, Before that Minneapolis. I have now firmly decided that by tomorrow I shall be gone from Ireland. As I wonder exactly what I am going to do about this, the phone rings. Nicole goes into another room to answer it, comes back, says to Clem, that was Judy, from London; and to me, she was going to come this weekend. Judy loves Ireland as much as you and Clem and I do, but with this latest business of the IRA, the silly girl’s afraid to come. Clem says, It’s just the newspapers; Kate knows all about the newspapers. I say, with some interest, But I haven’t read a newspaper in days. We hear footsteps in the hall. Clem calls out, Hello, William, Iris. And another couple come in, Americans. When Clem has introduced us, and brought their drinks, with ice, he also brings me another, very large, whiskey. This one, too, with ice. Nicole says to the couple, We were just discussing where Kate should go, on her Irish tour. She’s going with Clem tomorrow, to Mummy’s beach.

  And this matter of the commas. And this matter of the paragraphs. The true comma. The pause comma. The afterthought comma. The hesitation comma. The rhythm comma. The blues. And in this matter of the tenses and the question marks. In this matter of the scandal at the tennis courts. Did he know so little, then, of love that he did not know that the experience he has put me through, all those times, in all those years, is the one I’ve adumbrated, for a few hours, from time to time, just now?

  Nicole says, to the American couple, We were just discussing where Kate should go, on her Irish tour; she’s going with Clem tomorrow, to Mummy’s beach. I say, No, it turns out that I must go to London, for just one day. Coming back the same night, or maybe the following morning, and I’m afraid tomorrow will have to be the day. I am now trying to establish with these people my absolute intention not just to leave, but to return, within hours, to Ireland; so I stress it. I want there to be no question, or at least less question, of my attempting to flee the jurisdiction, if I’m caught, the word caught, and my problem, are becoming definite to me, along the way. Clem and Nicole give a little pantomime of despairing fondness, and then become distinctly bullying. I must postpone my trip to London until the last day of my stay in Ireland; under no circumstances can I go as soon as tomorrow. But by this time it has turned out that William, before retiring from his American professorship of physiology, had worked as a consultant to the United Nations. William now mentions that a UN official, a man much in the news, has arrived that day in Paris. As it happens, I know that official very well. I say, with surprising conviction, that the reason I must go tomorrow is that I have to interview him. Since the man in question has considerable chic and power, Clem somehow overlooks the question of why I must go to London to interview an official who has just arrived in Paris. I am not too much worried by this apparent inconsequence. We have all had at least three drinks by now, and as we walk to the dining room, Clem takes my arm. As soon as you get back, then, he says, the day after tomorrow, you and I will go to Mummy’s beach. The ambassador has told us everything about you. Nicole and I, you know, own some property in common. Mummy’s beach, actually. And when he wrote to us, the ambassador said, Kate will know just the sort of people to buy the property. People who would fit in, he says, squeezing my arm. You know, des gens convenables. I think, Good heavens, can I have heard him right? I say, Oh yes, what an interesting idea.

  We sit down at the dinner table, Nicole, William, Iris, Clem, and I. William is the first to get distinctly voluble and drunk. A meal, it is clear, has been laid on at considerable expense: smoked salmon, Russian vodka, very good wine, mutton, a wide variety of vegetables. There may be a cook, but it seems there is no other staff. We serve ourselves from the sideboard. The conversation turns somehow to Irish politics, nothing to do with what might come to mind, in the rest of the world, in connection with Irish politics, but rather this: the effect the European Economic Community has had on the natural la
ziness of the Irish working man. Every time I take a sip of wine, Nicole looks meaningfully at Clem, and at my wine glass, and he refills it. They seem to have no worry whether I can safely drive at all, let alone find my way home, home, in the dark, having drunk as much as this. Membership in the European Economic Community, they have all agreed, has totally undermined what vestige there was of a will to work among the Irish poor. But Iris, now, is clearly lit, on the Stolichnaya; she embarks upon a complicated story about a bearded young man, who had come, with two assistants, to do some work at her place, the cottage in which she and William have lived since William retired. The bearded young man was always late; repairs were much delayed. One day, when Iris asked him why, he said that he and his crew also had three other jobs. And the worst of it, she adds, is that on Thursdays he could never come; because that was the day he had to go and collect his check. He was on the dole. A silence. I call that point, set, and match, she says. A reminiscence from William about life as a physiologist in Uganda. From Nicole, some thoughts about the vicissitudes of country life. Strangely brutal, her anecdotes are, considering that her declared theme is the peacefulness of this place, the country, how she could never return to city life back home in Chicago. Meanwhile, she tells about the day when she looked away for one minute, and the gander pecked all his progeny to death. About the cow, which she had noticed was becoming weak, too weak perhaps to survive another winter. How she, Nicole, had put a halter on the cow, and walked it to the butcher. About the ill luck which caused the cow to drop dead right on the butchers doorstep. And about the technicality, the pedantry, the obtuseness that led the butcher to maintain that he could not sell meat from a cow that had arrived already dead. Nicole had twisted its tail. She swore that the animal flinched. But the butcher denied he had seen it move, and refused to slaughter it. Nicole giggles, and sighs again over the expense of such a cow. She tells of the time the sheep were poisoned; of the time her son, grown now but still a baby then, was bitten by a dog no one could find. She speaks of the pain of rabies shots. From time to time, with ever greater insistence, there recurs as well, between Clem and Nicole, a kind of multi-national name-dropping duet, and then a return to the subject of property in this idyllic part of Ireland. And Mummy’s beach. Iris and William, very tipsy but apparently prepared, exclaim and agree, whenever either of our hosts looks in their direction. But then, Nicole says, When I was a child, and Papa, of course, was a conductor. William, from the depths of his cups, says, helpfully, Orchestral? And Nicole, annoyed, perhaps, at the interruption, says, U-Boat. There is a pause. She says, more improbably still, In those days, everyone’s Papa was. Back home in Chicago? I wonder, or Minneapolis?

  After dinner, the men and the women separate briefly, to different bedrooms, the men downstairs, the women upstairs, the two places, apparently, where the bathrooms are. It is bitter cold in the upstairs bedroom, and there is something in its shabbiness, and perhaps in the fact that the windows are lined against drafts by sopping towels, which suggests a need, after all, of money in this house. And as Nicole, having shown us to the bathroom, goes downstairs, Iris suddenly turns to me and says, very softly and with real kindness, If for some reason, when you come back from London, you’d feel more comfortable staying with us, I mean with William and me, well, it’s only a small cottage, compared to the castle, or to this house, but we have an extra bedroom. I thank her. For some reason, we have been talking almost in a whisper. Nicole returns. We fall silent, and go downstairs. In the hall, outside the drawing room, conversation is desultory. Though Iris and William have also been saying goodbye, and putting on their coats, I am in fact the first to leave. They watch from the doorway, as I turn the car around in yet another narrow driveway. There is heavy rain, which turns to snow. By some miracle, I find my way back to the intersection with the main road. As I turn into it, the snow stops, the night is clear. I am worried that I will not find the Cihrbradàn turnoff, so I watch the road for any sign. There are no other cars at all. After several miles, however, there is just one car, coming toward me. We are on the straightaway, and the distance between us is at first considerable; but soon we are close, and no matter how far I pull over to the right, halfway up finally on the embankment, we seem nearer to collision. When we brake, both incredulous, to a halt, virtually headlight to headlight, I see that the man at the wheel of the other car is a priest. Until now, I had been proceeding, in the face of this inexplicable difficulty, almost entirely by instinct. As, of course, had he. And it is only when we brake to our unlikely halt, on the outer edge of a road, just before midnight, that it occurs to me in what way I have been wrong. I make gestures of apology, the priest nods, we back up, and I move to the correct side of the road. I arrive, without further incident, at the castle and my room.

  I finish packing, take my things downstairs. As I pass the kitchen, there occurs to me the question of the tips. That is, though I have spent the entire evening trying to establish my intention to return from London before the car’s lease has even expired, there is now more than a strong possibility that, if I get safely out of Ireland, I shall not be coming back. Leaving tips, of course, implies that the departure is, in some sense, final. If you really intended to come back within a day, they would say, if they caught me, on the road or at the airport, then you would not have left these tips. But I cannot somehow, whatever our relations may have been, bring myself to go away without leaving something for the staff. So I use the ambassador’s typewriter again, to type out envelopes to Kathleen, Paddy, and Celia. And in Celia’s envelope I enclose a note, which says: “I have gone overnight,” here for some reason I write, “To Limerick,” and I add, “Back Friday, or will call.” In my room, I again leave the curtains open, in order to wake up at first light. It is now after midnight. I don’t want to take a pill, lest I oversleep. And I cannot sleep. I read a little Samuel Pepys, rather like it. Then I rest. Wanting to leave time to get lost on the way to Dublin, yet not wanting to leave at a suspicious hour, I get up at three a.m., go downstairs, reconsider my note to Celia, cross out “Limerick,” write in “London,” cross out “London,” write in “Away.” I drink some milk, feel rather sick from the thickness and richness of it; make some coffee, drink that with warm milk, feel marginally better. I get the Irish whiskey from the drawing room, put it in the pantry safe, lock the safe, think it might be insulting to put the key on the kitchen table beside the envelopes, leave the key on the counter beside the safe. I go upstairs one last time, look at my room, see pail, and towel, and Evian bottle, of course, still on the hallway rug. Downstairs, I reconsider one final time the matter of the envelopes, decide I simply must leave them, anyway estimate that they won’t be found before nine-thirty, by which time I hope to have checked in for my flight. I decide not to turn on the outside or entry light, to avoid waking Paddy, in his cottage. I walk with my suitcase and my handbag across the drive. As I lean into the car to put my suitcase in the back, the car key drops out of my hand. I stand, in pitch dark now, and in heavy rain. I begin to search, the driveway, the gravel circle, the adjoining grass, the car. I kneel to look underneath the car, and my corduroy slacks are soaked. I return to the house, turn on, after all, the entry light; but the key dropped on the far side, in the dark shadow of the car. Finally, I find the key, somewhere inside the car itself, calm down, walk back to the doorway, turn off the entry light, roar off. No light at the gateway cottage, no light anywhere, no cars on the road, either, it seems. So I am not being followed. At the airports, of course, there may be someone. Still, though there’s sometimes rain, sometimes clouds, sometimes a clear black sky and that sickle moon, I am on my way.

  Quanta, Amy said, on the train, in that blizzard, in answer to my question. Not here, Diana said, to her lasting regret, to her own daughter, who approached her, crying, in front of all those people.