Enchanted Night

by Steven Millhauser

  “An adventure,” she says laughing.

  “I didn’t mean to ruin your feet.”

  “I don’t know why I put on these things. They were just there, by the door.”

  At the top he looks around quickly at the tree roots and dead leaves and pine needles. On the other side of the slope he can see a moonlit vacant lot littered with old tires among patches of goldenrod. The lot peters out at the back of a gas station. Haverstraw takes off his nylon windbreaker and lays it on the ground, before a tree trunk, and with a little bow he sweeps out his arm.

  “Well, I don’t see why not,” Mrs. Kasco says, and sits down with her back against the trunk, facing the brick apartments.

  “Not a bad view, really,” Haverstraw says as he hands her the glass of wine. He sits down on the ground beside her and draws up his long legs, slightly spread. He embraces his knees with his arms, grasping his left wrist in his right hand.

  “Care for a nightcap?” Mrs. Kasco says. She holds out the glass of wine.

  “No. Sure, why not.”

  Haverstraw takes a drink and hands back the glass. A car passes on the street below them.

  “A few nights ago,” Haverstraw says, “I was driving on the thruway, around two in the morning, just driving along you understand, and a car comes up on my right, low-slung, skirts, a mean-looking hunk of tin. Four guys in it, tough, young, out of the project. I remember hoping they wouldn’t kill me, but they weren’t even looking my way. But what struck me was what they’d painted on the side of the car. In big letters, very neat: CON AMOR DE LA MUERTE.

  “You shouldn’t drive around up there at night like that.”

  “But I mean, think of painting those words on the side of your car. Talk about street poetry. Poets of death. I felt like bowing my head out of sheer respect. Bowing my head.”

  “Here’s a piece of advice from a wise old woman. Never bow your head when you’re driving on the thruway at two in the morning. Here’s another piece of advice. Never bow your head at all.”

  Haverstraw looks out at the empty street with its patch of shine from the streetlamp, at the dark apartments with bare bulbs over the front doors, at the dark blue sky faintly orange at the bottom from a strip of diners and gas stations a few blocks away.

  “It’s good out here,” he says. “I can breathe now.”

  “The forest primeval, or what the corporations have left us of it. This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks. I had to memorize fifty lines of that thing in the eighth grade. But I’ll tell you what. I could do without that smell.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s from the brakelining plant over on South Broad.”

  “Well, I don’t care. I don’t ask for much. Even Sherwood Forest probably had beer cans all over the place. Miller. Bud. Think of Friar Tuck. All those six-packs.”

  “Look up there. Look. See it?”

  Through a tangle of black leaves and branches, high overhead, Haverstraw sees the bright white moon. It’s so bright he has to look away.

  “Isn’t it lovely,” Mrs. Kasco says.

  “To me it looks like a flashy ad. An ad for eternity. Buy one, get one free.”

  “I hate that. I goddam hate it when you do that.”

  “Oh, hell. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  “Things will work out,” Mrs. Kasco says, resting her fingers lightly on his forearm.

  Wearily Haverstraw bows his head onto his raised knees.

  The White Flower

  In moonlit attics filled with cast-off things, the dolls are moving about. The cloth doll with yellow yarn hair picks up a marble and puts it in her apron pocket, the drummer boy walks back and forth through a sliver of moonlight that turns the arm of his jacket a brilliant blue, the one-eyed cuddly bear walks around an old toybox into a shadowy place where he sees a pair of old boxing gloves, an upside-down sled with rusty runners, a towering chest of drawers. As he rounds a corner of the chest of drawers, he sees a white, billowy arm holding out a white flower. The one-eyed cuddly bear stops uncertainly. He sees it is the arm of Pierrot, in his loose white tunic with the billowy sleeves. Pierrot is kneeling and holding out the flower to Columbine, who already is walking away with a pert toss of her head. The one-eyed cuddly bear watches as the flower drops to the floor without a sound. His one eye is round with wonder. The thin white hand, at the end of the low-hanging sleeve, remains outstretched.

  Danny Alone

  Danny turns from the window and walks over to the leather couch on which Smitty is lying with the glass ashtray on his stomach. The ashtray rises and falls gently as he breathes. Behind the couch Danny rests one hand lightly on the couchback.

  “I’m going.”

  “The hell you are,” Blake says.

  “Let him go,” Smitty says.

  “What’s wrong,” Blake says.

  “Nothing. I need to walk.”

  “He needs to fucking walk,” Blake says.

  “Don’t start anything,” Smitty says. “Just don’t start anything.”

  “I’m not starting anything. Danny wants to walk, he can walk. It’s a free fucking country.”

  “Right.”

  “Only I’m thinking maybe Danny doesn’t like pussy. You like pussy, Danny?”

  “I said don’t start anything,” Smitty says, sitting up. The ashtray falls to the rug.

  “I’m not starting anything.”

  “Careful when you leave, Danny. We don’t want trouble.”

  “If anybody sees you,” Blake says, outraged.

  Down the stairs, through the door, across the bright-lit parking lot into the shadows of the trees. Danny moves between the row of trees and a few parked cars to the side street, turns right and passes the front of the library, crosses Main Street and heads for home. He likes Smitty, who admires him and protects him, but Blake is always flaring up, jealous, furious, waiting to strike a blow. It’s hard for Danny to remember how he fell in with Smitty; he’s definitely out of his element. Suddenly he’s stealing keys from the drawer in the library, breaking in. Proving something. Showoff. Big-shot. Look, Ma, no hands. He isn’t even sure what Smitty sees in him. Sometimes it makes him uneasy, as if he’s got something Smitty wants: good grades, friendships with smart girls, a serious witty father and laughing smart mother. Smitty once came over after school and talked for an hour with his mother, very serious, his language careful, formal, his face creased with thought. Smitty has brains, but he always has to put on a little act: tough guy act, good guy act, cool act. Sometimes Danny is bored by Smitty, deeply bored, but he doesn’t want to think about that now. He is sixteen years old and has never kissed a girl, never touched a girl—it drives him crazy and he doesn’t know what to do about it. If any girl sat next to him on a couch and let him touch her body he knows exactly what he would feel: a gratitude so deep that it would be deeper than love. The night is warm, with a little ripple of coolness in it. He passes over the bridge above the railroad tracks and looks down at the tracks stretching away toward New York and at the black crisscross structures across the tracks; he wonders what they’re called. He’s got to get that key back. He walks on, past the railroad parking lot, past the dark high school, under the thruway overpass, mostly trucks at this hour. Maybe he’ll chuck college and take to the highways, a truck driver with an elbow out the window, crossing the country at night, silent and alone. The sudden brightness of all-night diners, the steaming coffee in thick white cups as heavy as rocks. Diana Santangelo laughs at his jokes and sometimes touches him on the forearm when she laughs. When she laughs her shoulders shake, her silky blouse shakes, her hair shakes, and she hugs her books so tightly to her chest that they seem to be pressing painfully into her breasts. He tries to imagine what it would be like to have breasts: big jiggly shaky things stuck up there for everyone to see, big bobbly bouncers. Jumpy jouncy jigglers. Better to be a guy, stuff it out of sight. Girls in skirts and blouses, girls in summer dresses. To be in the cab of an eighteen-whee
ler, alone, on the highways of the night.

  Tired now: great peaceful waves of it, shuddering up his arms.

  Skintight

  The man with shiny black hair stands in shadow at the back of the high school and watches the girl in skintight jeans walk across the empty bright parking lot. There is a lost look about her, the look of a waif, a suburban gamine. Perhaps she’s in need of a friend. I’ll be your friend if you’ll be my friend. It is not good for a girl in skintight jeans to walk the streets alone at night: no no no no: someone should inform her mother. Her hair swings like a horsetail at the small of her back, switch switch above her tight butt. Tight round little butt divided by a visible line into two butterballs. How exactly do you get into pants like that? Well I just. He has never been particularly interested in the upper regions of girls. When she turns the corner of the building, he waits for a few moments before stepping into the unpleasant light.

  Mannequin Mischief

  The mannequin sees the man at the window, standing with his eyes closed. His lips and hands are pressed against the glass. She has seen this one before, looking up at her with his green, admiring eyes. Late at night the men sometimes gesture coarsely at her, try to attract her attention; once a man in a dark suit gravely bowed. It is all part of being a mannequin, a high instance of the art of appearance. The man at the window has always been respectful, an admirer, some sort of humble workman, perhaps. In the moonlight the mannequin feels her shoulders trembling. Her eyelids are moving, her fingers are quivering with life. She feels an inward streaming, and with a sense of fearful joy she turns her head slowly on her neck. At the window the man is opening his heavy-lidded eyes. The eyes, green as leaves under streetlamps, grow wider. The mouth begins to open. Now the man is moving backward, holding up both hands as if he is still pressing his palms against the glass. She feels the weight of her leg, turns her foot on her ankle. The man has struck his back against a telephone pole. The blow appears to startle him; his hands grope the air, then he is hurrying away, looking over his shoulder.

  The mannequin, pleased by the sign of her power, begins walking up and down in the window space, stretching her long, slender legs, swinging her elegant arms. Now and then she stops to touch the cool glass, to feel a blue silk necktie or a folded shirt. When she turns she sees the moon-striped store behind her. In a moment she has stepped down from the window. She passes along an aisle lined with dresses and, holding out both arms, feels the dresses moving against her fingertips as the hangers jangle on the racks. The world is full of things to touch. She walks along a jewelry counter, running her fingers along the glass, moves among rich-smelling leather pocketbooks, silky rustling slips. On one counter a pair of moonlit legs, ending at the waist, stands in shimmering black pantyhose. On the counter across from it sits a faceless white head. The temptation is irresistible. The mannequin picks up the head, which is surprisingly light, crosses the aisle, and sets the head on the flat, slanted top of the legs. She stands back to admire her work. Slowly the head begins to slide, suddenly it falls, strikes the glass counter, drops to the floor, goes rolling bumpily away through stripes of moon and shadow. The mannequin is restless. There is nothing for her here. From a clattering rack she removes a lavender silk scarf and ties it around the calf of a solitary leg standing on a counter, bent at the knee. Impatiently she makes her way to the back of the store, where it is dark and windowless. Beside the shadowy shelves of boots and shoes she can make out a door. The door is heavy and opens with a sound of scraping metal. Cool night air moves against her face. Above the railroad embankment a black crisscross tower and moon-glittering black wires are sharp-etched against the blue-black sky.

  Words Heard Under the Spruces

  “Look! Up there! There. See it?”

  “There?”

  “No, not there: there.”

  “Oh, you mean …”

  “Yes! Yes! Isn’t it …”

  “It’s really very …”

  “Hello there, moon!”

  Laura in the Thicket

  The moon has led Laura to a dense thicket in the rolling land between the back of the junior high school and the back of Denner’s Body Shop. In the trees it’s dark, with patches of moonlight. It reminds her of summer afternoons at Lake Quinnetuck, the sunspots on the pine needles, the smell of green. Laura feels soothed and excited in the trees, hidden and exposed. She feels the moon rippling all cobwebby across her arms and legs as she walks crackling through the dry needles. Her body feels feverish and cool. Moon, moon, do something. Save me. After a while she comes to a little clearing, a secret place: moon-blue sky above, moon-shade below, a patch of moonlight rippling along tree roots into deep shade.

  In the small secret place, tree-walled, a little room among the trees, Laura steps into the patch of brightness and lifts her face to the moon. The moon is so bright she has to close her eyes. She stands with her face turned up, the way she’s seen people in Indian summer, leaves yellowing on the trees, stand with their eyes closed and their bright faces turned to the sun. Her sun is the moon, feverish-cool. Ice-flames ride down her arms. She is a daughter of the moon. Touch me. Touch.

  Chorus of Night Voices

  Hail, goddess, night wanderer, sun-spurner. Hail, bright-sandaled one: watcher and dreamer, nighteye, downstreamer. You who soothe away day-sorrow, you friend of the outcast heart: touch, touch me now, burn me with brightness, pierce me with white arrows, till I am clean and clear as you, huntress and healer, all-revealer, comforter and destroyer.

  Haverstraw Takes His Leave

  Under the glare of the bare bulb over the door, Haverstraw hands Mrs. Kasco the wineglass.

  “Coming in?” she asks, narrowing one eye against the smoke from the cigarette in her mouth. She removes the cigarette and lifts the back of a hand partway toward her mouth as she begins to yawn.

  Haverstraw zips his windbreaker up to his throat, thrusts his hands in his pockets.

  “It’s getting on toward three,” he says.

  “Oh, three. I can manage.”

  “Well, I’m bad company now. I need to walk. Shake off this mood.”

  “You’re all right?”

  “I’ll shake it off. You sleep now.”

  “Yes. Sleep. Listen. You hear them?”

  “The grasshoppers?”

  “Is that what they are?”

  “Crickets, maybe. Cicadas. Who knows?”

  “I’ve heard that sound my whole life. Even in Louisiana. Listen.”

  Song of the Field Insects

  By and by

  Chk-a-chk mmmm

  O by and by

  Chk-a-chk mmmm

  How to Live

  “The thing is,” Haverstraw says, “you never see them. They’re always there, but you never see them.”

  “I used to sit up late with my father on the big screened porch in back. Just the two of us, Daddy and me. He’d wear a suit and a white hat. Listen, he’d say. You hear that? That’s the sound of the end of everything.”

  “Nice man.”

  “You remember that, he’d say. That will teach you how to live.”

  “And did it?”

  “Hell no. But I always listen for it.”

  “I think they’re crickets, probably. Some of them, anyway.”

  The Cricket Bluegrass Band

  Live it up, live it up, live it up, live it up Live it up, live it up, live it up, live it up

  Good Night

  “Night now.”

  “Night.”

  Mrs. Kasco stands in the half-open doorway, holding her empty wineglass.

  “You’re all right?” she calls.

  “I’m all right, all right. Right as rain. Right as night.”

  She raises her glass in salute.

  “So: night.”

  “Night.”

  He raises an imaginary glass.

  “To the night!”

  “I’ll drink to that.”

  She drinks.

  “Night.”

&nb
sp; “Night.”

  Laura Invisible

  Laura stands in the moonlight, eyes shut tight, feeling the whiteness burn into her. The moon sword is plunging deep, burning away her restlessness, cleansing her, killing her. She is drowsy and alert, fist-tense and half-swooning. She knows what she wants to do. Without opening her eyes, in the bright secret place, she takes off her denim jacket and lies down on her back. She slips her T-shirt over her head, tugs off her jeans—no underpants—and lies naked in moonlight. Free me, moon. Free me. The pine needles tickle her tense buttocks, her shoulders, the backs of her legs. The air is cool on her stomach. She wants to be consumed by moonlight. She thinks: this is insane, if anyone finds out. She thinks: I don’t care I don’t care I don’t care. Then she lets go. Wrapped in light, invisible, she offers herself to the blazing moon.

  Danny in the Back Yard

  As he turns onto his street, Danny feels a weary restlessness. The street sign is missing from the top of the round metal pole. He lives on a no-name street in a nowhere town. The two-story frame houses sit looking at the steep thruway embankment like drugged-out ladies in an old-age home trying to remember what lies on the other side. He doesn’t want to climb the stairs to his hot room, doesn’t want to see the shirt on the back of the chair, the open window with its BB hole, the screen with a piece of Scotch tape over the rip. He knows the night view from his window too well: the solitary streetlight shining on nothing, the roof-high embankment with its dark trees, the trucks at the top rolling by, their headlights flickering through the spaces of the guardrail. No, better to walk around the front porch with the broken wicker loveseat, make your way along the rutted dirt driveway with its tufts of grass, and enter the back yard. Beside the porch steps lies the sloping cellar door, covered by a sheet of tin that glitters in the moonlight. A garbage can stands beside a hook hung with careless loops of hose. He’s got to get the key back. From a pulley attached to a post of the small back porch, a clothesline stretches to a corner of the garage. Two white towels hang from the rope and cast black parallelograms on the grass. It embarrasses Danny to see underwear hanging on the line, his mother’s slips and bras, his own white underpants. The kitchen window is dark, no one up at this late hour. Upstairs, in one of the windows of his parents’ bedroom, a fan hums. His moon-shadow is sharp and clear along the grass. He can see dandelions in the moonlight, their jagged-toothed leaves, clumps of clover. Suddenly he lies down on his back in the grass, between the clothesline and the towel-shadows. Big moon above, small town below. He’s underneath the moon. Night pins him down. He’d like to wash away this whole evening, this whole life. He can hear the trucks rumbling on the thruway, the hum of the window fan, soft shrill of crickets, scrape of car tires on a road. The moon is looking down at him. A desire comes: to reach out and embrace the moon, to press it against his chest. O lady moon, up there in the sky. Wearily he closes his eyes.