“What,” Chris said, “was there on the ceiling?” She said, “clouds. And on the clouds ladies sitting. The ladies had no clothes on. They were smoking cigars.”
He could not hear the song in her throat. How could he? Her little monologue stabbed home. She liked to torture him with laughing. He was laughing, as a moth laughs. It was his own description of his laughter. No one could better it. He laughed silently, shaking shoulders. He had said, “I hate moths. I laugh like a moth laughs.” He did not like moths. He loved butterflies, dragon-flies. He had said, “moths are creepy things. When I was a small child, one flew in at our window, in the country, and beat on my face.” A small little boy in a big room had been bruised by the beat of moth wings; fantasy, fantastic imagery. The moth, in its proportion, became a sort of Arabian Nights roc-moth, a creature of imagination; who but Chris had ever said, “I don’t like moths?” He laughed, as such a moth laughs, hunching shoulders that would do for wide wings. He had wide wings, little curls at the forehead. She said, “no. Go to the Chelsea ball as a moth. Don’t paint on a Basque gipsy moustache. Paint on a moustache on your forehead.” He should paint on a wiry little stick-up sort of feeler thing or wire it. He should go to a ball as a moth. It was all fancy dress. “What shall I go as?”
He could not hear the song in her throat. How could he? How could he hear the e, the d, the c that slid in and the chord that was wrung from several different bright strings. He could not hear the song in her throat. “O, Chris, what do you think,” she suddenly remembered, “this morning—? I forgot to tell you.” A pebble had been dropped, “aloe” was a pebble or, appositely, a straw floating. “Aloe” remembered from nowhere, a word forgotten, stirred memory-in-forgetting. The surface of a pool had been broken, ripple set up ripple. She said, “Mira-Mare.” He said, “what, Alexis?” He called her Alexis sometimes, they didn’t know why exactly. “What Alex?” “You know, I told you there was a brand-new building, right out of a band box, at the top of some stairs that I was too tired to go up?” “One day—” “Yes, one day, I told you. It was just after we came. Then this morning, I saw the place, looking newer than ever and I climbed up. A sort of janitor person was there. I told him we’d come back to-morrow before bathing, about ten—but I don’t know.” He listened. She went on, “and what do you think its name is? It’s called Mira-Mare; Mira, the Wonderful, and Mare, the Sea, obviously.” He said, “Mira, the Wonderful, Mare, the Sea, obviously. You go as a seal, to that dance.”
III.
Paddy said, the French choose places like this. Who wouldn’t? She had meant to see Paddy. There were only seven days; six and a half, if you counted the first morning wasted. The first morning had not been altogether wasted. Christian said, “do you want to sleep?” She had said, “no.” She had pulled this strap, that strap, fallen into a bath, chosen the coolest thing she had. She met Chris in the hotel lounge, he in his most summer grey. She wore the flowered chiffon that was, Chris had said, “autumnal.” The chiffon was tea-colour, blobbed with indefinite rose-pattern. Here, the tea-coloured rose-pattern did not seem autumnal. It matched the tobacco under-side of great leaves that fell one, two, three, slowly so that you could count them. Before the Café de Paris, they were swept up; under the tree at the turn to the sea road, they lay crumpled; crushed under her heels, they gave up scent of summer, were not autumnal. Christian said that they were not magnolia.
Now the cases were all packed, just the things for the morning, the coolest she had, her bath things that would stuff in the top. She had switched off the middle light; the bed-lamp, by her side, cast a superior circle. The overhead lamps were garish but she hadn’t minded. They had blue shades that served rather to concentrate than to disperse the overhead crude yellow. The French, Paddy said, swarmed down here from Brittany. All those sensitive blue eyes in pale yet weathered faces, she judged, were Bretons. Paddy had told her in London, there were many French here. Monte Carlo.
She might have gone to see Patricia, but why? Paddy had an apartment in the rue or boulevard de something. She rented it in the season, lived here in the summer to economize, but Alex couldn’t find it. She didn’t try, superlatively hard, to find it. She had seen Paddy, in one of the fiacres, with the cream-coloured awning and the tassels, sunburnt, with teeth. Paddy was wearing a sort of chintz hat, was chattering to a friend, probably hadn’t seen her. What could she say anyhow, to Paddy, to excuse her casualness? What could she say to Paddy? Later she might say, “I have taken an apartment.” She might say, “we have taken an apartment, come to see us.”
Mira-Mare. She said Mira-Mare. It was a charm. It held her up, supported her, so that she could sit erect, her feet stretched sideways, out from the bed, wrapped round in the cool sheet. She wanted to see Christian, just to say good-night. She had said, “if the door’s open, just pop in to let me know, you are back.” At the hotel door, downstairs, she had insisted, “it’s only ten. I must pack anyway. Do your duty by the town, as I did this afternoon with the casino; go see something, maybe that outdoor movie.” He had held the bamboo and bead curtain for her, waited. “O do go, do go, Christian. Someone must see the fireworks. If I pack to-night, I am quite free to-morrow.” There had been occasional mild explosions and flickering of blue light. But now the show, whatever it was, was over. The traffic, last night, had made her think of the “battle of the taxis.” Last night, she lay thinking, listening to the hoot, the steady rumble, like Piccadilly traffic. The 14th of July, of course, every one would be out. Last night she had been frightened, said, “Italy, France.” She was swept into a circle of terror, “France, Italy.” She loved France— Italy and Monaco, a beauty patch, to be swept under. No, no, no her heart protested. Now there was shrill continual trembling, like (Christian said) “wind in telegraph wires.” They were, she was certain, tree-toads; he called them courtilliéres. He said, “in the Cevannes, they called them courtilliéres.” She said, “I’m sure they’re tree-toads.” The shrill persistent song of the far insects thrilled in her, like her own blood. The cry beat in her, was her. She was beating with it, was it, wrapped in the cool sheet.
A clock far, far, far, far, struck one. It dropped one into a pool of being. Her feet, stark straight across the narrow bed, stuck out in the mummy wrappings of the cool sheet. One. Far, far, far one sounded. It fell like a meteor. One came from another world, the human element was alien. She had been numbed, hypnotised by the high wind in telegraph wires of the courtilliéres, that Chris said were not tree-toads. Spiked sound, spiked up, defined yet motivated, like sea-tentacles under water. The wind in telegraph wires of the courtilliéres were spikey, yet moved in the fragrance of that element. The fragrance of the new-found element, in which their wings moved like antennae under water, was more familiar to her than this bell sound. One dropped like a meteor, from another planet.
One broke the charm, yet still was part of that charm. One recalled space, time, broke like a careless hand through paper scenery. One swept away the mythopoeic sense of her, pulled it aside like cheap mosquito netting. One, sounding, sounded across (now she noticed) belated trail of feet, a group, whose whispered Italian made a Longhi of the street, outside the window. Yesterday, leaning out, she had said to Christian, “it’s not a street, it’s not an alley, it’s a calle.” Longhi was outside and moonlight, the courtilliéres were a mosquito netting, sound and shape were punctured, here and there, separated by that gauze curtain. One was a hand lifted to drop, raised to lift that curtain. Feet shuffled. All the motor cars, in all the world, had passed here last night. Last night, there was a trail, like the battle of the taxis.
The shrill-shrill-shrill (wind in telegraph wires) of the courtilliéres had set her heart beating elsewhere. Her mythopoeic heart, that she had almost forgotten, had struck like a gong within her. Even that first morning, as she had dragged out her silliest things to belie it, it chattered in and against that gong. She had chattered interminably about the few belated hotel diners and mouthed epigrams across at Christian, at the expe
nse of the Americans-off-boats who trailed in, never less than fifty. She had decided at dinner, that the French pseudo-child, with the chiffon train and long bob brushing glaringly unburnt, immature bare shoulders was sheer Pinero 1930 and that it was she who had attuned sensitive ears to catch the very intonation of the colonel as, three tables down, he told the Carnival Queen’s first understudy, about Percy. It was she who had repeated all the Percy jargon, so that now, already in two days, Percy was a feature in their lives, an entity as precise, as embodied as the boy with the soot-lashes or their glorified favourite perched, with or without “winged sandals,” in platinum grey waist band, on the “last” rock. It was she who had discovered, if you take five Italian words and pronounce them French, you are talking Monagesque; a new language.
In less than a week, their lives had shaped to two lives, their separate abstract mythopoeic life and the personal concrete hotel life. In the almost empty dining room, there was flutter of paper vines and paper roses, the steady subdued buzz of electric fans and the shuffle of waiters, or the dining room was crowded suddenly with never less than fifty Americans-off-boats, who seemed to be stuffed, cheap cotton imitations, into their perfect doll-house. Their house was empty; long glacial hallways were cool with slats of closed shutters, to strike off radiant gold bars. The rooms, for the most part, were empty, half shuttered, with wide doors. The servants, sitting chattering in empty rooms, rose, half guilty, as they passed, down the interminable hallway. It was a large doll-house with tiny rooms, half empty, then stuffed with crude imitation toy-dolls, spilled out, by the cheap gross. “Of course,” she said to Christian, unexpectedly on the defensive, “you can’t judge Americans by these, any more than you could English people, if Liverpool and Manchester travelled.” A little barb stung out, as she bent to peel her ripe fig and Christian answered, “true. But there aren’t so many of them. Manchester and Liverpool might travel, by the handful, but never by the million.” It was the boy across, upset him. “Why,” he had asked Alex, “do American boys always look fat and milk-fed?” She had flared (why?), “they don’t, Christian. If Liverpool and Manchester travelled” et cetera.
Such were the empty straws flung down to show the heaving of the wave beneath them.
Such and such an empty straw, they flung down to show the heaving of the wave beneath them. Percy would do for a long time. If they stayed here a month, Percy would do all that time. Percy would come up, he was a new language. “Now,” said the Colonel, “it’s this way, I say ‘Percy do not,’ I shake a finger at him I say, ‘no, no.’ Percy felt in my pockets for the cigars. I said ‘no, no.’” The carnival queen (it was the real one that time) said without enthusiasm, “yes they are so uncanny,” but Percy’s father, the colonel, went on (he must have felt the sympathy in Alex’s chiffon back), “I said ‘no, no’ but Percy said ‘urrugh—urrugh— r’m, r’m, r’m, uurgh.’ But I said, ‘you can’t Percy, you’ve had one to-day already,’ but Percy just insisted ‘r’m, r’m, r’m, ooorgh.’” The language of Percy was now a common inheritance, they jabbered it when they saw the Colonel or any sort of Colonel, in the distance. But they had yet to make out what Percy was doing that day when the colonel was heard, across finger bowls and peaches, “and then Percy jumped right into the polar bear’s cave.”
Bright flame shot up, slashed hole in casual memory. They had watched a forest fire on the hills, the flame against evening, fluttered like yellow cheese-cloth. Then flame wavered, fragile as paper, straight upward, incense. There was heady visual memory of clustered rock and unexplored cove and a garden that was built out on a separate island with a thin breakwater of native stone to join it. There was a villa, whose roof was one gigantic sundial, there was a villa whose pots were enamelled bright blue and bunches of cultivated thistles oddly fumed lavender thistle smoke up into a sky that was almost white from shining radiance. There were the awnings, Chris called, “snails,” and that one house, built blank square with just one huge green snail awning, clinging to its sunside. There were the outsides of villas whose insides could be exactly gauged by their exquisite proportion and there were the smouldering terra-cotta villas whose taste was so atrocious that Christian called them “restful.” “I would like,” he said, “to have one of the worst of those Moorish villas and one cactus in the front yard.” There were steps that led skyward that were hardly distinguishable from irregular aged walls, except that there were no iron-red spikes of wild vervain, growing from the graduated irregularity of their stones. There were the inevitable geraniums, only a little burnt about the bases, and the terracotta was shown to be as cool as glazed bath-room tiles by the rabid gash of hollyhock shaped hybiscus to show what red could be. There were cool immaculate clusters of single white oleander, as delicate as orange blossom and the willow-like branches of other oleander that was now over. There were the turned-up hummocks of raw earth, in the Casino garden, that Chris said were one bank of lilies in the spring and over and through it all like darts puncturing a clear canvas (those darts of ecstasy to ruin a still picture) were the shrill whirl and whirl and sweep and swoop of swallows. There were swallows to shrill continually, early morning, late evening before the tireless monotonous drone of those musical wind-swept telegraph wires (courtilliéres) dragged one to sea-bottom. There were swallows to drag one out of sleep, tireless dart on dart, blue-blue to show blue, what blue should be.
“O hello, sleeping?” “No, I’ve been sitting here. Don’t switch on that light. I turned the little one off, just as it struck one. Here—wait— I’ll find it.” He had pushed back the screen, then, carefully replaced it. He stood for one moment in the terrific glare of the blue bulbs of the ceiling lights, which he immediately switched off. The meretricious, subtle little bed-light threw its little circle on the floor, on the sheet. He came toward her, his face bent toward her, she clutched the smooth stuff of his summer grey cloth, he sat down, he said, “I did go to the out-of-doors movie. It was a scream.” She said, “what was it?” He said, “why something so old as the hills that even I had never heard of it. French.” “Funny?” “In that way, yes. It was really rather queer, the moon was and that sheet of light across heads in a garden and a fountain, off stage, somewhere. They took up too much time in the interval, with a sort of patriotic concert and some speeches. That’s why I’m so late.”
She let her fingers go. She had been waiting for this but she could never tell him. Her fingers, clutching the smooth cloth to which, this evening she had wanted to grow, coral to grey rock, would belie the thing within her. Within her, was the steady flame that swept up like that forest fire, but subtleized, spread out, flung out, and over and under, so that she was no more participant of that flame than the fragrance of the flower is of its heady summer-pollen. She was the fragrance of the flower, the quivering in the air that set those wire things ringing, she was the shrill upward sweep of blue that spoiled a quiet canvas and she was the picture, created in her mind, as well as the outer picture. There were tags for this, Tao, Greek, Egyptian. She had no finger to put on that tag. There was a tag. “Do you remember once you turned out my pocket-book, in the car going to— to Sion—and I said, ‘there’s nothing but some bills’ and you read something I had scratched down on an old envelope?” His hand had closed over the hand that she had let drop. His shoulder, moving a little, hunching or shaking a little, was the sort of odd way he had of loving, no more than a wing moving. The touch of that exaggerated shoulder against her sleeping jacket, was the bone and sinew of a wing, was the raw structure of a thing that was moving, whirling, that was spread out to spoil the world about her. The raw bone was the merest skeleton, their love was the merest frame-work. He said, (he never listened to what she said), “I saw Percy’s father and the duchess and the other marchese and those two boys.” She said, as if this was all that there ever was between them, “did the smaller one still wear his bandages for sun-burn?” and half remembered that tag, the moth having seen the light . . . “I remember that tag.”
Wor
ds, repetitions, framing of words means bars down. The bars would fall, there would be swoop of dangerous thought, to pass dangerously, like the train, before their bathing beach, which she had not yet seen pass. “Is there time to bathe tomorrow?” He said, “why not?” She said, “almost the loveliest tree (or should I say the maddest?) is that one just as you cross the track, that looks sort of—sort of crippled and has that blue flame about it.” He said, “I don’t yet think those blue things are morning-glories.” She said, “which is your favourite tree?” He said, “I think I like that one cactus that grows at the Casino gate. The one with the triangular rosettes that might be fresh buds.” She said, “sub-conscious.” “Sub-aqueous,” he said, remembering her word. She said, “you remember that bit of paper, in my pocket-book, with the Tao tag (I remember it now) you turned out, on the way to Sion? The moth having seen the light—” He said, “never returns to the darkness.”
Copyright © 1996 by Perdita Schaffner
Introduction copyright © 1996 by Robert Spoo
All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, or television review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.
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