Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart

by Joyce Carol Oates

  It isn't clear from Claude St. Germain's mumbled, heavily accented speech whether he is an advanced student in the mechanical engineering program at the university or an undergraduate; perhaps he doesn't know his own status. He appears to be in his late twenties, has never lived in the North before, is frowning and distrustful of the politely smiling white girl when she says hello or tries to engage him in casual conversation in the vestibule of the rooming house where tenants get their mail or in the kitchen at the rear in which tenants have privileges. for weeks, St. Germain won't look her in the face.

  Then by degrees he turns friendlier, though his mood is never predictable. He's a big bodied man, very black, handsome, with outsized sculpted features like a Rodin bust cast in iron, thick nappy hair, a broad nose, an abrupt wildly ascending laugh that erupts without warning while his eyes remain unmoved.

  English is St. Germain's native language but he speaks it less fluently than most of the other foreign students, and even in one of his noisy ebullient moods he seems suspicious. fearful he's being laughed at behind his back. One day Graice overhears another tenant ask St. Germain how he is, and St. Germain says with a mocking laugh, Who is it wants to know, eh? You? You give a damn? Speck me to believe that. The sound of his feet on the stairs is hooflike and thunderous.

  Still, Graice is keenly aware of Claude St. Germain: listens for his voice, his explosive laughter; watches him, unseen, from her win dow; even follows him sometimes in the street for a block or two, when he doesn't see her. She feels a viselike sensation around her chest, a sensation intimate as sleep, watching him. When he isn't aware of her.

  When he's aware of her, she's likely to feel a stab of apprehension.

  Ah, but that walk of his, that rolling gait. that bobbing motion to his head: Graice watches as if memorizing. On the streets near campus the Jamaican walks now fast, now slow; now with an angry determination, now with an air of aimlessness, slightly hunched in his overcoat as if to minimize his height; making his way with unerring grace through clusters of strangers, virtually all of them white. For how white this world is!

  In early November Graice happens to hear from one of the other tenants that Claude St. Germain is having trouble with his courses, and the thought crosses her mind that she might help him. Not with mathematics of course but with English. if he needs help with English.

  This thought crosses Graice Courtney's mind swift and momentary as a high scudding cloud and is forgotten. With her courses and the hours she puts in for doctor Savage, she hasn't any time to spare; even if she weren't doubtful of approaching St. Germain, she hasn't any time to spare. Her chronic sense of herself is that of a figure running just ahead of a wall of flame.

  You like to go out with me sometime, Graice? A drink? Dance?

  Sometime? No?

  Abruptly it happens that St. Germain begins to be aware of Graice Courtney, and now he's lingering in the corridor outside her room and on the stairs, knocks on her door late at night to invite her for a drink in his room, waits for her to leave the house mornings so that he can fall into stride with her. No matter how stealthily Graice descends to the kitchen in the evening St. Germain is sure to follow, bursting in, rash, noisy, hopeful, belligerent, primed with questions to put to her, quick to erupt into his wild reckless laugh. He persists in inviting her out: To the movies, maybe? Dance? Just up to Marshall Street for a drink? Eh? Graice? What's the word? His eyes are cold and mirthless.

  Graice says politely, I'm sorry I can't, and, I'm re ally sorry, I can't, trying to meet the black man's gaze directly, not shrinking from his rage; Look, please, Claude, truly. I don't go out much, I haven't time.

  Haven't time! Haven't time'!

  Graice overhears St. Germain mocking her in a falsetto voice, to others; overhears him telling smutty jokes when she's certain to pass by; discovers him on the third floor, beltless, his trousers partway unzipped. St. Germain's room is on the second floor and he hasn't any business on the third. When Graice says, trembling, I think you'd better leave me alone, St. Germain says, with a quick glistening smile, You better leave me alone, baby. ever think of that?

  The week before Thanksgiving, Graice is downstairs in the kitchen at about ten o'clock in the evening there's another roomer there, making coffee, a mild mannered white man in economics named Hodler and in comes the Jamaican smelling of beer and perspiration, blustery, aggressive, all smiles. Well, hell lo Graice:

  where you been keeping yourself, baby? And within seconds, discreet as a cat, Hodler slips out of the room.

  St. Germain is jeweled in sweat like an athlete who's been warming up.

  He's wearing a re d OrIon V neck sweater with no shirt beneath and he's carrying a can of beer, chattering like a drunken parrot. Graice says, interrupting, You you're forgetting your pride!

  St. Germain squints at Graice Courtney as if these peculiar words of hers might be in code. But he can't decipher the code, so he shrugs, grins loose lipped, says, You wanna dance?

  Graice turns off the stove's gas burner and prepares to leave the kitchen but St. Germain, wriggling his hips Presley style, snap ping his fingers above his head, blocks her way. He's bawling a song in a calypso beat. How bout Harry Belafonte, baby? You like him, eh? Sure you do! All the white cunts hot for Belafonte. that asshole.

  Graice tries to force her way past St. Germain but he crowds her back, pushes her against the stove. this old fashioned gas stove, eight burners, enormous. wriggling his hips defiantly, not smiling now; and Graice, who has been under the confused impression that maybe Hodler hurried to get the house manager who is well aware of St. Germain's behavior in re cent weeks; has in fact quarreled with him repeatedly , begins to realize that there won't be any help she's alone with this embittered, disturbed black manand tries to think what to do. What to do! Yet it's without thinking that she ducks past St. Germain to get to one of the kitchen drawers, he seizes her arm and tries to spin her as if they're dancing a rough giddy dance, and Graice wrenches away, yanks open a drawer, takes out a knife, a paring knife, too small so she discards it and fumbles for another, a carving knife. now crouching, she lifts the knife toward the astonished St. Germain, saying, You touch me another time and I'll kill you, pointing the blade at his throat, speaking calmly and even dispassionately, until, with a shuddery little laugh, both hands uplifted in a parody of surrender, St. Germain backs off.

  He makes a long wet whistling noise with his lips. bugs his eyes at her.

  Graice Courtney doesn't move. She continues to hold the knife erect, blade pointed at St. Germain's throat. Her face is dead white, the freckles bleached away; her eyes are dilated but her hand is steady.

  it s remarkable how steady.

  She says, in that same quiet, unhurried voice, You mistook me for someone else, didn't you someone I'm not. Don't ever do that again.

  St. Germain is sober now, the defiance drained from him.

  OK, baby, you said it. you got the last word.

  To save face he backs out of the kitchen as if it's a calypso step he's executing, clumsily, a glance over his shoulder to see if anyone has witnessed his humiliation; and then he's gone, and it's over; and ever after tonight St. Germain takes pains to avoid Graice Courtney or, if he can't avoid her, to look, with dignity, through her. And Graice Courtney makes an effort not to look at him. not to let her gaze linger on him.

  In any case, the Jamaican engineering student disappears over Christmas re cess and is never seen again in Syracuse. His room on the second floor re mains unoccupied for weeks.

  Fwo thirty in the morning of this windy November day, past two thirty, and Graice Courtney is too excited to sleep; it's the fever excitement that precedes one of her migraine attacks but she can't control it; she dresses hurriedly, slacks pulled up under her flannel nightgown and no underwear, bare feet thrust into boots, winter overcoat, nothing on her head and no gloves no time for gloves she runs in the cold sharp air two blocks to a telephone booth near an Esso station, there she drops coins into the t
elephone, dialing the operator panting as she requests directorial assistance, and even as she's being told the Hammond telephone number of Verlyn Fairchild she's forgetting it she's defeated, makes no effort to re member. For how can she call Jinx now, so late at night, now or at any other time; how can she? She. who is she?

  She hangs up, the coins fall down into the slot.

  She presses her forehead against the cold plastic mechanism and shuts her eyes. This abject posture, preceding pain.

  Graice Courtney has neither seen nor spoken with Jinx Fairchild for a very long time. She has no right to him, no right even to think of him re ally, he's the husband of a woman she doesn't know, he's the father of children, she has no right to telephone him and interfere with the distance between them and his indifference to her, she swears she doesn't even think of him much in her new life: except tonight she took up a knife in re venge for him. Jinx Fairchild's pride, honor, manhood debased in another.

  Of course I didn't call. I never would. He'd think I was insane.

  It's impossible.

  She feels too weak to leave the telephone booth and re turn to her room. So rare is it that remnants of her old life protrude into her new life, like shrapnel fragments working their way through flesh, she's shaken, can't quite comprehend what happened, or almost happened; she's thinking bitterly how far away her lover is, how maybe it's that man she hates, the knife so poised and steady in her hand.

  Fansgiving Day dawns cold, clear, frosty, a metallic taste to the air.

  Even the sky looks frozen.

  like frozen water, rippled and webbed. But Graice Courtney doesn't giveitaglance.

  This is the day, the holiday, she's been awaiting. With both anticipation and dread.

  Undercutting her childish pleasure in the invitation by admonishing herself, It doesn't mean anything; he only feels sorry for you.

  And, It's just charity. In his eyes Graice Courtney is a stray.

  And, in her journal, where, a year later, she'll re ad the entry with astonishment: Prediction. a mistake. But a minor mistake.

  If Graice Courtney had brought along to college with her, as relatives urged and common sense directed, a few of Persia's good, not too flamboyant dresses, she'd have something suitable to wear to an occasion special as Thanksgiving dinner at the home of doctor Byron Savage: but of course, in the stubbornness of grief, she hadn't taken a thing. Couldn't bear even the sight of Persia's clothes, clothes purchased always and forever in the hope of achieving. whatever it is women hope to achieve by way of the purchase of pretty clothes.

  Beside, Persia was a size ten; Graice is a size seven.

  Thus out of desperation, two days before the dinner, Graice is forced to inveigle a friend into offering her the use of a dress: a lovely wool Lanz just slightly too large for her, with long graceful sleeves, a pleated skirt to mid calf, a row of neat bone buttons. The fabric is heather colored shot with threads of turquoise and gold, and in it Graice Courtney appears to advantage since the hazel of her eyes is heightened and her skin seems warmer, less translucent.

  Regarding herself in the mirror in this dress Graice bites her lip, murmurs aloud, Who is that Smiling with surprised plea sure.

  A world of surfaces, many faceted, infinite. And Graice Courtney one among many.

  Yet what is art except surfaces? Works of art, photography, the great tradition in all its plenitude?

  Surfaces by way of which, and by way of which exclusively, the interior world soul shines.

  If there is a world soul. If it is capable of shining.

  Since doctor Savage is going to be in the university neighborhood picking up another of the Savages' guests for the holiday dinner, the widow of the late Dean of the Humanities, he picks up Graice Court they too at her rooming house; no need for her to take a taxi. Arrives at 2117 South Salina promptly at four thirty in his pearly gray Lincoln Continental and Graice is waiting in the parlor with her coat on, hurries out to the curb, and climbs into the car's cushioned back seat; breathless she's borne off to the Savages' home in what must be a distant part of the city. Springdale Road bordering the golf course of the Onondaga Country Club.

  There's a conversation between doctor Savage and missis Wells, the dean's widow, who is seated beside him in the front seat of the car, and from time to time Graice Courtney is obliged to contribute, or to reply to questions put to her, though she has very little idea of what she says. doctor Savage is explaining that, over the years, the celebration of Thanksgiving dinner in their household has gradually shifted from early afternoon to early evening; he hopes their guests won mind, but it seems more civilized somehow; missis Wells reminisces warmly of holiday celebrations sixty years ago when she was a young girl, then turns with a smile to ask Graice Courtney what Graice's earliest memory of Thanksgiving is. and Graice hears herself say apologetically, I'm afraid I re ally don't re member.

  It's a puzzling answer. But neither missis Wells nor doctor Savage seems to notice; already they're talking about something else.

  Then there's the surprise of the Savages' house.

  Graice's first thought is, How monstrous.

  Graice's second thought is, How beautiful. is that a house?

  Graice had heard that Byron Savage is from a wealthy Syracuse family, that The Journal of art and Aesthetics with its full color cover and color plates is partly, perhaps wholly, funded by doctor Savage himself, but she isn't prepared for the Victorian grandeur of the man s house. It's a craggy little mountain of tall peaked towers, Roman arches, massive walls and chimneys and pediments, a night mare of grinning windows. When doctor Savage turns up the winding drive Graice says breathlessly, and quite sincerely, Oh, doctor Savage is that.

  your house? It's like a castle. I've never seen anything like it.

  doctor Savage laughs as if he's both embarrassed and pleased.

  He tells Graice that the house was built in the early 1900s by his father, Lawrence Savage; it's in an American architectural style known as Richardsonian Romanesque, named for the architect Henry Hobson Richardson. The stone of the exterior is pink Missouri granite in certain of the pediments and purple Colorado sandstone elsewhere; all the sculpture detail was done by hand of course, by stone carvers brought from England; each of the gargoyle figures on the downspouts is distinct from the re st. Some people think Romanesque is appallingly ugly and some think it very beautiful, says doctor Savage, smiling, but since I've lived here most of my life I'm not required to see it. I don't judge.

  White haired missis Wells tells Graice, doctor Savage is being too modest. The Savage House, as it's called, is famous in this area.

  It's listed with the National Register of Historic Places. And it is beautiful, isn't it?

  Says Graice faintly, Oh, yes.

  In the waning November light the Savage House with its highly detailed, ornamental lacade looks as if it were made of papiermache. It's a dream castle, a movie castle, yet so massive.

  so weighty in the eye. Graice Courtney wonders if, living in it, people come to re semble it.

  Please call me Gwendolyn.

  missis Savage takes Graice Courtney's hand in hers, not to shake it briskly but simply, for a moment, to hold it, her fingers warm and dry and assured. So pleased to meet you, dear, and so delighted you can join us. Byron has said such good things about you. about your work on the Journal and as a student of hisyou're doing a thesis with him, are you. and, ah, what else? your good solid common sense in the office.

  To these words, murmured in a rich melodic North Carolinian accent, Graice Courtney has no re ply, just smiles sweetly.

  Graice isn't doing a thesis with doctor Savage, she's only an under graduate. But the point is too minor to correct and, in any case, doctor Savage hasn't overheard. Aswim in missis Savage's cobalt blue eyes Graice just smiles.

  Gwendolyn Savage is an attractive, intensely feminine woman in her late fifties, with a soft moon shaped powdered face, silvery white hair, those striking blue eyes. She's short, inches shor
ter than Graice Courtney, but holds herself tall; there's something stately, even regal, about her posture, her voice, the assertion of her smile. She is wearing a black jersey dress with a draped satin apron front; her shoes are black suede; on her left breast there is a star cluster diamond brooch, an antique looking piece of jewelry, beautiful

  Beautiful too her diamond earrings and her rings. One of the rings glitters icy blue. a star sapphire?

  Persia's favorite precious stone, as she called it.

  Not that Persia Courtney had ever seen a star sapphire up close. Nor has Graice Courtney until this moment.

  Later, noticing Graice standing in a corner of the reception room shy and stiffly smiling, staring at a little mud colored Corot on the wall, missis Savage re claims her, introduces her to other guests.