Victorine

  Still Victorine made no reply.

  “Are you?” he asked.

  “A horse?” said Victorine.

  “A filly,” he corrected, “and a pretty one, with eyes set well apart.”

  Victorine was pleased. She needed compliments and reassurance.

  “Look! Quiet!” said Fool Fred. “He is walking! Step aside!”

  They both pressed back into the shrubbery and it snapped and crackled as if on fire, a few last dry leaves fell over their hair.

  “The white stallion!” said Fool Fred.

  As if he walked a plank, so carefully and gracefully did he place his hooves, the snow-white animal appeared as if out of a door. He held his head forward, level with his shoulders, and his round eyes were dark as ink; his pink nostrils like the Chambered Nautilus were wide and transparent and as he passed so close by Victorine and Fool Fred he smelled like heavenly hay. His skin, white as winter ermine, trembled ecstatically, as if some extra sensibility provoked him. His long white tail arched out behind him like a colourless rainbow and his big genitals were firm and rosy pink as peaches.

  It was the most beautiful apparition that Victorine had ever seen and she turned shining eyes on Fool Fred, “Lovely,” she whispered when she could speak, “thank you.”

  “You saw him?” said Fool Fred. “You did see him?” He took her gently by the shoulders and looked into her eyes.

  “Of course,” said Victorine.

  “Shall we go back?” said Fool Fred. “I am tired.”

  And Fool Fred did seem exhausted, he had lost his eager buoyancy, even his voice seemed frail and uncertain, he was not as tall.

  “Perhaps you are cold,” suggested Victorine; they walked hand in hand now, although he preceded her as before, “but your hand is warm.”

  “I am not cold.”

  “Hungry?” said Victorine.

  Fool Fred did not at once reply but as the back of the big house with its barns and outhouses came in view he said, “It is not easy.”

  “What?”

  “To make oneself understood.”

  “I know.”

  “It tires me.”

  “But I . . .”

  “Even you,” he said facing her and fixing her gentle attention with his bright eyes, “might not have seen the stallion walking.”

  “It was beautiful,” said Victorine.

  “I love you,” said Fool Fred.

  “I love you,” said Victorine.

  Chapter XII

  The Lovers

  “I wanted a tree house,” said Fool Fred, “but my father set me up here, I like it well enough. My father was a great joker,” he went on. “He said someone might take a shot at me, thinking I was a pheasant.” As Victorine did not seem to understand, he took her hand and said gently, “Little one, do you understand? My father was a great joker, you and I do not make jokes, we are the serious ones, but They, the ones in big houses, and in the village, they love jokes.”

  Fool Fred’s little apartment over the garage was comfortable and pleasant and neat.

  “They keep cleaning it,” said Fool Fred, smiling, “the poor things, and do look at my electric toaster! We must not blame them.”

  “No,” agreed Victorine, “but who?”

  Fool Fred’s rooms were thick with books, the shelves reached the ceiling, and they were piled up, too, in corners and under tables. He saw her looking at them all in amazement, and he said, “Many answers are not there, but turning the pages amuses me. Did you say ‘Who’?”

  “Yes I did.”

  He waved his hand gracefully. “The others,” he said. “You and I are taboo. Perhaps you have been excluded from the house because you are menstruating,” he said.

  Victorine felt herself blush.

  “They will take you back again, but not I, not me. I am an idiot, and as such, although I am much respected, I am taboo. I am feared.”

  “I am not afraid,” said Victorine.

  “Naturally not,” said Fool Fred, “you and I hear and see things that They do not, don’t we?”

  “Yes, we do,” said Victorine softly. It was certainly true. She longed to see the snow-white stallion walk again.

  “We are evil,” said Fool Fred suddenly.

  “Ahhh,” gasped Victorine.

  “Because we are sick,” he said, “that is why I am scarcely ever allowed in the house, never when my father was alive. I heard him say, ‘It is so painful for me to see him.’ I would contaminate the dishes, you know. You must not mind, little one, I am not afraid to touch you, to take you in my arms, come! We cannot contaminate each other.”

  Victorine put her arms around his neck and laid her cheek to his. “I love you,” she said.

  “Sweet,” he said, in his clear voice, “sweet and lovely and lonely. At last.”

  She drew away a little, “At last?”

  “I have My-Girl,” he said and he smiled so adorably and so happily that Victorine trembled as if she saw for the first time, a star.

  He kissed her longingly and softly on the mouth. He kissed her neck and opened her blouse and looked at her small breasts like half oranges, he caressed her skin with soft fingers and looked at her, and undressed her as if she were a doll. He wrapped her in a Paisley shawl that his mother had given him because it was pretty and he lay her on pillows and stood over her, unable to take his eyes off her. Then he dressed her as gently and deftly as a woman might. He fastened her shoes and kissed her ankles. “My-Girl,” he said again.

  Victorine felt his tender love as if she tasted a cup of hot cocoa after skating, it nourished her. She said nothing, did nothing, but her body, her skin and muscles, responded, and he felt her love under his hands.

  “I will come back,” said Victorine.

  Again he kissed her, their two wet mouths clung together, their virgin bodies almost talked.

  They separated, but he held her hand, he kissed the palm of it, “You know,” he said seriously, “little one?”

  “I think so,” said Victorine, wondering. She felt that she did and that she didn’t.

  “I am bound to continence or thorns will grow on the ground in the woods.”

  “Oh, I know,” said Victorine lovingly.

  “Goodbye, little heart,” he said.

  “Goodbye, Fool Fred,” how sweet his name sounded on her lips, to her, and to him.

  “My-Girl,” he said as she turned at the step down.

  “Yes?”

  “Come to me here then and I will take care of you. I shall know,” he said, and he looked at the sky where in the centre of the afterglow a sickle moon palely shone, “by the moon.”

  “Yes,” said Victorine in a whisper.

  It was a lovers’ pact.

  •

  Evil? Victorine shook her head, she felt no evil. Fool Fred could be mistaken, she trusted her instincts, although she did not always act on them. As she came into the driveway, she saw Lydia’s bike lying on its side like a bunch of bones in the desert; Lydia always let it fall where it would, and as she did not feel a bit like Lydia just this minute she went around back. Big Tom, with Joe standing aside, stood with his legs wide apart flooding the yard. He had a childish look in his round eyes, an absent-minded guilelessness, and as he caught sight of Victorine, he gave a tremulous whinny, like a night bird, a plaintive call. As a child, his ability had entranced her, as it had later embarrassed her. She and Joe used to discuss the weather until he stopped, but this time she wondered if she could bear it at all. It was too soon after the pure white stallion with his shell-like nostrils and his peach-coloured genitalia. Big Tom, gelded, had stunted parts and a back as broad as a mare; he was handsome, fifteen and a half hands, impressive, and he shone, red as autumn leaves, from Joe’s loving care, but he couldn’t compare with the apparition; his hooves were heavy, his head was too big, his ears didn’t curl delicately atop his brow like silver laurel leaves. Victorine unconsciously looked for comparison, too, between his legs, his tail was high as the flood co
ntinued, and she shook her head at what she saw, black as liquorice.

  “He drinks a quantity of water, where’d you expect it to go,” said Joe, a little rudely; he was annoyed at Big Tom, himself, he was overdoing it and it was time to feed the chickens. Big Tom heaved a great thundering sigh and stopped. Joe slapped his rump and he picked up his feet and ambled into his stall. Victorine felt a twinge of remorse, but because Joe was there and she was older now, she didn’t edge her way into his stall with him and on tiptoe kiss him between the eyes. And so her remorse hung around her for a while, it was akin to guilt but it wasn’t the real thing, it was diluted. The time spent with Fool Fred did not leave her with the sediment, almost, of sin, that her other activities and mystic daydreams had. As she went through the kitchen, Elsie looked up. She was immersed to the elbows in dough as if in quicksand.

  “What’s for supper?” said Victorine, not much caring.

  “You look like a rose,” said Elsie.

  Upstairs she went to the mirror as she always did, not out of vanity but to reassure herself, to feel her identity.

  “I’ll ask Lydia,” she said to her reflection. She longed to be wholly taboo, to be linked, wedded, to Fool Fred. She went to the head of the stairs and heard Lydia and Costello quarrelling violently in the living-room.

  “Break it up,” she called.

  “You little bastard,” she heard Lydia snarl. Bastard? She had heard the name not an hour ago—bastard?—she couldn’t place it.

  “You’re a little bitch, yourself,” she heard Costello say and she heard him laugh.

  “Oh!” sobbed Lydia, and she dashed up the stairs. “Hello!” she said to Victorine, quite happily, as if she hadn’t been in tears. “That precious brother of yours!” She threw back her head and laughed. “Just wait though, he’ll be sorry.”

  “Lydia,” said Victorine . . . she hesitated . . . “when shall I . . .” She hesitated again.

  “What?” said Lydia. “That Costello!”

  “When shall I . . . you know what . . . please, don’t you?”

  Lydia opened her turquoise eyes so wide that the thick lashes, over and under them, looked like bushes around a pool on top of a mountain. Then she shrugged, “I dunno,” she said, “who knows,” and she grinned.

  “But really, Lydia, when?”

  “Pretty soon, I guess,” said Lydia. “Take off your shirt.”

  She stared at Victorine’s half-formed breasts and noted the short dark hairs in her armpit. “Any minute now,” she said. “Have you got any here?” and she placed her wide white hand on herself, between her legs.

  Victorine shook her head.

  “What’s the hurry?” said Lydia.

  Victorine didn’t answer.

  “What’s got into you, Vic?”

  “Nothing.” She loved her secret, her innocent secret. Fool Fred was the only one who didn’t say “Don’t tell,” but she wouldn’t anyway, it was too sweet to share with anyone else, and Lydia would certainly spoil everything.

  “You’ll be sorry,” said Lydia. “It’s no fun and it goes on and on and on to the grave.”

  But Victorine definitely wanted to be taboo; she smiled.

  “Of course I’m half boy,” said Lydia, “and that’s why. It’s got something to do with hormones. I get hellish cramps. I wish I were one thing or the other.” She stuck out her lower lip and stared out of the window.

  “You’re terribly pretty,” said Victorine admiringly.

  “I know it,” said Lydia.

  Victorine didn’t laugh.

  “But does Costello know it?” said Lydia. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “He’s just dreamy,” said Victorine.

  “The two of you,” said Lydia. “Well, ’bye, kiss him for me.”

  But Victorine was really out of reach of dearest Costello now and the jealousy she had felt of Lydia or Costello, she didn’t know which, had vaporized. She longed to lie naked in a Paisley shawl with the sweet fool, and be taboo, two sweet fools.

  Lydia didn’t really want to leave. Downstairs, Costello was improvising on the piano and the notes seemed to tiptoe up the uncarpeted stairway, a disembodied little tune. It suited Victorine’s mood but Lydia frowned. “I’d like to . . .” she said and didn’t finish. She looked at Victorine’s toy chest. “You still play with dolls?” she asked.

  Victorine was glad to be able to say, “Not any more.”

  “Funny, isn’t it?” said Lydia, her thoughts, that Victorine could not follow, seemed to jump from chasm to chasm. “Do you know what a foetus is?”

  “Not much,” said Victorine.

  “I think it’s a kind of doll, too,” said Lydia. “After all, it’s funny, but a doll is a foetus, I mean in your feelings, like, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose dolls are make-believe babies,” said Victorine simply. She wasn’t much interested in the intellectual approach.

  “No,” said Lydia, “it’s not like that. It’s nasty,” she said.

  “What is?”

  “Dolls, dolls and stuff.” Lydia, too, seemed tired of her thesis, but she wasn’t through, she hung around. They heard the front door close, Costello had gone out. Lydia looked straight at Victorine, who was praying to God that she would leave (Dear God, make Lydia go away), and said, “Did you ever do it to yourself?”

  “Lydia!” whispered Victorine.

  “What of it!” said Lydia, but her face turned rosy pink and she ran downstairs, marbles and jacks and lipstick jingling in her jeans, and outside, slamming the door behind her, leaving Victorine as if trying to balance herself over an abyss. She sat straight up on the edge of the bed, half naked, her eyes clouded. She looked down at herself and tried to imagine Fool Fred caressing her skin. She lay down and closed her eyes and tried to see the inside of his room, hear his voice. “We are evil,” she heard him say. Could it be? “Fool Fred,” she whispered, “I’m My-Girl,” but nothing came of it. She could not, with all her talent, get the feel of him or imagine him at all; it was as if Chastity had hid in the closet. And you had to see Fool Fred to believe him. She gave up.

  •

  But the two children, Victorine and Fool Fred, without assignation, or prearranged appointment, met again and again, it was like, rather, predestination. She met him on the path, in the driveway, and in the village and each time he took her by the hand and led her into the woods and sometimes to his rooms, that “the poor things” kept so clean.

  Victorine, on the way to the post office, turned and went into the grocer’s instead. Fool Fred stood looking at great bushel baskets of glowing McIntosh apples. He chose two and held them lovingly in his hands. “I want these two,” he said, “because they are so beautiful.” He held them against each cheek and then he softly kissed them, it was as if he were loving a woman. The grocer winked at Victorine but she pretended to notice nothing (it would be disloyal to Fool Fred to intercept the wink at all), but the grocer meant no harm because he was a kindly soul and genuinely fond of the graceful boy in white duck pants and open shirt, impervious to cold, and a lot of other things, too. The wink was his way of protecting him against strangers, and he scarcely knew Victorine, he knew Elsie better who did the marketing. Victorine started to speak to Fool Fred but he gave her a blank look, veiling his eyes completely against her.

  A village character whom Victorine recognized as “the joker” said to Fool Fred, as he grinned knowingly at the grocer, “You folks entertainin’ the Duchess of Windsor tonight?”

  Fool Fred gave no sign that he had heard. “I’ll take these,” he said, and the grocer slipped the two apples into a little brown bag. “Answer him back, Boy,” he said, indicating “the joker.” The grocer was the only one in the village who would not call Fool Fred, Fool Fred. To the others Fool Fred was really his name, always had been.

  “ ‘A knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear,’ ” said Fool Fred softly, without bitterness.

  “Ha-ha, good lad,” said the grocer; he would tell his old woman about
it when he got home. “Should of seen him, cool as a cucumber, I’ve a notion he’s not the fool he lets on he is.” “His head rolled when he was a baby,” answered his wife, “and his eyes, they give me the creeps.”

  The joker shrugged. “Just foolin’,” he said.

  As Fool Fred passed Victorine, he touched her hand but did not look at her, and she knew she was not to follow him and didn’t. She finished her errand at the post office and started along the familiar little path. Fool Fred met her in the driveway. “My-Girl,” he said, “but not in strange places.”

  “I thought . . .” said Victorine.

  “I am taboo, you remember,” said Fool Fred, smiling engagingly at her.

  “Oh, but I too!” said Victorine.

  “They do not know that, My-Girl.”

  “But you do?” she pleaded.

  “My-Girl, yes,” he said sweetly.

  “Fool Fred,” she whispered, she loved to say it, “Fool Fred.”

  He led her into his little place. He sat beside her and stroked her face, he traced her eyebrows with a long finger, and her lips, he gently kissed her ears.

  “Little one, little woman, you must not infect me with feminine weakness, do not enfeeble me.” He looked at her so lovingly, his eyes searching her face so intently, that she scarcely understood the content of his speech, but only felt his eyes.

  “Do you understand?”

  “I think so; speak to me again.”

  “Neither must you ask me to produce the stallion too often. It is not easy to make him walk, to think his whiteness, to guide his hooves, and darken his eyes.”

  As Fool Fred spoke, Victorine thought she heard the sound of the white stallion on the spongy ground.

  “I hear him!”

  “No, little one! Do not tempt me to make myself clear again so soon. Wait, sweetest child, until you doubt me.”

  “Doubt you, you, Fool Fred!”

  Fool Fred kissed her mouth greedily.

  “You are chaste,” he said; he said it hungrily as if he would eat her.

  “But sometime?” begged Victorine.

  “Only if you doubt me,” said Fool Fred, “ever so little,” he added kindly, “then . . .”