Victorine

by Maude Hutchins

  “Yes?”

  “Curvets!” he said, his eyes flashing. “Curvets and croupades and caprioles!”

  Both children trembled with pleasure at the very idea, but there seemed no reason to believe, they were in such perfect accord and Victorine did understand him so well, that the beautiful white creature would ever dance.

  Their love did not progress, it stood still, and it was wonderful that way. Fool Fred read her whole chapters of his books, he read her poetry, history, fairy tales, mythology, philosophy and stories about whales and birds and insects. Sometimes he talked to her as if she were an animal. “What a sweet little paw”; “How many tits have you?”

  “Birds have neither memory nor anticipation,” he said, and Victorine fancied a chickadee static on the wing and an indigo bunting waiting, right where she was, in the sky, as birds really do hang motionless; who hasn’t seen them! He taught her about bats and glow-worms, and he showed her, illustrating with competent drawings how the favourite flowers of moths and butterflies and humming-birds are designed so that the slender tubular spur of the flower matches in length the tongue of the particular little creature that visits it, and that there are little landing platforms, too. “But the humming-bird sucks on the wing.”

  “Listen,” he said, “here is what I told you yesterday, ‘the nectar tube often matches the length and curvature’—how lovely!” he said, looking up, “even the curvature—‘of the beak of the bird, while stamens are arranged so that they brush against its breast.’ ”

  “That’s pretty,” said Victorine.

  “It is the act of love itself,” he said, and he drew a bird and its flower embraced like a fragile hand in a silk glove. “I have seen it myself,” he said, “many times, it is an intricate double design, beautiful to look at in its tremulous delicacy and balance, and the fragrance of pure love is in the air like a heavenly perfume.”

  “The goose,” he said, “is monogamous,” and smiled, but Victorine did not feel that it was meant to be a joke. “We are the serious ones,” he had said and it was true, the poet and the fool and the artist are economically rationed, and when they laugh, well, as Fool Fred put it, it is an intrinsic delight and not an explosive emission of sound from the throat accompanied by distortion of the facial muscles.

  “How alone we are,” said Victorine one late afternoon. The snow was coming down outside, the colour of violets, and in the silence they could hear each other’s hearts.

  “But we are not alone,” said Fool Fred rather seriously.

  “I like it,” said Victorine.

  “The children of sinners are abominable children,” he quoted from memory. “The inheritance of sinners’ children shall perish, and their posterity shall have a perpetual reproach.”

  Victorine felt cold and crept closer to her lover. “Draw the act of love for me again,” she said. It seemed as if the quotation had chilled her, reminded her of blood and mysterious sacrifices and secret places, rats creeping along the ground, and unholy friendships, physical incest, lonely guilty pleasures. “Don’t tell!”

  Fool Fred sensed her childish fears and took her small hand between his.

  “But that accounts for us,” he said, “which is good.”

  Victorine lay her head on his breast.

  “My father, the bastard,” said Fool Fred, “slept with many women.”

  Victorine was silent.

  “I heard it said in the village that his over-indulgence in fornication resulted in idiocy for me. I do not regret it.”

  “Fool Fred,” Victorine murmured.

  “I have not been circumcised,” said Fool Fred.

  “I love you just the same,” said Victorine.

  “My father begged me to listen to reason,” said Fool Fred; again he smiled at the absurdity of his father’s appeal, although he did not mean it as a joke.

  “My father thought that such a punitive measure would have a retroactive effect on himself, his own circumcision at the age of six weeks had done himself no good. He would have cut me off himself but I hid from him.”

  Victorine clung to her lover. She did not understand a word he was saying. “Kiss me,” she pleaded, “stroke me with your hands.”

  “My father,” said Fool Fred, kissing her lips between the words he seemed compelled to speak, “could not be expected to understand that a fool needs no circumcision for his own good, that he is born without the knowledge of evil, he does not know right from wrong and therefore cannot sin. That is what I mean, My-Girl, when I have said we are taboo, we are evil, but an evil that is indistinguishable from good.” Fool Fred seemed far gone in abstraction, he sat very still and the rhythmic movement of his hands on Victorine’s body ceased.

  Finally he said, “Do you understand me?”

  Victorine dared not lie. “Could be,” she said timidly, almost inaudibly, in the vernacular of Joe. She did not add, “It beats me.”

  Fool Fred gave her a keen and penetrating look. “Go to the window and open it, sweetheart,” he said.

  Victorine rose, wrapped in the Paisley shawl like an embroidered cocoon, and obeyed him without question. She managed to open the window and the violet snow drifted in.

  “What’s that!” she said, lifting her head.

  “Snow?” said Fool Fred smiling.

  “The smell!”

  In the middle of December, in a snow-storm that was a near-blizzard, a delicate but concentrated smell of new-mown hay filled the room.

  She looked at Fool Fred. He still smiled but he was pale and his eyes burned like hot emeralds.

  Victorine, in her agitation, let fall the Paisley shawl and flung her arms around the pallid boy who stood at such nervous attention. Naked, she clung to him and sobbed, “Oh, Fool Fred, I do not doubt you, please, Fool Fred, oh please, I understand you so much!”

  Fool Fred laid her on the couch and covered her tenderly. He closed the window. The fragrance of new-mown hay had disappeared.

  “Do not grieve for the absolute,” he said, “you were not born an idiot as I was; it is enough, almost more than I can bear, that we are as close as we are. It is not given to many to smell the new-mown hay that cradles the white stallion.” He kissed her. “Run along home, My-Girl.”

  •

  Often the little dog went with them on their walks and Victorine noticed his good behaviour in Fool Fred’s company. He heeled him and obeyed him, fawned on him as dogs do their trainers and keepers, all without Fool Fred’s raising his voice or his hand against him. That such an unstable and ridiculous little dog, who could not even chase a squirrel without being diverted by something else, who ate moths and barked at ants and ecstatically rolled in manure and swallowed bits of rock and feathers, all sorts of refuse, delighting in rotten fowl, and scolded the moon when it was full, and slept fitfully in brocaded chairs, could behave like a little gentleman and anticipate Fool Fred’s gentle commands astounded her.

  “Pedro,” said Fool Fred.

  The little dog came to him at once. To Victorine’s horror, after taking some time getting into position, balancing himself on three legs, he raised his fourth against Fool Fred.

  “No! No!” said Victorine.

  But Fool Fred leaned down and patted the dog. “Never mind, Pedro,” he said, and the little fox terrier sat down and smiled into his face, trying hard to keep his pink tongue inside that kept rolling out of his mouth.

  “He thinks I am a tree,” said Fool Fred, “dogs are tree-worshippers.”

  And as if it were a simple symbolism, a gesture, a prayer, the little dog had done absolutely nothing.

  “He likes me,” said Fool Fred, and Victorine was very much impressed.

  •

  “Dear,” said Allison, “perhaps your father is right.”

  “Of course he is,” said Victorine (How else could he be!), “he always is.” It was not sarcasm.

  Allison glanced at her and saw that it was said perfectly simply. If it had been Costello, it might have been impudence. Alliso
n waited.

  “About what?” asked Victorine, finally, not because she was very much interested but because she sensed she was supposed to ask, that her mother had something on her mind.

  “That you are seeing too much of the boy at Green Acres.” Allison would never call anyone a fool, even if it was his given name almost.

  Victorine was startled. “Fool Fred?”

  “Yes,” said Allison.

  “But I’m not, Mamma,” Victorine said. She was amazed that anyone, least of all, Homer, knew or cared if she saw Fool Fred or not. The tracks had been forbidden, the dark swamp where she and Costello used to play was considered unhealthy and treacherous, but no one had ever mentioned Green Acres.

  “I’m sure he’s a nice boy,” said Allison, “but your father says it looks bad.”

  “Looks bad?” Now what could that mean? Victorine did not register either understanding or resentment. Allison looked at her little daughter and thought that she saw her own face in miniature in one of her compacts.

  “Just don’t do anything to worry your father,” she said gently; she didn’t, or wouldn’t, understand the phrase “looks bad,” either, and so made no attempt to explain.

  But Victorine built it up in her mind; what if she were forbidden Green Acres! It was too late. Old Sadie Lovejoy had deeply wounded her but she had lived through it without calling for help. She could not explain Fool Fred to anyone; not even her mother, and although she did not know the lines, “Whereof ye cannot speak, thereof ye shall be silent,” that is what she felt. She was correct in feeling that her old loves, Joe, the Holy Bum, Costello, Lydia, Misael and Jesus might be within the limited comprehension of mortals, but Fool Fred?

  It bothered her, there was no question of giving him up (never!), but she did not want him to be tainted by deception. He wasn’t that kind of a secret and he had never said, “Don’t tell,” he alone had never said it.

  And so without realizing her own self-deception, she changed the subject, went to work on it. “Mamma,” she said, a day later, and Allison noticed her agitation.

  “What is it, Victorine?”

  “It’s about Green Acres.”

  “Darling, don’t worry.”

  But Victorine burst into tears and it was perfectly genuine, as real as could be, it wasn’t an act. “I don’t understand, Mamma, I don’t understand, I always wanted to be a parlourmaid!”

  Allison had to think fast and she did pretty well. She recognized that Victorine had changed the premise but she understood the logic which was simple enough arithmetic, and could only hope to solace one of her little daughter’s sorrows at a time.

  “But so did I,” she said, “secretly I always wanted to be a parlourmaid.”

  “I’m not a snob, and I didn’t snoop,” wailed Victorine.

  “Of course not, dear, but don’t cry any more.”

  And Victorine stopped. She was surprised and pleased at the relief she felt; not as clever as Allison, she didn’t see her error, or that she had fooled herself as well. (That she picked out the unjust accusations to weep about rather than the annihilation of the sweet daydream that had absorbed her for so long seems a normal reaction of a normal ego, the little mechanism inside that wants to be perfect and is so sensitive to attack.)

  That’s why, one supposes, she felt compelled to try again, this time with, of all mortals, Lydia!

  “Lydia, Daddy says I can’t go to Green Acres any more.” She was not exactly unaware of the exaggeration, but it was like reducing fractions, one had to start with an even number. It was an age-old device of logic and perfectly legitimate. Didn’t Socrates make use of it?

  “What of it?” said Lydia, unconcerned. “Who cares?”

  “But it’s so beautiful!”

  Lydia snorted, “Green Acres!” she said. “Scrub oak and stunted pine!”

  “But Mrs. Fitz Lovejoy!” said Victorine, suddenly loyal, and that wound was healed, she could speak of the pretty old lady without emotion.

  “That ole bag!” shouted Lydia.

  At this point Victorine was terrified for fear Lydia should mention Fool Fred. How had she been so stupid, what had misled her into a near-confidence with the glamorous tomboy! Neither did poor Victorine realize that she, herself, longed to speak his name. Action was called for, she could almost see Lydia’s lips forming the words, her teeth fitted over her lower lip as if to pronounce an F.

  She jumped up and beat Lydia over the head. “She is not, she is not, she is not,” she shouted.

  “She is too, she is too, she is too,” Lydia chanted and she shoved Victorine down across the bed and quickly straddled her. “Give up,” she said, squaring her shoulders back, “you’re licked.” They kept up the pleasurable and ticklish rough-house until, exhausted, they lay side by side holding hands. It was a lull. Each was silent, as it darkened outside and preparations for dinner could be heard below. It was easy to guess what Lydia was dreaming of because pretty soon she said, “Where’s Costello?” but it wasn’t so simple to figure Victorine, who didn’t say anything.

  Chapter XIII

  The Affair at the Tennis Court

  Cold fronts came and went, snow heaped up and melted away, big winds subsided into light airs, the constellations changed places, the sun appeared to keep a truer course, setting more and more in the west as it should, and its rays becoming more direct. The earth slowly thawed out in its closer communion with the sun and seeds germinated, willows that had remained a tawny yellow all winter turned a pale soft green, the lilacs, brittle and black, sprouted fat yellow shoots, crocuses sprang out of the ground every five minutes, the henna-coloured earth over the tulip beds heaped up, cracking all over, the hyacinths and narcissi came up like narrow knives, and all sorts of things happened in the woods, you could hear it.

  In the village they were displaying boxes of outsize pansies, yellow and purple and pale blue, and every store in town got out its supply of flower and vegetable seeds, no one knows how old, nasturtiums and morning glory and columbine; Little Marvel peas and Egyptian beets. Into the hardware store windows went shiny trowels and aids to gardening, even little pillows to kneel on and white cotton gloves.

  The cadmium-yellow forsythia branched out in every front yard like fireworks, and the lawns, protected by snow all winter, were covered with succulent tender tiny leaves of grass, the kind that is slippery and makes a vivid stain on your sneakers. In the mornings you could hear the bell-like sound of the rollers on people’s tennis courts and it wouldn’t be long now before the song of the lawn mowers would begin at dusk and the water pressure in the house fall to a mere trickle with everyone hosing his lawn, and a thousand sprinklers filling the air with mist, the little hot birds winging through the cooling spray and searching for drowned worms beneath them.

  Dennis was the first to feel the urge and he solemnly stuffed peanuts into the ground with a fat forefinger, and prune pits and lemon drops. It was Dennis, too, who spotted the first robin, the first warbler, the only bluebird, the first snake; the first hop-toad that had been doing heaven knows what all winter to have developed such a paunch he could scarcely move; half-dead with anaesthesia he clung to the ground and would not stir. Then a cloud opened and after the downpour, his progeny, uncountable, half an inch long, covered the paths and even the sidewalks in the village, making one wonder how and where the tremendous conception had taken place, under what auspices. The squirrels leapt from branch to branch overhead creeping after each other in an interminable symmetry, an angular procession, their tails arched over their snouts, talking like crows. The eager broody robins and swallows swooped with lengths of string, pieces of cotton, strands of human hair, dangling, to line their nests, heavy with eggs they faltered and lost altitude, and a purple crow with jet-black eyes snatched a sheet of note-paper right out of Allison’s hand and awkwardly flew it away, dropping it again and again but persevering. He would use it to reflect light in the woods for a dance of some sort, a ritual.

  “Twee toads,”
sang out Dennis from his bed, “twee toads and fwogs.” He was the happiest.

  Victorine found that Fool Fred lasted. She need not see him daily, sometimes whole weeks went by, and neither ever asked the other, “Where have you been,” or made excuses for an over-long absence.

  And a sensible loving friendship evolved for her and Costello out of the sweet and the secretive and the compelling sex-play of their childhood, and he read her Stendhal and King Richard II, neither of which did she understand too well, but the reading comradeship was pleasant, Costello’s voice moving, and all winter long from the study window, late at night, she had watched the spare old tree that pierced with its topmost branch a really gibbous moon as yellow and plump and soft as a huge breast, and Costello’s eyes turned from topaz to amber to apricot. Victorine’s eyes never changed, they were deep and dark as chocolate.

  It was like a journey, as she lay flat on the couch, her knees crossed, a pretty slipper dangling from one foot. Sometimes Costello, feeling her almost physical absence, would look up from his reading to see if she were still there.

  “Victorine?”

  “Costello?”

  “I wondered if you were asleep; are you listening?”

  And Victorine would quote the last sentence, “ ‘Shortly afterwards, the Marquis de Malivert having died, Armance and Madame de Malivert took the veil in the same convent.’ ”

  But she had been at a carnival where they were spinning a big wheel and was coming home with a sorrel-coloured teddy bear with beady eyes. Or with her patent leather slippers, slick with vaseline, safe in a little bag, she walked the long and happy curvaceous mile to dancing school. Again she climbed into the dizzy heights of the lighthouse and saw the great white light revolving that would never stop, “Not while I’m alive,” said the lighthouse-keeper, “and after me comes my son and after him his.” That was the time Dennis, spinning around like a top, had cried, “Look, I’m a light,” and then had stood still and pointed at “himself.” “Look! Quick!”

  “Denny, stop it!”

  “He can’t help himself,” said the lighthouse-keeper. “Bear with him, little woman.”