Collected Novels and Plays

by James Merrill

  For who can tell

  Whether your lyre

  Withstands the fire

  Of Hell?

  She sang the melody five times, but it had been so skillfully varied for each gift that the effect was enchanting, her voice no less so. Her song at an end, the applause doubled as Mme Stempel-Ross approached the footlights and, with a movement too gauche not to have been rehearsed, curtsied in her jodhpurs.

  Jane was finding it all pointless. In ten minutes, she promised herself, she would have a glass of cognac in the café.

  But ten minutes later, on the point of rising to go, she admitted to being curiously touched, if not by the performance, then by the vast theater itself, whose dark, not quite scented, audible air she breathed. Far off, the stage might have been seen at the end of a tunnel or from deep within a skull. It placed no claim on her. It left her glance free to wander down the rows of pallid faces turned like heliotrope upon the ringing spectacle, from box to box at this early hour occupied, if at all, by old people whispering or one ecstatic child, her hair in a black velvet ribbon; from these to the dingy gilt of the proscenium, its cherubs and nymphs, despite their loftiness, scarred with white where they lacked noses or fingers—Jane looked everywhere, in short, except at the stage. When at last she did turn to watch the opera, which all the while had been glowing softly along the cheek, she found what she saw meaningful.

  Against a moving panorama of trees and flowers Orpheus walked, singing his insipid, irresistible song. Animals drew near with gifts of leaves and fruit, adding to his human voice the deprived idiom of growls, hisses, and twitterings. He stroked them all, let them fawn at his feet, peck from his hand, dance after him as he walked singing. The changing backdrop of orchard, stream, and rock rippled and swayed. No matter what creature approached, lion, rabbit, tortoise, finch, the trivial tune had its way with each, and who was Jane not to nod, tap her finger upon the red plush railing, while the song penetrated her?—until with a shattering effort she stilled her finger and the tiny movement of her head. Her face showed nothing, but the trap had shut.

  Hitherto, even before what happened in Boston, she hadn’t really believed Francis capable of love for a woman. With her new knowledge came another. She wanted it to have been not Xenia but herself through whom he had tasted this love.

  From then on Jane gave little or not thought to Francis. She was remembering, instead, Bruno, a medical student in Rome, small, courteous, threadbare. She had known him the summer before she met Francis. One night, walking her to her door, “You know,” he told her, “we are alike, you and I. We fall in love with those who will never love us in return.” Jane blushed to remember it. How could he have said that, knowing how she needed him? Other specters rose up, whose names in some cases she’d actually forgotten, faces she had loved, innocently or ignorantly, and thought to put from mind. But she hadn’t forgotten them; worse yet, she hadn’t forgiven them. A cold began to churn inside her, that of a winter pond with many frozen lives. How crazy to care so violently for what might never be revived! At such a moment only an exercise of will could hold the mind together. Not only the mind—her whole body stiffened as if in order not to come apart, the limbs separating like petals of a shaken stem—white petals, she had seen them somewhere. Help me, let me go! she cried out to Bruno and the others. I don’t hate you, I just want to give you up! But how to give up what has never been had? As at the sound of a sane voice, Jane cocked her head. She understood what for some reason nobody had ever told her—the cause of Eurydice’s death.

  Now the tenor paused in front of a smoking aperture. Jane rose; she had had enough. But the door behind her opened. Without turning she readmitted Francis to her mind, coldly, a simple phenomenon like anything else.

  It was not he. “Jane, how are you? Hush!” And with a commanding smile Xenia sent her back onto her chair.

  During the song of Cerberus, a lugubrious trio, she grew calmer. For the first time in eight months her eyes met Xenia’s. Wrapped though she was in a flame-colored sari shot with gold—a gift from Francis, she hissed in reply to Jane’s few mild admiring gestures—the older woman looked both fat and shrunken. The child, evidently. At Xenia’s age it was a risky business to create life, rather than the images of life. At any age, Jane supposed.

  “What’s to be done with Francis?” his mistress went on. “He won’t leave the bar. Perhaps you can get him to come in for Act Two. Otherwise Tommy will be really hurt, that I know.”

  Jane murmured she would try; she saw no reason for Xenia to be specially concerned over Tommy’s feelings, whoever Tommy was. “Has Marcello come?” she asked a moment later.

  Xenia, a finger to her lips, imposed silence. The flute was reiterating some minor complaint in which strings gradually joined. “Genius!” she breathed. “Now the song of the honeycakes. No,” she said as soon as it had begun, “why should he dance attendance? He’s not the best sort of Italian, but a sweet honest boy. Why should he put up with Francis’s behavior? Though if you’ve met Marcello, you’ve seen what a flirt he is!” Xenia lapsed into laughter, recollecting escapades, but noiselessly, like an old woman. “Between ourselves, he couldn’t be more my type.”

  “According to Francis, he likes you too,” Jane remarked.

  “Voilà!” Xenia threw up her hands. “I can’t abide by these restrictions! I haven’t the temperament of a fiancée!”

  Such real irritation flickered up through Xenia’s words, it seemed safer to let them pass. Indeed, the act ended before their sense registered upon Jane. Much later, looking back on that quarter hour, she was to wonder at her own inaccessibility to experience; it might have been a strong drink of which abruptly she had had her fill, leaving her a bit stupid and sick. Things were neither reasonable nor startling. That Xenia was pregnant in no way explained her intention to marry, any more than it provided the name of her future husband. That Xenia looked old—well, people grew old; that couldn’t be helped. Jane saw now, in the stronger light, how little it could be helped. Throughout the theater people were rising, calling to each other, wanting to smoke and stare. But the two women in the box sat on, in their almost drunken calm. Xenia had thrown back her head to counterbalance the live weight of her body. Expressionism, was all Jane could think.

  “As you see,” Xenia finally said, “I’m worn out. These months have been in-cred-i-ble. I’m not myself. My feet have given out, I can’t work. I spend my days telephoning, from my couch, for Tommy. Without me there’d have been no performance, he would have had to give back the money. I’ve kept behind him every minute, pushing.”

  Jane decided it was safe to assume that “Tommy” and the composer were one person. “Why isn’t he here?” she ventured.

  “He’s backstage going insane. I say to him, ‘Listen,’” continued Xenia, “‘I’ve got one child here,’” patting her belly, “‘which is all I can handle for the present. If you can’t manage your own affairs, how are you going to support Junior here—tell me that!’” She leaned forward now with tragic, painted eyes. “I’ve all but decided not to marry him. I’ll keep my freedom and I’ll love him more than ever, you’ll see! I’ve purposely not talked about it to him, because of the pressures of these months, but now—!” She chuckled as though her minute of reflection had settled the matter for good. “That’s just what I’ll do. I’ll persuade him to use the money for the honeymoon, to go into analysis. Ouf! what a relief!” Xenia fanned herself vigorously with her program.

  A quiet tremor went up and down Jane’s back, a sign that something temporarily out of order was now working—enough at least to let her perceive that Xenia’s was a painful and complicated state of mind. Even so, she paused in rich uncertainty before reminding Xenia that her predicament had its brighter side. “About supporting the child,” she brought out, “won’t Francis help with that?”

  “Why should he?” inquired Xenia defensively.

  Jane blushed. She had never before discussed what Council Bluffs would have called a �
�needless offense to right-thinking people” with the offender in question. At a loss, she studied Xenia’s face and so bore witness to an almost comic sequence of expressions. It was clear that some mistake had been made, some miscalculation. Xenia opened and shut her mouth, then her eyes. “Francis said to you …?” she began, stopping to shake her head very rapidly while pinching the bridge of her nose with thumb and forefinger. “You understood from him …?” she hazarded next. Jane just blinked. Mercifully the door of the box swung open.

  It was Marcello, still in his pale gray suit. “I see I am very late,” he began in a hard, guilty voice. He looked prepared for some disagreeable reception. Finding only the ladies, his defiance crumbled. By the time he had fully explained his delay, the dozen civilities preventing his earlier withdrawal from—he faltered slightly—the home of an uncle’s business associate, his mouth had turned full and childish, his lashes were fluttering; Jane wanted to ask his age. “You see,” he cried, thinking to prove his good faith, “I did not take time to change into evening clothes! I hurried here, in a taxi—though now I see that I ought to have changed. You are both so elegant, I feel out of place.” However, an easy movement of his eyes back and forth among the neighboring boxes showed whom he considered the fairest occupant of their own. They didn’t detain him. Jane even caught an urgency in the directions Xenia gave him for finding Francis. Oh, she laughed and glittered, her lashes fluttered—there was your Europe for you, Jane told herself—but when he had left Xenia turned back at once. She actually pinched the bridge of her nose again, unnecessarily, for her question now came without hesitation:

  “Francis told you the child was his, didn’t he, Jane?”

  She nodded.

  “Well, it’s not true. The child is Tommy’s, of course.”

  “I see.” Jane stupidly smiled, as if a trivial typing error had been rectified. “I haven’t met Tommy.”

  “Let me assure you, I’ve done a very peculiar thing,” Xenia went on with growing animation. “In the bar Francis said he’d told you ‘everything,’ but notice what I did!” She held up one finger. “Instead of stopping to remember what he thinks the truth is, I’ve been taking for granted, talking to you, that he knew the real truth! It’s many a year since I caught myself in such a classic mental block. The subconscious never fails, though, does it?” She was all hearty laughter, as over the latest prank of an incorrigible child.

  Other details followed, to do with the various anguishes—emotional, economic, biological—that had kept Xenia from sitting down with Francis and making a clean breast of it. The deception had begun so innocently! “Believe me, it was what he needed to hear at the time. He wasn’t himself. He put the words in my mouth, I couldn’t tell him no. He’d been through some illness, some breakdown—you perhaps know more about it than I; he never speaks of it to me. What am I to do, Jane? Can I let one white lie, told months ago out of pure kindness, poison my life? If Tommy were to find out! I’d be on the streets! Shall I tell you what it means, my interesting slip of a moment ago? It’s a voice from inside,” Xenia pointed to her heart, “telling me that Francis must face the truth. I’ll speak to him tonight, at the party—no, better tomorrow, next week at the latest ….” Xenia had more to say but Jane couldn’t hear it.

  She had begun to feel again. The sweet relief of it helped her judge what violence she had done herself. All at once she relaxed, slumping a little, lips parting, fist unclenching like an opened flower. Now that it was over, what? Jane looked around as country people did, emerging from cellars after cyclones. Things cautiously reassumed their meanings. Wherever her mind’s eye rested she saw damage, but she felt warmth.

  “Must you?” she said quietly, the next time Xenia paused. “If there’s any way of not telling him, couldn’t you—”

  “What!” cried Xenia, staring.

  “—let him think the child is his? It helps him, he needs to believe it. Don’t tell him.”

  Objections rose easily to Xenia’s lips. If Tommy found out? If Francis made claims? What to tell the child itself? Had Jane been skilled in argument she might have hit upon answers to these questions. But to give reasons paralyzed her; she momentarily forgot what the reasons were. “Don’t tell him,” was the best she could do, “let him believe what he likes.” Until Xenia, who often argued merely for the intellectual fun and fierceness of it, finding so little, let herself be swayed.

  “This may not be the right moment,” she agreed, casting an ironic eye at two bald heads in the next box. She continued as if to herself: “Who knows what the stars hold? Zut! I’m not ready to marry. For one thing, Tommy doesn’t satisfy me physically. On the other hand, I’m no spring chicken. Suppose I drop dead in a restaurant? Then who takes care of the child?”

  “But you don’t understand!” Jane leaned forward, thinking herself inspired. “Francis would take care of the child! He wants to! And all you have to do,” she sounded her refrain one last time, “is never tell him!”

  Xenia appeared to shake herself awake. “Ah, but that’s utterly out of the question, utterly!” she explained, finality in her voice. “Let’s not talk about it any more”—leaving Jane to contemplate her own tactlessness in a silence which much peculiarly good-natured chatter from Xenia did nothing to dispel. “There’s Max! He’s waving to us! Come here, come here!” she mouthed without uttering a sound. “He’s a dear, you’ll adore him.” Or: “See that distinguished man in the third box down, with the mustache? He’s flirting with me. Now that is my type!”

  Years passed before Jane ever suspected Xenia of asking, that whole evening, nothing better than that her secret be kept forever from their friend. What she gave, during the interval before the others joined them, was hard to recognize as satisfaction, it had been so frosted over by sacrifice. “It would be for his good, you really think so? In that case, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for Francis, within reason … ah Max, te voilà! et toi, ma belle!”—this last to the old man, his face an embroidery of wrinkles and capillaries, and the red-haired woman, very powdered, whose name Jane was never to hear. They had just encountered Tommy in the vestibule; he was heading for the box, but in a black mood—let Xenia beware! “All day, every day,” the latter groaned. “I shall go mad, wait and see.” She addressed Max’s companion: “If ever you want to go back to the status quo you’ve only to say the word.” This sent the couple into shrieks of laughter, the old man showing a smattering of discolored teeth set here and there with gold, like primitive jewelry.

  When Tommy joined them he tumbled noisily onto the floor, there being no vacant chair. Francis, in his wake, paused before stepping over him to waver in their cramped midst.

  “Here you are, aren’t you ashamed?” said Xenia to one or both of them.

  Francis had taken hold of the powdered woman’s hand. He pressed it, played with it, let that take the place of speech while gazing from one to the other pleasantly. Even when he bent to whisper in Jane’s ear he kept his hold upon that white hand, less now to be cordial than to be upheld. Beyond him, framed by the entrance to the box, Marcello stood, their coats over his arm.

  “Listen,” began Francis; his breath was strong and damp against Jane’s cheek. “I’m going now, going home. I feel awful. You understand, I have to go. Here are extra keys.” He dropped them in her lap. “Big one’s to outside door, brass one opens apartment. I’ll see you in the morning, all right? You don’t need money? You’re sure?” He fished for a bill, dangled it before her; Jane had to thrust his hand away. Francis straightened up. “Xenia,” he said, “you’ll take Jane to the party afterwards, won’t you? Mamoushka, won’t you?”

  Marcello was watching Jane. Once their eyes had met she couldn’t think how or where to look, except into that familiar gaze—familiar to whoever knew Italy—of sexual provocation. “Command me,” his eyes said as clearly as any recitative, “command me, O fair one!” His lips parted, he began to smile—horribly. Jane’s fist tightened upon the keys. How did he dare, when it was Fran
cis who suffered, who needed him?

  “You’re not leaving!” cried Xenia, piecing it together at last. “When the best part’s coming!”

  “Let him go, Pussy,” a voice from the floor said. “I’d just as soon go myself. It stinks.”

  “What stinks? We’ve sat here enraptured, Jane and I!”

  “Yes,” Jane managed to say, “we have.”

  The young man lifted his head. “Are you Jane?”

  “Forgive me,” said Xenia. “I’ve forgotten your married name.”

  “What is it?” mused Francis. “I had it on the tip of my tongue.”

  Jane could give them no help in the matter.

  “Well, you’re very pretty,” Tommy said. “Are you leaving, too? Let me flirt with you and see how jealous my Pussy gets.”

  “Max,” put in the red-haired woman quietly.

  Looking away, Jane once more met Marcello’s eyes. The lights had begun to dim. At least she was living up to the yellow dress. Was this what other women called “success with men”?

  “Now, you can’t leave us!” Xenia called, only then noticing Marcello.

  “But, my dear,” the old man, Max, sought to reason with her, “we have seats downstairs. If we don’t leave now we shall be late.”

  Tommy scrambled to his feet. “That’s true,” he said gaily. “Everybody’s leaving. I’m leaving, too.” He turned to Jane. “Want to come?” Xenia seized his wrist.

  “I cannot bear this,” she announced in a savage whisper. “There are people tonight you must meet. They are watching you. Look!” Indeed, many glances had converged upon their box, piercing the gloom. A few people even hissed for silence. Xenia rose. “Francis, you reason with him! Oh you children! Tant pis! We’ll go outside!”

  They left the box, all six of them. Jane could hear their voices in the vestibule. In no time Xenia was back.