Collected Novels and Plays

by James Merrill

  The reconciliation he envisaged never got very far. That following winter, Charlie Cheek’s sailboat capsized in a heavy sea. Both he and Irene were washed up onto the beach days later, badly mutilated by sharks. The news was to leave Francis with an odd feeling, not quite annoyance, not quite frustration. “The emptiness, the pity of it,” he wrote his father at the time, remembering his high hopes, the day of the christening.

  “I’m off,” Francis said. “We needn’t decide about Mrs. Durdee now.” As nobody contradicted him, he started for the door. Larry and Enid rose at the same time.

  Benjamin’s eyes followed them. “I’m glad you’re taking an interest in your own affairs, Sonny,” he said drowsily.

  “What do you mean?”

  No answer came.

  “What does he mean?”

  Prudence smiled and put a finger to her lips. The old man had pulled a black mask over his eyes. So that Francis, going out with the Buchanans, had to content himself with Larry’s explanation. Mr. Tanning had meant the interest shown by Francis on hearing about Bishop Petroleum.

  “Oh come now!” he protested. “I wasn’t serious, I was being ironic!”

  “I know, I know,” said Larry, patting him on the shoulder so amiably as to leave uncertain which of them had the greater command of irony, in the last analysis.

  All three paused in the shade of the north terrace, watching children play hide-and-seek on the lawn down beyond the ha-ha.

  “They’re learning fast,” said Francis.

  Enid nodded vaguely. “They’ll have their supper at five-thirty.”

  “A cake with parents on it …”

  “Let’s go in,” said Larry, “and do our duty.”

  Francis thought he would stay outdoors. His brother-in-law took a step or two away, then returned. “Your father and Prudence and I,” he said in a low voice, “were talking before you came in. Did you know that the Cottage would be yours one day?”

  Francis nodded dreamily.

  Larry gave him an annoyed look. “Well, it was news to me,” he said, and went into the house, leaving a funny doubt in Francis’s mind. How had he known?

  Between games he caught Lily’s eye and beckoned to her. She took a long time to reach his side. “I have no present for you, Lily,” he said when she did; “will this do?”—offering her a five-dollar bill.

  “Oh, Uncle Francis!”

  The twins had followed her. He produced coins for them. Their real pleasure brought back his own childhood, and the subsequent painful process of learning to hide his love for money.

  “What are you playing?”

  “Hide-and-seek. Would you like to play?”

  “Good heavens, child—well, why not?”

  He let her lead him out onto the sunny grass. Coming to the brink of the small artificial precipice—the ha-ha—they jumped, hand in hand, down to the sunken lawn. Presently Francis was in the midst of children, their faces flushed and grave as if he were going to wrench some vital secret from them. Lily alone couldn’t stop giggling as she rehearsed the rules he had obeyed at her age, in the same walled garden.

  “Uncle Francis is It,” she announced proudly at last. “If he wants to play he has to be It.”

  So Francis obligingly buried his face in a hydrangea bush, hearing the muffled running of children seeking to elude him in far corners of the garden. As he slowly counted to one hundred, his mind wandered from the simple rules of the game—he, she, or It—to the shrubbery, the rose arbor, the wicker chairs on the terrace; he relished in advance the found child’s shriek of excitement. A vast silence now defined itself, in which he distinctly heard the opening and shutting of a screen door. That was odd. Somebody must have come out of the house to watch him, beneath the egg-white sky, his face deep in foliage, take part in a children’s game. He responded to the quiet attentiveness of that person, whoever it was, advancing to the edge of the ha-ha. The green eyes of Mrs. McBride’s daughter shone unbidden in his memory—would it be she? It would be somebody, at any rate, to whom Francis had never been a child, though seen as one among so many other greennesses; to whom indeed, rising from the growing discomfort of his position, he might turn with a smile, idly begin to talk. One by one he would shed, in favor of others more pressing, his obligations to the game. He would join his watcher, they would stroll together back into the house. The children, sensing the sudden drop in tension, the way a string goes limp when snapped, would come out of hiding and, accepting his withdrawal as they had his appearance, reshift the delicate balances of their play.

  “Ready or not!” he shouted, more to his observer than to the twenty little hearts pounding out of sight. Then he raised his head, looked round to the ha-ha.

  There was nobody in sight.

  Well then, thought Francis, managing an empty smile, what else but to play the game? Their eyes, at least, were on him, peering through leaves, peeking through wicker. With exaggerated stealth and flashing stern glances into the greenery he started across the lawn. Something winked in the rose-arbor, he darted forward—a bird. Something rustled out from the bushes behind him; crying “Aha!” he pivoted—a rabbit froze on the hushed lawn. Where were they? No sound of smothered laughter came to ease his confusion. It took Francis another few minutes to connect the sound of the screen door with the children making their escape. He was alone in the garden.

  The game had broken like a bubble—or had not, had rather, by ending on terms so incongruous, left him still inside it, sustaining it all by himself. He thought of some old stage uncle, living on in a boarding-house, friendless, wedded to the mannerism of a once famous role. He felt ridiculously lonely.

  At last he started back towards the house, regaining first the higher level of green, then the shady terrace. The cardplayers, intent on their game, scarcely looked up as Francis slipped into the great, red, scented room. He paused behind his mother while she fingered a face card. “Do you know what I’d love?” she murmured, feeling his presence. “A glass of cold, cold water.”

  “So would I, Francis,” said Mrs. Gresham.

  “Make it three,” whispered Bertha Durdee, and played a heart.

  Francis hurried to the pantry, positively afraid lest now, too late, he should hear from somewhere a chorus of mocking voices sing out the start of a fresh game, in which he, once again, would be It.

  On his return Natalie Bigelow asked for water. The grown-ups did not otherwise detain him.

  But only after coming upon the children building castles at the sea’s edge, oblivious to him, did Francis stare out over the lulled water and understand. He was It. He tentatively said so the first time, then once more with an exquisite tremor of conviction: “I am It.”

  The words carried with them wondrous notions of selflessness, of permanence. His father coughed behind him in the house. The children trembled against the sea. He knew the expression on his own face. The entire world was real.

  THE (DIBLOS)

  NOTEBOOK

  (1965)

  Isidore a menti, je ne méprise personne

  et ne hais point mes parents.

  Ayoub Sinano, Artagal

  Orestes

  The islands of Greece

  Across vivid water the islands of Greece lie. They have been cut out of cardboard and set on bases of

  at subtle odds with one another, upon bases of pale haze. Their colors are mauve, exhausted blue, tanned rose, here & there crinkled to catch the light. They do not seem

  It is inconceivable that they are of one substance with the warm red rock underfoot

  rock of one’s own vantage point (?)

  One early evening

  (Name) had grown used to this contradiction. She

  Late one spring afternoon a woman no longer puzzled troubled by this illusion left her house, the largest on the island of (Name), and set out on foot in the direction of town.

  At the top of a hill she met Orestes. He

  Her body was strong and graceful, her features first darkened
, then silvered by the dry summer. White strands in her iron-colored hair shot backward into an elaborate plaited bun. Her large, Byzantine eyes, immense & shining, though set in webs of age, attended without curiosity to the path which rose and fell never far from the water’s edge. She wore sandals, a gray skirt, not embroidered, & a night-blue shawl

  and had wound a thin night-blue shawl around the upper part of her body, to produce an impression of deliberate, coquettish antiquity. Drawstring looped over her wrist, an old-fashioned beaded purse sparkled mustily as she walked, making light of the mission she did not have. She had told them she was going to the pharmacy. They had

  She had said she was going to the pharmacy, not that there was anything to do, now, but wait. The others had appeared to understand.

  So did the few people she passed; they greeted her courteously, without lingering.

  On a small promontory she met Orestes. He was walking away from the town. It stretched on either side of him like a robe, its hues of white & stone hanging down into the still harbor.

  “Pardon me,” he said. “Do you live here? I am looking for the Sleeping Woman.”

  His Greek, fluent but incorrect, made her examine him carefully.

  “Ah,” she said at length, “but the best view is from the town. Did no one point it out? You must turn back.”

  Whereupon they fell into step together and Orestes set about

  O., who found all his own traits extraordinary, set about marveling at his stupidity imperception. Did she mean those slopes directly facing the port? Their silhouette made up the Sleeping Woman? He laughed out loud, swinging his zippered notebook from his little finger.

  At this juncture, I think, no serious evocation of landscape. What else will serve?

  Let me see. Orestes can give her ice cream at the café. (It must be Summer. O.’s sabbatical year will just have begun.) A mild dusk. The awnings that close me in won’t be needed. It will divert her to sit in full view of the populace—the grande dame of the island, already on such jolly terms with the newcomer.

  He will talk.

  “I was born 35 years ago in Asia Minor of Greek parents. My father, a goatherd, fell in love with a beautiful etc. Dead of cancer. Poverty. New York. Mother remarried, lives in Texas. A stepfather, a half-brother

  No. Avoid plunging stupidly into exposition. Let him be felt a bit. Let her be felt.

  (Orson—Orestes. Now another name for

  Maria

  Dora.)

  Psyche

  And let me not be part of it. It’s hard enough

  Fifi (Serafina)

  being O.’s brother in life, without sentencing

  Kiki (Pulcheria)

  myself to it in a book.

  Artemis

  Orestes

  Little stream, have you petered out so soon?

  This is my first prolonged exposure to the town of Diblos (1800 souls). It has, I can report so far, a hotel & a café. In the hotel are 12 rooms, 2 baths, a manager in pyjamas morning and night, an energetic Italian-speaking maid named Chryssoula whose children—Yannis, Theodoros, Aphrodite, six all told—run errands & whose big black cat does not. Here at the café, the canvas, still rolled down, is flapping furiously. An umber heat pulses through it. My table lurches from side to side as I write, at one with the incomprehensible voices, rattle of beads, the click & screech of crockery. It is 4:00 of my 2nd day here, and of my 7th in Greece for as many years. I’d thought one of the first things to do would be to walk out to the House, but I haven’t. Nor have I wanted in any way to “use” my previous visit, or my connection with O. & Dora. The natives have shown, up to now, no glimmer of recognition.

  5:30. The boat from Athens has come & gone. The awnings are rolled up. Nobody in sight. I could be giving thought to

  5:45. The American girl, Lucy, from the N.’s lunch last week, was on the boat. I hadn’t noticed her getting off. She seemed ominously glad to see a familiar face. Then: “But you’re working, excuse me!”—leaving me with the choice of being amused by her view of the Writer as finer & nobler than the rest of us or being undone by the whole sorry banality of writing so much as a postcard in a public place. Anyhow, she couldn’t join me. A luggage-bearing child led her off to a room taken, sight unseen. Will she be here long? I didn’t ask. I am so cold to people. And keep forgetting that it’s that, the coldness, the remoteness, that attracts them. If I were warmer, talked more, showed more interest, felt more interest—

  To fit in somewhere:

  (Dora) was constantly polite and respected, but Orestes had time for people, time to talk and show interest, to make his listeners feel that their minds were rare & flexible, time to welcome a stranger into the circle with some deft bit of nonsense from the speaker’s well of inexhaustible friendliness. This kind of conversation finds its happiest expression in the dialogues of Plato, where for all Socrates’ avowed humility it is certainly he who does the talking & remains the center of attention. The system worked like a charm at the waterfront café where a half dozen idle citizens would be held spellbound, hours on end, while (Dora) knitted. “How do you do it?” she asked one day.

  “What do you mean? I like doing it,” he said.

  “How can you?” was on the tip of her tongue. Instead she returned to her knitting handiwork, head bowed in acknowledgment of her friend’s superior humanity.

  (The Greek restaurant in New York: a contrasting scene.)

  17.vi.61

  From the post-office (no letters yet) a strange view of the Sleeping Woman, seen only by afternoon light until today. Barely recognizable, a collapsing tent of whitish bluffs & uncertain distances; let Orestes see her that way just before (after?) the confrontation on the terrace.

  Seen from the café, now, the Woman is more distinct: knee, belly, ribcage, breast (a shallow hemisphere) slung backwards to the long throat; a firm jutting chin, nose ditto; mouth shut, refusal of a kiss.

  She gives the landscape an intense dreamlike quality. In the foreground, set low, an Italianate composition of peeling villa, cypress, palm, lemon trees, all green-black between the sky-colored water & the hills pale as clouds.

  Even the narrow channel between island and mainland struck Orestes as emblematic. He thought of the “tight straits” of his early life.

  18.vi.61

  Along the quai are moored the little water taxis, each shaded by a canopy of white cloth. This, on Dora’s more stylish boat, had a border of scarlet fringe.

  She sent the boat for Orestes the following afternoon. The young boatman

  “Well, this has been very nice,” said (Dora)—they were now speaking English. She gave him her hand, adding as if it meant nothing, “You wouldn’t be a bridge fan?

  He stared at her, thinking of Hart Crane water to be spanned.

  “Or any card game. It helps to pass the time.”

  “Oh you know,” cried Orestes joyously, understanding & savoring his conquest, “I have no talent for such things. I would play a diamond instead of a heart—is that what the suits are called?” He ended by noticing her smile. “Would you like me to play cards with you?” he said meekly.

  She sent the boat for him the following afternoon. The young boatman, Kosta, knew him by sight. In those days before the tourists discovered (Diblos) every stranger was known, through someone’s hospitable interrogation, within an hour of arrival.

  (It’s moving too quickly.)

  (That same night) Orestes strolled the length of the waterfront to a taverna above the beach—from afar, a diamond blaze, a faint blare of song; once there, 8 tables, a central rectangle of earth, unshaded bulbs strung on wires. A whitewashed cube, windowless, in whose forehead burned the strongest bulb, completed the setting. Two couples sat at one table, two sailors at another. Orestes The music had stopped. O. nodded about politely, seated himself and ordered wine & cheese from the child who came stumbling out over an apron that covered him from chest to ankles.

  Ah wait. Insert:

  At a 3rd table sat
a small, plump infant of a man, dashingly dressed, an Athenian on holiday, O. supposed in the moment it took to nod about & choose a table removed from the outsider. He seated himself, etc. HA rhythmical grating, ominous & blurred, the needle in its groove, heralded the next selection. From the loudspeaker issued a splatter of twanging sounds, a melody any fragment of which seemed feverish but whose final effect was one of tragic lassitude. A voice put words to it:

  “In Trikala where two alleys meet

  They murdered Sahavlià…”

  (Or find other words. Love & Betrayal. Make them up?)

  One of the sailors rose to dance. He snapped fingers, leapt, dipped, never looked up. Above him, counterwise to his movements, a lightbulb slowly revolved. When the dance ended, the small plump man, who had come unnoticed to Orestes’ table, asked permission to sit down.

  The Enfant Chic.

  He is forever pursing his pale mouth and rolling his pale eyes. A silken swag of hair, a lightly pitted face like the moon’s. The rest of him vanishes into his new clothes; the white collar stands out from his ears, only his knuckles show below the pink cuffs. In talking, he spreads out his hands & the two middle fingers stay glued together as on fashion dummies. He would be, oh, 40. One thinks at first he is a photographer; he leers at one, mimes the snapping of a picture. Is he mad? His manner changes. He asks if one knows an Athens shop called l’Enfant Chic. No, no, no, he does not own it. No, no, he doesn’t buy his clothes there, hahaha. The outspread hand flattens upon his heart. Ze suis, moi, l’Enfant Seek. Actually his name is Yannis, as whose isn’t, and he runs a shop of his own here called Tout pour le Sport.