The Collected Stories of Hortense Calisher

by Hortense Calisher

  “Helena?” she said.

  Her voice, clear-cut, surprised her. There was nothing so strange about it. The walls remained walls. No one could hear her, or cared to, and now, tucking her feet up, she could remember how cozy this could be, with someone opposite. “Helena,” she said. “Wait till I tell you what happened while you were away.”

  She told her everything. At first she stumbled, went back, as if she were rehearsing in front of a mirror. Several times she froze, unsure whether a sentence had been spoken aloud entirely, or had begun, or terminated, unspoken, in the mind. But as she went on, this wavering borderline seemed only to resemble the clued conversation, meshed with silences, between two people who knew each other well. By the time she had finished her account she was almost at ease, settling back into the comfortably shared midnight post-mortem that always restored balance to the world—so nearly could she imagine the face, not unlike her own, in the chair opposite, smiling ruefully at her over the boy and his gingerbread fears, wondering mischievously with her as to in which of the shapes of temptation the Old Nick visited Miss Finan.

  “That girl and her log!” said Mrs. Hazlitt. “You know how, when they’re that young, you want to smash in the smugness. And yet, when you think of all they’ve got to go through, you feel so maternal. Even if—” Even if, came the nod, imperceptibly—you’ve never had children, like us.

  For a while they were silent. “Warwick!” said Mrs. Hazlitt then. “Years ago there was an actor—Robert Warwick. I was in love with him—at about the age of eight.” Then she smiled, bridling slightly, at the dark chair opposite, whose occupant would know her age. “Oh, all right then—twelve. But what is it, do you suppose, always makes old actors look seedy, even when they’re not? Daylight maybe. Or all the pretenses.” She ruminated. “Why … do you know,” she said slowly, “I think I’ve got it. The way he looked in my face when I was speaking, and the way the dog turned back and he didn’t. He was lip-reading. Why, the poor old boy is deaf!” She settled back, dropping her slippers one by one to the floor. “Of course, that’s it. And he wouldn’t want to admit that he couldn’t have heard it. Probably doesn’t dare wear an aid. Poor old boy, pretty dreary for him if he is an actor, and I’ll bet he is.” She sighed, a luxury permitted now. “Ah, well. Frail reed—Miss Finan. Lucky for me, though, that I stumbled on her.” And on you.

  A police siren sounded, muffled less and less by distance, approaching. She was at the window in time to see the car’s red dome light streak by as it always did, its alarum dying behind it. Nothing else was on the road “And there were the taxis,” she said, looking down. “I don’t know why I keep forgetting them. Veering to the side like that, one right after the other, and one had his light out, so it wasn’t for a fare. Nothing on the curb either. Then they both shot away, almost as if they’d caught sight of something up here. And wanted no part of it—the way people do in this town. Wish you could’ve seen them—it was eerie.” There was no response from behind her.

  She sat down again. Yes, there was a response, for the first time faintly contrary.

  “No,” she said. “It certainly was not the siren. I was up in a flash. I’d have seen it.” She found herself clenching the arms of the chair. “Besides,” she said, in a quieter voice, “don’t you remember? I heard it twice.”

  There was no answer. Glancing sideways, she saw the string of lights opposite, not quite of last night’s pattern. But the silence was the same, opened to its perfect hour like a century plant, multiple-rooted, that came of age every night. The silence was in full bloom, and it had its own sound. Hark hark, no dogs do bark. And there is nobody in the chair.

  Never was, never had been. It was sad to be up at this hour and sane. For now is the hour, now is the hour when all good men are asleep. Her hand smoothed the rim of the wastebasket, about the height from the floor of a dog’s collar. Get one tomorrow. But how to manage until then, with all this silence speaking?

  She made herself stretch out on the bed, close her eyes. “Sam,” she said at last, as she had sworn never to do in thought or word, “I’m lonely.” Listening vainly, she thought how wise her resolve had been. Too late, now she had tested his loss to the full, knew him for the void he was—far more of a one than Mrs. Berry, who, though unknown, was still somewhere. By using the name of love, when she had been ready to settle for anybody, she had sent him into the void forever. Opening her eyes, adjusted now to the sourceless city light that never ceased trickling on ceiling, lancing from mirrors, she turned her head right to left, left to right on the pillow, in a gesture to the one auditor who remained.

  “No,” she said, in the dry voice of correction. “I’m not lonely. I’m alone.”

  Almost at once she raised herself on her elbow, her head cocked. No, she had heard nothing from outside. But in her mind’s ear she could hear the sound of the word she had just spoken, its final syllable twanging like a tuning fork, infinitely receding to octaves above itself, infinitely returning. In what seemed scarcely a stride, she was in the next room, at the French window, brought there by that thin, directional vibration which not necessarily even the blind would hear. For she had recognized it. She had identified the accent of the scream.

  The long window frame, its swollen wood shoved tight by her the night before, at first would not budge; then, as she put both hands on the hasp and braced her knees, it gave slowly, grinding inward, the heavy man-high bolt thumping down. Both sounds, too, fell into their proper places. That’s what I heard before, she thought, the noise of a window opening or closing, exactly like mine. Two lines of them, down the six floors of the building, made twelve possibles. But that was of no importance now. Stepping up on the lintel, she spread the casements wide.

  Yes, there was the bridge, one small arc of it, sheering off into the mist, beautiful against the night, as all bridges were. Now that she was outside, past all barriers, she could hear, with her ordinary ear, faint nickings that marred the silence, but these were only the surface scratches on a record that still revolved one low, continuous tone. No dogs do bark. That was the key to it, that her own hand, smoothing a remembered dog-collar, had been trying to give her. There were certain dog-whistles, to be bought anywhere—one had hung, with the unused leash, on a hook near a door in the country—which blew a summons so high above the human range that only a dog could hear it. What had summoned her last night would have been that much higher, audible only to those tuned in by necessity—the thin, soaring decibel of those who were no longer in the fold. Alone-oh. Alone-oh. That would have been the shape of it, of silence expelled from the mouth in one long relieving note, cool, irrepressible, the second one clapped short by the hand. No dog would have heard it. No animal but one was ever that alone.

  She stepped out onto the fire escape. There must be legions of them, of us, she thought, in the dim alleyways, the high, flashing terraces—each one of them come to the end of his bookings, circling his small platform in space. And who would hear such a person? Not the log-girls, not for years and years. None of any age who, body to body, bed to bed, either in love or in the mutual pluck-pluck of hate—like the little girl and her mother—were still nested down. Reginald Warwick, stoppered in his special quiet, might hear it, turn to his Coco for confirmation which did not come, and persuade himself once again that it was only his affliction. Others lying awake snug as a bug, listening for that Old Nick, death, would hear the thin, sororal signal and not know what they had heard. But an endless assemblage of others all over the city would be waiting for it—all those sitting in the dark void of the one lamp quenched, the one syllable spoken—who would start up, some from sleep, to their windows … or were already there.

  A car passed below. Instinctively, she flattened against the casement, but the car traveled on. Last night someone, man or woman, would have been standing in one of the line of niches above and beneath hers—perhaps even a woman in a blue robe like her own. But literal distance or person would not matter; in that audience all wou
ld be the same. Looking up, she could see the tired, heated lavender of the midtown sky, behind which lay that real imperial into which some men were already hurling their exquisitely signaling spheres. But this sound would come from breast to breast, at an altitude higher than any of those. She brought her fist to her mouth, in savage pride at having heard it, at belonging to a race some of whom could never adapt to any range less than that. Some of us, she thought, are still responsible.

  Stepping forward, she leaned on the iron railing. At that moment, another car, traveling slowly by, hesitated opposite, its red dome light blinking. Mrs. Hazlitt stood very still. She watched until the police car went on again, inching ahead slowly, as if somebody inside were looking back. The two men inside there would never understand what she was waiting for. Hand clapped to her mouth, she herself had just understood. She was waiting for it—for its company. She was waiting for a second chance—to answer it. She was waiting for the scream to come again.

  About the Author

  Hortense Calisher (1911–2009) was born in New York City. The daughter of a young German-Jewish immigrant mother and a somewhat older Jewish father from Virginia, she graduated from Barnard College in 1932 and worked as a sales clerk before marrying and moving to Nyack, New York, to raise her family. Her first book, a collection of short stories titled In the Absence of Angels, appeared in 1951. She went on to publish two dozen more works of fiction and memoir, writing into her nineties. A past president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and of PEN, the worldwide association of writers, she was a National Book Award finalist three times, won an O. Henry Award for “The Night Club in the Woods” and the 1986 Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for The Bobby Soxer, and was awarded Guggenheim Fellowships in 1952 and 1955.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1948, 1949, 1950, 1951, 1952, 1954, 1955, 1956, 1957, 1960, 1962, 1967, 1975 by Hortense Calisher

  Introduction copyright © 1984 by John Hollander

  Cover design by Kelly Parr

  978-1-4804-3738-8

  This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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