They waited for the music to stop or the music to begin and they didn’t know where to go. The group of actors had to wait, for there was rustling and it seemed that Miss Stamberg was going to begin and they drew their robes and they drew their tunics self-consciously about them. “Oh Gawd—now that thing” George was saying “Pygmalion in Philadelphia. Poor damn Shaw would be delighted” and Hermione hated George with his affectation of familiarity with crowned (so to speak) heads and saw that Fayne Rabb was Pygmalion. That could be no other than Fayne Rabb because ouija-board perceptions saw Pygmalion, saw a stretch of sea coast, saw a boy in a tunic who was Fayne Rabb, who was Pygmalion. George was squinting at a programme held slanting to his left eye. “I’ve forgot my gig-lamps. When is the dance beginning?” And Hermione said, as if Fayne Rabb had not crossed her vision, as if a girl in a Greek tunic had not stood for one ironic moment before the negriod sort of art-picture of a woman on a sea shell, “Oh when this thing’s over. When this play they call Pygmalion is finished.”
Click. Those really sophisticated two men on the wide stair before the show began had brought things together (things out of focus), had been perceptive toward the really awful Perseus, had seen the Perseus as not so awful, bringing what he stood for into some sort of affectionate realm of recognition with their “Philadelphia Delacroix,” with their “Courbet and his moss-green.” Affection brought things with a click right, brought odd distorted images, Perseus with great halcyon wings (great white turkey wings, goose wings) on his wide sandals, sandals on his plump heel into perspective. Click . . . George couldn’t play this game, not really play this game, for art was what science wasn’t. Art was the discriminating and selecting and bringing odd distorted images into right perspective. There was good art, there was bad art, there was Carnation Lily Lily Rose which might be good or bad with lanterns hanging in a garden and that was no nearer, no further than . . . Pygmalion.
“I’m glad I waited in this corridor.” “Oh—then you recognize me?” “Recognize you? But I always knew you.” And George was shoving her in. “Who are these wretched dramatists, these highbrow art sort of college girls?”
“I don’t know who they are. I mean I only know who one is. I mean that girl I spoke to is Pygmalion. I met her at a party. A sort of hot day when the dust was so hot . . . it’s so much, isn’t it, cooler . . . it’s quite isn’t it cool?” And she knew being pushed into an end seat, with George pushed in a seat behind her (they were late, hadn’t got their own seats, had to take leftover seats) that she would always say to George now and to all the Georges “The dust was so hot. . . it’s so much isn’t it cooler . . . it’s quite isn’t it cool?” hearing an overture on a violin and seeing a form step forward . . .
PART TWO
I
one
“Sea beat up and wind fell hesitating . . . “Go on. . . “It’s rotten rather just here.” “You read so beautifully.” “I don’t want you to think I’m reading. It’s things back of me. It’s things back of me. You draw things out of me like some sort of . . . some sort of . . .” “Go on.” “I mean you draw things out of me.” Fayne Rabb was sitting on the sofa. The remains of the tea things scarred the floor beside her. “I mean the tea things look wrong here. Like setting teacups down on some pre-fifth-century Attic boulder. I mean to see teacups now in this small sitting room, to see you now in this small sitting room makes the sitting room . . . I mean it makes the sitting room seem like a gauze curtain.” “How exactly gauze? And how exactly curtain?” “I mean the curtains, the potpourri-coloured curtains . . .” “The —what exactly?” “I call the curtains potpourri-coloured. I mean everything in this house is potpourri-coloured. You make everything in the world seem shabby.”
She stuck out her head like a bird; seeing everything, Fayne Rabb saw nothing. She saw like a bird that sees a tree not as heap of leaf, haymow stack of leaf on leaf, a heap of green making a curve or a cushion or a feathery sort of blurr on a horizon. Fayne Rabb saw not the potpourri-coloured curtains, not the figure drawn a little apart, drawn just too far, just too near that made a voice ring and resound and colours jab and dart against the dark faded rose of the faded-coloured curtains. Fayne Rabb saw as a bird, seeing nothing of importance. “All the things that make the world important . . . all the things, I mean mama thinks important . . . you don’t . . . you don’t . . . recognize. I mean you don’t see the things. It isn’t as if you were destructive. Nellie said you were odd and so destructive. You just don’t see them.”
“I just don’t see what? This is interesting.” “I mean there is George. Now you would, I think, like George. I don’t want you to see George as George—” “Is it likely?” “No. It isn’t at all, not in the very least bit likely. But I have talked so much, so much about George—” “Are you still infatuated?” “In-fat-uated? That is just what all this time I’ve been telling you I wasn’t.” “Little, oh Miss Gart.” “No. Fayne. I’m not. I’m not so very little.” “You’re as little as a bird that has no wings, no beak, no feathers. You are the sort of thing a caterpillar would be before it were born, if all the time a caterpillar before it were born kept its own fur—fur-i-ness (is that what I mean exactly?), you are like a caterpillar just the minute it changes to a phoenix.” “A caterpillar doesn’t—I mean it doesn’t change into a phoenix.” “Who told you that little Miss Her Gart? A caterpillar I say does change into a phoenix.” Chin thrust out, days are getting darker, days are getting longer; Hermione said, “Now when I look into your face I think the most ordinary things. Now just now looking into your face I just thought the days are getting longer.” “Why looking into my face, shouldn’t you say the days are getting longer? Ordinary words aren’t always ordinary. Anyway I am—” “Am?” “Are” “Are what exactly?” “Ordinary.” “Fayne. Fayne. Fayne. Fayne. Fayne.” “You sound like a prophetess shrieking before Olympus.” “Not Olympus. It’s Delphi.” “It’s Olympus.” “You don’t really know the difference.” “Now little blasphemer—”
A hand thrust out. A hand swift, heavy; small, heavy swift hand. A hand thrust out and the hand (as it were) was thrust from behind a curtain. “AH this room, I’ve been saying is like a curtain.” The words were (as it were) dragged out of her long throat by a small hand, by a tight hand, by a hard dynamic forceful vibrant hand. The hand of Fayne Rabb dragged words out of the throat of Her Gart. “The whole thing comes right perfectly. I mean it is true that man is a shadow (what is that Greek tag?) I mean man being a shadow or a spirit or a bit of fire or something holding together a corpse. You are, aren’t you?” The hand let go dynamically. “Am—what, Hermione?” “You are—you make me see the transience in everything. You are conscious aren’t you that Fayne Rabb is nothing?” “I am, little blasphemer, conscious of none of any such thing. I am of great importance.” “You are and you just aren’t; don’t joke about all this. I mean I see (through you) the meaning of—of—” “Eternity?” “No-oo—not that exactly.” “Maternity?” “Oh horrible—” “Paternity?” “Fayne—are you really still there?”
“I am, Miss Her Gart. And I am not. I mean looking at Miss Her Gart, I see a green lane. There is some twist to it, a long lane winding among birch trees.” “No-oo—not birch trees.” “Yes. I say they are. I say they are birch trees. We are and we aren’t together . . . we go on and we don’t go on together . . . there is fear and disaster but Fayne and Hermione don’t go on together. I see a lane and the sea. The sea sweeps up and washes the steps of a sea wall. I mean the steps run down from the top of the wall and are half covered by the sea tide. There is wash forward, wash backward, there is wash of amber-specked weeds beneath the water. I don’t know where this is. I can see you are and you aren’t here. You are here and you aren’t here. I hate all these things that blunt you. You aren’t firm enough. You are transient like water seen through birch trees. You are like the sparkle of water over white stones. Something in you makes me hate you. Drawn to you I am repulsed, drawn away from you, I am negated. You are no
t myself but you are some projection of myself. Myself, myself projected you like water . . . you are the sort of fountain (to become graphic, biblical) that gushed out of the dead desert rock. I am not Moses. I never could have struck you. I did not strike you. You are yet repressed, unseeing, unseen . . .”
“Oh, Fayne, do, do, do stop saying these things.” “You are like other people. Really at the end, you are just like other people. You are afraid.” “Who wouldn’t be afraid of you glaring in the darkness?” “It’s not dark. The room is full of light. . .”
It frightens me to hear Fayne. It happens just as we are near coming together in some realm of appreciation. Words spring from nowhere; Fayne is like a bird under an anesthetic. Her chin thrust forward, “Oh, you’re always just like people.” “People?” “One gets so far with you. One thinks that you will follow. You’re just like everybody.”
Anger choked Fayne Rabb. The small murderous hand thrust out again as from behind a curtain. “But you’re iron. Where do you get your strength, Hermione?”
Words with Fayne in a room, in any room, became projections of things beyond one. Things beyond Her beat, beat to get through Her, to get through to Fayne. So prophetess faced prophetess over tea plates scattered and two teacups making delphic pattern on a worn carpet. Pattern of little plates, of little teacups (Fayne as usual had had no lunch) and people and things all becoming like people, things seen through an opera glass. The two eyes of Fayne Rabb were two lenses of an opera glass and it was Hermione’s entrancing new game to turn a little screw, a little handle somewhere (like Carl Gart with his microscope) and bring into focus those two eyes that were her new possession. Her Gart had found her new possession. You put things, people under, so to speak, the lenses of the eyes of Fayne Rabb and people, things come right in geometric contour. “You must see George Lowndes.”
For George Lowndes pirouetting like a harlequin must be got right. Hermione must (before discarding George Lowndes) get George right. “I’m seeing him tomorrow.”
two
“This woman’s not good for you and I don’t want to see her.” George tossed back a tuft of upstanding harlequin thick hair. Through upstanding harlequin thick hair the odd Swiss chalet and the little boy and girl painted in one side (to the corner) came straight. Seen through harlequin tuft of the upstanding hair of George Lowndes, it seemed charming and quaint suddenly that Eugenia should have done that. Fayne Rabb had said “How charming and Victorian of your mother to have done that” and the picture, the odd green on green that was the green on green daub of a picture by Eugenia, a picture that Eugenia had done when she wore a dart across fluffed-out Hellenistic hair and a row of ruffles tied round her waist to puff out at the back, became perceptible.
“I saw that picture when I was a very little girl, when I said to mama, ‘I want to paint a picture,’ and I saw that picture when I was a young grown-up big girl just finished school, and wanted to have all the old things put up in the attic, and I saw that picture a third time when Fayne Rabb said yesterday, ‘How charming and Victorian of your mother to have done that.’ ” Hermione said words from somewhere, from nowhere but harlequin upstanding hair of George waved like a jungle tuft of rank grass; it was brushed upward again volcanically by George who hadn’t heard a word she had been saying. Harlequin fingers jabbed upward and the high forehead and the thick beautifully modelled upper bones of the face, the cheeks and the heavy modelling of the forehead were revealed as George leant back. George ran his hands again through jungle tuft of rank hair and uttered. “Who helped you do this thing, Hermione?”
A picture was cut off by the shoulders that squared across it. At either edge of the shoulders a bit projected, oozed, so to speak, out, thick, thick green put on thick thick green. The little boy and girl daubed in carefully showed to the right of the squared shoulders of George Lowndes. On the other side, the stream that started high up on the hill ran away into the gold frame. The thick gold frame projected, outjutting beyond the squared-in shoulder of George Lowndes. “What thing do you mean George? Who helped me do what thing?”
“Well I’m ballyhoo damned if I’m going to help you with your bally writing.” “What’s ballyhoo George?” “I am. Damned. I won’t.” “Won’t what George?” “Did or didn’t we call a sort of truce just this instant?” “What instant?” “Did or did we not say we’d make a bargain?” “We did say George that we’d try to make a bargain.” “Hell. It will take some trying.”
Pages fluttered in the hands of George Lowndes. His hands fluttered white pages. What George holds in his hands is my life’s beginning. What George flutters is my life’s ending. Mama should have given me watercolours. I would rather paint. I wish I could have painted. “Mama should have let me play the violin like Fayne Rabb.” “What’s that you’re gurgling?” “I was saying I wish mother had let me play the violin like Fayne Rabb’s mother. I was thinking I wish I could have painted like Eugenia.”
“Painted? You call that painted?” George following the direction of eyes through his jungle tufts of violently upstanding bright hair, had bent his head over the back of the chair and was looking upside down at Eugenia’s old oil picture. “Well. Yes. I mean think of the fun she had putting that pine tree by that pine tree until way up at the top of the mountain the last pine tree is just one speck of colour.” “You don’t call that thing colour.” “No. But you must see what I mean exactly. You must see how she loved it.” “Love doesn’t make good art, Hermione.” George Lowndes bounced forward like someone who has had a tooth out. “I tell you this is writing”
Hermione faced George Lowndes across a forest jungle. Writing. Love is writing. “It’s like—like—Theocritus.” “Yes.” “It’s like an epilogue, you know.” “Bucolic?” “No. The other things. Not Tityrus tu titulae . . . it’s like the choriambics of a forgotten Melic”
three
Choriambics of a forgotten Melic. Choriambics of a forgotten Melic beat rhythm and rhythm through the alert avid out-watching mind of Her Gart. “Choriambics,” she repeated valiantly swaying with the jerk and sway of the trolley. “Choriambics,” she said to herself, sustained against the bulk of a huge negress who pushed through and through her, who pushed Her aside with a lumbering basket, who cried in harsh bull-bellow to the conductor, “I done said 22nd Street, I done tol’ you when I paid you.” “Choriambics of a forgotten Melic” sustained Hermione against a broad-shouldered sort of butcher who jolted her knees as she swayed forward pushed by the bulk of the negress. “Choriambics,” she said, “Choriambics, this part of town is dreadful” and sustained and pushed and pushed and sustained and pushed finally into a corner, she was somehow made conscious by numbers on houses, by trams passing trams, by huge lumberings of vans and furniture vans and the odd cross-traffic of Market Street that she was getting near her destination, 36th Street. West Philadelphia. “As Nellie says ‘West Philadelphia sustains our mediocrities.’ ”
“Melic mediocrity,” said Her Gart as she slipped to a cobbled pavement, picked her way across rough cobbles and rough stones, turned a corner; turning a corner, she darted down a long funnel off a side street where little houses all bore little numbers. “The address, as Nellie said, sustains modernity or was it mediocrity? Anyhow it’s melic.” Her Gart turned into Greenway Avenue. Greenway Avenue spread its length like an unfolded toy street. Greenway Avenue unfolded before her avid vision as if she herself had cut out all the little roofs, placed little house by little house, run them together. Greenway Avenue looked as if it would fold in triangular pattern if you picked it up, if you unspread it to put it back in its toy box or flat toy envelope. “Greenway Avenue is the oddest avenue. It doesn’t seem to be here.”
Her Gart stood at the head of the slightly down-tilting narrow long street. Houses and houses and houses all just like this, all with West Philadelphia for a postmark. Fayne had said “Oh yes, we live in West Philadelphia,” and Her had seen a house with wide-opening great doors and a little tree set somewhere. Her Gart readi
ng Greenway Avenue had visualized a little tree, magnolia perhaps blossoming toward summer or a little almond in bloom against a side wall. The street ran on and on and on, a study in perspective, stage street going on, not there, getting nowhere. “This street is only in the imagination. It’s not anywhere.”
“I suppose you are surprised to see us, find us just here?” “Surprised?” Hermione sustained a manner, sustained herself with a teacup handle, waited for the pause to grow, to spread, waited till the pause had worn itself out and was vibrating behind walls, behind doors, was beating and vibrating. Her waited till the silence wore itself out (it must have been all of twenty seconds) and caught herself back as if from sudden drowning, mind black and dark. “My mind has been so avid” she said to herself in the fraction of a second before her voice shook out callous and casual into that lurid strange air, “Oh—surprised?” and thought, turning, revolving her teacup casually in her stiff fingers, “My hand is like a wax doll in a toy shop. I seem to have been set here like a doll in a window, set upright with a wax hand curved on its wax-wrist joint around a doll teacup.” She thought of herself as a doll in a window and of Mrs. Rabb as of thousands and thousands of eyes outside, child eyes, greedy eyes, poor child eyes, rich child eyes, people-with-no-dolls’ eyes, people-with-too-many-dolls-wondering-if-they-wanted-another-doll’s eyes, people who stared at dolls in windows, not knowing whether they wanted the doll in the window or not, stared at her in the eyes of Fayne Rabb’s mother. “Why, why should I be surprised Mrs. Rabb to find you—to find you just here?”
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