Hermione

by Hilda Doolittle

  “Mama. She’s—she’s—sleeping.” “Sleeping.” “Yes mama.” “Sleeping?” “Yes Eugenia.” “But how—how can she be sleeping?” Innocence regarded Her out of violets. The eyes were violets. It was horrible. I am a second-rate necromancer. Part of Eugenia appears and that’s what makes it terrible. If I stare and stare with the utmost concentration, will the rest of her evolve out of nothingness? The face is going round, the eyes are violets, the nose is a nose from an Eleusinian frieze above an altar. The head is set right. But the whole thing’s marred with tea leaves.

  “You’re all blurred out with tea leaves.” Eugenia snatched at a handkerchief, scrubbed violently; “It can’t be tea leaves.” And something deep in Her rose and tossed rags and tatters and yet could not think it funny. “Now if I were George I would go off into fits of affected laughter.” “Did you say that George is here, too?” “No, I said ‘If I were George I would laugh at what upset you.’ Fayne’s alone. I don’t want to wake her.” “But you must—must—why it’s almost eight. It’s terrible. Dinner is really over.” “Mama, I can’t wake her.”

  Now the corridor and the lamp at the turn of the stairs and the shadows of the banister railings and the little low stool set in the window ledge at the hall-end and the window at the hall-end showing blue-black and a bare tree branch across it like a picture hung there and the carpet with the two edges of dark polished floor and the pattern on the carpet not quite symmetrical where feet had passed to and fro to the bathroom and the door half open that was Minnie’s door left half open made a scene, made a drop curtain for Eugenia.

  All these things and the marks on the carpet made a swing between worlds so that she knew herself the heart of a king buried in a sepulchre (in the land of his love) while the body of the king is elsewhere. My heart lies buried in there like Coeur de Lion (or whoever it was) who had his heart buried at Havre (or wherever it was) and the rest of him somewhere else properly at home. My body standing here staring at Eugenia is properly at home, my heart ripped out, all very neat and perfect, the thing’s so perfect. I will say that for the thing, “The thing is perfect.” “Wha-aa-at, Hermione?” “I said,” her voice repeated, “the thing is perfect.” “I see nothing perfect. Everything turned upside-down by this girl and ever since she’s come here, things have been different.” “How different?” “Meals. You never used to miss out lunch and dinner.” “I didn’t.” “You have done. You are taking things too—too—nonchalantly. You don’t seem to realize you’re being married.” “I’m not.” “No-oot?” “No, mama.”

  Eugenia was in the light that was the yellow somewhat corn-coloured light the lamp at the turn of the stairs made even here at the end of the long corridor. The mellow light persisted and Eugenia went on, “She’s done it.” “Done what, mama?” “Made you hate him.” “I don’t hate—as you say—George Lowndes.” Things that had been spoken were re-spoken. The things Eugenia had said Hermione now uttered like young oracle taking dying spark from a deserted old one. Eugenia always had been right really about Georgio. “I don’t love him.” “Since when—this intricate nonsense?” “Don’t go on, Eugenia. Minnie is sure to be—to be—listening.” “But—but—Lillian—” “Am I to marry George because of Lillian?” “Things—people—people are always talking.” “Well, they talked before I took up as they say George, before George took as they say me up. They will go on serenely talking.” Light cast from the lamp made such static shadow. The whole place ought to be whirling like a tenement fire. The whole thing is like a tenement blazing. And don’t feel it.

  “But she can’t go on there—sleeping.” “She won’t. She’ll wake up.” “But she can’t go on there sleeping.” Eugenia would repeat this, would repeat this, would repeat this. Hermione made her elaborate gesture. “Come in, mama. Perhaps now she’s already wakened.” The door flung, showed darkness and Eugenia fleeing, as before an upraised Gorgon head, this thing called Fayne Rabb. What is it Fayne Rabb does to everybody?

  No. Not everybody. Again, a suppliant at the door of some ancient altar, Her gasped out “What is it, what is it Fayne Rabb does to people?”

  A voice like a voice from a tomb, like a voice at the other end of a telephone wire answered her, “I always do. I have done always.” A tired voice but a voice as of someone who is dead “that Greek tag, a little soul for a little?” “A little soul for a little holds up this corpse that is man.”“Yes. But why go on, why go on with this thing?” “What thing, swallow?” “This going on and on with this thing.” Her could not see the hand she apprehended. She knew a hand was lifted, was sketching its hieroglyph toward an imaginary heaven. Birds across windows spelt things. Her had realized that birds made a pattern, made a hieroglyphic for people, wise men, augurers. Fayne was a bird, that swallow, flown here simply. People would not see her or, seeing her, regarded her bitterly, as an outcast. Fayne was a swallow making pattern across a window.

  “I wanted to get away . . . get away . . . then George said that I was merely human, that I wanted love. George said that I wasn’t so odd really, he was so inexpressibly tactful with poor mama. I sometimes think mama is mad. I know I am.” “Go on, Fayne.”

  Suddenly in the region of that hollow space that was or (she thought) should be the place a heart should be, a heart was. A heart (not the thing she had laid in a white vase) beat and made its answer. The heart in a white urn froze and bound Her so that she could not run away from the other, the unfamiliar beat and whirr her heart made at the name of George. George Lowndes in a moment, in Saint Paul’s twinkling of an eye became George Lowndes. “I ought to have thought sooner. Of course, I should have known that. I might have been quite happy.”

  nine

  Now playing with an eclair under a pink lampshade, the thing became more difficult. Now facing George across a white small cloth with cream sort of inserted edges and squares and triangles on the cloth and an inset little dolphin, ramping in its little square of insertion, it was the more difficult. The hat made it difficult which George said would be too big on anybody else and that made a flap of broad brim over one eye so that she could crouch, so to speak, under the hat waiting for the right moment to come when she should raise wide eyes, accusation making fire and spark to wither George and defiance making George quiver beneath spark and fire of accusation. This was somehow not the moment. George said, “We will do this sort of thing everywhere. There are little tables all along the lagoons and little tables set properly at Florian’s.” “Florian’s?” “Venice. Fancy anyone not knowing Florian’s. I’m going to get the kick of my life showing you Florian’s and the Prado; little tables at Madrith.” “Ma—?” “—drith.” “Oh.” Her realized (she ought to have remembered) that when George said Cadiz, it sounded like what he was saying when apparently (by the same logic) he was meaning Madrid. “Oh Spain. I don’t know that I’d like it.” “No.” George leaning back, contemplatively sipping something in a long glass that (to Her) was nameless, said, “No-oo, you’re awfully late Italian.” “But no one ever said that.” “I don’t mean it in that sense; I mean mid-earlyish. The sort of thing that happens in Tuscany. You know. That vague half-sensed aura of antiquity—” “My aura of antiquity is, wholly sensed, quite blatant.” “Then you shouldn’t wear such hats.”

  She knew the hat was wrong, had sensed from the beginning that the hat was badly chosen. Something underneath me, that isn’t me, wanted George all the same to like me. I am playing not false to George, not false to Fayne. I am playing false to Her, to Her precisely. Her became an external objectified self, a thin vibrant and intensely sincere young sort of unsexed warrior. The Hermione that sat there, thought patronizingly of that Her as from an endless distance. The Hermione that faced George, that had really wanted George to like her, drooping with pseudo-sophisticated langour under the extravagantly and fantastically brimmed hat said “That last act was so boring.” “The thing was monstrous. I never should have asked you.” Now she contradicted herself with false bright show of affectation, �
�Oh no. I really loved it.” George motioned for a waitress who presented a menu like a dance card. Her said, “But I don’t want—anything.”

  “We can’t sit here forever.” “Can’t we pretend it’s dinner and wait and then go and dance” (the menu gave her this idea) “or something?” “Why—Hermione—” “It’s so late anyhow.”

  George danced badly but some rhythm took her, held Her so that George through no fault of his own was moved into some rhythm not of his own making. “You’re the only female I could ever dance with.” “Why female at this moment?” “You aren’t are you, exactly masculine?” “Oh-oo?” “I mean are you?” Far and far-seen as at the end of a telescope, a young thing with stiff muscles of slender forearms was fastening an arrow. Somewhere else the same kind of a person, only a fraction more robust, was beating through underbush of Chersonese oak boughs. The person beating against impassable barrier of underbrush was alone—beating; I can’t desert Her. Her said “What do you think now of this Rabb?” The moment was chosen out of many moments. Moment under a pink lampshade was too obvious, moment to fill conversation waiting for a cab while he wrapped her fur about her was not the moment. Moment in the cab too obviously just right for some such outbreak was not the moment. Moment on moment on moment filling long evening in this slightly shoddy dance place, one by one had been discarded by something far and near, something in her that was Her, something of her that was no creature in a broad flapping hat but was HER precisely. Her spoke out of the cobweb Her had wound about Her. Her spoke out of the moments on moments she had carefully used for this minor motive, using all moments but this moment as web to catch Georg, Georgio and George Lowndes. Beneath the web on web (Her was so beautifully now hidden) Her raised its white head. A head rose out of the mesh on mesh, a silver spider rose with venom. George did not see the spider. Arachne. Pallas. I weave and weave and George has not seen the spider. Moment in the cab was nearest when George had said, “But all this is so unlike you.” What was you and what was you and what was you? What was like Her and what was unlike Her? George had no inkling.

  She sank back toward the broad bench where she had left her hat. This was not the sort of place Lillian would approve of. No one in fact would ever. She sank back on the long bench and lifted her hat and examined it critically. “Hermione.” “Georgio?” “This place isn’t—” “One—just one more—”

  Music went on, went on. Her said “I mean do you still like her?” “Like?” “The Rabb creature.” Moment after moment had been discarded for this moment. This moment hung, shaping an eternity, shaping the whole of Her. This moment was a small bridge, a book with a map, a path running through a forest; no, it wasn’t Xenophon who crossed that river, “it was Caesar.” “Caesar?” “Is it this moment.” “I don’t precisely follow.” Her balanced the broad light brim of the extravagantly picturesque hat. “One can wear this sort of chiffon lined thing winter and summer.” “It’s the least bit obvious.” “Yes, isn’t it?” The flower at the side fastened with the narrow velvet was a lily in a black pool. Lilies of all kinds, the fleur de lys being one. “The fleur de lys—” “It is rather a white iris. They grow on banks and in small clusters under olives. I mean the small humming-bird-blue-dart iris.” “Iris? Where my George?” “In Corfu. That’s Greece really. I’ll take you to Corfu.” “Yes George.” “The hat is atrocious really.” “Yes isn’t it?”

  A fall of dress stuff fell back from her thin wrist. Her wrist emerged apart from herself, a sort of wax wrist in a milliner’s window supporting a hat with a white-gold flower set at a slight angle, with a flower that went white-silver in the lamp-light. “Put a lamp in the window, pull down the shades you might sell this hat for new.” “No-oot exactly. The edge is frayed out here.” There was that about George, he could always play these games. “Then I must get a new one.” “I always wanted to buy wide hats for people. Lillian wears such small ones. Set too far back like some 1880 (I tell her) Belinda person.” “I remember you called Lillian Belinda.” “It appears my father bought a hat once.” “Your—?” “Father.” “You know I never saw him.”

  An arrested moment, a moment with a white wrist, a moment that was balancing a hat on its hand, might last forever. One moment sets the pace for all, all moments and one moment trembled in a white wrist balancing a too-wide black floppy hat brim. The moment sank, rose. The moment swayed with dancing. The moment was fluid, it was “Yes, you are Undine. Or. better the mermaid from Hans Andersen.” The moment was fluid, the moment answered the moment; “Yes. I am Undine. Or better the mermaid from Hans Andersen.” Her in her detachment so answered the set moment. The moment said, you are consciousless, a reed in a river. Fayne called you a reed, one reed pipe with a single motive. One reed pipe, a slight singing like some Dresden shepherd’s, modified to this room, to this lamplit boudoir corner. A singing was in a slight reed. “I mean you said you liked her.”

  Now he was protesting in the cab that the woman was mad. “She’s insane.” “What did you do to her?” Accusation now spoke blatantly, a black hat was crushed across knees, fur wrapped tight like an Acropolian aegis, fur wrapped close about panting flat breast beneath which a heart beat and beat, die or get it right, die or get it clear while George protested violently that he had never liked the woman. “Why do you then love her?” “I—never—” “She said she wanted happiness, sort of escape, that you made her feel free.” “I tried to—to help her.” “Then why did you lie to me?” Rumbling of wheels and Her knew more than ever they were out of some bad novel. One didn’t say “Why did you lie to me?” It was too crude, to blatant, everything was too blatantly crude. Her feet were cold. “Aren’t we nearly at the station?” Her feet were frozen, the whole day had been disaster. Why didn’t I just go on with it under a pink lampshade, all of life to be tread to music under a pink lampshade? If I had let it go, just let today drift me along, I would have drifted to Venice, to Vesuvius. I would have drifted to Vienna, to Versailles.

  “Why did I go on with it?” “With what? . . . pull yourself together, don’t don’t be hysterical.” Her feet were cold, her head was hot. “Why did I go on with it?” “On with what?” “With you—with you—can’t you see? Can’t you see you’ve tampered with me like an ill-bred child with a delicate mechanical instrument? You have no respect for science.” “I thought that was the thing you wanted to be rescued from. It was you who did the screaming.” “I did want to be rescued—I do, I do.”

  Words formed in the air, beat against the low peaked roof of the old-fashioned cab, beat and suffocated Her in the narrow funnel-like peaked-in little carriage. “What are you screaming after? The moon precisely?” “Yes. I mean I must understand this—” “There’s nothing to understand. I tell you I went at your own instigation.” “That’s true, George. I blame myself.” “Where’s the blame?” “She was delirious at my house.” “Delirious? She can throw herself into those sub-normal hysterical states at a moment’s notice.” “It wasn’t hysterical. It was real.” “Wha-aat happened?” “Oh the usual thing. Row on row on row. I had to stave off mama on one hand and Mrs. Rabb on the other.” “Mrs. Rabb?” “She telephoned and telephoned and telephoned. Then appeared with the milk for breakfast. She had on rubbers—that’s all that I remember—her rubbers.” Her felt tight gasps of pain drawn out from narrow flat chest. “It was so in-cred-ibly fu-uu-unny. I can’t tell you how incredibly it was funny. It was awfully funny.”

  The low roof of the cab became static. They were in a little box, shut in a little box, the box had been put away quiet on a shelf, the box was quiet. “It was terribly, at breakfast, fu-uu-nny.” The lid or the side or the floor of the little box was prodded open. A face peered in, a face out of a jack-in-the-box, the wrong face, everything would come alive suddenly, faces of dolls, cups and saucers. The things in little boxes would come alive. The teapot from the dollhouse tea set box of tea things would have a long nose. “It was so awfully fu-uuny.” The box that held the jack-in-the-box would be a mutilated emp
ty box, not good for anything if the jack-in-the-box didn’t step back. The head poked and prodded forward, moved like the jack-in-the-box head on its cylinder of springs. The cylinder of springs would rest on the floor and he would soon drop side-ways. He seemed to be dropping sideways or he had upset the box they were in.

  “Hermione. Hermione.” A voice called Her Hermione. “My name’s Her. I am Her. She is Her. I am not Hermione out of Shakespeare. Hermione out of Shakespeare was more or less one person like the person who went with Orlando. Have you noticed in Shakespeare everybody goes with someone? Almost everybody. Not fools—and—lilies of all kinds.” “Her-mione.” The person beside her who was George out of a Punch and Judy show, that Punchinello with harlequin’s tight painted-on striped trousers was now shaking Her. “Come. Come. We can’t have all this nonsense.” Her was standing on the pavement with the harlequin who was Georgio. He was looking at Her. Georgio was looking at Her.

  “I don’t understand this nonsense.” Wheels were rumbling under Her. “Is there anything so cosy as a train that’s moving? Now we might be going to Venice or Versailles.” The train made stable growl like back-drawn Atlantic breakers. Her throat was warm, a hot hand and open fingers seemed to scald her throat that had been so cold. Her throat had risen to December like lilies of all kinds . . . the fleur de lys being one. I am Hermione out of Shakespeare. I am the word AUM. She said Em, Hem, Um, clearing her throat and her breath made a runnel in her throat like an icicle on a hot stove. Breath became red hot and melted an ice throat. Words made runnels in the throat, different shapes like frost on nursery windows. I never saw frost on any other window. Stars of frost were incrusted on her long throat. The fur was inadequate, did not keep the cold out. The fur was too hot, a mass of prickly little sticking out bristles, the sort of badger’s collar that a dog wears.