The Blue Guitar

by Alex Austin

They might sit in the parlor and Jean would hold a book open in his lap and pretend he was reading to her. Of course he could not read, so he would make up stories that were far more marvelous than any she had ever read to him. Or, knowing the house as perfectly as he did—where every chair and table stood, how long this room was, how that hall turned—he would lead Sygen about the house. She would keep her eyes closed, trust to him completely, and know always she was safe with him. He would lead her down the beach and, still with her eyes closed, she would undress and they would run, both of them naked, hand in hand into the surf, laughing together as soon as the cold waves crashed down over their heads.

  She would lie in his arms, take his body joyfully into her, and when love was done she would ask him what the sky was like or was it possible to see where the far side of the ocean ended.

  Neither of them would ever have called these games any part of magic, and yet the world they had made for themselves was one only the bewitched can ever know (the prince seeking his love in a dark wood falls under a djin’s spell, sleeps for a hundred years, wakes believing his dream of her has been real and so must spend his life mourning the loss of a love he never found), and finding herself alone now in the ordinary world, Sygen felt like someone who has been asleep and dreaming for a long time and then suddenly, even rudely, awakened.

  She heard the rain; it was a flat sound, not filled with echoes any more. She turned restlessly on her pillow, tried as hard as she could to fall asleep.

  If only they had been left alone, she thought. They might have gone on forever together, sharing these winters, gathering their strange warmth out of the freezing wind.

  Now she could see the dried, old face of Miss Smith. She had heard Jean call her beautiful, and her heart ached her for the first time to realize with such lonely horror that her brother was blind.

  She pressed her eyes tightly shut because she did not want to listen to the truth inside her that told her she wished Miss Smith would die.

  four

  Miss Smith woke and was sorry to see the rain.

  It would be a gloomy day. She would not be able to walk along the beach with Jean. She wondered if he would come to her room or would he be afraid his mother or sister would see him? They could spend the day together in this bed, by these windows. The day’s gloom filled her with a frightened yearning to be with him. The world outside now seemed so hostile, as if it had somehow discovered a horrible secret about her that even she herself did not know and the wind blowing cold rain against her windows was crying a kind of judgment to her.

  Miss Smith pulled the blankets up almost over her head. She did not want to leave this room. She was in danger, but she was safe where she was. If she were to venture forth on such a day, anything at all would be possible and all possibilities seemed to her now to be lonely and terrible.

  five

  Mrs. Orlovski yawned as she opened her eyes. “Oh dear,” she muttered sleepily, as was her custom upon awakening.

  She blinked her eyes open, saw the peeling white plaster over her bed, and told herself she would have the room painted before the summer guests came. She was always telling herself this, but she always had the guests’ rooms painted, never her own.

  chapter 8

  one

  THE HOUSE might very well have seemed a grave on this day had it not been for the life Mrs. Orlovski infused into it with her constant bustling about, tossing her bits of cheer around with all the abandon of one scattering seed upon stone ground.

  First of all, she went to Miss Smith’s room and after a brief bit of haggling between them, during which Miss Smith said she would like to remain in her room, Mrs. Orlovski convinced her guest that it would not only be more cheerful downstairs, it would be warmer too.

  “You know, we don’t really have the house fixed properly for winter guests,” she said. But as soon as she realized what she had said, she smiled quickly and added, “That’s why I keep the rest of the rooms closed up and only this one open.”

  After she had succeeded in getting Miss Smith to join them at breakfast, she went on to prepare her special oatmeal pancakes, a rather lumpy delicacy she had discovered some years ago by making a mistake when reading a recipe from the Sunday newspaper.

  The breakfast conversation was mostly about the pancakes and the weather and was over before anyone had a chance to discover any possible danger in the present situation.

  The windows kept rattling with the wind, and Mrs. Orlovski kept saying, “My, just listen to that wind, will you.”

  Following breakfast, Mrs. Orlovski said she was absolutely certain they could all make a cheerful day out of this terrible weather if they just used a little imagination.

  Mrs. Orlovski’s idea of imagination was to play parlor games.

  No one wanted very much to play any of the games Mrs. Orlovski suggested, but since everyone was quite wrapped up in his own unsettled feelings, it seemed best and, above all, safest to go along with the suggestions.

  Mrs. Orlovski led Miss Smith, Sygen, and Jean in a guessing game that involved guessing the names of songs when someone on the opposite team sang only a phrase or two of the melody. But since Mrs. Orlovski found herself doing almost all the singing, she decided that it would be great fun to play charades.

  “Everyone wants to be an actor or actress,” she announced. “Simply everyone!” And she made sure she did not look at Miss Smith when she said this.

  Miss Smith said, “Couldn’t we play something a little more quiet, Mrs. Orlovski?”

  But Mrs. Orlovski’s face beamed and she said, “You just wait and see how much fun it will be.”

  The game did not last very long. Like a bird trapped in a room, it found no place to fly to and so its wings were rendered useless and the bird, for that time of its being trapped, ceased to be a bird.

  No one had the enthusiasm to portray any given assignment with any accuracy and so the opposite team could never make out what was being done. Only Mrs. Orlovski played the game, so to speak, giving it wings. Her slip read War and Peace, since they were using only the titles of books to begin with.

  Mrs. Orlovski made a great to-do, racing back and forth across the parlor as if she were being chased by mad dogs. She waved her arms frantically and made jerky, tight motions with her hands to signify the firing of pistols, and finally she fell over onto her back, clutching her breast first in agony, then stretching her arms out, closing her eyes, and trying very hard to hold her breath.

  She lay there like that for several moments, then got to her feet with a smiling groan and made the sign for the word “and.” She then proceeded to glide about the room waving her arms and hands like gentle wings and while, by this time, everyone knew what the title was simply because Mrs. Orlovski had mouthed it several times while saying it to herself, no one spoke up.

  Sygen, who made up one of the teams with Jean, described in a very soft voice whatever Miss Smith or Mrs. Orlovski was doing, since Mrs. Orlovski’s version of the game was quite different from that set down in the rules, each team trying to guess what the other was doing.

  When Sygen did not speak for some time and Mrs. Orlovski was still gliding about the room, Jean turned to his sister and said, “Did she fall down again?”

  And Sygen said, “No. She’s still a bird.”

  And Jean said finally, “War and Peace.”

  Mrs. Orlovski stopped, quite out of breath by this time, and she said, “I really thought you’d never guess it. Why, in another minute I think I would have flown right out that window.” And she laughed heartily at this, but when her laughter was greeted only by smiles from the others, she called a halt to the morning’s games, but not before pointing out, “I do think I’m my summer self today.”

  She returned to the kitchen, where she fixed cream-of-chicken soup, a cottage-cheese salad, some tuna fish, and a caramel custard for lunch.

  Miss Smith excused herself when she had finished eating. She said she was going to her room and take a nap. Mrs.
Orlovski said she thought that would be a fine idea. “It’s certainly a perfect day for it,” she added as Miss Smith took her leave, but thought about how fine it would have been if the games had gone better, if they could all have spent the day in the parlor together, playing any number of games.

  Sygen said she did not feel very well and would her mother mind if she didn’t do the dishes. Mrs. Orlovski, who was still in the exuberant mood of game playing, said, “Of course not, dear. Why don’t you take a nap too?” And Sygen said she would.

  Jean remained seated at the kitchen table, having a second cup of coffee while his mother started to do the dishes.

  As she washed the dishes, Mrs. Orlovski started telling about one of her last-summer’s guests. This was a middle-aged lady named Amelia Storm, and since it was storming out, Mrs. Orlovski said, she had been reminded of this particular guest.

  She pointed out that Amelia Storm had been to Europe once for three weeks. She had taken the trip as a young girl. It had been the only thing that had ever happened to her from what Mrs. Orlovski could make out.

  “She was just so plain, you know,” Mrs. Orlovski said. “A nice lady, but so plain and tidy.”

  She went on to tell how Amelia Storm, even though she had spent only three weeks in Europe, was always using French phrases in her conversation. She hardly spoke a sentence that did not contain a French word or phrase. And while Mrs. Orlovski herself did not understand French, she suspected that Amelia Storm made use of a good many words in the wrong places and if the good Captain Orlovski had been about to hear her, he would most probably just burst right out laughing at all the silly mistakes she was making.

  When she turned around to take up the remainder of the dishes from the table, Mrs. Orlovski noticed that Jean had left. With the water running in the sink and talking away as she had, she had not heard him go.

  She was really quite surprised to see that he had left without so much as saying a word. But Mrs. Orlovski was not a woman to remain surprised for very long. And so she collected the dishes from the table, returned to her sink, and went right on thinking about Amelia Storm even if there was no one she could tell the remainder of the story to.

  two

  Tico Reeves came to the beach on this morning too. The rain lashed at him with the same raw, insatiable fury that cast old rocks into vague blue depths of the sea. He walked against it, tasting it, closing his eyes to its myriad strength, but inside him feeling the day come alive like desire even out of that close sky that was the color of soiled linen or dead bark or maybe what a man is when he’s lived and died on past being a man.

  He was accustomed to such days in the open. He knew dirt and sky, rock, tree, and whatever could fly or crawl or walk almost as upright as a man. He had worked swamps and broken roads in such rain. Men cursed it and let it rot their hearts; it stirred flat reptile heads to touch swelling death to a man’s bare leg; it weighed down wings of birds so they sought shelter in leaves, against branches or high rocks; but it had only served to cool him, wash him clean, hide him in thick swamp mists so he would stand leaning on pick or shovel, watching the sky as if that ebbing space in the high wind alone were freedom.

  He thought little of it, and now it was a dream that took him here, a dream of her telling him some secret he could not remember when he woke that morning, but flesh having known the secret before it was even told, now moved to its rhythm, revealed its ancient path, carried him past the meaning of all memory into that pure existence of flesh that is, always has been, without meaning.

  The sisters could always be heard moving about the house. They were never silent. Their female odors, lush as the gardens of some pagan king, filled every room, even to the restaurant and kitchen downstairs and rising to the small attic they had given him for a room. Often when he was alone, he saw their images break out of the dark as whispered sounds that travel a great distance before reaching the ear, saw these images threaded with light, fragile as slow constellations wheeling across skies that are only imagined. When he heard the bath running he could see them stepping into it carefully to test if the water was just right. He could see them washing their fine breasts with white soapy cloths, warm-water voluptuaries, lingering always, keeping such smiles to themselves. He could see their hips wide in the bath’s shallow sea, watch their hands wash thighs gently to the groin and to that fold of groin that was dark with kept secrets and hurting desire.

  Sometimes he saw the sisters when he thought of the golden-haired girl, and the confusion of images angered him and he would try to wipe his mind clean. But there were times when it did not seem to matter to him. The sisters or this girl he had chosen—they were all part of some richness, some incalculable treasure that was his to possess. And then he would recall Joe Tom, the old man, driven mad or holy by the cramped laughter of those who, squatting on heels in the dirt, could see truth only if it made a clear stain on the palms of their hands. And Joe Tom said, “There is always one, boy. Just one. That’s all.”

  He did not walk quickly in the rain. He did not walk, as men do, to escape it. He kept his eyes opened, closing them down only when the wind was particularly strong, cutting then against him, a knife the full size of the sky itself.

  Tico Reeves, as he walked along the beach on this morning, breathed deeply as a man might on those first days of spring when the world is deceptively new again and life takes hold for a time even in the shallowest of veins. There were such wonders to behold, his blood told him. Even this rain, this wind, this cold that hungered for his flesh—all these were wonders too. He could not begin to count the shapes life had in this world, for they were truly without number, like all the flies on all the rumps of all the mules standing half asleep in front of all the houses he had ever passed.

  Perhaps it was the prison; he did not know. “God don’t walk in here,” the black man Riley said so often, the other prisoners hating him, but no longer bothering to tell him to shut his nigger mouth. “God don’t walk in here. You got to count it yourself. You got to see and listen. Because God He don’t walk in here.” Riley could talk, think, feel, remember, or contemplate nothing but God. And after taking ten years of the talk himself, he had sat down one April afternoon at the crapping next to the black man and had told him how God’s been looking down for centuries, waiting, waiting, waiting, watching man, His great creation, thinking always, “When in hell is he going to get the joke?” The others had laughed. The black man Riley nodded slowly, but many times, as if something had gone wrong in his neck, and finally he said, “Maybe the joke will be when He does walk in here. Maybe that will be it.” “And clears out niggers for good and all,” one of them said. And Riley said only, “And clears out man.”

  Perhaps, Tico Reeves thought, if every man served out the beginning of his life in prison as he had, the end, and the middle too, would have to be joyous, the freedom of a single day always an abyss too marvelous not to be worshiped in holier voices of blood than those that, so humble in the knowledge of what they will never be and always without laughter, must whisper the names of dead gods and forgotten days.

  His own father had lived this way, making the world his simply by wanting it with all the great strength of knowing who he himself was. This man with thick mustache and a derby hat he’d take down out of the one bedroom closet whenever he’d be ready to haul out the whiskey jug to get drunk for the night and maybe for the day and the night that would follow. Tico Reeves could recall the image of that tall, derbied, mustached, blustering man who entered any room like a great wind and who spoke every word as if only God could hear him and the laugh was eternally between the two of them.

  Tico Reeves knew well enough that his father had been, in the flat, abrupt eyes of others, a comic man, even a fool. He had often heard the story of how, at the age of thirty-five, when he had decided to give up brothel women who never asked money of him and some of his jug whiskey to take a wife, he had been turned down by fifteen women in the small dirt town where they lived, fiftee
n including a mole-cheeked widow, before he was finally accepted by the pale-faced daughter of the shoemaker, Pud Arronaz, whose grandfather had been half Mexican. It was certainly not because his father had not been handsome: he had been a tall, powerful man with black eyes like rocks you could burn to light up a dark place under trees; he had the nose of a Roman and a mouth whose very shape was proof that it could not ever lie. He had been a man of laughter, of much joy, a man who could hold all the world in the palms of his two hands and shape it to the simple and grand desire of the day. He was a man who loved whiskey and good talk and full-bosomed women and the smell of air. He was a man with a roaring sound in a place where whispers were the language, and the women as well as the men feared him and hid their fear in laughter and called the man a fool because he made them all feel foolish.

  But the shoemaker’s daughter, pale-faced, with flower-eyes and small frightened breasts and a body that seemed to have been made for little more than dying, took him because no other man would have her. They had no joy together, with her always taking him silently, not moving a muscle, like a penance to be done in church, the silence a way of acknowledging before God the acceptance of this evil that Salvation would be the end of; and nine years after Tico Reeves was born, with the three brothers born in that many years before him and the two sisters in less than two years after, the father set out again into the world to find a place where the rivers were like blood and the smiles of women tasted of wild places in the hearts of men. He even said, “You’ll have peace now,” before he went. And he stopped on the dirt path to turn and shout back at her, “That’s all you ever wanted anyway.”

  And then what happened was both comical and miraculous because the pale-faced mother who had not even the passion, the feeling to cry out her pain in childbearing, the daughter of the shoemaker, the dry-mouthed girl who, with her man, could speak only of God and holy things she did not understand, suddenly began to grow flesh on her and her eyes gave up their dying for a kind of laughter that had never come out of her before and she let God tend to His own holy business if there was any to be done and when the preacher came calling from town to ask her why she no longer came to church on Sundays, she said only, “I’ve finished with that,” saying it not as if she had given up God, but as if she had already done all that He, this God, had required of her entire life.