Sudden, scalding jealousy enveloped him. Clarissa, glimpsing already and without guessing it, the splendor to come in which he himself could have no part. . .
Leasing struck the door a resounding blow and called, “Clarissa!”
In the mirror he saw her start a little and turn. The shower wavered about her. Then she moved out of sight, except for a golden flickering among the mirrors, as she approached the door.
Leasing stood there, shaking and sweating with intolerable confusion. He knew his deductions were ridiculous and impossible. He did not really believe them. He was leaping to conclusions too wild to credit, from premises too arbitrary to consider in any sane moment. Granted that inexplicable things were happening, still he had no logical reason to assume a divine lover’s presence. But someone, Someone stood behind the events he had just been rehearsing, and of that Someone, whoever and whatever it might be, Lessing was agonizingly jealous. For those plans did not include himself. He knew they never could. He knew—
“Hello,” said Clarissa softly. “Did I keep you waiting? The bell must be out of order—I didn’t hear you ring. Come on in.”
He stared. Her face was as serene as always. Perhaps a little glow of rapture still shone in her eyes, but the shower of gold was gone and she gave no outward sign of remembering it.
“What were you doing?” he asked, his voice slightly unsteady.
“Nothing,” said Clarissa.
“But I saw you!” he burst out. “In the mirrors—I saw you! Clarissa, what—”
Gently and softly a—a hand?—was laid across his mouth. Nothing tangible, nothing real. But the words did not come through. It was silence itself, a thick gag of it, pressing against his lips. There was one appalling, mind-shaking moment of that gag, and then Leasing knew that Someone was right, that he must not speak, that it would be cruel and wrong to say what he had meant to say.
It was all over in an instant, so suddenly that afterward he was not sure whether a gag had actually touched his lips, or whether a subtler gag of the mind had silenced him. But he knew he must say nothing, neither of this nor of that strange, vivid dream in which he had met Clarissa. She did not guess. She must not know—yet.
He could feel the sweat rolling down his forehead, and his knees felt shaky and his head light. He said, from a long way off, “I . . . I don’t feel well, Clarissa. I think I’d better go—”
The light above Dyke’s desk swung gently in a breeze from the shaded window. Outside a distant train’s hooting floated in across the post grounds, made immeasurably more distant by the darkness. Leasing straightened in his chair and looked around a little dizzily, startled at the abrupt transition from vivid memory to reality. Dyke leaned forward above his crossed arms on the desk and said gently,
“And did you go?”
Leasing nodded. He was far beyond any feeling now of incredulity or reluctance to accept his own memories. The things he was remembering were more real than this desk or the soft-voiced man behind it.
“Yes. I had to get away from her and straighten my mind Out. It was so important that she should understand what was happening to her, and yet I couldn’t tell her about it She was—asleep. But she had to be wakened before it was too late. I thought she had a right to know what was coming, and I had a right to have her know, let her make her choice between me and—it. Him. I kept feeling the choice would have to be made soon, or it would be too late. He didn’t want her to know, of course. He meant to come at the right moment and find her unquestioning, prepared for him. It was up to me to rouse her and make her understand before that moment.”
“You thought it was near then?”
“Very near.”
“What did you do?”
Lessing’s eyes went unfocused in remembrance. “I took her out dancing.” he said, “the next night.”
She sat across from him at a table beside a little dance floor, slowly twirling a glass of sherry and bitters and listening to the noises of a bad orchestra echoing in the small, smoky room. Lessing was not quite sure why he had brought her here, after all. Perhaps he hoped that though he could not speak to her in words of all he suspected and feared, he could rouse her enough out of her serene absorption so that she might notice for herself how far her own world differed from the normal one. Here in this small, unclosed space shaking with savage rhythms, crowded by people who were deliberately giving themselves up to the music and the liquor, might not that serene and shining armor be pierced a little, enough to show what lay inside?
Leasing was tinkling the ice in his third collins and enjoying the pleasant haze that just enough alcohol lent to the particular, shining haze that always surrounded Clarissa. He would not, he told himself, have any more. He was far from drunk, certainly, but there was intoxication in the air tonight, even in this little, noisy, second-rate nightclub. The soaring music had a hint of marijuana delirium in it; the dancers on the hot, crowded floor exhaled excitement.
And Clarissa was responding. Her great black eyes shone with unbearable brightness, and her laughter was bright and spontaneous too. They danced in the jostling mob, not feeling jostled at all because of the way the music caught them up on its rhythms. Clarissa was talking much more than usual this evening, very gayly, her body resilient in his arms.
As for himself—yes, he was drunk after all, whether on the three drinks or on some subtler, more powerful intoxication he did not know. But all his values were shifting deliciously toward the irresponsible, and his ears rang with inaudible music. Now nothing could overpower him. He was not afraid of anything or anyone at all. He would take Clarissa away—clear away from New York and her jailor aunt, and that shining someone who drew nearer with every breath.
There began to be gaps in his memory after awhile. He could not remember how they had got out of the nightclub and into his car, or just where they intended to go, but presently they were driving up the Henry Hudson Parkway with the river sliding darkly below and, the lights of Jersey lying in wreaths upon the Palisades.
They were defying the—the pattern. He thought both of them knew that. There was no place in the pattern for this wild and dizzying flight up the Hudson, with the cross-streets reeling past like spokes in a shining wheel. Clarissa, leaning back in the bend of his free arm, was in her way as drunk as he, on nothing more than two sherries and the savage rhythms of the music, the savage excitement of this strange night. The intoxication of defiance, perhaps, because they were running away. From something—from Someone.
(That was impossible, of course. Even in his drunkenness he knew that. But they could try—)
“Faster,” Clarissa urged, moving her head in the crook of his arm. She was glitteringly alive tonight as he had never seen her before. Very nearly awake, he thought in the haze of his reeling mind. Very nearly ready to be told what it was he must tell her. The warning—
Once he pulled up deliberately beneath a street light and took her in-his arms. Her eyes and her voice and her laughter flashed and sparkled tonight, and Leasing knew that if he thought he had loved her before, this new Clarissa was so enchanting that. . .that. . .yea, even a god might lean Out from Olympus to desire her. He kissed her with an ardor that made the city whirl solemnly around them. It was delightful to be drunk and in love, and kissing Clarissa under the eyes of the jealous gods. . .
There was a feeling of. . .of wrongness in the air as they drove on. The pattern strove to right itself, to force them back into their ordained path. He could feel its calm power pressing against his mind. He was aware of traffic imperceptibly edging him into streets that led back toward the apartment they had left. He had to wrench himself out of it, and then presently the northbound way would be closed off for repairs, and a detour went off along other streets that took them south again. Time after time he found himself driving past descending street numbers toward downtown New York, and swung around the block in bewildered determination not to return.,
The pattern must be broken. It must be. Hazily he thought
that if he could snap one thread of it, defy that smooth, quiet power in even so small a way as this, he would have accomplished his purpose. But alone he could not have done it.
The omnipotent machinery humming in its course would have been irresistible—he would have obeyed it without knowing he obeyed—had not Clarissa shared his defiance tonight.
There seemed to be a power in her akin to the power of that omnipotence, as if she had absorbed some of it from long nearness to the source.
Or was it that Someone stayed his hand rather than strike her forcibly back to her place in the pattern, rather than let her guess—yet—the extent of his power?
“Turn,” said Clarissa. “Turn around, We’re going wrong again.”
He struggled with the wheel. “I can’t . . . I can’t,” he told her, almost breathless. She gave him a dazzling dark glance and leaned over to take the wheel herself.
Even for her it was hard. But slowly she turned the car, while traffic blared irritably behind them, and slowly they broke out of the pattern’s grip again and rounded another corner, heading north, the lights of Jersey swimming unfocused in the haze of their delirium.
This was no normal drunkenness. It was increasing by leaps and bounds. This, thought Leasing dimly, is His next step. He won’t let her see what he’s doing, but he knows he’s got to stop us now, or we’ll break the pattern and prove our independence.
The tall, narrow buildings shouldering together along the streets were like tall trees in a forest, with windows for motionless leaves. No two windows on the same level, or quite alike. Infinite variety with infinitesimal differences, all of them interlacing and glimmering as they drove on and on through the stony forest. Now Leasing could see among the trees, and between them, not transparently but as if through some new dimension. He could see the streets that marked off this forest into squares and oblongs, and his dazed mind remembered another forest, checkered into squares—Looking Glass Land.
He was going south again through the forest.
“Clarissa—help me,” he said distantly, wrestling again with the wheel. Her small white hands came out of the dark to cover his.
A shower of light from a flickering window poured down upon them, enveloping Clarissa as Zeus enveloped Danae. The jealous god, the jealous god—Leasing laughed and smacked the wheel in senseless triumph.
There was a light glimmering ahead through the frees. He would have to go softly, he warned himself, and tiptoed forward over the . . . the cobbled road. Without surprise he saw that he was moving on foot through a forest in darkness, quite alone. He was still drunk. Drunker than ever, he thought with mild pride, drunker, probably, than any mortal ever was before. Any mortal. The gods, now—
People were moving through the trees ahead. He knew they must not see him. It would shock them considerably if they did; he remembered the garishly dressed people of his other dream, and the young man with the whip. No, it would be better to stay hidden this time if he could. The forest was wheeling and dipping around him behind a haze of obscurity, and nothing had very much coherence. The ringing in his ears was probably intoxication, not actual sound.
The people were somberly clad in black, with black hoods that covered their hair and framed pale, intolerant faces.
They were moving in a long column through the trees. Leasing watched them go by for what seemed a long while. Some of the women. carried work bags over their arms and knitted as they walked. A few of the men read from small books and stumbled now and then on the cobblestones. There was no laughter.
Clarissa came among the last. She had a gay little face beneath the black cap, gayer and more careless than he had ever seen her in this . . . this world. She walked lightly, breaking into something like a dance step occasionally that called down upon her the frowns of those who walked behind. She did not seem to care.
Leasing wanted to call to her. He wanted to call so badly that it seemed to him she sensed it, for she began to fall behind, letting first one group pass her and then another, until she walked at the very end of the column. Several girls in a cluster looked back a few times and giggled a little, but said nothing. She fell farther back. Presently the procession turned a corner and Clarissa stopped in the middle of the road, watching them go. Then she laughed and performed a solemn little pirouette on one toe, her black skirts swinging wide around her.
Leasing stepped from behind his tree and took a step toward her, ready to speak her name. But he was too late. Someone else was already nearer than he. Someone else—Clarissa called out gayly in a language he did not know, and then there was a flash of crimson through the trees and a figure cloaked from head to heels in bright red came up to her and took her into its embrace, the red folds swinging forward to unfold them both. Clarissa’s happy laughter was smothered beneath the stooping hood.
Leasing stood perfectly still. It might be another woman, he told himself fiercely. It might be a sister or an aunt. But it was probably a man. Or—He squinted slightly—nothing focused very well in his present state, and things tended to slip side-wise when he tried to fix his eyes upon them—but this time he was almost sure of what he saw. He was almost sure that upon Clarissa’s lifted face in the dimness of the woods a light was falling softly—from the hood above her. A light, glowing from within the hood. A shower of light. Danae, in her shower of gold.
The woods tilted steeply and turned end for end. Leasing was beyond surprise as he fell away, spinning and whirling through darkness, falling farther and farther from Clarissa in the woods. Leaving Clarissa alone in the embrace of her god.
When the spinning stopped he was sitting in his car again, with traffic pouring ‘noisily past on the left. He was parked, somewhere. Double-parked, with the motor running. He blinked.
“I’ll get out here,” Clarissa told him matter-of-factly. “No, don’t bother. You’ll never find a parking place, and I’m so sleepy. Good night, darling. Phone me in the morning.”
He could do nothing but blink. The dazzle of her eyes and her smile was a little blinding, and that haze still diffused all his efforts to focus upon her face. But he could see enough. They were exactly where they had started, at the curb before her apartment house.
“Good night,” said Clarissa again, and the door closed behind her.
There was silence in the office after Leasing’s last words.
Dyke sat waiting quietly, his eyes on Leasing’s face, his shadow moving a little on the desktop under the swinging light. After a moment Leasing said, almost defiantly, “Well?”
Dyke smiled slightly, stirring in his chair. “Well?” he echoed.
“What are you thinking?”
Dyke shook his head. “I’m not thinking at all. It isn’t time yet for that—unless the story ends there. It doesn’t, does it?”
Leasing looked thoughtful. “No. Not quite. We met once more.”
“Only once?” Dyke’s eyes brightened “That must be when your memory went, then. That’s the most interesting scene of all. Go on—what happened?”
Lessing closed his eyes. His voice came slowly, as if he were remembering bit by bit each episode of the story he told.
“The phone woke me next morning,” he said. “It was Clarissa. As soon as I heard her voice I knew the time had come to settle things once and for all—if I could. If I were allowed. I didn’t think—He—would let me talk it out with her, but I knew I’d have to try. She sounded upset on the phone. Wouldn’t say why. She wanted me to come over right away.”
She was at the door when he came out of the elevator, holding it open for him against a background of mirrors in which no motion stirred. She looked fresh and lovely, and Lessing marveled again, as he had marveled on waking, that the extraordinary drunkenness of last night had left no ill effects with either of them this morning. But she looked troubled, too; her eyes were too bright, with a blinding blackness that dazzled him, and the sweet serenity was gone from her face. He exulted at that. She was awakening, then, from the long, long dream.
Clarissa glanced vaguely around. “Oh, out, I suppose. Never mind her. Jim, tell me—did we do something wrong last night? Do you remember what happened? Everything?”
“Why I . . . I think so.” He was temporizing, not ready yet in spite of his decision to plunge into these deep waters.
“What happened, then? Why does it worry me so? Why can’t I remember?” Her troubled eyes searched his face anxiously. He took her hands. They were cold and trembling a little.
“Come over here,” he said. “Sit down. What’s the matter, darling? Nothing’s wrong. We had a few drinks and took a long ride, don’t you remember? And then I brought you back here and you said good night and went in.”
“That isn’t all,” she said with conviction. “We were—fighting something. It was wrong to fight—I never did before. I never knew it was there until I fought it last night. But now I do know. What was it, Jim?”
He looked down at her gravely, a tremendous excitement beginning to well up inside him. Perhaps, somehow, they had succeeded last night in breaking the spell. Perhaps His grip had been loosened after all, when they defied the pattern even as briefly as they did.
But this was no time for temporizing. Now, while the bonds were slack, was the moment to strike hard and sever them if he could. Tomorrow she might have slipped back again into the old distraction that shut him out. He must tell her now—Together they might yet shake off the tightening coils that had been closing so gently, so inexorably about her.
“Clarissa,” he said, and turned on the sofa to face her. “Clarissa, I think I’d better tell you something.” Then a sudden, unreasoning doubt seized him and he said irrelevantly, “Are you sure you love me?” It was foolishly important to be reassured just then. He did not know why.
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