261.
“There were a lot of girls back then,” said Schell.
262.
Salt said, “There are a lot of girls now We will run out of everything, won’t we? Air, water, land, luck, sugar, salt, gasoline? But we will never run out of girls.”
263.
Inj was running.
264.
Salt said, “A typewriter doesn’t invent words.”
265.
A dark bird sat perched in a cedar tree.
266.
Schell had never quite believed that Salt was real. And now that the young man sat before him with his eyeglasses, with the very ingredient evidence of his existence—the skin, the bones; his luck, his lack; the orange marmalade on his flannel shirt—he seemed less actual than ever.
267.
There were a hundred dark birds in the branches of the cedar trees.
268.
Dr. Lemon had once tried to teach Schell to play random chess, that postmodern variant of the game, in which pieces retain their abilities and function, but may begin from randomly selected places on the board, rather than their standard positions. In a game of tactics; one had to rethink the concept of strategy. Schell had lost very badly. The truth of it was (that is; the way it had actually happened) he had never won at a game of chess against the doctor.
Did this suggest that he was a poor player?
269.
The girls were home.
270.
A door slammed shut.
Inj said, “Benny?”
271.
A picture tilted crookedly against the flowered wallpaper.
272.
In moments of anguish Schell had called out to a god of mercy in whom he had never believed.
273.
Beatrice was in the kitchen.
The black cat pawed the windowpane.
He gave a mournful yowl.
“Oh, you poor terrible thing,” said Beatrice.
“Is this what you want?” she said.
And she placed a dish of milk on the floor.
274.
When Salt came in, Inj was sitting on the bed.
275.
Olga took Julian into the bathroom, and she washed the blood from his nose. She asked him, does it hurt? She took him into his room and told the boys that they had to make up, because they were brothers. She told them not to come out until they had made up. After Olga left; Jules said how much he hated her. Chet agreed. Chet asked Jules if he missed the last girl. Jules remembered her. She was pretty. Olga was not pretty, but Olga made cupcakes with melted chocolate in the middle. They were good and sweet and salty. But the last girl had long hair that brushed your cheek when she tucked you into bed and that was good too. The boys were silent then for a while; they played Clue until dinner.
276.
It was Miss Scarlett in the library with the candlestick.
277.
Salt told Inj the story of Schell’s coffin.
278.
Salt was thinking about what it would feel like to be stabbed in the heart with a knife.
279.
Louis Sarasine raised his glass.
And he pronounced, “To monsters.”
280.
Inj walked down the hallway.
281.
Black turtleneck sweater, Levi’s, woolen socks.
This is what Inj wore.
282.
It was evening, all afternoon.
283.
Beatrice was thinking about her father. And how he taught her the difference between right and wrong.
284.
Zigouiller touched Eloise’s shoulder.
285.
There was. There is a name for girls like Susu.
286.
“Knock, knock—” Inj said.
287.
Eloise wondered if she had made a terrible mistake.
288.
He went to the balcony and stood against the shadows. He asked her if she had heard the story of the statue in the lobby? He asked her did she know that the lady appeared in the doorway one day or maybe it was night many years ago? and that the two men who had brought the statue inside had gone snow white, hair that is, within hours? A girl sick with an ancient fever had touched the lady and was healed. It was true; the girl had grown up and was married to the night clerk. “Do you believe me?” he said. Did she believe him? “I believe you,” Susu said.
289.
Susu broke the third rule of storytelling.
290.
Inj closed the door of the study.
Schell rose from his chair.
There was a bottle of vodka on the table.
He poured a drink from the bottle.
He gave the glass to Inj.
He poured himself a drink.
Behind the desk there was a bookshelf.
She turned her back to him.
She looked at the books.
“I bet you’ve read them all,” she said.
She ran her hand, palm-flat against the spines—
Inj picked up her glass.
She sat beside Schell on the sofa.
She drank.
He refilled her glass.
She said, “I bet you know everything that there is to know.”
She said, “I don’t know about aqueducts, or which king killed which other king or what god did what to whom. I don’t have every possible poem in the world memorized—”
She reached over and pulled the string on a lamp.
She turned it on, then off.
On then off.
On then off.
“I’m pretty,” she said.
“You’re beautiful,” he said.
“I know,” she said.
“I’d rather be important. Or tragic. But I’m not. I’m beautiful,” she said.
She said, “Ben is important.”
“Is he?” said Schell.
“You probably think that we are very silly.”
“I don’t,” Schell said.
“Of course you do,” she said. “Because in some ways we are.”
Inj held her glass in both hands.
“I have to tell you something,” she said.
He waited.
She turned toward him.
“Benny’s gone dry,” she said.
“What?” he said.
“He can’t write,” she said.
“You have to help him,” she said.
“Help him?” said Schell.
“Yes,” she said.
He asked her, “How would you like me to help him?”
“Don’t joke,” she said. “I can tell that you’re joking.”
She drank.
She pushed—in a funny girlish gesture—her hair from her face.
“Is it true?” she said. “That you’ve lived out here for years—but you haven’t written anything? Is that right?”
He said that he supposed that it was right.
“Why?” she asked.
“Why what?” he said.
“Why don’t you write?” she said.
“Does it make a difference?” he said.
“Does it matter why?” he said.
“I don’t really understand,” she said.
“Look at it this way,” he said. “Between something and nothing; I choose nothing.”
“You’re being abstract, aren’t you?” she said.
“Do you still like it then? writing, I mean,” she said.
“That only matters to children,” he said.
“What?” she asked.
He said, “Whether one likes a thing or not.”
She paused.
She thought about it.
She seemed to be thinking about it.
She said, “I’m being such an idiot.”
She leaned back against the sofa.
She said, “I wish I were thirty-six years old, wearing black satin and pearls.”
She drank.
&n
bsp; He reached for her glass.
He said, “Perhaps you’ve had enough.”
“No, no,” she said. “I’ve only just begun.”
Inj was beautiful in the moonlight.
291.
Isn’t Inj beautiful in the moonlight?
292.
Have you had enough?
293.
No, you’ve only just begun.
294.
“Please tell me what I can do for Benjamin Salt,” Schell said.
295.
Inj rested her head back against the sofa.
“It’s so quiet here,” she said.
“Is it always so quiet?” she said.
“Ben can’t stand the quiet. He keeps a radio on all the time,” she said.
“What about you?” said Schell.
“What?” she said.
“You,” he said.
“Oh,” she said.
“You’re being deep,” she said. “I get it. Metaphysical and all that, right?”
“I am—” she said.
She closed her eyes.
“Whatever he wants me to be,” she said.
She opened her eyes.
“Didn’t I say that just the right way?” she said.
“May I have a little more to drink?” she asked.
“Didn’t I say that just like a girl in a movie?” she said.
He filled her glass.
“Will you help him?” she asked.
“I’ll do whatever you want me to do,” he said.
She turned toward him on the sofa.
She set down her glass.
“Are you making fun of me?” she said.
He said, no; he wasn’t making fun of her.
“Oh,” she said. “Then you’re being kind?”
He refilled his glass.
“Don’t be kind to me,” she said.
“Don’t pity me,” she said.
“I can’t stand it,” she said. “When men are kind.”
She stood—uncertain—and then steadied herself.
“You don’t know a thing about me,” she said.
It was not an accusation.
It was only a weary statement of fact.
She stood behind him.
Inj touched his shoulder.
She leaned close.
Her hair brushed his cheek.
She whispered—
296.
Louis Sarasine looked out at the ocean. He saw two girls running into the water.
297.
“Don’t you see?” Inj said. “You might have dreamed this. I practically don’t exist.”
298.
Louis said, “One sees a girl—and immediately wants to tell a story.”
299.
Susu told him that he had better go. He kissed her on the forehead, and said, “Godnight.”
300.
At dinner that night they sat, the foursome, around the wooden table in the kitchen.
The fare was simple: cassoulet, with dark bread and butter. Green plates, chipped cups, mismatched knives and forks; winter squash, blackberry preserves, and a rustic almost brusque bottle of burgundy, still dusty from the cellar.
Beatrice lighted the candles.
Inj watched Salt.
Schell sat at the head of the table.
He filled the wineglasses.
He said a toast to the travelers.
It was New Year’s Eve.
They raised their glasses.
To the life of the mind.
Life, well, that was something wasn’t it?
They ate and drank.
They spoke of such things as places and birds.
They talked of poetry and the Trojan War.
Of which god did what to whom.
And which king killed which king.
Salt, when he had eaten his fill, pushed his plate away—
He said, “Mr. Schell, you know, for the longest time I didn’t believe that you were real.”
Inj smiled. Like the last girl in the world.
And she rose to help Beatrice clear the table.
Outside the snow fell and fell. It was night. And there was nothing like it. Like night. Like being on an island at night during a snowstorm. Like being in a stone cottage in a kitchen, with a fire burning in the stove and the melting-down sweetness of waxing candles, and a black cat, though a bit ferocious, lurking in the warmth, and a spotted dog sleeping on a woven rug; while girls set cups upon saucers, men talked about the past; while the wind banged against the windows, and waves on the lake rolled up and crashed down. Still, one felt very safe, at the table waiting and awaiting coffee and cake and talking of the past, the past, great fallen Babylon; so it was hard to imagine that the house itself was no more than the fragile shell of an egg.
301.
Over a late supper one year or was it an early breakfast in the next? in a bustling diner amid drunken chatter, they fell upon their food (for her: Adam & Eve on a raft; for him: Burn one, take it through the garden, and pin a rose on it), famished. A jukebox was playing. A girl cried. A glass smashed to the floor. And then the plates were taken from their table by the overburdened waitress who left the man and the lady for a long time to their own devices and then perhaps repenting this inattention brought to them without prompting a banana split so improbable that Eloise felt dizzy with sweetness even as the bowl was placed on the table with two spoons and she couldn’t say why the story of her life had taken such an odd turn and she didn’t know what the author had next in store for her. She didn’t know what was going to happen next as she looked at Zigouiller across the table, and he added cream to his coffee and reached with his spoon into the chocolate and cherries, and he said, “When are you going to leave your husband?”
302.
It is a species of unkindness not to wait for those who are slow. It is a kind of cruelty not to care for those who are weak. There are things worse than anger. The poet says we cannot fall out of the world. We are in it once and for all.
303.
“Let’s leave tonight,” said Zigouiller.
304.
Susu was happy after he left. And sad too.
305.
Susu was thinking about the starfish, the hermit crab, the whale’s backbone.
306.
Eloise was thinking about gold and silver, ivory, apes, and peacocks.
307.
Salt said that he knew that it was late—
What could time mean to them?
Schell looked at Salt across the table.
“Can I have it?” said Salt.
Schell wanted to hate Salt.
He didn’t hate him. Nor even did he envy him. He did not envy Salt’s youth, his hope, or his ambition. He had only a sense of all the things in the world that were Salt’s to lose.
“Don’t you have one more question?” Schell asked.
And Salt said, “Is it too late?”
308.
Reality is never paper or scissors.
It is always rock.
It is a boulder.
309.
Salt’s glasses caught the candlelight.
So it was hard to see that his dark eyes glittered too.
310.
Inj rested her face in her hands.
311.
Beatrice refilled Inj’s glass.
312.
Is the coffee ready yet?
313.
Schell looked at Salt.
314.
Susu looked just like her mother.
315.
The night was cold. The car was hot. Zigouiller was driving. Eloise pushed back the collar of her coat. She placed her cheek against the window. Then felt a slight revulsion and pulled away. She stared out the window. And for a moment, she mistook the shadow of her equipage for blackbirds in the snow.
316.
Schell was thinking about the girl in the snow.
317.
Olga told the boys that they could st
ay up to watch one year fall to the next, but Chester and Jules fell asleep in their pajamas in front of the television.
318.
Dibby was typing.
319.
Susu was becoming less and less real.
320.
Schell wasn’t sure that there had ever been a girl in the snow.
321.
Zigouiller took the key from Eloise’s hand, and he unlocked the door.
Let the Dark Flower Blossom Page 19