David looks up. David wonders whether he is the only one to notice that Susan is playing badly. Her Suggestions reveal that she has no grasp of strategy; he knows that she doesn’t have the STUDY, Professor Plum, or the Revolver, yet on her last turn she named all three, as if guessing at random instead of using her own cards to make controlled guesses. The poor quality of her play disturbs him, and he tries not to look up when it is her turn, for fear that his irritation will show on his face. True, she has never played before this evening—David has never known anyone who hasn’t played Clue, and he imagines it as a misfortune, a childhood deprivation, as if he had been told that she had never eaten a piece of chocolate or visited an amusement park—but the rules are easy and the principles of inference elementary. It isn’t likely that Susan, a Radcliffe graduate who majored in mathematics, cannot follow the game, and David senses a deeper reason: something is wrong between her and Jacob, she is worried and distracted, she is filled with an unhappiness that doesn’t show on her cool, lovely face. And when he looks up suddenly from his cards, in order to see whether she is concentrating on the game, he is unsettled to see, three feet away, staring over Marian’s shoulder at the porch windows, the large, beautiful, sorrowing eyes of Susan Newton.
The doorknob. Mr. Green’s hand is resting on the knob of the BALLROOM door. He hears nothing within. It is possible that Miss Scarlet and the Colonel have left, and that Mr. Green can enter with impunity and retrieve his book; but there are other explanations of the silence. The room is large and the door is thick; it is quite possible that a conversation at the far end cannot be heard by someone standing outside the door, his head bent almost to the wood, listening intently. It is possible that Miss Scarlet and the Colonel are within, but silent. It is possible that Miss Scarlet has left the room by another door, leaving the Colonel alone, or that Miss Scarlet is alone, having been abandoned by the Colonel. It is possible that they are within but have been joined by a third person, say Professor Plum, who had not expected to find them there and whose unanticipated appearance has rendered everyone silent. It is possible that Miss Scarlet, Colonel Mustard, Professor Plum, Mrs. White, and Mrs. Peacock are all inside, facing this very door, awaiting the return of Mr. Green, whose comic disappearance has been discussed at length. Indeed, as Mr. Green stands with his head bent close to the wood, he is surprised at how the possibilities proliferate: it is possible that neither Miss Scarlet nor the Colonel is inside but that someone else, whose appearance caused them to leave, has remained; it is possible that Miss Scarlet has been murdered and is lying with her throat cut on the window seat; it is possible that Mr. Green is inside and that he is imagining himself outside, with his hand on the doorknob and his head bent close to the wood of the door. Even as the possibilities multiply, Mr. Green realizes that he does not know whether he desires Miss Scarlet and the Colonel to be present or absent, since he is not certain whether he wishes to confront them and apologize, or to evade them and retrieve his book in peace; and as he watches his hand begin to turn the doorknob he does not know whether to be astonished at his audacity or ashamed of his timidity.
The bodies of women. David is disturbed by how much time he spends thinking about the bodies of women. He is released from this necessity only rarely, under the influence of a stronger passion, and Susan’s presence on his birthday is disturbing in part because she interferes with his release into family feeling. Although she is dressed modestly, in a vanilla silk blouse and tan corduroy skirt, David is aware of her breasts pushing lightly against the thin cloth, especially when she leans forward to roll the die; and when she crosses and uncrosses her legs, or shifts her position slightly on the padded wooden chair, he is disturbed by the soft sounds of cloth, the creak of the chair, and the hushed slippery sound of sliding and rubbing skin. Susan had arrived in nylon stockings, but when she came down from her room he saw that she had taken them off. Stockings themselves, their scratchiness and glisten, have always disturbed him, but the fact of their removal disturbs him even more, as if she had suddenly drawn attention to the act of lifting each leg in turn to roll down the tight, clinging stockings, as if, carelessly lifting each leg in turn, she were taunting him with the suddenly exposed flesh of her upper thighs, as if, lifting each leg in turn, higher and higher, she were attempting to slip her legs into his mind and leave them there, lifting turn by turn, forever, while she vanished into Cambridge, Massachusetts. One afternoon, in the year before Marian left for college, David had entered her room to look for a piece of paper. He was startled to see Marian standing in a half-slip, facing him. At the sight of the heavy white breasts with their red wounds he felt a rush of fear and sorrow, even as he felt something relax at the back of his mind, as if he had suddenly remembered a word that had eluded him. Marian instantly crossed her arms over her chest, gripping her shoulders with her hands. What David remembers is the white-knuckled fingers, the crushed, painful look of the breasts, the proud and sorrowful turning away of Marian’s face, and the fact that although she turned her face to one side, she did not turn her body away.
The Colonel makes up his mind. At the sound of the turning doorknob the Colonel turns his head sharply toward the distant door and is aware, even as he turns, of the silk-and-flesh slapping together of Miss Scarlet’s knees and the sudden stiffening of her limbs as she prepares to fling herself upright. The Colonel, although he once beat a man senseless with his fists, is essentially a discreet man, who prefers not to be caught in compromising situations. Nevertheless, during the moment when he hears the turning doorknob and the clapping together of Miss Scarlet’s knees, he realizes two things: he is not going to permit Miss Scarlet to escape her banal destiny, even if the door should open to admit a regiment; and the banging together of her knees, the tensing of her body, the look of sharp alarm constitute Miss Scarlet’s sole failure to assume a pose, and render her suddenly desirable. As she struggles to rise, the Colonel admires for a moment the tendons of her neck tensed like ropes, the harsh twist of her torso, the lines of strain between her elegant eyebrows, before throwing himself on her expertly.
Late. It is growing late. Susan yawns through tightly shut teeth, slitting her eyes and giving a faint shudder. She wonders whether Jacob will tuck her in and talk to her, she wonders whether he will make love to her in the narrow bed in his attic room before leaving for the cot in David’s room. Marian’s large eyes are half closed; she leans her temple on the heel of a hand, so that the skin above her eyebrow is taut, giving her a look of alertness that clashes with her drooping, sleepy air. Jacob has been steadily drinking glasses of wine and cups of coffee; the whites of his eyes are cracked with red, his irises glitter. Now he leans forward on both elbows and runs three fingers of each hand slowly along his temples, over and over; his thick, springy hair has a slightly mussed look. David’s eyes are tired, and burn with Jacob’s cigarette smoke; his heart is beating quickly, as if he has been running. Upstairs, Samuel Ross lies asleep on his back, breathing through his mouth, rasping lightly. Martha Ross, turning heavily in her sleep, half wakes and hears voices from downstairs. She must tell Sam that the children are still up, the children, yes, but again she is asleep. Across from the Ross house a light goes out in an upstairs window of the Warren house. Sandra Warren, closing her eyes in the dark, can hear through the open window the sound of the exhaust fan in the Rosses’ attic and a faint sound of voices from the Ross back porch as she thinks of Bob Schechter coming out of the water with his hair flattened down and his streaming body shining in the sun. A foghorn sounds. The tide is going out; on a blanket on the dark beach, two lovers lie facing each other, stroking each other’s cheeks. Far out on the water a blinking lighthouse shows where the dark water meets the dark sky, before plunging both into blackness. On the other side of the beach a dull red glows in the sky, from the shopping center a mile away. Again the foghorn sounds; on the Ross porch, David listens to it and thinks of train whistles, night journeys, distant cities, all the unseen places longing to be seen.
An unscreamed scream. As Miss Scarlet struggles with the Colonel, she opens her mouth to scream but does not scream. To scream is to secure rescue, to assure the flinging open of the door, the clatter of feet across the hard floor; but rescue means discovery, and Miss Scarlet does not wish to be discovered sprawled beneath the odious Colonel with her crimson dress above her hips and her pink crepe de chine knickers at her knees. She cannot but hope that the door will remain closed; even to struggle is to risk discovery. The unscreamed scream struggles inside her, ripples across her abdomen, makes her fingertips itch. Miss Scarlet realizes that her sudden, involuntary resistance has aroused the Colonel, whose dull brain no doubt teems with juicy images of struggling maidens; she further realizes that the necessary cessation of struggle will satisfy his trite image of conquest. As the seconds pass, and no other sound is heard at the far end of the BALLROOM, Miss Scarlet marvels at the way in which the world has conspired with the Colonel, for whom even the act of vision is hackneyed and hand-me-down, to absorb her into the realm of the imaginary.
Hair. The game is winding down now, and Marian wonders whether David has had a good birthday. He appears to be engrossed in the game; he studies his cards intensely, continually makes marks on his pad, shakes the die over and over in his fist, flings it vigorously onto the board. He is taking on some of Jacob’s characteristics, as he sometimes does: when he flings the die onto the board he gives his wrist a twist that is Jacob’s, and he talks to the die in Jacob’s voice: come on baby, three baby, three big ones for Brother Dave. Jacob has thrown himself into the game; his excitement, which has infected David, makes Marian uneasy. There is sweat-shine on Jacob’s cheekbones and on one side of his nose; his thick hair, ruffled by his thrusting fingers, has sprung out of place. David’s hair has always been different: straight and pale brown, it falls slantwise across his forehead almost to his eyes. From time to time he sweeps it up with a hand, leaving a few long hairs fallen. Marian looks across at Susan, startled by the beauty of her hair. Marian has always been troubled by the thick abundance of her own hair, which breaks the teeth of combs. She remembers David’s childhood hair, silky and brown, the fineness of it, and the sweetness of his scalp’s smell. Susan looks tired. She is far from home, in a strange house. She too is part of David’s birthday. “Susan,” she says, reaching for the bowl of potato chips and realizing that it’s the first time she has said the name aloud. “Can you use some more of these?”
In the darkening corridor. In the darkening corridor Mr. Green stands with his hand on the turned doorknob. It seems to him that he hears dim sounds from deep within the dangerous BALLROOM, but the sounds are so faint that they may be nothing more than sounds of the house itself. The house is full of sounds: loose window sashes knock in their frames, water pipes mutter, floorboards creak, the very walls seem to breathe and sigh. The memory of his discovery in the shadowy corner, and of his awkward, guilty retreat, is so vivid to Mr. Green that he cannot continue his arrested motion. With alarm he realizes that his current posture is no less dubious—anyone happening along the corridor might well mistake him for an eavesdropper, for his hand is on the knob, his forehead is bent forward almost to the wood of the door. Indeed, it would not be difficult to imagine that he harbored a weapon in his waistcoat. Mr. Green looks stealthily over his shoulder: no one. He is alone. He thinks of the quiet arbor in the garden behind his mother’s house, of the well-worn leather of the armchair in his room. His mother had been right: he would not enjoy the weekend.
The Black Hag. The Colonel, at the instant he enters Miss Scarlet, begins to lose interest in her. Miss Scarlet has exhausted her purpose as prey; her remaining usefulness is severely limited. The Colonel prides himself on not being a sentimentalist. His interest, he reflects, will steadily diminish as his thrusts increase in intensity until, at the famous moment, Miss Scarlet will become superfluous: and the Black Hag, bending over him with cold fingers and heavy-lidded eyes, will claim him once again.
The die. The die is a translucent red cube with slightly rounded corners. The spots are sunken, opaque, and white. It is difficult to tell whether the spots are small holes in the surface that have been painted white, or whether they are small white plugs that have been set in holes in the surface. Through any of the six translucent sides, other spots are visible as little reddish lumps shaped like the heads of bullets.
Poor thing. Miss Scarlet slips nimbly from her body and takes up a position not far from the window seat, where she observes with interest the scene before her: the Colonel’s pale, well-muscled, heaving buttocks peeping out from beneath his agitated shirttails (the Colonel is naked only from the waist down), the young woman’s raised knee pressed back against her ribs by the Colonel’s splayed hand, a tangle of pink and white at the ankle of the other foot. The young woman’s visible arm is stretched out, the hand limp at the wrist; her face is turned to one side and her eyes are closed. She looks for all the world as if she has been slain—only, from time to time, a barely perceptible tremor passes over her body. Poor thing, Miss Scarlet thinks.
Stunning. Susan is not deceived, by Marian’s gesture, into sudden intimations of intimacy. She is grateful anyway. She sets down the bowl beside her glass of wine, bites into a saddle-shaped chip, and looks directly at Jacob’s sister, whose face is already turned toward David. At that moment, in that light, at that precise angle, Marian’s unlovely face is stunning: her high cheekbone shines, the tide of her hair rolls along her face and dashes down on her shoulder, the sharp proud line of her forehead and nose slashes across the dark green blinds like a blade of light. Susan’s hair has been admired since early childhood, but she feels that its straightness shows lack of character. She has always been attracted to forceful, intelligent, unbeautiful women stronger and bolder than she. In high school her best friend had wild hair and braces, wore torn jeans and floppy lumberjack shirts, practiced the violin three hours a day, and once punched a boy in the mouth when he refused to stop torturing a cat. Susan is willing to be proud of her hair because Jacob adores it, but if she were Jacob she would be more critical. Jacob is stern when it comes to her taste in literature (Faulkner is a gasbag) and music (rock music is what Yeats meant by “mere anarchy is loosed upon the world”), but he is reverent toward her body, which makes him seem careless. If she were a man, she would want to plunge both hands into Marian’s torrent of hair. If she were a man, she would reject herself and choose Marian.
Mrs. Peacock and Mr. Green. Mrs. Peacock cannot endure the presence of Mrs. White for another second: the slumped shoulders, the dark eyes glistening with desolation, the hands moving helplessly, the air of dazed bewilderment, all these inspire in Mrs. Peacock a sense of suffocation. She must escape from this room that is filling up with grief, a grief that rushes outward in all directions, pushing down everything in its path, pressing against the walls, hurting her skin. “Yes ye
s, dear,” Mrs. Peacock says, “it will be all right,” and escapes from the desperate gaze, the inconsolable bulk of flesh. She makes her way down the corridor toward the DINING ROOM, passing on her way the corridor to the BALLROOM, where she is surprised to see Mr. Green standing with his hand on the doorknob, his head half bowed. At the sound of her footstep Mr. Green whirls to look at her, gives a gasp, then fumbles at the door and thrusts it open, disappearing within. A queer one, Mr. Green. One might almost think he was afraid of her.
Endgame. David knows that the murder was committed by Mrs. Peacock, with the Candlestick, in one of three rooms: the BILLIARD ROOM, the DINING ROOM, or the BALLROOM. The game is winding down now; it is simply a matter of moving his piece across the board from room to room, eliminating the incorrect ones. Although Susan’s guesses have grown more skilful, she does not appear to know either the murderer or the room, but David is less certain of Marian and Jacob. Jacob almost never loses at Clue; his logic is flawless, his instincts sure. Marian, in her quiet way, is a dangerous player who can never be ruled out. David knows, from his system of checkmarks and X’s, that Jacob has identified Mrs. Peacock and the Candlestick; he is almost certain that Marian knows both, though he can’t be sure about the weapon; all three of them are moving from room to room, searching for the final clue. This part of the game always draws attention to another disturbing flaw in the game’s design: although play is supposed to be based on logical inference, it admits a high proportion of sheer chance, since each time a player’s token is accused of the murder it must be moved to the room in question. One is continually being whisked away, to the wrong part of the board. Jacob is known to absorb this whimsical element of the game directly into his strategy, and to make a useless Suggestion deliberately, for the sake of removing a token as far as possible from its apparent destination. He has already pulled David across the board to the STUDY, which he knows David holds in his hand, thereby delaying David’s progress and wasting a move of his own; the result is to give Marian an advantage in the race to new rooms. The game cannot last much longer. David is pleased to see Jacob bending intensely over his Detective Notes, trying to wrest an additional secret from his complex system of marks; Jacob seems in a better mood, he has been drawn into the game. David wonders what will happen next. Will there be another game? It’s almost one in the morning. Will Susan retire and leave the three of them together, to talk in the living room? Marian seems tired; perhaps she too will go upstairs. Will Jacob want to stay up till dawn? Will they walk to 7-Eleven and buy Cokes at four in the morning? Will they go down to the beach and walk out to the end of the jetty and sit looking across the black Sound toward Long Island? The foghorns are silent now; maybe the sky has cleared. Will Jacob want to talk? Will he talk about Dad? About Susan? His writing? David hopes he can somehow let Susan know that it’s all right for her to be here on his birthday. He shakes the die in his loose fist, enjoying the tension of the game, holding back, savoring the moment when he will suddenly open his hand and watch the red die tumble across the bright, loud board.
The Barnum Museum: Stories (American Literature Series) Page 5