Lilith

by J. R. Salamanca

  “No.”

  “You didn’t? But then why does it seem beautiful to you?”

  “I didn’t say that. I said the water was beautiful, not the river. The water is beautiful because it makes rainbows in the mist above the falls, the way my prisms do. And because it is all broken into crystal spray above the boulders, like chandeliers. And because there are drowned queens floating in it with their lungs full of silver.” She stood up impatiently, shaking her head like a dog emerging from water, and spread her fingers in the sunlight. “I want to paint,” she said. “May I, Mr. Bruce?”

  “Yes, of course. I’ll set up the easel for you.”

  “Not here. It will blow over in the wind, and I can’t see where the cascade breaks, down there. Can you bring it a little closer for me?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ll see what Mr. Clayfield says.”

  I walked across the boulder to where Bob, Mandel and Wren sat with the other patients amid a litter of waxed paper, sandwiches and Thermos bottles.

  “Miss Arthur wants to go down a little further, to paint,” I said. “She says it’s too windy here, and she can’t see well. Is it all right?”

  “I guess so,” Bob said. “There are only eight of them; and if we’re responsible for two each it ought to work out. How are they getting along?”

  “Very well, I think. Warren is full of very frank admiration, but he seems to be well behaved, and I think she’s rather enjoying him.”

  “Good. As long as he doesn’t get on her nerves I’d let them stay together.”

  I think it was partly Lilith’s pleasure—how warm, artless and genuine it always seemed on such occasions!—at Bob’s agreement that made me less cautious than I should have been; for this, together with the staff’s eagerness to encourage her participation in more such outings, made me particularly anxious to insure her enjoyment of the trip, and more liberal than I should have been, perhaps, in judging the suitability of the site she chose to paint from. This was on a high flat shelf of rock in the lee of a great boulder which shielded her easel from the wind, and selected, apparently, out of her passion for privacy and originality, as it stood far back from any of the footpaths that wound among the bracken. We had to forge our way to it through a thicket of chokecherry which scratched our wrists and ankles and ripped a large triangular tear in Lilith’s skirt, through which the white flesh of her thigh flashed rhythmically as she walked. She stopped sometimes to break clusters of purple pokeweed berries from the tall, soft-stemmed bushes that grew among the thicket, or to pluck up handfuls of young grass, or strip the bright scarlet berries from another flowering plant, which I did not know.

  “What are they for?” Warren asked.

  “To paint with.”

  “Really? You really paint with them?”

  “Oh, yes. They make lovely colors.”

  She stuffed them into the pocket of her skirt and climbed with swift, lithe movements up the shelf of rock that she had led us to. When she had gained the top of it she lifted her bent arm to her forehead, staring across the chasm into the sun.

  “Oh, this is a lovely spot!” she said. “Can we stay here?”

  I saw with some misgiving that less than ten yards in front of us the bank dropped steeply to the river in an almost vertical slope, strewn with shattered boulders, slate and the rotting trunks of fallen pines; but as a concession to her enthusiasm I did not protest. Warren set up her easel with many ostentatious manipulations of its bolts and braces and, while she began to sketch, stretched out on the rock a little behind her to watch, beaming with obvious delight at the privilege. I sat beside him and smoked a cigarette, falling into a state of luxurious somnolence from the sunlight, the droning of bees in the wildflowers, the rumble of the falls and the occasional casual murmur of their conversation.

  It was astonishing to watch with what skill Lilith used the natural colors of the berries and herbs that she had gathered. She crushed the grass blades on the stone and rubbed the moist, frayed fibers on her paper to make cloudy masses of vegetation in many different tones. The stamens of the wild flags she used like pencils, touching their tufts of pollen to her painting and then brushing it with her finger tip to produce points of scattered yellow, brilliant as buttercups.

  “It’s wonderful!” Warren said. “I had no idea you could paint like that—simply with grasses and things of that kind.”

  “Yes. They fade, of course; but there are no such colors while they last.”

  “But don’t you need many more? How can you paint with so few?”

  “I have others here, in my box, that I’ve made—permanent colors. This red is cochineal, the black is simply charcoal, the ocher is clay from the garden at Crowfields. And here’s a white I made out of limestone; I slaked it myself and pulverized it in a mortar.” He murmured with admiration while she burst one of the pokeberries with her finger tips and drew a streak of vivid violet across the paper.

  “I should like to be able to paint,” he said, “or to do anything of that kind. I have always had a great love of the arts; when I look at a painting or listen to music, I’m very moved. I understand them, but I can’t do them myself.”

  He watched, frowning with fascination, while Lilith’s fingers flashed about the easel. “How do you begin?” he asked. “I can never understand how you begin. When I pick up a violin or a paintbrush I suddenly feel exhausted and embarrassed. What is it that you do?”

  “I do nothing,” Lilith said. “My hand moves, and I follow it.”

  “Ah, that’s it!” Warren said. “The hand moves! Mine doesn’t move, of course. Or if it does, it moves only in the direction of the salted almonds. I always have a bowl of them beside me when I work; it is a great mistake. I sat all one afternoon last week, trying to write a poem, and could do nothing but nibble salted nuts. The more I tried to concentrate the more of them I ate. It’s what always happens. I can’t trust my hands, you see.”

  “I think that is where you fail,” Lilith said. “You must learn to trust them, if you want them to lead you to things you love.”

  “Do you think they will? Perhaps it is only that I love salted almonds. What a terrible thought—to be a gourmet by nature! A taster and sampler of things. Still, it may be true, I’m afraid. I have a scholar’s mind, you know, not an artist’s. It’s a very different faculty.”

  “But you have the gift of tongues. That’s a great gift.”

  “Oh, it’s nothing, compared to yours. I’ve studied them, yes; I know their grammar. But you’ve invented one of your own. That is the greatest gift.”

  “I did not invent it,” Lilith said, turning toward him with a fiercely solemn look. “It was taught to me. I learned it, just as you do.”

  “How?” Warren said. “Who have you learned it from? Do you mean it’s a spoken language?”

  “Yes. It is spoken by my people.”

  “Really? And you actually hear them, then? You hear them speaking it? I would love to hear it, too. I’m fascinated by languages. Do you think they would speak to me?”

  She watched him studiously for a moment, seeming to search his face for signs of mockery; but there was nothing to be seen in it but guileless eagerness.

  “Perhaps,” she said. “But it’s very difficult to learn to hear them. It was many years before they would reveal themselves to me.”

  “I’m sure I could learn it,” Warren said. “I learn very quickly, you know. I learned to speak Hungarian in less than a month. Perhaps you would teach me.” He clasped his knees in his hands, leaning forward with excitement.

  “No, I wouldn’t be allowed to teach you, unless it was approved. It’s a language that very few are permitted to speak.”

  “But what would I have to do?” he asked. “I’m sure I could persuade them.”

  She lifted her brush and clenched the tip of it lightly between her teeth, staring softly at the ground. “You would have to demonstrate great courage,” she said. “And a great capacity—for joy.”

>   “But I have!” he cried. “There are so many things that I take joy in. I have a very exuberant nature. Perhaps you haven’t noticed it. But I’m not very brave. I admit I’m not very brave. I’m afraid of all sorts of things cuts and bruises, sudden changes of temperature, for example. I catch cold very easily, you know. I have never been physically very strong.”

  Lilith burst into a peal of laughter and turned back to her painting. “You are a fraud!” she said. “You talk about submitting to holy powers, but you’re terrified of little bruises or of catching cold. I think you’re as devoted to misery as Mr. Bruce is. And you boast of your capacity for joy!”

  “But I have it!” Warren cried. “You don’t understand me. I have!”

  “Eat these, then.”

  She turned suddenly, plunging her hand into her pocket and flinging a handful of the scarlet berries toward him. They bounced and rolled on the gray rock, settling in the crevices, where they lay glittering like little beads. I lunged forward involuntarily in the beginning of a gesture to clutch his hand if he should reach for them, but I saw there was no need. He stared at the red berries with a sudden look of fright, drawing his hand inward against his breast and recoiling from them humbly.

  “Oh, no. They would make me sick. They may be poisonous.”

  “Perhaps,” Lilith said. “But perhaps they have a thrilling, exotic flavor, like nothing you have ever tasted.”

  She took another handful of the berries from her pocket and, dropping her head back, tossed them into her mouth. Before I could reach her to prevent it she had swallowed them and drawn her wrist across her lips to wipe away the scarlet stain.

  “They’re delicious. Clean and bitter, like anise. You see how foolish you are.”

  I had leapt to my feet—much too late, as I say, to interfere—and stood frowning at her with chagrin.

  “Have I made you angry, Mr. Bruce?” she asked softly. “It was very foolish. They may be poisonous, as he says.”

  “They won’t hurt me if they are.”

  “I hope not. If you do any more foolish things like that I’ll have to take you back.”

  “Are you worried about me, then?”

  “Of course,” I said. “I’m responsible for you.”

  “Yes. Then I’ll be very good. I promise not to get sick. I wouldn’t want to embarrass you.” She held her hand out toward me, her palm glittering with scarlet juice from the crushed berries. “Would you like to taste it, too?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “You see, you are both alike. You’re concerned about your health. But I have tasted a flavor of this world that you will never know.”

  “Yes, but I’m afraid of things like that,” Warren said. He sat with his head drooped, staring rather shamefully at the ground. “Poison, and things of that kind. I’ve read about it in books—how you die in agony. I believe you draw your knees up against your chest and resume the fetal posture. It’s really dreadful.”

  He rose and prowled restlessly about the rock, examining the boulder wall with his long fingers, which he poked in a sorrowful and abstracted way into the dust and rubble of its crevices, turning sometimes to look at Lilith. We were both suffering, I believe, from the same curious sense of defeat at her hands, and went without speaking for several minutes, each silently considering his own inadequacy. In a moment he turned, chuckling in his noisy childish way, and called excitedly, “Look what I’ve found! A mantis! Look how huge it is!”

  It was indeed an enormous insect, with a plump brilliant-green body the size of a large cigar, and great flat forelegs which it held lifted and bent in an attitude of savage piety. It had fallen from the foliage above and stood with calm and monstrous dignity on a ledge of the boulder, turning its small head in a deliberate way from side to side while it regarded us with a look of fearful intelligence in its bulging eyes.

  “How beautiful he is!” Lilith said. “And how wise he looks!” She had come to stand beside Warren at the boulder, and the three of us, our shoulders touching, peered with fascination at the little monster.

  “I wonder what he’s praying for?” I said.

  “For victims.” Lilith laughed as the mantis revolved its head slowly, seeming to survey each of us in turn. “I wonder which of us he will choose?”

  “It’s an ugly thing,” Warren said suddenly. He picked up a long flat blade of shale which lay broken in a rift of the rock and lifted it to strike the insect.

  “Oh, no, don’t kill him!” Lilith cried. “No, no!” She clutched at Warren’s hand as it descended, but insufficiently to deflect the blow; the mantis lay crushed and quivering against the gray rock. “What a terrible thing to do! He was beautiful!”

  “I didn’t know it really mattered to you,” Warren mumbled. He raised his hand and stared at the long ragged scratch her nails had made across the back of it. “You scratched me.”

  “Let me see,” Lilith said.

  He turned his hand toward her and she stared at it somberly for a moment.

  “Why, you have beautiful hands,” she said in a quaintly reflective way, as if she had never before observed them.

  Warren blushed and closed his fingers quickly. “I bite my nails,” he murmured, and then, with a terrible effort of will which one could read in the tension and deepening color of his face, he straightened his fingers slowly, as if to exhibit his disgrace, and asked softly, “Do you really think that if I learned to trust them, as you say, they would find me things I loved?”

  “Yes, I know they would.”

  Knowing the painful shyness and formality of his nature, I was more than ever aware of the intensity of the impulse which made him raise his hand in a slow, trembling gesture of agonized determination and take very gently between his fingers a strand of her soft bright hair. She did not withdraw, or look at him directly, but bowed her head slightly in a delicately feigned unawareness, suffering his touch.

  “Then I will try to learn to,” he murmured. He withdrew his hand and stood watching her averted face with a composed radiance of expression that was quite moving to see. Lilith turned suddenly and walked back to her easel, dipping her hand into her pocket and taking out more of her wild berries. She worked swiftly for a moment, making broad violet strokes across the top of her paper, and then said suddenly, “I need some water to wash it out; I’ve gotten it too dark. May I get some?”

  “Where?” I asked.

  “There’s a pool in the rocks back there, where we climbed up.”

  She pointed down the shelf of rock and I saw the water shining among the branches of an elder bush. It was scarcely ten yards away, a little below us and easily in sight of the boulder on which we stood. When I hesitated for a moment, she said, “It will only take me a minute.” I am not sure, although I had much time and occasion to consider it in the days that followed, just what prompted my unfortunate reply to her request; surely even with the few yards’ advantage she would have had if she had tried to run away I could easily have overtaken her, and she would, at any rate, have been able to make very little headway through the dense thicket. Yet Bea had told me that she had tried previously to escape, and the possibility remained that she might do so again and might, however futile the attempt, have injured herself stumbling about the rocks and through the bracken. I think my reasoning was that it was better to keep her in front of me, with the only possible avenue of escape—the thicket behind the rock—barred by myself. It was also the forthrightness of the request which made me suspect that if she intended to deceive me in any way, it was in order to separate herself from Warren and me by getting the water herself. It was the first time I had had to trust my own initiative with patients and was not yet fully familiar with the involutions of their cunning. (I say “cunning,” although I am not yet sure, and perhaps never will be, if it was such.) I am not really sure, in my threadbare and guilty memory of the event, what my reasoning was; but I soon had shocking evidence of its error.

  “Let me get it for you,” I said with assume
d casualness. “That’s very kind of you.”

  “Do you have a cup or something in your box?”

  “No. You can just soak my scarf in it, if you will. That’s all I need.” She untied the pale silk scarf from her throat and tossed it to me lightly. It fell across my fingers like breath.