Lilith

by J. R. Salamanca

  I find that I can stare into the petals of a flower for ten or fifteen minutes at a time without exhausting its attraction, feeling, on the contrary, a gathering intensity of pleasure which approaches exaltation. The fuchsias on the front veranda are particularly fascinating. They have a vividness of tone which seems to oscillate, to awaken all kinds of thrilling vibrations in the senses, drawing one deeper and deeper into the profundities of color until the universe seems composed exclusively of it; there are no other stimuli, no other modes of being, no reality but color. God, grief, mortality, eternity, all these become shades or aspects of glowing fuchsia. It is a really extraordinary and delightful experience, for which I cannot account; but it has given me an understanding of the pleasure Lilith must derive from the light-games she plays with her prisms.

  I have a wonderful tactile sensitivity, too, which unfortunately is not always enjoyable. Wind on my lips can cause an almost unbearable tingling sensation of pleasure; the touch of cork or rubber is often oddly repulsive. And certain sounds have become excruciating; I was filling a Thermos jug the other day and as I screwed the cork into the neck to tighten it the faint dull squealing sound it made against the glass sent a sudden agonized electric shudder through my nerves, such as the sound of chalk shrieking on a blackboard used to give me. When I was walking home last night there was a workman shoveling rubble from the sidewalk, and the sound of the steel shovel scraping on the concrete made me very nearly scream with pain. My hearing seems to be much more acute, as well, and to be astonishingly increased in its power to orientate sounds spatially. For example, I was able the other day to isolate and follow to its source in the grass under the kitchen window the singing of a single cricket—something I have never before been able to do, although I often used to try when I was a child.

  My sense of smell is most affected. Odors intoxicate me, even many of which I have never before been aware. The scent of certain flowers, particularly—those with an astringent, herblike bitter scent, such as geraniums, dahlias and verbena—gives me a sense of delicate and rather sinister excitement which often puts me into a state of nervous exhilaration before I am aware of the cause of it; and that of sweet, heavy “tropical” flowers—gardenias, magnolias and honeysuckle—is virtually overpowering. I went walking the other evening before I went to bed and passed a group of high-school students coming home from a dance at Langley. One of the girls was wearing gardenias in her hair, and as she went by on the sidewalk the scent of those white blossoms in the warm night air made me very nearly reel with a sudden wave of hopeless, yearning tenderness. Now where did that sudden wave of emotion come from—to leave me trembling with loneliness in the street as their voices faded away under the dark elms?

  I can smell the wind, now, too. I know when it is blowing from the west—however gently—because it always brings that dark, humiliating smell of Niggertown: clay, soaked hard and sour in soapy water; grease and cheap cologne. It makes me wince. But tonight it is blowing from the north, and I can smell the orchards: fruit-tree gum, and Hales and Elbertas ripening in the warm wind. I wonder if those girls who used to pick the peaches are still sitting in the branches, singing ballads in the moonlight? I would like to go up there and lie in the grass under those dark trees among the fallen fruit—brown and overripe, with a sweet, moist, slippery softness that you can plunge your thumbs into until they touch the stone. I wonder if one of them would come to me? How lovely that would be: with the heavy boughs above us raining their faint mist of resin through the dark, and her pale naked body beside me, stained and scented with the slippery, rotting peaches.

  MON. MAY 25:

  I have not been asked to escort Lilith again for a whole week now. Yet every morning at the O. T. meetings Bea has asked one of the others—Kit, Mandel or Bob—to invite her out; and twice Lilith has agreed to accompany them. Bea seems very pleased about this, but has not offered to discuss it with me. I have managed to pretend an appropriate degree of satisfaction when the contacts were discussed, and an indifference to the fact that it was someone other than myself who made them; but I cannot help wondering what it means. Have they decided that it is unwise for me to see her any more? Perhaps my talk with Dr. Lavrier was more revealing than I was aware, or than he let me know. I have gone over and over it in my mind, lying in bed sometimes at night and murmuring our conversation to myself as accurately as I can remember it, out of a restless dissatisfaction—sometimes with what I said, and sometimes with what I imagine I must have left unsaid. Can it have disclosed to him some buried fear, some potential weakness or element of incompetence in myself that I myself am scarcely aware of, and which he feels would prejudice any further relationship with Lilith? I am satisfied that I tried to express to him my feelings toward her as candidly and completely as I could, and if I was not entirely successful it was only for the reason that I was honestly not certain of what my feelings were. It was after all the purpose of my interview to try to clarify them to a comfortable and practical extent—which I am sure he understood, and in which, for a time at least, I felt I had succeeded. But every day I feel those insights fading, and become less certain of my actual attitudes.

  It’s three days now since I have even seen her. I stopped by on Friday to speak to her for a moment, but she was out with Mandel somewhere, and although I watched for her around the grounds I couldn’t see her anywhere. I suppose they went down to the lake again.

  I’m sure that Bea and Dr. Lavrier have discussed my relationship with Lilith between them, but I am for some reason very unwilling to question her about it. Still, it doesn’t seem reasonable that they would behave in such a surreptitious way. Candor seems to be the cornerstone of Bea’s gospel, and if she can extend it to her patients it doesn’t seem very consistent or honorable for her to refuse it to me. If she doesn’t offer some explanation soon I’ll have to ask for one. I feel an increasing confusion and anxiety about it all.

  THE anxiety expressed in this last extract from my journal was relieved on the following day when Bea asked me if I would take Lilith on the “experimental trip” which Dr. Lavrier had suggested.

  “She seems to be becoming much more sociable,” she said. “Which is something we are all pleased with. Dr. Lavrier says she is offering less resistance in analysis, as well. He’s very anxious to start getting her abroad again, but thinks it should be done in stages. Why don’t you take her bicycling for an hour or so, out on those back roads towards Frederick?”

  I said I would be happy to, and added, with a carefully suppressed elation, that as I knew the roads well from having ridden there so often as a boy, I would have the advantage of a close familiarity with the countryside in the event of an attempt to escape on Lilith’s part. Bea seemed quite pleased with my foresight. How foolish my apprehensions had been! How perfectly natural it was for a general test of Lilith’s growing sociability to have been made! I felt quite merry when I presented myself to her, a frame of mind which she seemed to find amusing.

  “You seem very happy, Vincent. Is it because you’ve had such a long holiday from me?”

  “Oh, no; that was unavoidable,” I said. “You don’t seem to have lacked company, anyway.”

  “No; I thought it would be more discreet.”

  “More discreet?”

  “If I were not too exclusive in my choice of escorts.” It was impossible to know if she was mocking me.

  “How would you like to go bicycling?” I asked. “It’s a lovely morning.”

  She stared at me somberly for several moments before she answered, “Do you think they would approve?”

  “Of course they’d approve. As a matter of fact, Bea suggested herself that I ask you.”

  “Oh, did she?” She was sitting at the sill with the glass prisms lying on her palm, glittering in the sunlight. She lifted one and, spreading her fingers, ran the tips of them through the rainbow of colors that it threw upon the sill. It made a hectic effect: the livid flickering of her finger tips down through the spectrum and i
nto light again. “All right, then, if you like.” She paused for a moment and then added, “You haven’t told me what you said to Dr. Lavrier.”

  “No, I don’t intend to,” I said. She turned to face me swiftly with an expression of contempt that was truly unnerving. “Do you think I should?” She did not answer. “Did you think I would?”

  She turned away from me and began to adjust the prisms in her palm. “I see that he has filled you with courage. He must have reassured you greatly.”

  “Do you want to go out?” I asked again rather bluntly.

  “Yes.” She set the prisms carefully together on the sill and stood up, smiling at me.

  “Don’t you think you ought to put your shoes on? Won’t the pedals hurt your feet?”

  “No.”

  “I thought we’d cycle out along the Frederick road. There’s not much traffic and it’s pretty country.”

  “If you like. Did they really ask you to take me?”

  “Yes. Doesn’t that please you?”

  “Yes.”

  She said nothing else all the while we were going down in the elevator and walking across the grounds to the bicycle shed. While I was unlocking it and taking out a pair of bicycles Warren came toward us from Field House, walking hastily across the shadowed lawn.

  “Good morning, Miss Arthur,” he said, smiling at her in an abject way that made me cringe. Lilith said nothing, standing with her head bowed. “I’m making something for you. In the shop. They told me your birthday was next week, and I wanted to give you something. I wonder if I ought to tell you. Still, I think it’s going to be quite nice. I’ve been working on it for some time now. It should be finished in a day or two.” She would still not raise her head or speak to him. He stood clutching his hands together with distress. “Are you going bicycling?” he asked. “It’s a lovely morning for it. Would you mind if I came with you?”

  “I’m afraid that isn’t possible, Warren,” I said.

  “It isn’t? Oh, that’s disappointing. Perhaps after you come back Miss Arthur would like to come to Field House and hear some music. There are some new recordings of Chopin that are very good.”

  I had brought with me a canteen of water and a parcel of watercress sandwiches which I placed in the leather pouch beneath my saddle, giving her a moment to reply; but she stood as silently as ever all the while. When I had finished buckling it I said, “I don’t think we’d better arrange that for today. Perhaps later in the week.”

  “Oh, I hope so. I’d be happy to play them for you any time. I’m staying there now, you know—in Field House. I’m getting much better. I’m planning to write very soon about a job.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” I said. “Goodbye for now, Warren.”

  “Goodbye. Goodbye, Miss Arthur.”

  He stood looking after us with writhing hands as we walked down the drive with the bicycles. At the entrance to the grounds we mounted them, and Lilith sat obediently in the saddle, bracing herself with one bare foot against the curb.

  “Which way are we going?” she asked.

  “Straight down the street, out of town. I’ll follow you.”

  She pedaled slowly down the quiet street under the great elms, her hair flashing in the alternate patches of sunlight that fell between the leaves. It was less than a mile to the edge of town; the rows of houses on either side of the street ended suddenly, and the soft hills of the countryside, many of them green with late crops of barley, opened out before us. There were no longer elms along the road, nor shadow; we rode in morning sunlight along the narrow country road into which Montgomery Avenue extends. It sloped gently upward into the hills north of the town, so that we were obliged to pedal quite slowly up the incline. Lilith stopped after a while and stood with one foot on the ground, turning in her saddle to wait for me.

  “Can’t you ride beside me?” she said as I came abreast of her. “It makes me very uncomfortable to have you there behind me, and I don’t think it’s very courteous.”

  “All right. I didn’t think you were particularly anxious for my company.”

  “I wouldn’t have come if I weren’t.”

  We pedaled on, side by side, in silence, between the swollen hedges of honeysuckle. Below us there were sheep grazing in many of the valleys along the shallow creeks, and their bleating reached us sometimes very thinly through the hot bright silence, a mournful and contemptuous sound. I could hear also the soft snarling of bees among the honeysuckle, and all the while the sweet heavy odor of the coral-colored blossoms fumed about us. Lilith lifted her hand once, swerving in the road, and wiped the damp hair from her forehead.

  “Are you hot?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s shady a little farther along. There are lanes of cedars along the road.”

  “Can we stop there?”

  “Yes.”

  We pedaled for another few minutes until we reached the row of trees, feeling their cool bath of shadow fall upon us. There was a “crazy fence” of weather-darkened cedar rails along the road, against which we leaned our bicycles. Lilith climbed up onto it and unknotted the blue silk scarf she wore about her throat, clutching the rail with one hand while she did so.

  “Are you tired?” I asked.

  “No. I’m never tired. I’m only hot. Can I have some of the water?”

  I unscrewed the cap of the canteen and handed it to her. She tilted her head back, her throat stretched and rippling as she drank. When she had finished she pressed the cool aluminum of the flask against her cheek, cringing a little from its coldness, and gazed off at the distant hills. On many of their slopes there were outcroppings of blunt, gray, rain-smoothed rock, and above these, where the soil was no longer workable, dark-green wooded patches of maple and gum.

  There was a disturbing familiarity about the slope of the hill in front of us; the disposition of the few silver maples that ran down in diminishing numbers from its crest, the arrangement of the visible boulders among them, and the shining course of the creek in the narrow valley below were all part of a pattern that oppressed me in a vague and fugitive way, like the sudden remembering, at midday, of a dream. I had stood looking down at it for several minutes before I realized, with a faint, cool rebirth of the dread which had accompanied it, that it was here I had had the accident with my mare. I wondered while I looked down at the landscape if it were entirely by coincidence that I had chosen this spot to stop and rest, or if those mysterious subliminal powers of selection with which I was becoming increasingly familiar from my reading and lectures could have been responsible for it. I could hardly believe in this latter possibility, for I could think of nothing to be gained by bringing her to a place that held such painful memories for me.

  “I’m glad you brought me,” Lilith said. “It’s a lovely spot.”

  “Yes. I used to ride all through these hills when I was a boy.”

  She turned toward me, smiling. “On quests, Vincent? Are there dragons in the woods, or evil sorcerers?”

  “I think there may be,” I said.

  “Really? Oh, I want to see them!” She slipped down from the rails and stood with the fence between us, laying her hand on mine. “Come and show me.”

  “No, I think we’d better stay up here.”

  “I’ll go alone, then.”

  Before I could make a move to seize her she had fled down the slope of the hill, her hair splashing about her shoulders and her skirt flying. As it was evident that I could easily overtake her and that the woods were far too sparse for her to hide in, her flight was obviously more a demonstration of caprice, or perhaps a test of wills between us, than a serious attempt at escape; and I was for this reason very leisurely in my pursuit of her. I vaulted the fence and walked down the hill behind her—it seemed to display much more authority than running—being careful nevertheless to keep the distance between us a reasonably limited one. She had entered the thin patch of woodland in a moment and ran through its gray shadow like a dryad, looking back at me ove
r her shoulder and laughing merrily. The slope of the hill dropped steeply here, and I had only just increased the pace of my pursuit to a mild trot, to prevent her from disappearing from my sight below the fall of land, when I saw her stop, lifting her hands to clasp her throat lightly and staring down at the ground. As I approached I saw that she stood amongst a litter of huge bleached bones, scattered for yards among the stones and dead leaves of the forest floor, the work of vultures, rain and frost. They had lost all design, except for half of the broken rib cage, which lay with its pale curved staves standing upright, like a ruined harp. Beside it, half buried in a mound of rotting leaves, lay the shattered skull, its splintered bone washed clean and dry as chalk. It gave me an inconsolable feeling to look at them, being my only monument upon the earth. A little yellow butterfly was fluttering among them.