THERE is a hypnotic quality about terrible things. Whenever I recall the various disasters of my life—killing my horse, my mother’s and Eric’s deaths, the grenades in the amphitheater—I find myself re-creating their details, one after another, with a trancelike attention and respect, as if I found them strangely beautiful and just. I do not reflect upon them at all, but simply record them, tensely and involuntarily, hypnotized by the strange purity they assume. It is in this way that I recall the details of the morning mentioned above in the extract from my journal: meticulous, remote, fascinating in their known and inexorable progression. I see myself, as if behind a pane of polished glass, shaving at the bathroom mirror, carrying my shoes downstairs so that I will not wake my grandparents, who sleep later and later in their age; making my coffee and drinking it at the porcelain table in the silent kitchen (smiling all the while, staring up at the quavering violet webs of my cigarette smoke which marble the morning air); emerging from the front door with an air of controlled, expectant haste; pausing, as I cross the street, to examine a flattened toad on the pavement (it must have been run over days ago, because it is crisp, dry and leathery, its legs spread out in a perfectly symmetrical, ridiculously romantic attitude, as if attempting to embrace the whole world in some strange, mortal, primitive passion); walking under the cool elms, in spite of myself, with a constantly accelerating pace; pausing impatiently at the traffic light on Diamond Avenue; continuing briskly, smiling, until I stop suddenly—having seen a Negress in a red dress approaching me—cross the street again and continue down the opposite sidewalk with scarcely any adjustment of expression or emotion, the maneuver having become so habitual. (Once, many years ago, I did meet her, coming home from school, and, burning with humiliation, forced myself to look into her eyes, to watch her bitter contemptuous smile, as she approached and passed me. I could not do that again.) I enter the Lodge grounds, plucking the tip from an arbor vitae branch and crumbling it nervously in my fingers as I walk quickly up the drive. At the main building I pause, glance about with assumed indifference, then raise my eyes swiftly to her window. She is there, her gold hair glinting in its snood of shadow from the wire netting, her eyes vivid with anticipation. She purses her mouth to me in a soft, pleated rose of tenderness. My mind wanes wildly with delight. (Today I am to take her walking past the pond!) I go on up the drive, constraining with terrible determination the precious furor of my heart. I mount the shop steps, pausing at the top to look toward her window, then enter with inspired insouciance.
Dr. Lavrier is present to hold one of his occasional seminars with us. We discuss the patients earnestly, attentively, sipping our coffee out of paper cups, sprawling in the red leather armchairs. I give a cunning, extremely eager, diversionary report on Sonia Behrendt. She has expressed, as many of the patients have, an interest in fishing. I suggest stocking the lake with bass and blue-gills for this purpose. The suggestion is a great success. There is much animated discussion, in the course of which I offer to obtain details from the Fish & Wildlife Division. Bea is particularly pleased, smiling her gratification at me. I am asked about Warren. “He is considerably happier lately. I think it’s because of the attention he’s been getting from Lilith at the tea dances. He’s more active, too, and more productive.” Dr. Lavrier nods. “That was a good piece of work, getting her to attend them. It’s certainly done him good, as well as her. But we mustn’t let him build up any false illusions about Lilith’s affection for him; that could be disastrous, you know, as well as dishonest and undignified. But to enjoy her company and to dance with her occasionally—that seems to me to be perfectly acceptable, as long as he’s realistic about it. Try to keep it on that note. How has Lilith seemed this week?” “Well, I think she’s continuing to improve a little. I think Bob had her out yesterday, didn’t you, Bob? How did she seem to you?” Ah—adroit that was! Attention is shifted. (I have no monopoly on her company.)
Bea listens to the discussion with earnest, intelligent absorption, lightly brushing her brown hair. I move my eyes alternately to all their faces, my mind wandering. They are so intent, devoted. For a moment I am shamed by their sincerity; then I remember her laughter, the dazzling length of her thighs, a way she has of plucking at her eyelashes while she sits musing. She is waiting! Will they never finish their idiotic chatter? My love is waiting!
After the meeting I cross toward the main building with hectic, carefully disciplined excitement, determinedly limiting the length of my strides. My key sticks for a moment in the elevator door. I twist it savagely, in a rage of impatience, swinging back the heavy metal door, which closes with a solemn clangor behind me.
Lasciate ogni speranza. I stand for a minute in mild, perpendicular propulsion while the hidden machinery hums infernally. At the second floor I push the steel door open tremblingly; it seems to scald my hand. I stop at the floor office. Miss Donohue is checking the night attendant’s reports, holding the sheets in one hand while she lays out towels for the morning baths. She is too harassed to notice that my whole body is flaming softly, like wind-blown coals. “Hello, Vincent. Who do you have this morning?” “I’m taking Lilith out by the pond.” “Good. Keep her out for as long as you can, will you? Give us a little peace around here.” “I’ll try. Are you having trouble?” “Oh God. Carter’s gone back up to Fourth; she just bit one of the attendants. God, it’s like a madhouse around here this morning. Where are the scissors?” I smile mechanically at her joke, proceed down the corridor with feet of fire.
The door of Lilith’s room is ajar; I knock twice lightly in an accustomed, intimate way, and enter, closing it behind me. She springs softly from her window seat, standing with her ankles in a pool of sunlight, and breathes Hello to me, her silent lips holding the O position of the final vowel in the same warm rose she offered me from the window. We stand for a moment in marvelous silence, our eyes joined, my heart raving. I say, “Good morning” rather harshly. She does not reply. Her eyes wander for a moment; she seems thoughtful. There are her manuscripts on the desk in front of me; she has been illuminating letters of her Gospels. I touch a great Gothic gold-leafed A with my finger tip. “That’s beautiful,” I say, raising my head. She lifts her hand, twisting a strand of hair between her fingers. “Are you ready?” I ask.
“Yes. Where are we going?”
“To the pond. Isn’t that what you wanted to do?”
“Yes. But, Vincent—I want to ask you a favor. A very special one. Will you promise?”
“I suppose so. What is it?”
“No, you have to promise.”
“All right. What is it?”
“Can we—can someone else go with us?”
“Someone else go with us?” (A joke of some kind—one of her pranks, whose delightful meaning will be revealed in a moment.)
“Yes. Yvonne. She asked me if she could. I know she wants to very much.”
“Yvonne?” (Cold. So cold suddenly. Must wait and see. Certainly not.)
“Yes. Do you mind, just this once? She so seldom gets out.”
I refuse to acknowledge the dread that has touched me. I am suddenly sternly matter-of-fact. I must dismiss the whole thing instantly. A brusque manner will help me to believe it does not exist. “If she wants to go out, I’ll get an escort for her. Greta can take her; she’s on casual duty this morning.”
“No, she wants to go with us. You see, there’s something she wants to talk to me about.”
“Why doesn’t she talk to you about it here?”
“It’s something very personal, and we have no privacy here. You know we’re not allowed to close the door when we’re visiting.”
“Well, if she goes with us, I’ll be there. She still won’t have any privacy.”
“Oh. I thought perhaps you’d let us . . . be alone for a little while.” She drops her head, watching patiently her slender, sunlit feet. A monstrous indignation swells suddenly within me. I begin to speak quickly, rather senselessly.
“I don’t understand you. Wha
t do you expect me to do? I don’t want her to go with us. How can we—”
“Oh, Vincent, please. Just this once. She’s been such a dear friend to me here, and she’s such a sweet person. Won’t you do this for her?”
“No. She’s no friend of mine. I don’t like her at all. I don’t like you having her for a friend. I won’t do it.”
She stands patiently, gazing at her white feet, crouching down in a moment to clasp their warm arches in her hands, her shoulders huddled, her hair blazing. I stare down at her, in spite of my indignation weakened by her beauty.
“I thought you would be kinder to me, Vincent.”
“I don’t call that a kindness,” I say bitterly. She does not reply, and I add less violently in a moment, thinking she has relinquished the request, “You know I couldn’t allow you to be alone together, anyway. Neither of you has privileges. It’s very strictly forbidden.” I am not aware of the absurdity of my protest until I have spoken it. She crouches before me, caressing her feet musingly, and says very gently in a moment, “Yes, there are many forbidden things; but we have done them, Vincent. I wonder what they would do if they knew?”
A wave of incredulity, outrage, pain that scalds my mind and heart like fumes of acid. I say harshly, agonized, “What do you mean?”
“If you don’t let her come with us, I’ll tell them, Vincent.”
It is true, then. Some ancient, lugubrious sage within me nods wearily. I feel my lips and eyes grow pale with fury. Very well, then. Nothing is barred. But I shall win. My voice is strained, softly shrill: “Tell them, if you like. Do you think they’ll believe you? I have a reputation here for being very conscientious—a very honest, dedicated worker. And you are a madwoman. Do you think they’ll take your word against my own? Tell them.”
She looks up at me with a pained, importunate expression, as if she hates to hurt me in this way. “But if someone on the staff were to support my story, were to offer evidence, even, then perhaps they would.”
“Someone on the staff? What are you talking about? You don’t know these people!”
“Yes, I do. I think perhaps Mr. Mandel could be persuaded to support me.”
I stand pale and shocked with anguished disbelief at this piece of treachery. She rises quickly, her face suddenly weary with a compassion which I cannot believe or understand.
“Oh, my dear.” She reaches toward me and touches my hand timidly.
“Don’t touch me,” I say harshly.
“You mustn’t suffer, Vincent. Oh, my love, I don’t want to make you suffer, believe me. Don’t you understand?”
“Yes. I understand. It’s monstrous, terrible.”
“No, Vincent. It’s beautiful. We mustn’t deny each other joy—any joy that is possible. We must rejoice at it. We must help each other to be perfect in our capacity for it. Don’t you understand that I love you now as much as I ever have, as much as I always shall love you?”
I stare at her in grief, still not able to believe. “Lilith, you wouldn’t really tell them?” I whisper hoarsely. “You couldn’t do anything so terrible. Don’t you know they would dismiss me? That I’d never see you again?”
She watches my eyes pityingly but unwaveringly. “Yes, I suppose they would.”
“And doesn’t it matter to you? Doesn’t it matter that we’d never see each other again?”
“If you aren’t strong enough to follow me, if you don’t love me enough to follow me—then it will not matter.” She takes my hand and bows her head above it, clasping it to her cheek. Her hair spills over my forearm, warm from the sun. She kisses my fingers, murmuring passionately, “Afterwards you will understand, I know. I’ll teach you to understand, and to rejoice with me.” I stand, weak with revulsion, betrayal. “Now come with me. Come and tell Yvonne she may go with us.”
What can I do? There must be something I can do! I follow her numbly to the door. Perhaps on the way I will think of something—while we are walking. I must have time to think. I follow her mechanically down the corridor, my mind apparently paralyzed. We stop outside of Mrs. Meaghan’s door, at which I stare wanly for a moment.
“You must knock,” Lilith whispers. I look at her desperately. Her eyes are cool, unyielding, almost lifeless in their purity, like those of the china fairy I won for her with the toss of a rope quoit at the fair. “Knock, Vincent.” An attendant prowls stolidly past us down the corridor—small, clipped, knoblike head, big shoulders, arrogant gait; it is Mandel. Lilith looks toward him briefly, then at me, with perfect, implacable eyes. Ah, God! I raise my clenched hand quickly, rap the panel twice. How loud it sounds! The gentle astringent European voice invites me in immediately. I push the door open and stand on the threshold clutching the doorknob, as if unwilling wholly to enter this lair. She is seated at the table by her window, writing letters. The blue bowl is filled this morning with floating purple asters. Her pale-violet stationery has an embossed silver crest at the top which she strokes lightly with her finger tips while she speaks. She raises her head with a mild, ironic look of inquiry.
“Good morning, Mr. Bruce.”
“Good morning.” My voice is parched with shame and has the slightly unnatural rapidity of hysteria. “Miss Arthur says you have asked to go walking with us.”
“Why, I did, yes.”
“Would you still like to come?”
“How very kind of you to ask. Are you sure it won’t be an inconvenience?”
“No, not at all,” I say, with a craven, idiotic pretense of ignorance of the plot, which seems to be the only way I can salvage any semblance of dignity. I stumble on in a pathetic attempt to reinforce the impression. “I’m sure it will do you good.”
“So you have been telling me all summer; and at last I am convinced. You see how persuasive you have been?” Foul woman! I stare at her with crippled loathing. She rises, setting her pen down gently on the table. “I wonder if I have time to change my shoes?”
“Yes, of course. I have to report to the office, anyway. You can meet me at the elevator.”
“Thank you.”
I close the door, swinging past Lilith blindly toward the office. Miss Donohue is still busy with her towels.
“Are you checking out?” she asks, barely glancing at me.
“Yes. I’m taking Meaghan too.”
“Meaghan?” She looks up at me with surprise.
“Yes. She asked to go.”
“Wonderful. I don’t think she’s been out in six weeks. How did you do it?” Another minor triumph for me! I cringe at her look of approbation, feigning interest in a syringe that lies on the shelf beside me so that I can turn my face from her.
“She wanted to go. Who’s having sedative?”
“Oh, that was Carter’s. Did I tell you she blew up?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Don’t forget to give us a report on Meaghan when you get back. They’ll want to see that.”
“No, I won’t.”
They are standing together in casual conversation at the elevator door as I emerge from the office. We descend in burning silence, Mrs. Meaghan, with an air of satirical fastidiousness, arranging the pleats of her light woolen skirt. Outside, in the morning sunlight, she seems for a moment unsure, pausing and turning toward us with a faint look of alarm. I rejoice at her fear, silently and savagely invoking all her nameless devils to beset her. But Lilith, with a swift, fleeting gesture of comfort—of command, perhaps—takes her hand; I see their fingers twine and clench for an instant, then loosen and part convulsively. (How often has she taken my hand in just that way—both in the promise of love and in its consummation! A white knife of pain divides my mind.) A moment later the woman is perfectly assured, walking beside us in dignified composure through the shadows of the poplars that fall across the drive.
“I think it was wise of me to come,” she says. “It is a beautiful morning. What are these trees? They are quite lovely.”
Lilith waits for a moment for me to reply, but I cannot speak. “They are
poplars,” she says gently.
“Poplars. I thought poplars were something quite different—a tall slender tree.”
“Those are Lombardy poplars, Yvonne.”
“Oh, yes. I have never taken much interest in nature. It repels me.”
“But you love flowers.”
“Oh, yes; I have a passion for flowers. But that is quite different, I think. I believe that flowers transcend nature, in the way that certain persons transcend humanity; and these deserve our admiration.” Her voice pauses, pursues its topic with a delicate allusiveness. “They somehow escape their nature by becoming consummate specimens of it. This is a theme of Bergson’s. Do you know him?”
They go on with their dreadful spurious sociability. I walk beside them in a state of stark and desperate despair, trying frantically, vainly to invent a solution of some kind before we have gone too far. I watch Field House approach, loom to our left for a moment, slide inexorably past. Then Bea’s cottage, then the shop, the bicycle shed, Doctors’ House, my mind all the while lurching numbly, spastically, at mad straws of hope: A rock; pick up a rock and crush her skull, like a horse’s; say it was an accident; she fell and injured herself; had to be destroyed. The lake; drown her in the lake; luminous, rotting, ragged face, fish-bitten; drenched, death-coated eyes. Drown both of them. Rot there in their warm, foul sea, their peeling fingers and floating hair entwined. O God, deliver me. We are on the open stretch of road that leads to Hillcrest. Beyond is the lake, with the barn behind it at the edge of the oak woods. Very little time. What will she do? How will she say it? What shall I reply? Then suddenly, from the sky, whose aspect I have been too preoccupied to notice, comes what for a moment I misconstrue as divine intervention: a drop of rain upon my wrist. I look up fervently. A great purple-black cloud has drifted across the fields, its edge devouring the disk of sun above us.
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