Lilith

by J. R. Salamanca

  “You may read it, if you like.”

  I open the sheet of paper and read, in an ornate and devoutly executed hand:

  This is the birthday present I made for you, but I have not yet had the courage to give it to you. If you will do me the honor of using it when you paint, then I will be able to feel that I have contributed in some small way to the beauty that you bring into the world. I have not seen you now for eight days.

  W. E.

  I feel a slight pang of indignation as I read the words.

  “He asked Miss Brice to bring it up to me yesterday. Don’t you think it’s rather touching?”

  “Yes.”

  She takes the box from me and lays her hand upon it musingly. “He has nice hands. Not cold, like yours. I had no idea he could make anything so lovely with them.”

  “Yes, it’s beautifully made.” My indignation grows more intense, to something approaching active jealousy.

  “I think it’s quite touching. He’s a sweet boy, really. I’ve been rather cruel to him.”

  “I thought you considered him a fool,” I say, a little shamed by the strenuousness of my own voice. My breath is suddenly cool and shrill in my nostrils.

  “Perhaps. But I don’t think he will steal his gifts back from me, or lie to me. I think he is capable of trust. And I think he would follow wherever I asked him to.”

  “Yes, I suppose he would,” I say bitterly. “I suppose there are many who would, if you don’t care what kind of fools you have following you.”

  “I think he may be braver, and less of a fool, than you imagine,” she says with gentle, infuriating calm. “I would like to know. I want you to take us walking together tomorrow.”

  My indignation breaks suddenly into a hot flood of outrage.

  “And do you think I will? Do you really think I will?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  I stare at her savagely, my eyes feeling hot and heavy with rage.

  “No, I won’t. What do you think I am? Don’t you think I have any pride at all?”

  “I want your pride to be in me,” she says, becoming suddenly more gentle. She inclines her head a little in a supplicating way, her eyes softening. “I want you to trust me, Vincent.”

  I feel my resolution ebbing slowly before her beautiful wild eyes.

  “I can’t tomorrow, anyway. I have to work on Third Floor. I’ll be busy all day.”

  “Oh, that’s a pity. I’ll have to ask someone else to take us, then. Perhaps Mr. Mandel will.”

  She moves toward me slowly, her hands a little outstretched to clasp my head, her faint bitter-clean verbena scent enfolding me with fragile tyranny, like the climate of a dream. She takes my temples in her finger tips, bringing by forehead gently to rest against her breast. Whitest, most exquisite of all havens. Oh, white rose of the world!

  “Vincent, I would cherish you so if you could learn to trust me,” she whispers. “You would never have known such joy.”

  “I’ll have to see,” I murmur. “I don’t know. You’ll have to wait a day or two.”

  IN the evening, as I walk down the drive from the shop, I hear the sound of a Chopin prelude wandering sweetly from the open windows of the Field House lounge. I stand for a moment under the wet trees, staring down at the wings of a drowned damsel fly, oars of iridescent filigree, floating in a dark pool at my feet. I listen to a few bars of the melancholy notes and then turn up the Field House path and enter the building. Warren is alone in the lounge. He sits in one of the overstuffed leather chairs in front of the open phonograph, tapping an imaginary keyboard with his finger tips, his long dark hair fallen forward to half conceal the look of mournful ecstasy on his pale, heroic face. He rises immediately when I enter the lounge and moves to the phonograph, offering to turn it off so that we may speak.

  “No, no.” I wave him back into his chair and sit beside him in another, listening. The late-afternoon sunlight enters through the western windows, casting soft yellow trapezoids on the papered walls; one of them is broken across Warren’s chair. His hand lies in the light, and I study it while I listen to the music: the dark hairs blazing in the soft brilliance, the long fine fingers with their bitten nails and ragged cuticles. I imagine it touching her intimately, trembling. He will have just such a look as he has now—drowsy, avid, the absurdly doglike look of human ecstasy. The music rises in a grievous frenzy, then, after a stark pause, reaches its climax in three shuddering chords, like the stifled, sobbing moan she makes in love; and I see her clenching his hair to bring his mouth to hers.

  “Isn’t that wonderful? Isn’t that a perfectly beautiful thing?”

  “Yes.”

  I sit with closed eyes while he rises to switch off the phonograph, an attitude that he generously mistakes for reverence, for he says quietly in a moment, “It’s almost more than one can bear. It almost seems like treason of a kind to come back from that world at all, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes.” Idiotic man! I watch him settle himself in the chair beside me, tugging his trouser cloth from the crests of his knees and turning to face me with shy awkwardness.

  “I wonder if Miss Arthur would like to hear them? I asked her once, you know.”

  “I don’t know, Warren.”

  “I thought you might bring her over some afternoon. Perhaps you could ask her again; she may have forgotten about it. I’m sure she’d like to hear them.” One hand goes nervously to his mouth; he retracts it instantly and couples his finger tips together to conceal them. His eyes plead with me. I stare into them and say with sudden deliberate malice, disguised by a solicitous hesitancy in my voice. “Why, I’m not really sure she would, Warren. I did mention it to her again, just this afternoon, and I’m afraid she seemed quite uninterested.”

  His face falls into a still, startled expression of dismay. “Oh. Oh, you did?” He lifts his joined hands and stares at them for a moment. “Oh, I didn’t realize that. You saw her today?”

  “Yes.”

  “I wonder if she mentioned the present I sent her? I asked Miss Brice to take it up to her yesterday. A paintbox I made her in the shop. I don’t suppose she said anything about it?”

  “Yes, she did, as a matter of fact.”

  “She did? Was she—did she seem pleased with it?”

  “Why, that’s rather hard to say.” I drop my eyes evasively with just the proper expression of regret. “She showed it to me. I thought it was beautifully made.”

  “Thank you. Yes, I spent quite a lot of time on it. I found a book, you know, that tells how to do that kind of work. I thought she’d like to have something like that.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you don’t think she seemed . . . particularly glad to get it?”

  “I couldn’t honestly say she did, Warren. I was a little surprised at her indifference; it’s such a beautiful piece of work.”

  “Yes.” He moves his head and stares miserably at the sunlit windows, an expression of harrowed resolution growing in his eyes. “I wonder if you would do something for me, Mr. Bruce?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “It would mean a great deal to me.”

  “I’ll be happy to do anything I can.”

  “I wonder if you would tell me, absolutely frankly, what you consider her opinion of me to be?”

  I pause effectively, spreading my fingers and studying them with quite spurious compassion.

  “Well, you know, she’s a very—well, a very capricious person, Warren. I’m sure you realize that.”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t think she’s a type of person who could ever feel very sincere or lasting affection for anyone. Something she said today made me particularly aware of that.”

  “What did she say?”

  “Well, there’s no point in repeating it; it would only be . . . painful. But you can take my word for it that she’s a shallow and very cruel person, really.”

  “I’d like to know exactly what she said. It’s very important to me.” He star
es at me with a severe, carefully controlled look of desolate but dignified appeal. “You promised to be completely frank.”

  I look levelly into his eyes, capitulating at last, with simulated misgiving, to his demand: “She said, ‘Just because I’ve tried to be nice to the poor fool once or twice, he seems to think he has some claim on me. He’s a stupid, fawning creature, and I despise him.’”

  I watch the sudden, swiftly deepening pallor of his face and the odd, involuntary working of his hands. His eyes have a diseased look of despair.

  “I’m sorry,” I say more gently. “You asked me to be frank, and I thought it might be better, really, if you knew.”

  “Yes. Yes. I’m very glad you told me. Thank you.”

  “I think it would be much better if you didn’t have anything more to do with her at all. It can’t lead to anything but humiliation, Warren. She isn’t worthy of you.”

  “Yes. Thank you.” He sits clenching and loosening his hands. His eyes close slowly with a look of great fatigue. I lay my hand on his shoulder and after a moment stand up.

  “I enjoyed the music very much. I’d like to hear some more of it soon.”

  “Yes.”

  “I know it’s very upsetting to you; but I hope you’ll decide not to see her any more. I’m sure it’s the wisest thing to do.” He does not reply. I stand uneasily, looking down at his bowed head, and realize suddenly that I have no very clear idea of why I am doing this to him. Can it be that I honestly wish to do him good, to protect him from my own fate? It is possible, I think; for as I watch his silent suffering I am aware of a feeling of love for him which is very powerful—the feeling of devotion, of respect, of intensely shared distress, which one must have, I imagine, for a beloved brother. We are really very much alike. So much so that perhaps the bitterly humiliating things I have invented to say to him are a form of self-contempt, or even a way of preserving, however brutally, his mirror-image of myself from Lilith. I do not know, at all, and have no desire to inquire too closely. I go to the door, turning back briefly to say, “Thank you for the music, Warren. Good night.”

  He raises his head slightly, saying with difficulty, “You’ve always been very kind to me, Mr. Bruce. I hope you know how much I appreciate it.”

  “I wish I deserved it,” I say, and go out into the rainy evening.

  I HAVE come to work early, as I could not sleep. There is no one in the shop yet. I let myself in with my key and set the kettle on the electric plate, standing at the window while I wait for the water to boil. It is a beautiful morning, clean and fresh, with an autumnal coolness in the air. Over Crowfields there are three buzzards drifting and soaring in the blue sky. The kettle squeals on the electric plate, the shop fumes with its fragrant smells of leather, wool and lumber. Exhausted by my dilemma, I stand in strangely sensitive acquiescence, accepting everything—all odors, colors, textures, temperatures—obediently, uncritically, with bemused felicity, enjoying my reduction to a kind of measuring instrument, my gracelike state of subjugation, so like that of innocence. In a moment the shop phone rings and I pick it up, saying rather stupidly, “Hello.”

  “Is that the shop?” It is Bea’s voice.

  “Yes.”

  “Vincent?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, hi. Listen, is Greta there yet?”

  “No, there isn’t anybody here.”

  “Well, when she comes in ask her to ring me, will you? She’ll have to take over this morning. I’m up here at Hillcrest, trying to help out about Warren. I’ll probably be here all morning; they’re trying to get his parents now.”

  After a short pause I ask in a frozen voice, “Why are they trying to get his parents?”

  “Didn’t you hear about it? Oh, God, it’s awful, Vincent. He killed himself last night.” There is a dreadful pause. “Vincent?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry to spring it on you like this. I thought you would have seen someone this morning. It’s shocking, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Be sure and let Greta know.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll see you at lunchtime. Bye.”

  “Bea,” I say suddenly.

  “Yes?”

  “Where is he?”

  “He’s up here, in the clinic.”

  “Can I see him?”

  “Yes. Do you mean right now?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right. I’ll wait for you at the desk, then. You’d better leave a note for Greta.”

  “Yes, I will.”

  I set down the phone and stare out of the window at the buzzards flying against the summer sky; how beautiful they are to observe—what grace and excellence, what indolent yet ardent loops and swift, spiraling descents, what long poised planes of shimmering, gliding flight, what delicately woven arabesques, all made in tribute to an unseen mound of carrion.

  I write out a note for Greta and stand it up against the phone cradle; then, separated from the morning sunlight by my fine cool web of dread, like a moist, shining caul, I walk down the road to Hillcrest past the dew-dark mulberry trees.

  Bea is standing at the desk in the broad, hotel-like foyer. She advances toward me as I enter, holding out her hands to me in a lovely gesture, intimate yet dignified, which makes me feel a wave of bitter affection for her.

  “I’m sorry, Vincent. I know how fond you were of him.”

  “What did he do?” I ask.

  “Oh, it’s terrible. Are you sure you want to know?”

  “Yes.”

  “He got a kitchen knife from somewhere—he must have brought it in from Stonemont, I guess—and held the point of it against his chest and then fell down full-length onto the floor.” She closes her eyes for a moment and I feel her fingers tighten about my own.

  “And he was always so afraid of getting hurt,” I say. “Little cuts and bruises, and things like that.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  ‘When did it happen?”

  “About four o’clock this morning, I think. Mrs. Larch found him when she was making her final check at five, and Dr. Donaldson said he’d been dead about an hour.”

  “I’d like to just see him for a minute. I never said goodbye to him properly.”

  “Yes. He’s upstairs. Do you want to come up?”

  “Yes.”

  We go up silently in the elevator and along the corridor to the clinic. A nurse opens the door to admit us to Warren’s room. He is lying in a white metal bed, his face utterly drained of color, his long fine hands with their ragged nails resting on the sheet. I stand looking down at him impatiently; it is not his face I have come to see, but his wound. But Bea and the nurse are here—I cannot bare it before them, and there is no adequate pretext to be alone with him. Yet I want to see his wound. I feel that if I remember it exactly, and apply my mind to it forever, if I meditate upon it unceasingly, as long as I live, I can perhaps, in some small degree, atone. But I see that this is impossible, so I turn away from the bed, saying only, “I think you ought to cover his hands. He didn’t like people to see his fingers.”

  “I will, Vincent.”

  She says goodbye to me at the door. “I don’t think I’ll get away till noon. You’ll tell Greta to make up the schedule?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’d keep this away from the patients until Dr. Lavrier tells me what to say. Some of the Field House people may have seen the commotion this morning, but I don’t think any of them actually know. Just be noncommittal if they ask.”

  “Yes.”

  I leave Hillcrest and walk back to the Lodge with the sensation of being supported by some volatile and exotic element which swarms all about me and preserves me from collapse. I am sure I should fall face downward in the road if I were not supported by this mysterious atmosphere. Part of my resistance seems to be derived from breathing it, as well; for it is quite different from the air I breathed yesterday. It sends a bitter nourishment along my nerves with every breath I draw—little
tingling flashes of inspired fortitude.

  I have this peculiarity: very often, in moments of stress, I hear (I must actually invent them myself, of course, but the effect is that of hearing them) all kinds of sagacious voices clamoring within me, manufacturing epigrams, homilies, bits of abbreviated wisdom and advice of every description, abstract and practical, derived from my predicament; just as if there dwelt within me a gang of noisy aphorists who rejoiced at every such opportunity. I hear one of these voices now, repeating obstinately and pontifically: “You must fill yourself with the sky to bear the sky”; and I nod at this banality, much as a drunken man nods at the most abject platitude.