Lilith

by J. R. Salamanca

  I must see Lilith immediately; this is the only certainty I have, and I am most crucially in possession of it. For what? Approval? Solace? Guidance? I think only to see her, to be aware of her tangled golden hair and wild violet eyes. Only the beautiful, unequivocal havoc of her presence can make this outrage congruous. Only by suffering the bewilderment of her beauty can I be saved.

  I increase the pace of my strangely sustained walk to a mild trot, ignoring the O. T. meeting entirely as I hurry past the shop toward the main building. The elevator ascent of only one floor seems interminable. I do not stop at the floor office, but go directly down the corridor to Lilith’s room.

  I am aware, the moment I enter, that she has watched me approaching from her window, for she has risen to meet me and stands in the center of the floor, staring, her look of anticipation overshadowed by a totally foreign one of fear. She has drawn her hair back behind her ears in an oddly formal way, and stands stroking it with nervous abstraction. I close the door behind me and move toward her, recklessly ignoring the danger of an intrusion. She withdraws quickly—a movement which startles and pains me.

  “What do you want?” she whispers.

  “I want to touch you. Don’t move away. Give me your hand.”

  She yields it strengthlessly, watching as I lift her hands and kiss them with gentle frenzy, murmuring, “Lilith, help me. Help me.”

  Her fingers are cool as porcelain; my lips tremble upon them.

  “Vincent, what is it? Why are you trembling like that? They’ll come in. What is it?” She clenches my hand suddenly with her own, her fingers hardening like stone. “Is Mother here?”

  “Your mother?” I raise my head confusedly.

  “Yes. I saw the ambulance. Is she here?”

  “Your mother isn’t here.”

  “But I saw the ambulance this morning, very early, hours ago. They came to get Ronnie, didn’t they? They’ve taken him away.” Her eyes have become dark with desperation.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I say. “No; they didn’t come for Ronnie.”

  “But I saw them take him out, on a stretcher, with a white blanket over him. So still. I was watching from the window. Why are you lying? You always lie to me.”

  “It wasn’t Ronnie. I don’t know who he is, but it wasn’t him.”

  “It wasn’t Ronnie? Are you sure? You mustn’t lie to me.”

  “I’m sure,” I say. “It was Warren.”

  “Warren?” She stares at me for a moment, her eyes wandering slightly as she struggles to solve some terrible inward complexity. “You said it was Warren. Oh, Warren. You mean that gentle one, with the beautiful hands. Who made me the box. Have I shown you my lovely box?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh yes, of course I did. And we’re going walking, aren’t we? You’re going to take us walking.”

  “No.”

  “But you promised, Vincent. You said in a day or two. But you mean he’s sick, don’t you? Isn’t that what you mean? When he’s better, then.”

  “He’s dead.”

  “Of course, he has another one of his colds. But when he’s better you’ll take us walking in the field where all those yellow flowers are. I’ll lead the way, because I know the way best, and we’ll walk in yellow joyflowers, perhaps even by the sea. On a special path I know, by the sunflower sea. Because you promised we could. You promised me.”

  “He’s dead,” I murmur with dull, brutal insistence, shaking my head in hopeless emphasis. Why does she feign this stupid bewilderment? Why will she not understand? She has promised to help me; she has told me of her strength and promised to help me when I needed it. I have most need of blessing now. I raise my eyes to hers with a ruined, hopeless look of supplication. But whose face is this I see? Not a splendid, triumphant queen’s, but a child’s—an anguished, terrified, lost child. I am suddenly stricken with fear.

  “Lilith,” I whisper, “don’t you understand me? Don’t you know what I’ve done? He’s dead. He committed suicide.”

  “Oh, no. No, no. I don’t understand what you’re saying. You’re lying to me.”

  “I told him you despised him. I said you called him a ‘stupid, fawning creature.’ I was crazy with jealousy. It was because I loved you. Don’t you understand? You have to help me, Lilith.”

  She shakes her head with desperate denial, retreating from me toward the window seat, her face gone pale, her eyes enormous glittering jewels of dread.

  “Oh, you mustn’t! How wicked of you to lie to me! How wicked of you to say such terrible things!”

  “I couldn’t bear to think about what you wanted me to do. I couldn’t stand it. So I told him those things. But it was right, wasn’t it? It was what you really wanted me to do; I know it was.”

  “Oh, no, no. What terrible things you say to me! You think it was because I loved him, don’t you? But it isn’t true. That isn’t why they die.” She backs away from me as I follow her across the room, holding out her hands to fend me away from her. But I am filled with savage, importunate determination; I am hardly aware of—or else I desperately ignore—her frightened protestations. I clutch at her hair and clothing, as if drowning in the mysterious element which surrounds me.

  “I’ve just seen him!” I whisper with hectic, half-forged exultation. “I’ve just come from his room. You should have seen how innocent he looked, lying there. Like a child. You would have been so proud of me, Lilith, because I’ve done what you wanted me to. You must say it. Say it! Say how proud you are of me!” I seize her wrists in my hands, but she sinks before me onto the window seat, her head dropping forward, her golden hair swinging from side to side in anguish.

  “It wasn’t because I loved him. It wasn’t! It was because of that aspic on the glass plates down there in the garden; it looked just like blood. That was why he did it. I don’t kill things I love. I don’t! You’re lying if you say that!” She moans softly, lifting one hand to tangle her fingers in her hair, her body gone limp with grief. I kneel on the floor before her, forcing my head into her lap, burying my face in the cleft of her thighs, taking her wandering hands to press them fiercely against my cheeks, mumbling soft, hysterical demands.

  “And now you have to love me forever, because of what I’ve done for you. You see how much I love you? No one else would have done that for you. But I have. I’ll do anything you ask me to, Lilith. Tell me what I must do now. Tell me.”

  “Oh, please, leave me alone. You mustn’t say these terrible things to me. Leave me alone—please, please.”

  She goes on moaning comfortlessly, swinging her head from side to side in a restless, agonized way. My fear greatens suddenly, like a vivid, swiftly blossoming flower. I lift my head to look at her and rise quickly, fondling and stroking her with little cold nervous gestures of my hands.

  “Yes, I’ll go away now. I’ll leave you alone. I know how tired you are. You have to rest for a while, and then I’ll come back later.” I murmur to her in a hurried, frightened tone of reassurance, my hands fluttering about her collar, her hair, her brow, half comforting, half beseeching, in little terrified caresses. “You’ll feel much better after you’ve rested. We’ll talk about it then.”

  After a moment she stops the restless swinging of her head and clutches her elbows, pressing her arms against her waist and shuddering silently. I stand stroking her head fearfully, bending down to touch her forehead with my lips. “Lilith, do you hear me? Will you lie down for a little while and rest? I want you to rest.”

  “What?”

  “I’m going to leave you for a little while. I want you to lie down.”

  “Yes, please. But you’ll come back? Do you promise to come back?”

  “Yes, I’ll come back. And I’ll bring you something. Some flowers, perhaps. Would you like that?”

  “Yes. A flower from that lovely field. A yellow one. Not a rose.”

  “All right. And you mustn’t think about anything while I’m gone. Just lie down and rest. And then I’ll come and
bring you your flower. Do you promise?”

  “Yes, I will.” She lifts her head to me in a weary childish way as I leave the room. “There are some there that we crushed with our bodies; not those. You mustn’t bring any of those.”

  “No, I know.”

  “And you will come back, won’t you? Because I’m very frightened.”

  “Yes, Lilith.”

  I close the door and stand with my hand on the knob, staring down the hall. Its vast Arctic bleakness is broken by the sight of Miss Donohue, coming toward me in a white, frozen uniform which shrieks faintly with the sound of splitting frost as she approaches. At my appearance her look of casual greeting changes to one of professional acuteness; she pauses inquiringly before me, asking, “Is anything the matter?”

  So habitual has my reflex of deception become that I do not require the pause of even an instant before my calm, succinct reply: “She’s pretty upset. She saw them taking Warren out of Field House this morning in the ambulance.”

  “Oh, Lord; wouldn’t you know it. I was afraid she might; she’s up at all hours.”

  “Yes. I guess it gave her quite a shock. But she seems better now. I made her promise to lie down for a while.”

  “I’ll have Dr. Lavrier come up; he may want to give her a sedative.”

  “Yes. You’d better check in on her from time to time. I’d stay myself, but I’ve got an O. T. meeting.”

  “I’ll look in, in a minute. Thanks, Vincent.”

  “That’s all right.”

  I go on slowly down the corridor, staring across the wastes which stretch out endlessly from Lilith’s door.

  I DO not know how I survived the remainder of that day; my memory of it is of that strange kind of possession which afflicts—or fortifies—one in moments of emergency. I moved through an interminable series of activities in a haunted, passionless way, directed by an intelligence and energy quite independent of my own. Gratified, but too distraught for admiration, I beheld myself performing my duties with a kind of frozen, expert apathy—addressing foreign faces, conducting foreign patients, my body animated by a remote competence, my lips producing involuntary and miraculously appropriate speeches from which my thoughts and feelings were separated in still isolation, numbed and preserved in anxiety, as if in a cold liquor.

  In the late afternoon I went into the meadow behind the O. T. dormitories and picked a handful of primroses for her, bunching them together in my hand and twisting a strip of vine around their stems to form a little bouquet as I carried them to her room. I found her much calmer. She had drawn the curtains across her window and lay on her bed in the dark, staring up into the dusk of the room.

  “Vincent?” she asked as I entered.

  “Yes. Were you asleep?”

  “No. I was only thinking—remembering. I was afraid you wouldn’t come. I’ve been waiting such a long time.” She took the flowers from me with a murmur of pleasure as I approached her bed, cradling them in her hand and holding them lightly to her nostrils. “Ah, you remembered. Thank you, Vincent. Are they yellow? I can’t see them, quite.”

  “Yes. They’re primroses.”

  “Primroses, from our field. How sweet of you. Witnesses of our joy. And, you see, they’re not blemished: so fresh and bright. Aren’t they, Vincent? I know they are.”

  “Do you want me to open the curtains? You can see them better.”

  “Oh, no; the sun is too bright. It seems to scald my eyes. What makes the sun so bright today?”

  “I don’t know. Sometimes it’s like that in the early fall.”

  “In the fall? But it isn’t fall yet; it can’t be fall already. Oh, then you’ll be going back to school!”

  “I’m not going to school.”

  “You’re not going to school?”

  “No. I’m going to stay here with you. All winter. Always.”

  “Will you? Do you promise?”

  “Yes.”

  “And bring me flowers? All winter? Where will you get them?”

  “I’ll find them. In our field, perhaps.”

  “Yes, I think they’ll bloom all winter there. Even in the snow. Because we’ve warmed the earth forever with our love. Haven’t we? We’re the ones who keep it warm, not that horrid sun.”

  She lay quietly, brushing her lips and nostrils with the bouquet, while I bent above her, stroking her hair.

  “What were you remembering?”

  “Oh, all sorts of things I haven’t remembered for years. A teacup falling on the floor in the sunroom because of something I said, and everyone staring; Cousin Priscilla’s kimono, with those gold dragons embroidered on it, all wound around her breasts, as if they were suckling her; the sound that tires make on gravel, very late at night, underneath the rose arbor; and the pier at the bay, with dried fish scales stuck to it, and all the initials cut into those old pale boards—all those summer loves. Terrible things. Why do I have to remember such terrible things?” She pressed her face against my forearm with a gentle, fearful movement, staring into the darkness. “I try not to think about them, because they frighten me; but they keep coming back. They’re beautiful but frightening, like knives wrapped in silk—lovely, soft, scented silk, with knives inside. What must I do to keep from remembering them?”

  “You can work—do some painting, or play your flute, or compose.”

  “Yes, I must do that, mustn’t I? I must work very hard on my language. There are so many words I have to put into my vocabulary. What do you call it when someone is afraid of beautiful things—of light? Luxophobia? No, there isn’t any word for that in English, is there? I should think there would be. There are so many things I haven’t found a word for yet.” She turned to look up at me and stretched out her hand to lay it lightly on my face. “And, Vincent, I don’t want to make you angry. I don’t want you to be miserable and say terrible, angry things to me again—so when Warren is better I’ll give the box back to him and won’t see him any more. Will that make you happy?”

  “Yes.” I laid my finger tips lightly across her eyelids. “Don’t talk any more now. Go to sleep.”

  “I’ll see him just once more—to give the box to him—and then we won’t need to talk about it any more. I won’t ask you to take us walking again. He’ll be better soon, won’t he?”

  “Yes, I think so. We’ll talk about it later.”

  “In the morning? Will you come back in the morning?”

  “Yes. Go to sleep now, and I’ll come back in the morning.”

  THE night that followed was full of terrible livid dreams, imposed upon the darkness out of which they rose like jewels lying on black velvet, and in which Warren’s face appeared in a score of tormented images, sometimes drowned and bloated, drifting whitely in fathoms of dark water, sometimes bruised and disfigured with blows, the mark of my knuckles printed brutally across his swollen lips. In one—the last of all, for I was startled into wakefulness with it just as the windows were growing pale with dawn—he appeared miraculously resurrected, in a robe of rotting and verminous sable, with a makeshift coronet of tinsel on his dark hair, clutching a broken, rusted sword in one hand and sitting in state beside Lilith at the end of a great narrow hall down which I advanced in trembling anticipation while they beckoned to me, chuckling, with foolish, feverish gestures of their hands. It was just as I knelt before them to receive the touch of peerage on my shoulder that I awoke, shivering, in an icy ague of excitement, my hands pressed in homage to my breast.

  HERE is the last scene of all:

  I walk quickly, still full of the cold fear in which I have awakened, under the avenue of poplars toward the main building. I must stop to see Lilith for a moment before I attend the morning O. T. meeting. The shrill, ugly anxiety which animates me is controlled by my attention to the silver trails of slugs upon the pavement. The morning shift is changing and the elevator is busy; I walk up the emergency stairs, oppressed by the chill reverberation of my heels in the tiled shaft. I unlock the metal door of the stairwell and walk
quickly down the morning-quiet corridor to Lilith’s room. I knock at her door twice in my usual pattern, standing with tightly clasped hands in sudden desperate impatience. Will she never reply?

  I knock again, more loudly. Silence. Can she still be sleeping? Nonsense; she is up every morning at dawn. There is something the matter. I turn the handle, push the door inward and stand peering about the sunny room. She is not here! A lattice of triangulated shadow lies across her desk, which has an appearance of disarray. A bottle of scarlet dye has been overturned, spilling across the pages of her open Gospel and making a ghastly stain upon them. A sheet of gold leaf has fallen to the floor and stirs with a tinsel whisper in the draft. The horse skull lies beside her loom, broken into many chalky fragments. The red rosette is ripped apart, its crumpled satin ribbons tangled about a chair. Raising my head, I see that the motto on the wall above her bed has been defaced, the great letters blacked out with fierce strokes of charcoal. How silent it is—how desolate! “Lilith,” I say softly. (Perhaps she is hiding under her bed.) There is no answer. After a moment I turn and leave the room, walking down the hall with frantic haste. In the floor office Miss Donohue is filing the night attendants’ reports. I stare at her somewhat wildly as she turns toward me with a look of consternation.