There were three acts, they said. We had seen the first and second. There were small acts in between when they just dropped the curtain. In between the acts, everything was the same as when we came. There was red velvet on the seats of the chairs; a boy in a round cap went down the aisle selling popcorn. Tootie said, “Could we have popcorn. Mama?” Aunt Belle bought us popcorn. But you could tell all the time, even when you were crackling your popcorn, that everything was different. I mean, it went on even after the lights came up in the theater, even after people turned round in their seats and talked and the boys in the gallery shouted and stamped.
It was the university students in the gallery; Aunt Belle called them boys. They stamped and laughed and clapped and made a lot of whistling noises to the bloodhounds, when they came on the stage.
“Why do they laugh, Aunt Belle?”
“Oh—well—I mean, lots of them come from big cities or even from New York. I suppose they think it’s just a funny little provincial theater.”
“What’s provincial, Aunt Belle?”
“Well, a small place, a little town, like ours; I mean to them, to lots of them, it’s a funny old-fashioned show, that’s why they laugh and have fun like they do, whistling at the wrong time to make the dogs forget to chase Eliza.”
It was fun for the university boys to whistle and stamp their feet. But people hushed at them and a man in front turned round and said he’d speak to the manager about this, and in the last act when Uncle Tom died, maybe the man had spoken to the manager, because the university boys seemed to be quiet in the gallery.
The university boys were grown-up young men like our Howard cousins, and Eric and Alfred who were at the university, too. The thing was, it was very exciting and maybe the university boys thought it was exciting, too, but in a different sort of way. They did not understand how it is for some people. They did not understand that when Aunt Belle said would Gilbert mind coming back with her so Tootie could sit next to the aisle, that aisle all at once, was the same as the aisle in church. They could not understand how some people could sit like that in the chairs with the red velvet in the dark, and it was like being in church.
The theater was dark and the lights that Aunt Belle called footlights were like ours in church, when we sit in rows, grown people and children like this, and the Sisters walk down the aisles to hand the candles to the children.
Lots of people do not know the things we know and that Uncle Tom was seeing a vision, like something in the Bible, when he saw Little Eva with a long nightdress and her gold hair, standing against the curtain that had wings painted on it, just where Little Eva was standing, so it made Little Eva look like the princess in our fairy book who had long gold hair, only the princess hadn’t wings, only maybe the university boys didn’t have that kind of book or maybe they didn’t know how to look at pictures or to see things in themselves and then to see them as if they were a picture.
Anyhow it was over. We went home. But the street would never be the same again, it would always be different, really everything would always be different. This street that we walked along, deliberately dodging ahead to thwart Aunt Belle and Ida (who would prefer, we knew, the short way across the bridge and up the hill), was the street down which, only yesterday, Uncle Tom had been pulled, complete with log cabin; the hounds we had seen, less than an hour ago, chasing Eliza, had snuffled and shuffled their way along these very paving-stones. Here by the Linden House, the procession halted and the slaves pushed together and Simon Legree took off his hat and got out a cigar. I could have wished the parade had got stuck near the end, then I could have looked and looked at Little Eva, I could have pushed forward and touched a gold wheel of her chariot.
Here the donkeys had slowed down, and they had one donkey pulling a log, I suppose to show how the cabin was built. Well, really there had been so much, you kept remembering bits of it; in the light of the play itself, the details of the parade came into different perspective, everything came true—that is what it was. Everything came true.
The street came true in another world; our side street past the Linden House in our small town that the university students, Aunt Belle said, would call provincial, was a street across which wheels of a great procession had passed. Oh well, I know it was only Little Eva in a jerry-built, gold chariot, and yet it was the very dawn of art, it was the sun, the drama, the theater, it was poetry—why, it was music, it was folklore and folksong, it was history. It was all these things, and in our small town, on the curb of the pavement, the three children—and maybe Tootie—who stood watching, were all the children of all the world; in Rome, in Athens, in Palestine, in Egypt they had watched golden chariots, they had seen black men chained together and cruel overseers brandishing whips. It was Alexandria, it was a Roman Triumph, it was a Medieval miracle-play procession with a devil, who was Simon Legree, and the poor dark shades of purgatory, who were the negroes chained together, and it was Pallas Athene, in her chariot with the Winged Victory poised with the olive crown, who was coming to save us all.
It was all these things and many more, and the names of many cities could be woven together on a standard to be carried at the head of this procession, and yet you would not have told half the story. It was art or many of the arts, concentrated and maybe consecrated by the fixed gaze of these same American children, who in the intensity of their naive yet inherent or inherited perception, glorifying these shoddy strolling players, became one with their visionary mid-European ancestors and their Elizabethen English forebears.
And it didn’t stop there, because when we got home everything was like that. If you take down one side of a wall, you have a stage. It would be like the doll house that had only three walls, and you could arrange the room without any trouble; a bed could be over there by the window instead of drawn up in the corner by the wall; Mama was sitting at the piano and it was still Mama and yet it was Little Eva’s mother and if Uncle Fred came in and sang Last night there were four Marys, like he did when Mamalie asked him to, then he would be Little Eva’s father.
Papa did not sing of course, and we would not want to change our father for anyone else and Uncle Fred was our uncle anyhow, but that is what you can do.
If Mama sits at the piano and plays Moonlight, the room is the same and there is always that difference that Moonlight makes when Mama plays it, but there was another difference. There would be someone else who was myself, yet who was the child of the Lady who Played the Piano; then I would be Little Eva and I would have an Uncle Tom who was not really an uncle, but it was like that. It was called a play, it was the first play we had been to. But a play and to play were the same, you could play now without any trouble. You could arrange the sofa that was too heavy to pull on the other side of the room and you could see how the room had only three sides and you could walk across the room and toss your head and say, “Oh, this is so hot, it’s so heavy,” and you could carefully push it aside when you sat down on a chair; although anyone could see that you had short hair with, at best, mousy duck-tails at the nape of the neck, yet you could toss your head and the gold curls.
It was the same gold as the princess had, who had the seven or the nine brothers, and I had brothers and could make up more by counting in the cousins. Then, I would be like that. But no one would know about it. Everything was the same, but everything was different. You could think about it in bed. Then everyone’s house would be open on one side and you would see it all going on. The Williams family across the street would be in bed, at least most of them would be, but Olive maybe would be allowed to stay up and help Professor Williams put away the stones that he had in little boxes for his students at the university.
I did not want to think of the university and the students but of the Williams family across the street, and Papalie and Mamalie sitting in their sitting room, and Ida in the kitchen. I did not tell Gilbert about it, and I laughed when he laughed about how funny it was when the bloodhounds didn’t chase Eliza but sniffed and scuffled in the
footlights. The footlights threw new shadows, so that faces were different. Now I could see that their faces were different under the lamp in the dining room so that Mama said, “What’s the matter, Sister? Why don’t you eat your dinner?”
The dinner was on the table. The lamp was on the sideboard. The doors opened from the little hall that led into the kitchen and every time the door opened and Ida came in, you could see how the whole room was different. There was the door that led down steps to the street, that we called the side door; it was closed now. There was the door that led into the sitting room. Someone might come in, like they did, maybe Uncle Hartley with a newspaper or Aunt Jennie with a basket or even Mamalie with a plate and a napkin over it, “I know Charles likes my apple pies,” she would say and Mama would take the plate and say, “Oh, Mimmie you do spoil us,” and say, “Sit down Mimmie,” and Mamalie would say, “But Francis” (that was Papalie) “is waiting for his dinner.”
At any moment, someone might walk in the door through that street door or the closed sitting room door and you would see now how they said things, how Mama was sure to say, “Oh, Mimmie you spoil us,” and Papa would look up and get up to find Mamalie a chair and then she would slide out; she is a very little lady; really, soon, Gilbert will be as tall as she is. You could see how pretty Mamalie was, in her lace cap.
Mama had been to a fortune-teller. I do not remember when she first told me about it, yet I remember the strange gap in consciousness, the sort of emptiness there, which I soon covered over with my childish philosophy or logic, when she said, “It’s funny, the fortune-teller told me, I would have a child who was in some way especially gifted.”
It was that, that stuck. We were not any of us, “gifted,” as if we had failed them somehow. I can not say why we cared, or maybe the others didn’t care. But there should have been a child who was gifted. How could I know that this apparent disappointment that her children were not “gifted,” was in itself her own sense of inadequacy and frustration, carried a step further?
Mama told me how she heard a voice outside one of the empty classroom doors.
“What voice, Mama?”
“Oh, it was only Papa, it was only Papa; he said, 'Who is making this dreadful noise in here?’”
“Who was?”
“Well—I was alone, I went off, I was alone, I was hiding, I was singing.”
“Oh—I see—didn’t Papalie know?”
“Well—I don’t know—I don’t think he meant to hurt me, no, I know he didn’t mean to hurt me.”
“Maybe it was someone else making a noise in another classroom.”
“No—maybe it was—yes, but anyhow, I was so hurt, I never sang any more, not even in church.”
So Mama never sang any more, though her speaking voice had a rare quality; it was low and rich and vibrant. Yet, it couldn’t have been just that that stopped Mama singing, there must have been other things as well. Anyhow, she told me that, and she told me how she went to a fortuneteller.
Mama did not tell me that the Spanish Student came into the fortune-telling, but she did tell me about the Spanish Student. I see the Spanish Student, in capital letters like that, like a play or an opera. It was perhaps a play or an opera to Mama, something that might have happened, which did not happen, in which she played a small part, in which she might have played a leading role.
She told me about Madame Rinaldo who had taught singing at the seminary, and who had been an opera singer, and the aunts often talked about her, and we still had some of the old things that Madame Rinaldo had left Mama—a crown, bracelets, stage properties, veils, and robes in an old chest in the attic. Madame Rinaldo did come into it, but Mama never said she imagined herself in Madame Rinaldo’s crown and bracelets, though I often tried them on and wished I were enough grown-up so they would fit me, and like Mama, I pretended to sing when no one was around.
The Spanish Student was from South America; he was at the university.
Mama said, “There was a Spanish Student at the university—he—well, he thought that he was very fond of me. I was sorry afterwards.” What was she sorry about? Was she sorry he had gone away or that she had not gone with him, or what?
“How do you mean you were sorry afterwards?”
“I mean,” she said, “I forgot myself, I might almost have forgotten myself—I mean he was a stranger, he was a southerner, he did not understand—I mean, I never told Papa about it, I was sorry afterwards.”
I waited for more.
She said, “He went away.”
Madame Rinaldo died and left Mama her opera things, the Spanish Student went away, Mama met Papa at the seminary at German reading-classes they had for older people in the evenings. Mama said the fortune-teller was just like those people, she just happened to say this or to say that. I did wonder what she really did say. But Mama did tell me that the fortune-teller told her that she would have a child who was gifted.
“You know what these fortune-tellers are like,” said Mama. “Of course we never told Papa.”
THE DREAM
The dog is now a myth, for that reason he appears in dreams, unmistakably and in the most satisfactory manner. He wallows in snowdrifts, his ears are like the knitted mittens on that long tape than ran through the sleeves of our winter coats; he carries, of course, the barrel strapped to his collar, and as I fling my arms about his neck— he is larger than a small pony—I am in an ecstasy of bliss. The snow gives back whatever an anesthetic may have once given.
Mythology is actuality, as we now know. The dog with his gold-brown wool, his great collar and the barrel, is of course none other than our old friend Ammon-Ra, whose avenue of horned sphinxes runs along the sand from the old landing-stage of the Nile barges to the wide portals of the temple at Karnak. He is Ammon or he is Amen, forever and ever. I want you to know he is as ordinary as the cheap lithograph that used to hang in nursery bedrooms; he is even as ordinary as the colored advertisement sheets, bearing his effigy, tacked to telegraph poles that one passed, in the old days, along the reaches of the Bernese Oberland. You see him on a postcard in a window along the lake of Lucerne. There is a monk standing beside him; we may whisper Saint Bernard. Or, depending on what particular line or telegraph pole our particular wire of approach to the eternal verities is strung, we may actually be reminded of our own or a friend’s dog, or we may know that we have seen, in the flesh, the Lion of Saint Mark’s or the Lion of Saint Jerome, or we may recognize our indisputable inheritance, Ammon, Amen from time immemorial, later Aries, our gold-fleece Ram.
Our Ram, however, had not gold fleece, his fleece came from Mamalie’s medicine cupboard. It was pulled off in tufts from a roll of cotton for making bandages or for stuffing pillows or for putting in ears with a little oil or for borrowing to make a quilt for the new bed for the doll house. Cotton? Was this from a bush that grew in the South or was it from a sheep? I do not think we knew or asked; greater issues were at stake, greater questions though unasked were being answered.
It would be near Christmas again, because Papalie had a great lump of clay on his table, the microscope was put away on top of the bookcase, and the tray of pens for his red and green and black ink was pushed aside and he had just said, “Elizabeth,” (which was Mamalie) “will you keep an eye on these ink bottles?” There was not a breath of suggestion that any of us might upset the ink bottles, there was nothing of that in his voice. He wanted room for the lump of clay that was wrapped in a damp cloth and the cotton wool and the roll of fine wire and the matchsticks.
You may wonder what mysterious occult ceremony requires cotton wool from Mamalie’s medicine cupboard, a knot of wire and the gardening shears which did not belong on his desk, matchsticks, a lump of clay. You, yourself may wonder at the mystery in this house, the hush in this room; you may glance at the row of children on the horsehair sofa and at the plaque of mounted butterflies, or at the tiny alligator, who is varnished and looks like a large lizard and whose name is Castor or whose name is Pollux, the child
ren can not tell you for no one has been able to answer that question for them.
Castor and Pollux are, you may know, stars shining in the heavens, but though two or three of the children seated on this sofa watch their father go out of the house on clear evenings to look at the stars in his little observatory across the bridge up the side of the mountain, this Castor and Pollux are not thus Greek, they are not stars in the sky, they are not even a myth out of a later, more grown-up fairy book called Tanglewood Tales.
They have not yet read the Tanglewood Tales; Ida reads Grimm to some of them at night after they are in bed, temporarily three in a row in the same bed.
Castor and Pollux are two alligators; one is dead, true to the Greek myth which after all came from the older Egyptian layer of thought and dream. Castor is, shall we say, hibernating in the attic in his tank behind the wire netting. Pollux, shall we say, is mounted on an oval of beautifully varnished wood, a talisman, a mascot, an image—an idol even. Men worshipped crocodiles in the days when men’s minds were not more developed than the minds of this row of children.
The Gift: Novel Page 3