Then the wind blew upon her face and she idled along the deck and paused again at the wheelhouse, yawning. Nobody there. But that’s so, the helmsman went off early to get word for a tug. She entered the room, examining the control fixtures with interest. She touched the wheel, tentatively. It turned all right: they must have fixed it, whatever was broken about it. She removed her hand and examined the room again, hopefully, and her eyes came upon a binocular suspended from a nail in the wall.
Through the binocular she saw a blur in two colors, but presently under her fingers the blur became trees startlingly distinct and separate leaf by leaf and bough by bough, and pendants of rusty green moss were beards of contemplative goats ruminating among the trees and above a yellow strip of beach and a smother of foam in which the sun hung little fleeting rainbows.
She watched this for a time, entranced, then swinging the glass slowly, waves slid past at arms’ length, curling and creaming; and swinging the glass further, the rail of the yacht leapt monstrously into view and upon the rail a nameless object emitting at that instant a number of circular yellow basins. The yellow things fell into the water, seemingly so near, yet without any sound, and swinging the glass again, the thing that had emitted them was gone and in its place the back of a man close enough for her to touch him by extending her hand.
She lowered the glass and the man’s back sprang away, becoming that of the steward carrying a garbage pail, and she knew then what the yellow basins were. She raised the glass again and again the steward sprang suddenly and silently within reach of her arm. She called “Hey!” and when he paused and turned, his face was plain as plain. She waved her hand to him, but he only looked at her a moment. Then he went on and around a corner.
She hung the binocular back on its nail and followed along the deck where he had disappeared. Inside the companionway and obliquely through the galley door she could see him moving about, washing the luncheon dishes, and she sat on the top step of the stairs. There was a small round window beside her, and he bent over the sink while light fell directly upon his brown head. She watched him quietly, intently but without rudeness, as a child would, until he looked up and saw her tanned serious face framed roundly in the port. “Hello,” she said.
“Hello,” he answered as gravely.
“You have to work all the time, don’t you?” she asked. “Say, I liked the way you went over after that man, yesterday. With your clothes on, too. Not many have sense enough to dive away from the propeller. What’s your name?”
David West, he told her, scraping a stew pan and sloshing water into it. Steam rose from the water and about it bobbed a cake of thick implacable looking yellow soap. The niece sat bent forward to see through the window, rubbing her palms on her bare calves.
“It’s too bad you have to work whether we are aground or not,” she remarked. “The captain and the rest of them don’t have anything to do now, except just lie around. They can have more fun than us, now. Aunt Pat’s kind of terrible,” she explained. “Have you been with her long?”
“No, ma’am. This is my first trip. But I don’t mind light work like this. Ain’t much to do, when you get settled down to it. Ain’t nothing to what I have done.”
“Oh. You don’t — You are not a regular cook, are you?”
“No, ma’am. Not regular. It was Mr. Fairchild got me this job with Mrs. — with her.”
“He did? Gee, he knows everybody almost, don’t he?”
“Does he?”
She gazed through the round window, watching a blackened kettle brighten beneath his brush. Soap frothed, piled like summer clouds, floated in the sink like small reflections of clouds. “Have you known him long?” she asked. “Mr. Fairchild, I mean?”
“I didn’t know him any until a couple of days ago, I was in that park where that statue is, down close to the docks, and he came by and we were talking and I wasn’t working then, and so he got me this job. I can do any kind of work,” he added with quiet pride.
“You can? You don’t live in New Orleans, do you?”
“Indiana,” he told her. “I’m just traveling around.”
“Gee,” the niece said, “I wish I were a man, like that. I bet it’s all right, going around wherever you want to. I guess I’d work on ships. That’s what I’d do.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “That’s where I learned to cook — on a ship.”
“Not—”
“Yes’m, to the Mediterranean ports, last trip.”
“Gee,” she said again. “You’ve seen lots, haven’t you? What would you do, when the ship got to different places? You didn’t just stay on the ship, did you?”
“No’m. I went to a lot of towns. Away from the coast.”
“To Paris, I bet.”
“No’m,” he admitted, with just a trace of apology, “I never seemed to get to Paris. But next—”
“I knew you wouldn’t,” she said quickly. “Say, men just go to Europe because they say European women are fast, don’t they? Are European women like that? promiscuous, like they say?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I nev—”
“I bet you never had time to fool with them, did you? That’s what I’d do: I wouldn’t waste my time on women, if I went to Europe. They make me sick — these little college boys in their balloon pants, and colored stickers all over their suitcases, bringing empty cognac bottles back with ’em and snickering about French girls and trying to make love to you in French. Say, I bet where you went you could see a lot of mountains and little cute towns on the side of ’em, and old gray walls and ruined castles on the mountains, couldn’t you?”
“Yes’m. And one place was high over a lake. It was blue as... blue like... washing water,” he said finally. “Water with bluing in it. They put bluing in the water when they wash clothes, country folks do,” he explained.
“I know,” she said impatiently. “Were there mountains around it?”
“The Alps Mountains, and little white boats on it no bigger than water beetles. You couldn’t see ’em moving: you only could see the water kind of spreading out to each side. The water would keep on spreading out until it pretty near touched both shores whenever a boat passed. And you could lay on your back on the mountain where I was and watch eagles flying around way up above the water, until sunset. Then the eagles all went back to the mountains.” David gazed through the port, past her sober tanned face mooned there by the round window, not even seeing it any more, seeing instead his washing powder colored lake and his lonely mountains and eagles against the blue.
“And then the sun would go down, and sometimes the mountains would look like they were on fire all over. That was the ice and snow on ’em. It was pretty at night too,” he added simply, scrubbing again at his pots.
“Gee,” she said with hushed young longing. “And that’s what you get for being a woman. I guess I’ll have to get married and have a bunch of kids.” She watched him with her grave opaque eyes. “No, I’m not, either,” she said fiercely, “I’m going to make Hank let me go there next summer. Can’t you go back then, too? Say, you fix it up to go back then, and I’ll go home and see Hank about it and then I’ll come over. Joshll want to come too, most likely, and you’ll know where the places are. Can’t you do that?”
“I guess I could,” he answered slowly. “Only—”
“Only what?”
“Nothing,” he said at last.
“Well, you fix it up to go, then. Ill give you my address, and you can write me when to start and where to meet you... I guess I couldn’t go over on the same boat you’ll be on, could I?”
“I’m afraid not,” he answered.
“Well, it’ll be all right, anyway. Gee, David, I wish we could go to-morrow, don’t you? I wonder if they let people swim in that lake? But I don’t know, maybe it’s nicer to be away up there where you were, looking down at it. Next summer...” her unseeing eyes rested on his brown busy head while her spirit lay on its belly above Maggiore, watching little white bo
ats no bigger than water beetles, and the lonely arrogant eagles aloft in blue sunshot space surrounded and enclosed by mountains cloud brooded, taller than God.
David dried his pots and pans and hung them along the bulkhead in a burnished row. He washed out his dishcloths and hung them to dry upon the wall. The niece watched him.
“It’s too bad you have to work all the time,” she said with polite regret.
“I’m all done, now.”
“Let’s go swimming, then. It ought to be good now. I’ve just been waiting for somebody to go in with me.”
“I can’t,” he answered, “I’ve got a little more work I better do now.”
“I thought you were through. Will it take you very long? If it won’t, let’s go in then: I’ll wait for you.”
“Well, you see, I don’t go in during the day. I go in early in the morning, before you are up.”
“Say, I hadn’t thought of that. I bet it’s fine then, isn’t it? How about calling me in the morning, when you are ready to go in? Will you?” He hesitated again and she added, watching him with her sober opaque eyes, “Is it because you don’t like to go swimming with girls? That’s all right: I won’t bother you. I swim pretty well. You won’t have to keep me from drowning.”
“It ain’t that,” he answered lamely. “You see, I — I haven’t got a bathing suit,” he blurted.
“Oh, is that all? I’ll get my brother’s for you. It’ll be kind of tight, but I guess you can wear it. I’ll get it for you now, if you’ll go in.”
“I can’t,” he repeated. “I’ve still got some cleaning up to do.”
“Well—” She got to her feet. “If you won’t, then. But in the morning? you promised, you know.”
“All right,” he agreed.
“I’ll try to be awake. But you just knock on the door — the second door on the right of the passage, you know.” She turned on her silent bare feet. She paused again. “Don’t forget you promised,” she called back. Then her flat boy’s body was gone, and David turned again to his work.
The niece went on up the deck and turned the corner of the deckhouse on her silent feet just in time to see Jenny rout and disperse an attack by Mr. Talliaferro. She stepped back beyond the corner, unseen.
* * * * * *
Boldness. But Fairchild had said you can’t be bold with words. How, then, to be bold? To try to do anything without words, it seemed to him, was like trying to grow grain without seed. Still, Fairchild had said... who knew people, women....
Mr. Talliaferro prowled restlessly, having the boat to himself practically, and presently he found Jenny sleeping placidly in a chair in the shade of the deckhouse. Blonde and pink and soft in sleep was Jenny: a passive soft abandon fitting like water to the sagging embrace of the canvas chair. Mr. Talliaferro envied that chair with a surge of fire like an adolescent’s in his dry bones; and while he stood regarding the sprawled awkwardness of Jenny’s sweet thighs and legs and one little soiled hand dangling across her hip, that surge of imminence and fire and desolation seemed to lightly distend all his organs, leaving a thin salty taste on his tongue. Mr. Talliaferro glanced quickly about the deck.
He glanced quickly about the deck, then feeling rather foolish, but strangely and exuberantly young, he came near and bending he traced with his hand lightly the heavy laxness of Jenny’s body through the canvas which supported her. Then he thought terribly that some one was watching him, and he sprang erect with an alarm like a nausea, staring at Jenny’s closed eyes. But her eyelids lay shadowed, a faint transparent blue upon her cheeks, and her breath was a little regular wind come recently from off fresh milk. But he still felt eyes upon him and he stood acutely, trying to think of something to day some casual gesture to perform. A cigarette his chaotic brain supplied at last. But he had none, and still spurred by this need, he darted quickly away and to his cabin.
The nephew slept yet in his berth, and breathing rather fast, Mr. Talliaferro got his cigarette? and then he stood before the mirror, examining his face, seeking wildness, recklessness there. But it bore its customary expression of polite faint alarm, and he smoothed his hair, thinking of the sweet passive sag of that deckchair... yes, almost directly over Ms head.... He rushed back on deck in a surge of fear that she had waked and risen, gone away. He restrained himself by an effort to a more sedate pace, recoxmoitering the deck. All was well.
He smoked his cigarette in short nervous puffs, hearing his heart, tasting that warm salt. Yes, his hand was actually trembling, and he stood in a casual attitude, looking about at water and sky and shore. Then he moved, and still with casualness he strolled back to where Jenny slept, unchanged her supine abandon, soft and oblivious and terrifying.
Mr. Talliaferro bent over her. Then he got on one knee, then on both knees. Jenny slept ineffably, breathing her sweet regular breath upon his face... he wondered if he could rise quickly enough, in an emergency... he rose and looked about, then tiptoed across the deck and still on tiptoe he fetched another chair and set it beside Jenny’s, and sat down. But it was for reclining, so he tried sitting on the edge of it. Too high, and amid his other chaotic emotions was a harried despair of futility and an implacable passing of opportunity. While all the time it was as though he stood nearby yet aloof, watching his own antics. He lit another cigarette with hands that trembled, took three puffs that he did not taste, and cast it away.
Hard this floor his old knees yes yes Jenny her breath Yes yes her red soft mouth where little teeth but showed parted blondeness a golden pink swirl kaleidoscopic a single blue eye not come fully awake her breath yes yes He felt eyes again, knew they were there, but he cast all things away, and sprawled nuzzling for Jenny’s mouth as she came awake.
“Wake sleeping princess Kiss,” Mr. Talliaferro jabbered in a dry falsetto. Jenny squealed, moving her head a little. Then she came fully awake and got her hand under Mr. Talliaferro’s chin. “Wake princess with kiss,” Mr. Talliaferro repeated, laughing a thin hysterical laugh, obsessed with an utter and dreadful need to complete the gesture.
Jenny heaved herself up, thrusting Mr. Talliaferro back on his heels. “Whatcher doing, you old—” Jenny glared at him, and seeking about in that vague pinkish region which was her mind, she brought forth finally an expression such as a steamboat mate or a railroad flagman, heated with wine, might apply to his temporary Saturday night Phillida, who would charge him for it by the letter, like a cablegram.
Jenny watched Mr. Talliaferro’s dapper dispersion with soft, blonde indignation. When he had disappeared she flopped back again. Then she snorted, a soft, indignant sound, and turned again onto her side. Once more she expelled her breath with righteous indignation, and soon thereafter she drowsed again and slept.
NINE O’CLOCK
It was a sleazy scrap of slightly soiled applegreen crêpe and its principal purpose seemed to be that of indicating vaguely the shape of Jenny’s behind, as she danced, caressing the twin soft points of her thighs with the lingering sterility of an aged lover. It looked as if she might have slept in it recently, and there was also a small hat of pale straw, of no particular shape, ribboned.
Jenny slid about in Mr. Talliaferro’s embrace with placid skill. She and Pete had just quarreled bitterly. Pete had, that is. Jenny’s bovine troubling placidity had merely dissolved into tears, causing her eyes to be more ineffable than ever, and she had gone calmly about what she had intended all the time; to have as much fun as she could, as long as she was here. Pete couldn’t walk out on her: all he could do would be to fuss at her or sulk, or maybe bit her. He had done that once, thereby voluntarily making himself her bond slave. She had rather liked it....
Beyond lights, beyond the sound of the victrola, water was a minor ceaseless sound in the darkness; above, vague drowsy stars. Jenny danced on placidly, untroubled by Mr. Talliaferro’s endless flow of soft words against her neck, hardly conscious of his hand sliding a small concentric circle at the small of her back.
“She looks kind of nice, don’t she
?” Fairchild said to his companion as they stood at the head of the companionway, come up for air. “Kind of soft and stupid and young, you know. Passive, and at the same time troubling, challenging.” He watched them for a time, then he added: “Now, there goes the Great Illusion, par excellence.”
“What’s Talliaferro’s trouble?” asked the Semitic man.
“The illusion that you can seduce women. Which you can’t. They just elect you.”
“And then, Gold help you,” the other added.
“And with words, at that,” Fairchild continued. “With words,” he repeated savagely.
“Well, why not with words? One thing gets along with women as well as another. And you are a funny sort to disparage words; you, a member of that species all of whose actions are controlled by words. It’s the word that overturns thrones and political parties and instigates vice crusades, not things; the Thing is merely the symbol for the Word. And more than that, think what a devil of a fix you and I’d be in were it not for words, were we to lose our faith in words. I’d have nothing to do all day long, and you’d have to work or starve to death.” He was silent for a while. Jenny yet slid and poised, pleasuring her soft young placidity. “And, after all, his illusion is just as nourishing as yours. Or mine, either.”
“I know: but yours or mine ain’t quite so ridiculous as his is.”
“How do you know they aren’t?” Fairchild had no reply, and the other continued: “After all, it doesn’t make any difference what you believe. Man is not only nourished by convictions, he is nourished by any conviction. Whatever you believe, you’ll always annoy some one, but you yourself will follow and bleed and die for it in the face of law, hell or high water. And those who die for causes will perish for any cause, the more tawdry it is, the quicker they flock to it. And be quite happy at it, too. It’s a provision of providence to keep their time occupied.” He sucked at his cigar, but it was dead.
“Do you know who is the happiest man in the world today? Mussolini, of course. And do you know who are next? The poor devils he will get killed with his Cæsar illusion. Don’t pity them, however: were it not Mussolini and his illusion it would be some one else and his cause. I believe it is some grand cosmic scheme for fertilizing the earth. And it could be so much worse,” he added. “Who knows? They might all migrate to America and fall into the hands of Henry Ford.
Complete Works of William Faulkner Page 40