“Naturally you weren’t a fool, were you?” Leonie said. “Never in your life. Not our Nathanael Vickery.”
Leonie jumped to her feet and ran over to the car and reappeared a moment later with her purse, an enormous russet-colored straw bag with an over-the-shoulder strap and a big brass sunburst catch. She fumbled inside, hunting up her cigarettes. They were in a 14-carat gold case with her initials on it; a love-offering from an admirer, perhaps. “Don’t you dare scowl at me, my boy! I’ll smoke if I want to. I’ll do anything I want to. There’s nobody within miles except some boats out there, and even if there were . . . Why do you look so disapproving all the time?”
“Do I?” Nathan asked, puzzled.
“Even when you’re not frowning you’re, you know, judging,” Leonie said with a fastidious shiver, drawing near so she could gaze down her nose and across her cheekbones at him, “you’re always aware. There’s you on one side and the object of your pity or scorn or charity or whatever on the other side. Sometimes I feel,” she laughed, “you’re going to reach out and hocus-pocus me and cast out my devils—! And then what? Then I’ll be so lonely, what will I do?”
Nathan tried to laugh, realizing she was joking: must be joking.
“Even your laughter is a judgment,” Leonie said bitterly. “It sounds like goddam sandpaper scraping against itself.”
She lit a cigarette with her gold lighter—which was a love-offering; Nathan remembered the day it had come by special-delivery mail to the television station—and dropped the lighter and the package of cigarettes back into her purse and let the purse fall into the grass. Though they were both supposed to have dressed for a picnic, Leonie wore open-backed high heels, white, very new-looking, and a half-dozen thin bracelets that clattered with every move of her arms, and a dress with an unusually tight skirt. Nathan had no true awareness of his clothing—a white shirt, a pair of drab dark trousers, dark brown socks and scuffed black shoes. Today was Sunday and he had, of course, worn a tie earlier, and a coat of some kind that matched the trousers. Tonight, when he led the Evening Praise Service at Reverend Beloff’s church, he would put the tie and the coat back on. He rarely thought about what he wore, or how he appeared to others, despite Leonie’s frequent criticism, and even on the warmest summer days he wound up in his usual outfit, more out of absent-mindedness than indifference.
At the moment he was uncomfortably warm.
“Look at you eying the world and finding it wicked!” Leonie cried.
Nathan tried to smile because he knew she was joking, teasing, and that was one of the things that exasperated her—his failure to catch on to her jokes. “I don’t find the world wicked,” he said uneasily.
“You don’t find it at all!”
Nathan narrowed his eyes against the angry accusing glare of her face. Though he had had only a swallow or two of the gin, it seemed to him that the very top of his skull had loosened; there was a sensation of ticklish, frightening hilarity in his throat and the upper part of his chest. If only he needn’t gaze upon this young woman . . . if only he needn’t stare at her. For she entered him, pierced him, through his eyes: at the point where he was weakest. Was sin itself always a matter of the senses, Nathan wondered suddenly, and might mankind be freed of the deathliness of sin if the senses were somehow obliterated . . . ? Was it the wish of the Lord that the spirit be reduced triumphantly to a bodiless shimmering indestructible essence that could not be assaulted and violated by the illusory world?
But Leonie was calling to him.
“Look, Nathan, the poor things—Look—”
At the edge of the clearing, where a sparse pine woods began, two very skinny dogs had appeared. A third poked its head around an overstuffed trash barrel.
“They’re scavengering for food,” Leonie said. “They look so hungry.”
She stooped to get the half-eaten sandwich of Nathan’s that lay on the ground and brought it along with the rest of the picnic food to where the dogs cringed, eying her fearfully. Nathan too came forward, thinking there might be some danger—Leonie was so bright and blithe and talkative that the dogs might be frightened—but nothing went wrong: Leonie simply tossed the food to the dogs, murmuring, “Why, you poor things! You look so hungry! Wherever did you come from, all burdocks and mudsplashed and bedraggled . . . ?”
All three were mongrels, with long ungainly tails. The largest, which was so shy of Leonie and Nathan that it half-crawled along the ground, its back legs grotesquely flattened, must have had a bit of collie blood in it, judging from the contours of its head. Whimpering, barking in short excited gasps, it ate the turkey scraps Leonie gave it in a single paroxysm and then swung around, cringing, and trotted back into the woods. “Poor things,” Leonie cried. “Are you lost? Isn’t it a shame! Why don’t we take one of them back with us, Nathan, this smallest one here—Are you a boy or a girl? Eh? Why are you so afraid of me? I don’t have anything in my hands, I don’t have anything to hit you with! Wait, where are you going? Oh wait! Aren’t there any more leftovers for them? Wait—”
Nathan had found it difficult to concentrate on the dogs. He stood behind Leonie, watching her. Had he dreamed of her like this the night before? The scene was so familiar: even the way sunlight fell broken and splotched upon her bare shoulders was familiar: surely he had been in this place before! There was such life in her, such rich warm lustrous heedless life . . . He should have turned away, he should have shielded his eyes against her. But he could not. He felt lightheaded, not himself, on the brink of doing something outlandish—breaking into laughter or shouting. He joined Leonie in calling after the dogs. “Here! Come back! Here! Nobody’s going to hurt you!” When Nathan’s voice was raised, or when he sang, it seemed to him that a superior power laid hold of him and the voice wasn’t his at all: it was both melodic and strong, sinuous and graceful, a stranger’s startling and rather marvelous voice. (He had discovered while visiting one of Reverend Beloff’s charitable institutions—only a home, really, in a converted mansion in a decaying residential section of Port Oriskany—that, no matter how sickly and apathetic people were, they could nevertheless be awakened by song, by gospel songs especially; it almost seemed as if, with the Lord’s sudden power, even the mute could discover a voice within them they had not known was there.)
“Poor things! But I suppose they were mangy and diseased, you know, wormy,” Leonie said, hunching her shoulders for a moment in an attitude of pity and disdain.
“God has abandoned them,” Nathan said slowly. When Leonie turned to him, fussing with an earring, he said in a somewhat louder voice: “God has not abandoned them.”
“Oh, no. No, I suppose not,” Leonie said. She pursed her lips in a childlike manner and clasped her hands before her; the red-orange nail polish gleamed handsomely. “Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. And aren’t we a whole lot better, my boy, than them?”
Leonie stepped laughing into his arms, pressing herself against him, nuzzling her warm face against his shoulder and neck. Nathan was accustomed to her teasing, but the very touch of her alarmed him: he felt sexual desire as if it were a blow, a violent affliction. Blood seemed to drain rapidly out of his head, rushing into the pit of his belly, into his groin. He managed to step aside from Leonie, holding her by the shoulders, trying to be as playful as she. Was she drunk? Pretending to be drunk? It was extraordinary how beautiful she seemed to him, even with her hair wilder than usual and her small snub nose gleaming with a film of oil. Her eyes—but were they, properly speaking, hers? or her Creator’s?—that faint sly green, so thickly lashed, like a near-transparent stone or shell: her eyes were the eyes of his dream, shining upon him, making their claim.
“Oh you and your silly Touch me not!” Leonie laughed. “I always thought that was the most unnecessary and ungenerous and just plain silly thing Jesus ever did, flinching back from his own poor grief-stricken mother like that—imagine! Touch me n
ot! Oh just imagine! I wouldn’t have tolerated it if I’d been Mary! I wouldn’t! Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father. I wouldn’t have tolerated half the nonsense of those times! Imagine, for a woman—life for a woman then—just imagine, Nathan! And you’re almost as maddening right now, though I believe in your heart you are really sweet and loving . . .”
Nathan laughed and turned away and went back to the picnic table, walking stiffly and self-consciously, knowing Leonie was staring at him. Could she tell? Could she sense? He picked up the bottle of gin, meaning to take it back to the car; meaning they should head for home since it was getting late; but he found himself pouring two more drinks for them instead . . . And time seemed to pleat, a long delirious moment seemed to swell, and burst, and he heard his own voice inside his head trying to determine whose hands those were, what was the nature of flesh and bone and blood, was there a precise meaning in the arrangement of dark hairs on the backs of his fingers, the particular size and shape and texture of his fingernails, the slightly raised bluish veins on the backs of his hands . . . ? He half-shut his eyes, feeling the pull of the Lord. The light of the day was not sufficient to withstand the powerful pull of the dark, for what meaning had a stranger’s thin, trembling hands, what meaning had the cloud-streaked blue sky and the blue-gray waves of the lake and the pines at the periphery of his vision, compared to the signs and wonders of the Lord?
But Leonie gave no heed, Leonie had no idea: she came up behind him and slid her arms around his waist, loosely, playfully, and pressed her cheek against his damp shoulder.
“I don’t want to go back. I suppose we should go back. I just love driving a car, this car specially, but I don’t want to go back . . . the way they yowl those songs it just goes through me like the beginning of the flu! I swear. Wish I could sing even louder than I do and drown the lot of them out and not have to hear them . . . and then Daddy smiling like he does and thanking them, saying the Lord must be well-pleased with so much enthusiasm, well—! I know what Daddy is secretly thinking just like I know what I am secretly thinking. And tonight you’re in charge, aren’t you, and it’s like you don’t even hear the dreadful flats and sharps and mispronounced and scrambled words; all the noise just whirls around your head and leaves you untouched: which must be a blessing indeed!”
Nathan took hold of her wrists to disengage himself. Then he could not move. His head slumped on his breast, he felt suddenly a sense of paralysis, danger and yet paralysis, as if all the strength had drained out of his body except the strength that beat so cruelly in his groin. Leonie hugged him tight for an instant before releasing him. “Oh a final drink is a good idea,” she said airily. “Maybe I won’t hear the faithful yowling and bawling myself tonight. Except I have to drive back home: you never got around to learning, did you? Or anyway you don’t have a license. Imagine, a boy of eighteen not knowing how to drive a car, isn’t that the silliest thing—!”
Leonie sipped at the gin. Nathan saw his hand raising his cup in slow motion. A wax-glazed paper cup with a paper handle. The liquid was colorless and clear and yet so powerful. Rising into his brain, clouding his vision. He sniffed several times. He coughed. His coughing echoed curiously in his head so that he thought he heard noise at a distance—the stray dogs barking in the woods. But when the coughing spasm stopped he heard nothing except the usual summer sounds: the thrumming of insects, the calls of hidden birds.
“You and I could marry, instead of me and Harold Dietz,” Leonie said, sitting back against the picnic table. “You’re younger than me but I don’t care. Do you? Younger but anyway smarter: some of the time. And wouldn’t Daddy be delighted! Oh, he wants you in the family, he truly does! He’s just plain jealous of anybody else taking a look at you, like that what’s-his-name, the evangelist out of Cincinnati, nosing around with queries about Nathan Vickery! The thing is, hon, and don’t ever let on I told you, the thing is that Daddy could pay you more than he does, and there’s no need for you and your grandmother to pay us rent for that bungalow, that’s all a tax write-off, I think it’s just mean of Daddy to keep charging you after all this time! So if this Brother Asa or whatever his name is, if he makes you some kind of an offer, hon, don’t just turn it down but come to Daddy with it and make him increase your salary, or anyway come to me and I’ll coach you what to say—are you listening? Daddy knows you are worth a lot more than you’re getting, there are donations and pledges and inheritances tossed our way because of you—in addition to all the money Daddy has naturally been getting by himself—but the thing is, Nathan, he keeps such business matters secret: only him and his attorney and financial adviser know how much the church has now: not even his poor daughter is allowed to know! So you’ll have to be very clever, and when the time comes I can coach you, otherwise—But aren’t you listening? Aren’t you? Well, I suppose Christ wouldn’t have cared about such things either, I suppose I’m just shallow-minded and cheap and don’t understand you at all, no more than I understand Christ—I mean I love Him, you know, and accept Him as my personal Saviour—but—but I don’t understand Him, that He should get betrayed like that and trapped and killed when he knew all along about Judas and could have escaped—couldn’t he?—and maybe lived to be a nice old man, healing people and explaining to them about the Kingdom—? I don’t understand Him and I don’t understand you but that’s what’s so sweet about you, Nathan, and why I think you’re so precious; you could be my baby brother sometimes and at other times, when you’re preaching, I think My God! who is he!—and just sit there hypnotized. And I could listen to you, anything you had to say, just anything, not even what you’re saying so much as, as you yourself: your voice. But why are you blushing? You’ve heard all this a million times now from everybody!”
Nathan stepped toward her, and hesitated. The very sight of her hurt him: his eyes ached. He was trembling. His throat and jaws had gone rigid. If he should shout at her, if he should burst into laughter?—or into tears? He never cried. He had not cried for a decade. Why was he trembling? He finished the gin so that he could set the cup down. Why was he trembling? His eyes flooded with tears and a single tear ran down his cheek. Leonie saw it and leaned forward and licked it with her tongue. Then she kissed him. Nathan put his arms around her and kissed her, on the lips, lightly.
“Don’t you like me? Oh you do like me, don’t you?” Leonie said. “I’m just so fond of you, I’m crazy about you, aren’t you sweet—! Oh you’re just so sweet! There’s nobody like you in the world!” She lifted her face to him and clasped him around the neck and Nathan found himself hugging her, his palms flat against her back, rigid against her back. He kissed her; in a daze, in a fog. There was such life, such sensation in his lips, in his tongue, it was as if that part of him had stirred into life, strange to him. And Leonie’s lips as well. And her warm, damp, writhing body. “Do you like me? Do you love me?” she whispered.
Nathan gripped her tighter, kissing her. He could not stop. She ran both her hands down his back, quite hard; she slid her fingers inside his belt, inside the waist of his trousers, and clasped him tight.
“I don’t think anything would be a sin between you and me,” Leonie said. “Because we’re like brother and sister. In our hearts. Aren’t we? Or maybe I am your Mamma? Oh, I would love to be your Mamma! I would take care of you forever and comfort you and cook for you and hold you tight and if any time the world hurt you, why I would be there—I would always be there. There can’t be any harm in it, can there? Any sin? Nathan?”
His soul had shrunk, had drained away. There was nothing but Leonie, her flesh, her damp face, her lips. Her arms around his neck. Her dreamlike soft wailing voice. He kissed her more desperately, and pressed his face against her neck, against her shoulder, seizing her around the waist, stooping awkwardly to kiss her breasts. His soul had shrunk, there was nothing but the urgency of flesh, the cruel hard beating pulse of blood, that filled him so that he could have groaned aloud with the pain of it, and the humiliation. “Do yo
u love me? Do you love me?” Leonie whispered. Nathan pressed himself against her, as if wishing in his anxiety to caress the entire length of her body with his, eel-like, desperate, out of breath, impatient. She clasped his head against her. Her fingers closed in his hair. “Nathan? Nathan? Do you love me?” He slipped to his knees clumsily and hugged her around the hips and pressed his face against her belly, whimpering, gasping for breath.
“Oh Nathan maybe you—Maybe you shouldn’t—”
She spoke so sharply, in so startled a voice, that he drew back at once. He stared up at her, blinking in amazement.
Leonie straightened her skirt, trying to smile; she brushed his long hair out of his eyes and off his damp forehead. “I mean—you know—maybe you shouldn’t. I—”
She stepped away from him and he remained kneeling on the ground, panting like a dog. His face burned. Another tear rolled down his cheek and he wiped it away himself, quickly, with his shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” Nathan said hoarsely.
“There’s no need to be sorry!” Leonie said. “There’s no need! I mean—I mean I’m just—”
“I didn’t mean to frighten you,” said Nathan.
“You didn’t frighten me. I mean, I—I just don’t—I don’t know quite what to—”
Nathan got to his feet shakily. He saw that his knees were dirty but he hadn’t the energy to brush them off. And there were lipstick smears on the front of his white shirt. But he hadn’t the energy, the spirit, to really take note. He stood with his head bowed, his chin almost against his throat. Inside him, mocking him, great leaden waves of blood beat against the frail envelope of his skin, wishing to burst free.
“I have to get married someday,” Leonie said, sniffing. “I mean—I mean—My husband would want—You haven’t ever made love with anyone, Nathan, and I haven’t either: I mean not really! Do you know what I mean? And so I think—And Daddy would be so—And I could get pregnant, hon, just think of that—what a surprise that would be for all of us!”
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