Sister Age

by M. F. K. Fisher

  Yes, things were getting worse.

  Mrs. Mack spent more time than ever before in the bottom of the old house, and often lay quietly, even in an empty morning or afternoon, on her bed in the corner of the stone foundations. She knew she was waiting, but she did not waste her time and read from this and that book on the growing piles on the floor. She was careful, though, not to feel any interest in pulling out one of the French novels, for fear of putting off the increasingly bold scampers of her friend’s henchmen behind them. She did not want to disturb by so much as a breath or a smudge the faint but positive marks of their roadway.

  On the other side of the stone wall that held up the front porch of the house, past the foot of her bed where the rats always disappeared with an insouciant flip of their behinds, there was a rough but pleasant bathroom, and against its inner wall stood the kind of ready-made metal shower that is bought from a mail-order house. It had no ceiling, but steam seemed to vanish into the big comfortable space under the house, and although the bathroom had been fabricated during an emergency when the place was filled with young people overflowing from the upstairs, Mrs. Mack had made it her own since their latest invasion and then disappearance, and spent much time in it, soaping and splashing and whistling contentedly through her scented vapors.

  One afternoon in the shower, trying to scrub her feet with a new brush, she found it wise to stand on one leg, and put up her right hand, to hang on to the top of the neat white-enamelled wall.

  Something bit into her index finger—the one she used most, the one that had always led her safely in unknown places. Something not only bit into the tip of this valuable if small limb but chewed on it for what seemed like a long time, perhaps five seconds—enough to take out a goodly piece of her. She felt more astonished than affronted. Two more bites sank neatly into the sensitive fingertip before she pulled it down, with a sharp cry.

  Not much later she was sitting, an emergency case, in Dr. Milwright’s treatment room, her finger bound loosely and fairly bloodily in a dish towel—the first thing she could find in the kitchen after she had hurried upstairs, feeling strongly angered. The young doctor was a favorite of hers, because outside his office they shared some of the same political and even religious persuasions, and inside it he seemed in tacit agreement with her innate mistrust of pills-in-general. He swabbed and probed skillfully, and then said in his usual laconic way, “Too bad. Animal, all right. Rabies shots.”

  “Oh, no,” she said flatly. “I know what bit me and he is not rabid. Not in the slightest. He is simply being egged into it by all those treacherous buddies, to lose face.”

  Dr. Milwright looked at her for a minute or two, scribbled on his chart pad, and then asked, “Does he … do these buddies talk to you now and then?”

  His voice was too kind, too gentle. His scribble had been too discreet. She could read upside down as well as the next one, and it was plain to see that he had not noted any medical facts.

  “So perhaps a little more cleanup,” he went on casually. “This will sting. And how about a little shot, more or less a penicillin booster? Just pull up that skirt, now.…”

  A nurse popped through the door on the cue word “skirt,” and waves of compassion bulged out around her—ah, the poor soul sitting there with the blood all over from the end of her most important finger. Then Dr. Milwright pulled stuff through a needle from two ampules into a syringe, milky white, crystal rosy, and Mrs. Mack, her dress up around her waist and her panties down around her ankles, said with outward calm, “I know that creature. He is good. He was protecting something the others had lied to him about, probably. That is all that happened. It was not to hurt me.”

  The doctor put down his needle at the sound of her quiet voice, and looked at her with his very old, wise eyes. “And so I must protect you,” he said. “But I know what you are saying. So bend over, please.”

  She sustained the surprisingly unpleasant puncture very well, it seemed to her. The nurse pressed a little cold piece of cotton on her buttock, and finally she straightened up her body and then her clothes, blinked away about a tear and a half, and looked searchingly at Dr. Milhouse … or was it Dr. Milstrom, or …?

  He smiled at her. “You’ll be fine,” he said. “We all have our own friends. We’ll put a little more cooler on this finger, and I want to see you in two days, Mrs. Murgatroyd.”

  And Mrs. Mack fainted so fast that she hit the floor before anybody could reach out to her.

  The downstairs had never seemed more welcoming, more shadowy, and the cool bed had never felt more sweetly hers. Mrs. Mack agreed with herself that she was very tired. It had been kind of that nice young doctor and his nurse to drive her home and undress her so deftly.

  It was late afternoon by now, and the corners of the room were disappearing. Soon she would put on her light and read whatever was on top of the nearest pile of books, but there would be time enough for that. She was waiting for something else, and without any question she knew that it was to talk with her friend again. She turned on her side, so that she had a clear view of the long row of novels, and as if with another vision she saw or felt the tiny path behind them. She shifted so that the place where the doctor had stuck her did not twinge, and put her bandaged hand carefully on the pillow beside her face, as if it did not belong to her but must have an eye kept on it.

  As the room grew darker, she began to use her new night eyes, the ones that saw best when every light was out—and, sure enough, almost from the top of her head she sensed that first one silent small rat and then several more flowed through the tiny crack and disappeared behind the novels. She had never seen so many. It was like a special dress parade. They ran carefully, with not a single scuffle or squeak, and one by one flicked themselves jauntily up to the far hole behind the shower wall and on to whatever goal they seemed so firmly to believe in, under the front porch. For the first time they were courteous, not arrogant. Mrs. Mack regretted having told the doctor that they were trying to oust their leader, or whatever foolishness it was that she had babbled while her finger hurt.

  She settled more comfortably into the bed, no longer needing to be cautious about her bottom, finally forgetting the little red holes in her finger. And as she knew would happen, her friend was there before her bright new eyes, not, like his henchmen, running behind the books but sitting on one of them, with his tail falling down elegantly over the title, and one delicate paw raised as if to keep her from speaking. So she waited, while the band of communication unrolled slowly between them like a smooth silk ribbon.

  We were interrupted, he said, but this time we can finish the explanation you asked for. I know it, since I know your name. But first I want to tell you that it was not I who bit you but two of my workers, on my instructions. It was to teach them not to touch people.

  Mrs. Mack felt that this was a roundabout way of instruction, and apparently he agreed, for he said, Obviously! But I have to protect you, too.

  That was what the doctor had said, and when her friend signalled behind him with one ear and another smaller rat stood meekly toward the back of the novel, they looked for a minute like the man and his nurse, watching her intently but lovingly, protecting her.

  Thank you, she said. Yes, I know I should thank both of you, all of you. But we were interrupted when I was asking you about why everybody seems to forget my name and who I am, so that I begin to wonder if I am. That is, I wonder whether I have ever been the young girl and then all those other people I thought I was for so long. Do the grandchildren—

  Her friend interrupted again, with a slow gesture of his hand. His tiny teeth shone in her new night sight, and she watched his meek companion bow up and down and clasp paws to breast as if in pleasure. She waited patiently for what her friend was going to tell her. Finally, he moved forward a little, so that he stood at the spine of the book—dangerously, except for a rat. She felt filled with confidence in him, and in what he would say.

  The whole reason for your confusion, he
said with a little cough, and the reason for everyone’s confusion, and all the wasteful forgetting, is that …

  And in a great flash Eileen Oliver Mack understood.

  (Dr. Milwright, standing close by the bed against the long row of Simenons and Colettes, sighed, and his nurse whimpered, “Ah, the poor soul!” “Not at all,” he said crossly.)

  Diplomatic, Retired

  Mr. Judd’s white shirt and heavy blue serge suit felt stiff and strange in the warm Mexican air, and smelled strongly of moth balls and the armpits of a laundress he had employed at least ten months before.

  She had been a queer cleanly soul, a pure Hindu walking haughtily through the streets of Trinidad with her washing on her head: a good worker she was, but with such a powerful smell to her that finally even the toughest old chaps at the Consulate had to stop letting her touch their shirts and underwear.

  Mr. Judd sniffed somewhat nostalgically at himself, and tapped on the iron-and-glass door of the Finnegans’ rented house.

  There were several people sitting in the patio when he went in. It was foolish to try to remember who they were: at the thought of such a thing Mr. Judd’s tight lipless old mouth pulled itself willy-nilly into a small grin, and all the faces became the smooth egg-shapes of a thousand, ten thousand, oh why not say a million, that had rolled past his eyes from Rangoon to Manila for perhaps forty or more years. Or was it forty? Or fifty? Who could say how long a diplomat had been a diplomat, once he was retired and in his right mind?

  Young Finnegan put a Cuba Libre in his hand. Thank God, Mr. Judd observed placidly to the self in him that seemed lately to have become so companionable and agreeable to chat with, thank God he had been sensible enough to have Billy at the hotel bar make it double instead of single for his two dry Martinis: a Cuba Libre was a hell of a poor drink to give a man before dinner.

  This one was strong, at least. He drank deeply, knowing that after two more swallows his hands would be steady enough to let him hold the glass with only one, so that he could eat a few small tasty and extremely prophylactic tidbits with the other, so that he could drink more.

  A woman came over to the uncomfortable adobe bench that ran around three sides of the patio, and sat down beside him.

  He moved away from her a little, partly from long training in politeness in the Service so that she would consider his movement of the buttocks and hips a proper substitute for standing up and bowing, and partly because he did not like women with their hair skinned back. It reminded him of native girls, slant-eyed bitches with their sleek hair coiled low, stuck through with ivory pins. He liked women with lots of soft curls about their faces, if he liked women at all, which he really did not, come to think of it. That’s why I’m a bachelor, he remarked slyly to his companionable self, and he smiled his old dry grin again.

  “Mr. Judd … I wish you’d tell me,” the woman said. And to his other self he said silently, while he heard his voice go on and on and felt the drink warm and steady him, Here we go again! One more God damn foolish woman asking me to tell her all about the Foreign Service! One more woman taking pity on me and thinking Poor lonely old Judd and setting herself to draw me out at a cocktail party!

  “I’ve never been sick a day in my life,” he was saying to her. “That’s one reason I’m here tonight, one of the oldest retired men in the Service. That’s the great secret … stay healthy. And know the Chief of Police, of course. Know him so that when you come home and find all the beer gone and maybe a cold chicken or a joint of beef gone from the ice-chest or the pantry you’ll see that he has been there and you’ll think, Well, that’s all right, because you need his help on a false passport case anyway.…”

  Mr. Judd took another Cuba Libre from young Finnegan. It tasted better than the first one.

  The woman beside him was drinking straight tequila from a thin blue glass. Mr. Judd looked more closely at her. He disapproved of seeing women drink straight liquor. It was all right, probably, for females with their hair flat like this one, even if they were white like her, too.

  On consideration she was more attractive than he had expected from her banal approach to him. She held her glass very steadily, in a composed way, and sipped from it as if it had water in it.

  Suddenly she looked at him, and he lowered his eyes and cleared his throat scratchily with irritation at having been caught observing her.

  “Yes,” he said, deciding to revolt her because he felt cross, “I have two principles of conduct, especially in the hot countries.…”

  “Tell me, Mr. Judd,” she said, leaning her head a little sideways so that the mellow light in the patio slanted along her head and made it look silver instead of dark.

  “I’ll tell you. Know the Chief of Police and keep your bowels open, that’s what I always say to the young fellows.”

  He pulled at his drink, and noticed that his hand was almost as steady as hers now, and then he peered sharply at her, hoping to see her get up to talk with someone else. But she was leaning toward him, her eyes looking solemnly into his.

  “Tell me, Mr. Judd,” she said in a soft insistent way. “How do you diplomats do it?” She sipped from her thin blue glass, and kept on looking at him as if he were very important to her.

  “Eno’s. Eno’s Salts. Get them anywhere. Two pints a month, that’s what I’ve averaged for the last thirty-five years. Always arrange it with the local Service, just after I’ve made my first introductions … save a lot of money by knowing where to get it in pint bottles, Mrs.… Mrs.…”

  “Glenn. But I’m a Finnegan. I’m staying with my brother’s family here. Tell me, Mr. Judd … why are you here too, in Mexico, in Tlecaplac? It must seem very dull for you after … Saigon, and all that.”

  He realized without either resentment or pleasure that she was settled beside him for the party. He began to talk, as he had talked for so many hundreds of times to women at diplomatic receptions and teas and cocktails and gymkhanas. Tonight, though, he heard his voice saying several things which before he had murmured only to his inner self. Once, for instance, he said, “You know old Jules Goldthorn. He was great stuff, we thought once, the poor old fool! Ambassador Goldthorn! A high-class officeboy, that’s all, that’s all! He was fine for counting the pencils. Maybe.”

  Mrs. Glenn laughed, and looked at him with a kind of approbation as she sipped steadily at her tequila. Then she said, “It must be such a relief to say that, at last.”

  “Yes,” Mr. Judd said.

  He took another Cuba Libre from young Finnegan, and as he heard his dry old voice go on and on, he began to feel that he was really not talking to the woman at all, but that she was, with her strange smooth hair and her quiet way of drinking, his inner self, the true and only companion he could talk to lately, the one remaining friend.…

  “Once in Saigon, when I lived in a little apartment above a place where a family made harnesses … coolie harnesses … they owned more than a hundred rickshas, and were rich from renting them … I employed their daughter. She was half French, of course, so that it was all right for the prestige of the Consulate … no natives allowed of course except as servants. But this girl was beautiful, with smooth thick hair. And as soon as she began to work for me she got sick, even though she’d been raised there in Saigon … suddenly wanted me to take her away … couldn’t stand the climate, she said, like all the rest of the people in the Service except me. ‘Iron-gut Judd’!”

  Almost everyone else in the little cool dim patio had stopped talking, and sat quietly on the tiled floor or in the rawhide chairs, drinking and listening.

  Mr. Judd looked around him, and the faces were no longer blank eggs like all the other faces in the diplomatic wheeling and flowing of his life, but had eyes now that gleamed in the light, and mouths that moved mysteriously into half-smiles or speculation as he talked.

  He took a couple of little hot tacos from an old Indian woman who slipped like a firm dark shadow from one person to the next, with two plates held by hands invisible un
der her rebozo. Young Finnegan filled his glass again, and said, “We’re out of limes. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “This drink couldn’t be better,” Mr. Judd said automatically, but by then he meant it.

  “And the girl in Saigon? Tell us,” Mrs. Glenn murmured. She leaned her head back against the plaster wall, and Mr. Judd was startled to find himself faintly excited by the light that touched her throat. It was like very calm water, with moon … moonlight … the moon shining.… When had he last felt this obscure delight? He shifted drily on the adobe bench, and cleared his own throat with a sort of resentment.

  “She was trying to blackmail me, of course. That can’t happen in the Service. I advised the Salts … a rather large dose. She took too many … all half-breeds exaggerate … but it gave me time to arrange my transfer. Later she married one of the young chaps. It ruined him. She was only half French. And of course her health was gone, after that dose of Salts … no health at all, poor child.…”

  Mrs. Glenn drank on, without looking at the colorless tequila in her glass. Young Finnegan had put the bottle beside her on the long smooth adobe seat, and every time she poured her hand was as steady as stone. So was Mr. Judd’s by now. He looked proudly at it, and wondered if Mrs. Glenn had noticed how young it appeared in the dimness, as young as hers, and less skinny. He liked women well rounded … if he liked them at all … but still he must admit that this one was for some reason excitingly beautiful all of a sudden.