Collected Novels and Plays (33 page)

“As you see, it’s been days since the woman came to clean. I’d phone her if I knew her name,” said Francis, returning from below with the tea tray. A soiled white cat followed him. “My, what a treat to have you here! I hope you don’t take cream. So tell me, tell me,” he genially added as he handed her a blue-and-gold cup marked with a crown surmounting the letter M.

“Would that be for Massey?” asked Jane, admiring it.

“No, who—ah, tell me about Roger. He’s a soldier? An officer?”

She hesitated. She knew her letter hadn’t gone astray, for he had telephoned
at once, as though reminded of her for the first time in years. “You’re really alone in that wicked town? Look, you must come down here Saturday without fail, there’s to be a gala at the opera.” Then, when she objected that she couldn’t afford it: “Nonsense, I’ve plenty of room for you!” and the next day Jane
received a check for her train fare. It brought back with a sweet pang their Italian travels. She stopped minding having had only a card or two from him since the dreadful night in August. He was her dear unpredictable Francis and she wanted to see him. Now, face to face with him, she tried to rephrase her letter, making it sound spontaneous and offhand. No, Roger’s training had barely begun. Friends had been pulling strings in hopes of getting him deferred, but had wangled no
more than a few months’ delay. No one could say why he’d been called up now, married, his thesis near completion—it was the Army’s way. At present he would probably be up to his waist in mud, somewhere in Louisiana.

“Are you planning to join him?” asked Francis absently.

“In the mud?” Jane giggled. No, not till he had some permanent assignment. Who knew, with his languages he might be sent to Europe? In the meantime she was making all the money she could. She’d even begun taking in typing, to fill up her evenings.

“But then you’re very lonely!” he exclaimed in surprise.

How strange he was! “Of course I’m lonely!”

“Apart from that, though,” said Francis, “all’s well with you?”

“Apart from that,” Jane permitted herself a note of sarcasm, “I couldn’t be happier.” She wrinkled her nose over the teacup.

Francis didn’t notice. One reason their talk hadn’t brought them closer was the fleeting look of disinterest, of having been interrupted, that kept crossing his face. As she watched he leaned forward, lifted a sheet of paper from the floor and held it loosely upside down, not to appear to be reading it. He was, however; Jane could see his eyes move under almost closed lids. He felt her glance, looked up. “Oh Jane, forgive me,” he said in real
dismay. “But what’s happened has changed my whole
life, and now—” Francis broke off, shaking his head and smiling in a new odd way that affected only half of his face. The cat, who had also been watching him closely, leaped into his lap. He drained his cup and began to tell her about it.

“You understand,” he said, “I’ve never had the slightest interest in any of this rot. Whether the word comes from a medium or from the Mormon Temple or from the Pope himself, I’ve never in my life supposed that death brings anything but total annihilation. It’s always made me the least bit nervous to hear people talk about the ‘other world’ or the ‘life of the soul’—as if such phrases really
had meaning. Once or twice before, I’d amused myself with this,” he nodded at the Ouija board, “but nothing came of it. It depends so much, you know, on who your partner is. Oh, I did once speak to a young German engineer, drowned in the Indian Ocean sixty years ago; and once, briefly, to someone who
said
he was Beau Brummell, but wouldn’t answer a single question. ‘Tut, tut, young man!’ was the most I could get from him. That class
of spirit is so petulant, full of warnings and obscure directives, or given to repeating childish syllables until you want to throw the tea-cup across the room. In the light of what Meno has told me, those are the voices that merely echo one’s own subconscious preoccupations.” At the sound of a faint ringing Francis stiffened. “It’s nothing,” he said presently, “just the phone in the next apartment.”

Jane was beginning to feel gooseflesh. “Go on,” she whispered. “Who is Meno?”

“Our familiar—the spirit who first communicated with us, oh, some three weeks ago. We’d sat down casually one evening and were being bored to tears by a cretin named Patrick, a G.I. who’d recently burned to a crisp in a warehouse, when all at once the cup began to move so firmly, so swiftly—”

“Without your touching it?”

“No, no, of course one has to touch it ….” He floundered for an instant, having lost contact with his own excitement. “And out came these messages. We could hardly get them on paper—long, splendidly
formed sentences. Well, judge for yourself!” Francis reached past Jane to draw from under the papers that littered the couch a notebook bound in limp red leather. “I’ve transcribed it all here, along
with our questions,” he said, flipping through what she estimated to be some fifty pages of fine script. How much time it must have taken him! “Here, for instance, Meno sketches in his family background:
My father
,” Francis read aloud,
“was a highly educated slave from Rhodes, whom Tiberius took to Judea, there accidentally exposing him to the teachings of a 12-year-old child.
Who was that? We asked.
Christ. But for him I should have
had a brother. He drove my father from my mother’s bed.
Christ did?
Yes.
How old were you then?
An infant.
When did you die?
In 38 according to your calendar. I was put to death by Caligula for having loved his sister Drusilla.
Did she love you?
O yes. We were secretly married. We met often in an underwater cave, luminous and blue.
You mean the Blue Grotto?
Of course.
It wasn’t till then,” said Francis,
looking up, “that I remembered Tiberius kept his court on Capri. Then Meno asked:
That island we were prisoners on, is it still beautiful?
We told him it was, mentioned the scenery, the tourists. He kept saying
Ah!
as if terribly pleased. Well, I shan’t read the whole record, but he goes on and on. Oh, it’s very charming right here,” Francis said, stopping at a later page, “about Drusilla:
I was given her as a slave. We swam
together in that blue water. I showed her shells and she looked at them. This was the first lesson in love.
Her first lesson?
Hers and mine.
Was she younger?
5 years. Poor sweet ruined Drusilla.
Why ruined?
Caligula made love to her. It was not his fault. His mother had done the same to him, giving him Spanish powder before her ladies. She said, ‘What the Emperor enjoys, so shall I.’
Meaning Tiberius?
Of course. Some say this
caused Caligula’s epilepsy.
”

“Mercy!” breathed Jane, thinking what Council Bluffs would say to such a story. On sitting down with Francis she had been startled by certain changes in his appearance—his heaviness, the faint weblike lines at the corners of his eyes. These now seemed trifling next to the changes implied by his new preoccupation. Did he mean her to
believe
all that?

“And, my dear, the orgies that went on—six or seven people of any
age or sex in a bath of warm perfumed oil, followed by one of cold white wine! Marcello couldn’t hear enough about
those.
”

“Marcello does this with you?”

“Yes, of course.” Francis stared at her as though it were something she ought to have understood from the beginning.

“Well,” Jane asked after a moment, “have you checked what he tells you? Is it historically true?”

“I haven’t checked, no. I’d say offhand, if there
were
any discrepancy, it would be on the part of history.”

Jane gulped. Was he serious?

“Meno has hinted that history’s very shaky. What’s more,” Francis lowered his voice confidentially, “he gets a little put out if we try to test him. Once I asked, was there any way of seeing him? The answer came in one word:
Die.
But then he said if each of us would sit back to back holding mirrors he’d be able to see
us.
So there we were, Marcello with the big hall mirror in his lap, I with this one.”
Francis smiled into the lyre-shaped mirror across from them. “At first we were laughing like idiots, then something went wrong. I felt seasick from so many reflections rocking back and forth. Marcello thought he saw a third figure in the room. Later Meno told us he’d seen
himself
for the first time in nearly two centuries.
Then
it had been in the mirrors at Versailles. He was the rage there for several seasons. What do you look like?” read
Francis, finding the place.
“As I did at. A beautiful youth.
What color are your eyes?
Gold brown. A poem to me began
—
no, you have no Latin. I will supply a French translation:

The rest is really too risqué. Still, we draw up a mirror for Meno whenever we can. He loves that. He saw me drinking milk once, and called me
a peasant. But
calmad
,” he said, for Jane had glanced apprehensively towards the mirror, “it’s only when
both
Marcello and I are in view that he’s able to watch. Heavens, what time is it?”

“Not quite five.”

“Does this interest you?”

By then Jane wasn’t sure, and said so. “I don’t see,” she tried to explain, “how it helps those of us who’re still living.”

“My God!” cried Francis. “It does everything! Listen: there is another world. Each of us here on earth is looked after, cared for by an individual spirit, a patron as Meno calls it. Think how much this changes! Our lives are not ends but means! The soul begins as an insect, an animal, pig, dog, cat. The cat sees in the dark, sits on the wall, waiting to become human. The soul does become human at last, is helped through one incarnation after another
until found worthy of the first of the other world’s nine stages. Once that happens, the patron moves to a higher stage, and
you
become a patron!” He was standing up now, the cat displaced, clasping and unclasping his hands. “Far below on earth a tiny savage soul is born, in Naples or the Brazilian jungle. It is yours to care for and lead towards wisdom. Meno has told me all this. He’s told me about everybody, who their patrons are, how many lives
they’ve had. Your patron, for instance, is Pilar Mendoza, dead in Granada in. You were first born, I seem to recall, in, and have had some forty incarnations since then—usually dying in infancy because, your patrons tells Meno, you do not take to life. But there’s hope. One or two more lives may release you from earth. My father has many lives ahead of him. Vinnie’s patron complains that she has stubbornly refused to advance herself for the last three
hundred years. Xenia, on the other hand—”

“What about you?” interposed Jane. “Is Meno your patron?”

“Not at all. Meno is Patrick’s patron,” he said with decision.

“Patrick?”

“Don’t you remember? The boy we first talked to, who was burned to death?” Francis reached for his notebook and read:
“He is of a weak if
not animal mentality which will not soon be allowed release.
Did you know, by the way,” Francis broke off, “that Xenia’s having a baby?”

“Why no!” cried Jane, flabbergasted.

“Well, she is, sometime in June.” But he didn’t enlarge upon the topic, reverting instead to her earlier question. “My patron is a Hindu mystic with an unpronounceable name. My present incarnation is my twelfth and last.” With these words an involuntary half-smile flickered across Francis’s face. It occurred to her that the spirits had made a snob of him.

“Your last?” she echoed.

“Yes. I shall be going to Stage One.” He walked away.

“And you believe that?”

Francis struck a note on the harpischord. A tone, dry and vital, sang through the air, surprising Jane, who hadn’t supposed so elegant an instrument to be in working order. When he turned back, the smile embraced many things. “I believe all of it,” he replied. “I’ve even given up my analyst. I tell you, this other world is
real!
”

She couldn’t doubt it; his face shone, his voice rang clear and full of life. Gone were its mute stranglings and cold monotone whereby, in proportion to the seriousness of his talk, Francis had often struck Jane as disclaiming responsibility for anything he might happen to say. Now, clearly, he had dumped the whole burden in Meno’s lap. It left him free to snap his fingers blithely at history, at human reason. “Things that once upset me
dreadfully,” he was telling her, “simply don’t concern me any more. Furniture, for instance. Look at this room. I’ve spent
thousands
of dollars. There was to have been something magical in fine old things, that would have helped me
be.
Now, I could give them all away, and probably shall. You never had a wedding present from me, did you? Pick out whatever you like—I mean it.” He took her hand. “I feel warmly towards
people for the first time in my life. I need no defenses. I’m like a philosopher in his bath; all the hatred, all the fear has been let out of me, as by an opened vein, painlessly. Sometimes,” Francis laughed, letting go
her hand, “I don’t even know what I’m saying, I who used to weigh every word! Remember our talk? It’s happened, Jane, I’m afloat! I can’t imagine fearing death. I can’t imagine wanting
anything—what I’ve been given’s enough. Listen!”

The telephone was ringing; he rushed into the hall. “Oh, Xenia—” Jane heard him say, his voice suddenly listless.

She set about powdering her nose, using her own small mirror in preference to the one in front of her. It embarrassed her not to be sharing his excitement. What had he meant by their talk in Cambridge? Who had been afloat—himself? Herself?—and what did being afloat mean? She felt dull, confused, open to the perils of talking or thinking metaphorically. For relief she got to her feet, wandered out of the mirror’s range, his voice only a murmur from
the hall. At the window Jane held aside the blind and gazed down into his garden: dead ivy and dirty snow the unseasonable cold wouldn’t let melt. Francis, Francis, she sighed. She
had
loved him, loved him still, but hadn’t foreseen his garden bringing tears to her eyes. Tears? Not quite; a sting, a tiny smart. That would have to do for the present. Already, from the hall, Jane could hear Francis shift into the mode of farewells. He would come back in; there
would be more talk, drinks, changing of clothes, dinner, a taxi …. If honest-to-goodness-weeping lay in store for her, and Jane couldn’t at all be certain that it did, the long evening had first to be lived through. Poor me, she thought, marveling at a world—had it once been her own?—where the heart had time for its troubles and joys, where importunate feelings were cradled to sleep like children; you could look down on them sweetly breathing, with tears
or smiles upon their faces.