Darconville's Cat (38 page)

  “Hello? Isabel?”

  She experienced a sudden sensation in her arms and
legs of terrifying lightness, a suspension effected by the mind to
feign invisibility, and immediately she felt she would disappear.
She took refuge in interior mystery, a forest appeared to her, a
magic world where as a princess she—

  “Are you there, Isabel? Please?”

  Determined, covered in the dark robe of her closed
eyes, the night, the shadowed room, Isabel sat perfectly still
until the voice called out no more, and she knew beyond all truth
that there was never an end to nothing. And she never moved but
only rested her head against the back of the chair, resigned in
will, and continued to stare toward the wall at the impossible,
paradoxical flame splitting up through the darkness of the canvas
like some pale and lovely summoner beckoning her beyond her
failures and broken dreams into the safety of nothingness, a place
where there were no consequences, no grades, no plans, no
expectations, nothing to live up to or long for or even love, for
love was not only over but love was the worst something of all.

  She was waiting, she remembered, and she was
waiting, she knew, for someone. But who? she wondered. But who?

  XLII

  The Jejune Dance

  A hall, a hall! give room! and foot it, girls.

        —WILLIAM
SHAKESPEARE,
Romeo and Juliet

  THE QUINSY DANCE—sound lutes! tabrets!
bombardons!—had begun. The large ballroom of the student union,
decorated with flowing blue-and-white bunting, was brightly lit,
and a felt oriflamme proclaiming the year (apostrophe, two digits)
of the graduating class rose in the shape of a Q behind the main
table, where stood hundreds of paper cups filled with red punch.
There was to be no tippling. The previous night, President
Greatracks had delivered to the class his usual Levitical caveat on
the subject, a flat denunciation for the most part, complete with
anecdotes, of that prince of winepots, General Ulysses S. Grant, “a
dang winebibbin’ dipsofreek who couldn’t wake up of a morning
without walkin’ sideways!”

  “The girls are quiet as question marks now,” said
Mrs. McAwaddle to Prof. Wratschewe, the other chaperon, “but I
fancy they’ll all be running us jakeleg around here later on.” She
was dressed in a blue double-knit, a necklace of huge dead
turquoises, and serviceable shoes. “I trust you’ll prove, being the
senior member here, to have the eyes of a potato?”

  “Potato,” observed Prof. Wratschewe, graciously
bowing a cup of punch to his colleague. “Did you ever stop to think
that if ‘gh’ stood for ‘p’ as in ‘hiccough’; ‘ough’ for ‘o’ as in
‘dough’; ‘phth’ for ‘t’ as in ‘phthisis’; ‘eigh’ for ‘a’ as in
‘neighbor’; ‘tte’ for ‘t’ as in ‘gazette’; and ‘eau’ for ‘o’ as in
‘beau’ “—he snapped out his ball-point and scribbled on a flattened
cup—”then the correct spelling of potato would be
ghoughphtheightteeau
?” He looked up smiling.

  But Mrs. McAwaddle was already on the other side of
the room.

  The band—a blotch-complexioned group from
Charlottesville named
The Uncalled Four
—ripped it all open
with a muscular rendition of “Dixie,” always so popular, always so
malapropos, and then settled into its repertoire of out-of-date
tunes and shopworn instrumentais, abuses made even more frightful
by the almost parturifacient din coming from the direction of that
one great guy with big ears in the schnitz-pie-colored tux (that’s
him on the electric guitar) who has a voice like a toad under a
harrow. But his money paid for most of the instruments. And they
travel in his car.

  At first, no one would dance, some shy, some not yet
ready, but eventually they moved: a general forth-issuing onto the
floor, with all
le donne mobile e nubile
in their long
white gloves and flouncing dresses looking like so many
ortelans-in-papillotes, bell-flowered, orange-flowered,
poppy-flowered, curl-flowered. Her eyes star-shining, Alphia
Centauri sighed and whispered to Pengwynne Custis at the cloakroom
that, gosh, everyone sure looked as fetching as fetching could be.
“Bull,” said lovely, spoiled, rich Pengwynne Custis, thrusting her
wraps at the black attendant, “I’ve seen prettier faces on a damn
oP iodine bottle.” “Why, I just
love
your gown,” came a
voice from behind Pengwynne. She turned. It was beautiful Hypsipyle
Poore, mysterious, enveloped in black faille, with a blood-red rose
at her waist and a Gainsborough hat framing her perfectly oval
face. “But, tell me, where were you when they fitted it?” And,
smiling, Hypsipyle tinkled her finger across the room at several
boys.

  The boys—young
beaux sabreurs
in the
Southern tradition—were mostly overappareled little rakehells from
nearby colleges, dashing bucks and guys with names like Reggie
Deuceaces, S. Waverly Carter, Guggenheim Grant, Fern Hill, Sheraton
Commander, Hampton Court, and Schuyler Colfax or, perhaps, Colfax
Schuyler—it didn’t matter. They idled about, smoking and chatting
and, periodically, dancing their dates woodenly across the floor
toward the outer balcony where they either fell abruptly into
gourmandizing kiss sequences or produced flasks which appeared at
the ends of their fingers, out of nowhere, like conjurers’ doves.
And some couples—some couples went out to their cars.

  There was a general mood of excitement, waltzing and
whirling, swinging and swirling. Behind, four years of work! Ahead,
the future! But now, fun! Most of the girls conservatively kept to
the punch, others didn’t, but some, already flown with insolence
and wine, were squealing and running niminy-piminy through the
arcades, putting the come-hither on their boyfriends and scooting
like little grunions into the side-rooms for fumbling but
passionate embraces. Heather Tilt’s date, his urgent hand rummaging
hopefully toward her
dra-geoir
, got himself a good slap in
the face for it. Mona Lisa Drake and her date were engaged in a
long, deep kiss in the shadow of a column when she looked up
soulfully and whispered, “Be careful, it’s my heart.” One yahoo
with a juggler’s face—her blind date from Washington and
Lee—actually
proposed
to Charlotte Rumpelmeyer who, in
spite of his altiloquence, thought it might be a happier marriage
if they knew each other longer than five minutes. And in one dark
room Poppy Mandragora ineffectually tried to struggle up, as her
hot-blooded boyfriend nailed her down on the couch with kisses,
sucked her sighs, and cannonaded her with dabs at the lower neck,
and she just about managed to gasp through a space in his arm-hold,
“Ashley,
please
, let’s not spoil it.”

  It was a perfect night in Quinsyburg; warm and
romantic, with the scent of honeysuckle, yarrow, and beebalm heavy
in the air. Solitary as a substantive, Darconville crossed the
campus, circling as unobtrusively as possible by Bryerly, Harrop,
and Fitts dormitories—and noticing, in the latter, the darkness of
one particular room. He stood awkwardly by the front walk outside
the parlor of Fitts for a moment and called out Isabel’s name
several times, but his voice, hollow as the soul of an echo, came
back and embarrassed him. He went round behind the building,
emerged through a walkway by the greenhouse and saw the lights,
heard the music, coming from the student union. All along the
street, couples sat in their cars croodling, sipping from bottles,
or shifting about with exasperated cries like “You’re on my hair!”
or “I’m hitting my head!” or “It’s not a snap, for godsakes, it’s a
hook
!”

  As Darconville crossed the street, he heard from an
adjacent car a little squeal, monarticulated and lubricious, which
posited, by dint of accompanying coos and whuffs, a diabolicating
two, exercitants, clearly, in the rites of Venus Pornokrate.
Suddenly, the girl, coming up for air, looked out the car window
and skreeked, “
O lord
!”

  It was Robin Kreutznaer in high apostrophe, mussed,
looking unavoidably at—and straight into—Darconville’s face. Both
were embarrassed. Her flowery anadem was askew, her long dress
unambiguously bunched and disarranged. Beside her, buckling up his
suspenders, sat some fat-witted bedmaster or other with a mouth
like a cigar-fish and a plastic bowtie clipped to one side of his
limp, open collar. Darconville’s student was disconcerted, it
turned out, less for having been nobbled not ten seconds previous
than for another reason; she produced a rat-tail comb and spoke,
apologetically, between shuttles.

  “I sure am sorry,” she said, “for not submittin’ my
poetry paper, sir. I
clean
forgot last week, layin’ off,
see, to bring it by this week, but then what hap—” Robin hiccuped
“—pens? Right. Didn’t I get to ailin’ something awful, sir?
Monthlies. You know? Oops!” Robin’s date, snapping open an
imperial-size can of beer, sucked in half the can, wheezed manfully
and, grinning, lustfully climped her on the thigh, but she pulled
away—a bobolink sitting beyond a cat’s jump— and continued. “Point
being, I gave out to Dean Barathrum that I’d finished up my work
for graduation, see? And what with his notions, I mean, uptrippin’
me tellin’ a lie and all? See what I mean? God, I’m wicked
embarrassed!” She groaned and slapped her head back onto the seat.
“The question is, see, when
can
I hand it in, bein’ as
tomorrow is Sunday and we all around here”—she gestured backwards
with her comb in the direction of Cagliostro—”well, we were
plannin’ to cut for Richmond, see, I mean, you dp see, don’t you?
Like I say, last week, shoot, I was all intentions. Then Friday
came and—”

  “Have you seen Isabel Rawsthorne?” asked Darconville
with tears in his eyes.

  The dance, at a discreet interval, was called to a
halt. It was time for some matters of great pith and moment. The
student body president, Miss Xystine Chappelle, wearing a
honeysuckle-colored linsey dress with puffed-out sleeves and a
full-gathered skirt, appeared in a trembling spotlight. Sweetly,
she welcomed everybody with a prepared speech, fashioning a
metaphorical vase, as it were, into which poetess Iva Ironmonger
Dane, clearing her throat, placed a meditative/descriptive flower
for the whole class entitled “Where?”—a little piece that ended
with a bit of advice:

        ”Do not follow
where the

           Path
may lead.

        Go, instead,
where

           There
is no path

        And leave a
trail.”

  Commemorations followed. Miss Quinsy—Hypsipyle Poore
herself, escorted by two white-gloved young men (the others, all
watching in silence with thoughts uniform: no more than the
delightful sporting of the intellect with the flesh that is its
master)—was called upon to do the honors. First, she presented a
set of two walleyed Staffordshire dogs to the class adviser and
assistant dean, Miss Dessicquint, and then the belated retirement
gift of a Jefferson Cup to Miss Thelma Trappe, not in attendance,
and who couldn’t have been reached, certainly, if upon such a thing
depended the volume of applause. All of this was followed by the
Longstreets
ambo
who, swaying, sang a duet of “Carry Me
Back to Old Virginny.” The special sentimental finale having
concluded, the young people began to drift away for more dancing,
but wait—who was that puffing in through the fire-door, shod in
sneakers, a flashlight bulging out of his back pocket?

  It was President Greatracks himself who,
finger-popping the inside of his acoustical cheek three or four
times, recommanded everyone’s attention for a sudden, impromptu
speech:

  “Here, y’all!” he clapped. “It’s only me who clum up
here, not to preach, not to teach, but only to put in my jerp’s
worth about this here dance, OK? Now, I don’t want to be accused of
bein’ nar-ruh but I’m in charge here at Quinsy for you outsiders
who mayhap have got another im-pression, your college president,
the straw that stirs the drink! These is facts, in horsetradin’
lingo. I’m feelin’ like a bull moose tonight! And why?
Wha
? Well, I cain’t hardly memorize, lemme tell you, the
last time I set my peepers on gals lookin’ so mightily good
appearanced, mmm-
mmm
! Glo-rious! We folks from the
upbrush, ‘course, never had anything near as good a time as this,
bein’ poor as Job’s turkey and all, but then, see, we don’t count
long as y’all in high fettle here at the graduation dance, hear?
Delivered.

  “But now pay me some mind: I naturally don’t expect
y’all to be in low cotton tonight, do I, and I want that put in
capitals, see?—yow-ever, I hear tell been some liquor-tipplin1
going on here, yes? That right? Look around, this kind of thing
prelavent? Huh? That Southern quality? You been raised up—where,
Paree? Babylon, for cry-eye
? I only just now put my hand
on one wimpbucket here in his dang shirttails, I want you to know,
walkin’ around slantindicular and actin’ like a field-nigger at a
weekend funeral! You can wipe off them phony Miss-Little-What-Me?
faces, girls, ‘cause, I can tell
you
, I been all the way
there and back again! I took him a twist by his ear, that’s right,
and showed him into the middle of next week where that oP boy goin’
to be wakin’ up famous with the collywobbles and a nice pro-nounced
case of kitney trouble, bet on it! OK? Now you can set your foot
down on this, people:
I ain’t gonna buy this kind of thing! Not
here, not there, not nowhere! You got it
?” He pulled his
mouth. “Good, now keep it. I’m hot as a sunburnt sheep up here,
them lights is in-tense and like to give me pinwheels in the
eyeball, and I need me a Co’-Cola.”

  There were murmurs. President Greatracks, stepping
down, gulped a cup of punch so quickly it splashed down his chin
and squittered all over the paper tablecloth and then, making a
battery of reluctant handshakes, he drew out his flashlight, waved
it, and went charging back into battle. Whereupon Xystine
Chappelle, as the applause died down, motioned everyone forward to
hold hands and sing the school song, “Pledge We to You, Quinsy, All
Our Troth.” The lights dimmed, the band again flouted up a medley
of slow uningenious waltzes, and in the semi-darkness couples once
more closed in, groin to groin, clutching in tenacious spasms of
ardor but showing now, at least it seemed to Mrs. McAwaddle, too
much in vertical behavior of what seemed, clearly, horizontal
intentions. After giving one couple the benefit of the doubt—had
they caught
buttons
?—she stepped onto the floor, touched a
boy who had his head buried in his partner’s neck like a hatchet,
and whispered too loudly, “Elbow room!”