Lilith (29 page)

Took Lilith walking this morning to the pond. It was quite early and there was still dew on the grass and mist above the water. She sat on the bank with her skirt touseled about her, gathering tulip blossoms that fell down from the poplars. They were all blown and broken; she smoothed the orange petals with her fingers, making them like candle flames. On the opposite shore there was a blue heron hunting for frogs, wading very slowly with delicate stealth, lifting its spoked feet clear of the surface with every step and turning its head sideways to peer among the rushes, its cockade trembling. There was sometimes the soft plash of the falling blossoms on the water. It was delightful to lean against one of the poplars, watching her.

“May I wade?” she asked.

“Yes, if you promise not to drown.” She swung her shining head to look at me. “I would hate to have to go in after you,” I said immediately. And then, while I looked at her, another of those vivid, startling images that come into my mind when I am with her: myself walking up through the rushes with her body in my arms, her wet frock clinging to her slender body, her drenched hair hanging in ragged, dripping strands, her drowned eyes open, their violet washed pale as opals.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“Nothing. Are you going in?”

“Yes. Will you come?”

“No. When my feet get cold I’m miserable all day.”

She stood up in the grass and gathered her skirt in her hands, stepping out cautiously into the placid water that glittered in the morning light. There were two Liliths, joined at their calves: one fallen, tremulous girl with rippling breasts looking up from her silver underworld, mocking every move my Lilith made. They watched each other merrily and tenderly.

“Look at her,” Lilith said. “She wants to be like me. Oh, she is lovely!” She leaned down swiftly and kissed the floating face, which shattered at the touch of her lips, then stood watching with astonished, rueful eyes.

“My kisses kill her. She is like all of them; it destroys them to be loved.”

“Is it cold?” I asked, although I did not wish to speak.

“Oh, it’s sweet. You must come, Vincent.”

“No.”

She moved out farther into the pond, clutching her skirt in her hands, the cool water devouring the white columns of her legs, wading in mercury to her thighs. In a moment she had almost disappeared into a bank of milky mist that hung above the water. Only her head and shoulders faded forth from it into the nebulous light above the lake which made her hair glow with a soft, tarnished brilliance. She stood silently, sunken in pale mist, staring out across the water; and I had for a moment the bewildering conviction that she would truly vanish.

“Lilith, come back!” I called, my voice hollow over the lake in the quiet morning air. It echoed three times from the far shore. She turned and came toward me through a patch of water lilies by the shore, the great green leaves and floating lavender blossoms slipping along her wet thighs as she parted them. She stopped and lifted one, glowing in her hand like palely tinted paraffin, the long tubular stem dripping silver.

“Isn’t it beautiful?”

“Yes.”

“I must take one to Yvonne.”

She lifted it higher and, leaning down to the water, bit the stem through with her teeth, her head turned sideways and her hair floating, smiling at me as she did so.

“They’re bitter.” She waded to the bank and held her hand out to me. “Help me.”

Cold, fragile hands, like a frozen sparrow I picked up once when I was a boy. I pulled her up onto the bank and she stood with her wet hair clinging to her throat, lifting the pale flower to her nostrils.

“Do you mean Mrs. Meaghan?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Why do you take her flowers?”

“Because she loves them, and she is afraid to go out by herself to get them.” She watched me for a moment, her eyes becoming still. “Do you mind?”

“No, of course not.”

“You called me ‘Lilith.’”

“It seems a little odd to go on being so formal.”

“Yes.”

“You’re all wet,” I said. “We must go back and get you dry, or you’ll catch cold.”

“I never catch cold,” she said. “But we’ll go, because I want to take my flower back before it withers.”

We walked back silently to the Lodge, a curious tension between us, almost a bitterness.

I felt listless all the rest of the day, impatient and disinterested in my work. Kept thinking about the pond and wanting to return there. Had the feeling that I had forgotten something that I must return for. Even went through my pockets to see if I could discover what was “missing.”

It is not possible any longer to consider this a general and “normal” anxiety about my work. It may be partly this; but I recognize, too, my involvement with this girl. She “persuades” me, in some unaccountable way, although she is never openly disobedient or defiant. I can never seem to understand what it is that she persuades me
to
, although I am aware that in spite of my determination my handling of her is never successfully objective, and I know that I cannot be effective here until I learn to correct this. She makes me see things with her eyes, as it were—there are those “visions,” for example, which she seems to evoke. They are not really visions, of course, but ideas about her—conceptions—which are so spontaneous and intense that I almost seem to see them.

I must speak to Dr. Lavrier about it. I feel that these things need to be discussed with him, because it is impossible to get them into a report. When I brought her back this afternoon, for example, I had only the time and space to write: “
Accompanied patient to pond at her suggestion. Agreeable and composed. Went wading, gathered flowers, and talked in lighthearted, happy way. Habitual carelessness about appearance. Asked if she could go out again tomorrow.
9:00-10:00 A.M.” Yet how little does this express what actually occurred, or what I felt to have occurred, beyond the actual events. How totally misleading or inadequate language can be if used in too precise, too categorical a way! I’m sure that much of this can be illuminated if I speak to him in person. After all, what I feel disturbed about may be some very common occupational thing that he can give me immediate insight into. I will try to make an appointment with him tomorrow. . . .

“Good, Vincent. Keep her stirring if you can.”

“She wants to go to one of the tournaments they have around the county. I told her I’d ask about it.”

“Why, that’s wonderful,” Bea said. “But she’ll have to have special permission to go outside the grounds, and I don’t have the authority for that. You’ll have to ask Dr. Lavrier about it.”

“Yes, I wanted to. I wonder when I can see him?”

“This morning, if you like. He has staff conferences from eleven to twelve. Shall I ring him?”

“Yes, I wish you would.”

I took Doris Glassman to Field House for a game of ping-pong in the early morning, enjoying in a vagrant, thoughtless way the incessant clattering rhythm of the celluloid ball and the swift mechanical adjustments my bent arm made from side to side, to meet it with the paddle. She kept up her endless senseless civilities while we played: “You’re a very good player, Mr. Bruce. Oh, that was very good. I guess you must be winning, aren’t you, Mr. Bruce? You certainly play well, Mr. Bruce.” Once, when she stooped to retrieve the ball, she held it for a moment in her fingers, seeming to lose her orientation completely while she stared at it.

“What kind of an egg is this, Mr. Bruce?” she asked.

“A linnet egg,” I said. “A silver songbird will hatch out of it if you hold it to your throat.”

“Will it really, Mr. Bruce? I will, then. That would be very exciting.” She lifted the ball to her throat and clasped it there with her hand, smiling at me foolishly. I had not said this out of mockery or impatience with the poor girl—I don’t really know why I said it—but watching her stand there at the end of the table, holding the ball against her throat with foolish, patient delight, I felt suddenly alarmed and ashamed. She must have sensed this in some unexpectedly acute manner, for she removed the ball and laid it on the table, her smile widening with a look of appallingly sensitive and humble understanding, and said, “I guess you must have been fooling me, Mr. Bruce.”

“Yes, I was,” I said gently. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right, Mr. Bruce. I like to joke myself. I like people with a sense of humor. You certainly seem to be a very nice young man, Mr. Bruce.”

“I’m afraid I’m not, Doris,” I said.

When I had returned her to her floor I felt compelled, out of some nameless uncertainty, to visit Lilith for a moment before my interview with Dr. Lavrier. She was bent above her desk, working with painful concentration on her illuminations. I stood above her and pointed to a line of the ornate Gothic script.

“What does that say?” I asked her.

“This is one of the very oldest of the Data,” she said. “Which is a sort of Gospel. It was given by a scribe from Lamora, after his Recapitulation.”

“What does that mean?”

“After many years the Elders are required, for a period, to renounce. They must abjure joy, and resume the old gods, and relive their mortality. It is a kind of imposed anguish, which greatens the joy of those who are wise enough to bear it, and to understand. The line says, ‘Although I was grown too great for them, I found that my old sins fitted me like the folded garments of childhood, if one should remove them from an attic hamper. And in this was my astonishment and delight. For how should we trust God if He did not allow us to possess what He had, in love, relieved us of?’”

I tried for a moment to understand it, but I suppose I must have been too preoccupied, for it seemed to shimmer just beyond the reach of reason.

“It seems that your sages have the same passion for obscurity as ours,” I said.

“You must remember that he was writing out of darkness. He was suffering. These are the Dark Gospels.”

She laid a sheet of tissue across her work and stood up, stretching her hands above her head, her fingers twined together, while she arched her back.

“I don’t want to work any more. Will you take me walking?”

“I can’t just now,” I said. “I have an interview with Dr. Lavrier in a few minutes.”

She dropped her laced hands to the back of her head, clasping her neck with them, and looked out at me somberly from between her pointing elbows.

“He is my analyst.”

“I know.”

“What are you going to talk to him about? Me?”

“I suppose we will, among other things.”

“What will you say about me? Will you tell him how wicked I am?”

“Since he is your analyst, I suppose he knows already.”

“But I think he likes to be reassured, from other sources. He is such a simple man, but very kind. I talk to him for hours about my childhood, inventing all sorts of things to please him.”

“Do you think he believes them?”

“He will believe anything about me, except that I am happy. He thinks, for some reason, that I should be as miserable as he is, and works devotedly to make me so.” She wandered to the window and, raising her hands to the level of her face, clutched the wire netting with her curled fingers. It gave her a lithe, ferocious appearance, like a cat poised to pounce. “It is all he exists for,” she said. “Inventions and confessions. He thinks he sees truth in them. Don’t you see that he’s such a fool, Vincent?”

“No. I think he’s a very intelligent and sympathetic man. I like him very much.”

“And do you want him to have the same opinion of you?”

“I’d like him to, yes.”

“Then you must produce some of your own for him. It will please him.”

“Some of my own what?”

“Confessions.”

While I tried to think of a reply she stood clinging to the netting and staring down upon the prone and vulnerable world, a lovely, jailed predator. Becoming suddenly conscious of the inappropriate length of the silence, I said rather harshly, “What should I confess to him?”

She half turned toward me, laughing. “Why, Vincent, how should I know? If you have nothing that you believe in to confess, invent something for him, as I do.”

“What good would that do?” I asked.

“None at all. Except that you would both feel rather pleased. You would feel that you had done the right thing, and be quite proud about it, I suppose.” She turned to face me fully, sitting on the sill and leaning back against the wire netting, her eyes becoming somber. “There is no telling what he will prescribe—a long trip, or a change of jobs, perhaps. But no matter what it is, I can tell you from my own experience that it will not cure what possesses you.”

With my resolution very little improved by this exchange, I knocked a few minutes later at the door of Dr. Lavrier’s office. I saw that Bea had informed him of the subject of my interview, for he had Lilith’s clinical records spread out on his desk, along with a sheaf of therapists’ reports, among which I recognized several in my own handwriting.

“Bea says you want to talk about Lilith,” he said. “She wants to go to some event outside, is that it?”

“Yes. A tournament. There’s one at Kingston next week, and I promised her I’d ask about it.”

“Did you suggest it yourself?” he asked.

“We were talking about horses the other day, and she said she liked them. When I mentioned the tournaments she said right away that she’d love to go to one. She seemed quite excited about it.”

“I see.” He began sorting out the stack of reports that I had made on Lilith, glancing through them rapidly while he spoke to me. “You’ve had extraordinary success with her. I’m pleased to see it. I don’t see any mention of hostility here anywhere. Doesn’t she ever express any?”

“That’s why I wanted to talk to you,” I said. “Those reports aren’t always very accurate. That is, they’re factual, but they don’t express what actually happens: the atmosphere of the relationship, if you know what I mean.”

“Yes. And you feel that the atmosphere of your relationship is different from what these reports indicate? Are you disturbed about it?”