William Styron: The Collected Novels: Lie Down in Darkness, Set This House on Fire, The Confessions of Nat Turner, and Sophie's Choice (36 page)

They sat across from her on the sun porch, in the shoddy chairs. The place had not even the virtue of a gentle light; it seemed perfectly suited to weariness and waiting. Two bulbs behind scorched lampshades cast a bald white incandescence through the room; the lamps were set too high, with a studied and unerring miscalculation, and the light they shed denuded the room of all its comforting shadows, like the lights in courtrooms and bus stations or any place oppressive and temporary. In the hallway outside, nurses passed noisily, carrying away the supper trays. Here all three of them puffed on cigarettes; smoke floated in oily blue coils around the room. There was one ashtray, which Helen, standing at her vantage point by the door, kept to herself, and soon beneath the chairs lay a litter of smashed butts, some red from the paint on Peyton’s lips.

“Love,” said Helen in a quiet tone, scornfully, “love!” Her voice rose on the last word and she paused, staring at them violently. Neither of them returned her gaze. “Love!” she repeated haughtily. “Neither of you will ever know what that means!”

She sat down with a sort of swift, rustling fierceness, propped up rigid and tense and exact on the edge of the couch. “Now it’s not the waiting that hurts so,” she said more softly. “That I could stand. I have waited all my life, it seems, for things to happen, for things to come that never came, for one word, I guess, just one single solitary word to tell me that all this lonesomeness wasn’t in vain—that my afternoons of waiting and silence and misery didn’t add up to an eternity after all. One word and I’d be saved, a word that I could have said as well as you, it didn’t matter, so long as we both understood: ‘love’ or ‘forgive’ or even ‘darling,’ it made no difference. One single word. If you only knew my waiting, all waits would seem to you like one minute, do you understand? But you don’t know what love is—or waiting, either.

“So I could stand the wait all afternoon. I could stand the waiting. It was this other thing that mattered. All afternoon I sat right here where I am now, looking out at the hills. You never came, nobody came, but please don’t think I suffered over that: the waiting I can stand. Nobody came. … Yes. The doctor came. He’s a fine, nice man. It was miliary T.B., he said. I guess he saw I was alone, and he’d come and talk to me, pretending to be sociable, but that wasn’t his real intention. He told me finally, very gently: that she probably wouldn’t pull through—a day or two more or something like that—but never fear, there was always a chance. That gave me some strength. I sat here watching the light come down. Oh, what a dark day. I said to myself, be strong. That’s what I said. I said, even if they don’t know, well, Maudie knows, and that’s enough. She knows! Want me to tell you about her, my dears?” She paused for a moment to gaze at them.

They looked back at her now with pity, with a sort of horrified tolerance, but with anguish, too, and guilt. And as if to reassure each other, they took each other’s hand, conscious only of the moment’s accusing silence and the treacherous, pervasive hospital fumes, in each corner confounding disease and decay. Suddenly Loftis blinked. His bandage had slipped down over his eye; with shaking fingers he reached up to adjust it. Past the door a colored orderly toiled, pushing a cartful of spoons; somewhere far-off, water trickled, murmurous, liquid, unceasing. Helen shifted a little on the couch, without lowering her gaze brought one finger up to the side of her nose in a quizzical, humorous gesture, but unconsciously, and then pointed a hand at them. Then suddenly she let her hand fall. Her eyes became gentle.

In a tender, reminiscent voice, she told them.

“Listen—I remember my afternoons … listen …”

In the summer they’d sit together on the porch, she and Maudie, watching the ships and the clouds and the bumblebees in the hollyhocks buzzing about, flying from light to shade. She’d sit and knit or read and Maudie would stay beside her, looking at the picture books. There would be a breeze from the bay, and clouds: they’d come over across the beach, edges dead-white, melting, with rain like dark stuff inside, traveling very low, and soundlessly bend the tops of the willows, trailing huge shadows across the lawn beneath; the wind would rustle Maudie’s hair, the picture book and her hair, too. Then there’d be a sort of whisper and the wind would cease, the pages would stop fluttering and the sun return and make the lawn smell like grass again, very hot. They’d drink iced tea, Ella would bring it to them. They’d hear the screen door slam, Ella’s feet limping on the gravel, to scrape then across the porch and finally stop behind them. Ella would lean down and stroke Maudie’s arm, then put the glass in her hand and say something gentle to her, and leave. Helen and Maudie would be alone again.

Sometimes gulls would come over and Maudie would point to them and lift up her arms. Sometimes Helen would tell her about the battleships and freighters: they were anchored far out, and while they watched them the wind would change, the tide sometimes, and the ships would turn all facing the house, so thin against the horizon that they almost disappeared. Smoke hung above Norfolk; sailboats tilted against the wind: sometimes their hulls couldn’t be seen, only the sails, so they looked like scraps of cloth being blown above the waves by something invisible.

Helen would tell her about Pocahontas and Captain John Smith, telling the mind of an infant, hardly even that, stories about people who hardly even existed. Were they still here, still alive? Maudie wanted to know. Helen would say, “Yes,” because they were her friends: friends never died but always lived, and would live in her silent heart forever. She’d tell her of the ships coming past the house years ago, the Indian forest, and of the pagan who saved the Christian soul from sacrifice. Wasn’t that nice, Maudie would say. Were they still here, she’d ask; where were they now, Mamadear? She’d say, “Out there, darling, now close your eyes and think and they’ll return.” And so they’d close their eyes, thinking; then Helen would squeeze her hand and they’d both look at the bay. So too, to Helen it would seem that all had changed: soon Maudie would say, “Yes, Mamadear, I see them,” and below the scudding clouds it appeared that each stake and boat and scrap of sail had been swallowed up by the waves. The towns around the shore had gone; forests grew to the beaches. On the sand bars stood windswept trees. Even the house had vanished: from where the terrace had once stood they were peering through a sunny canebrake where insects darted and hummed; there was marshland beneath their feet.

Silence was everywhere: Ella, sounds in the kitchen, hammering from the barracks, the noise of bumblebees—all these had disappeared and they were sitting alone and quiet in the canebrake, waiting, hardly breathing. Sunlight streamed down endlessly; it seemed to come from another land.

Presently Helen said, “Look, Maudie, there they are,” and they saw them: two ships, galleons with great pink sails. Then she said, “Listen, Maudie.” They listened, heard high above like pipes the shrilling of a thousand gulls. She said, “Do you see them, Maudie?”

“Yes, Mamadear.”

Then they looked through the canebrake and saw the sails dip and belly and pass on toward the river, twin flares of pink against the sky: no cities beyond, no smoke at all, no voices, only these passing galleons and the swell and dip of sails; they went away. They closed their eyes again, and she squeezed Maudie’s hand. They looked up. “Yes, Mamadear,” she said. Everything was as it had always been. Then they’d go to sleep.

Men were building the barracks next door. All summer long, and in the fall, they’d hear hammering and banging in the field. At first they could see the workers, but then the mimosas bloomed; it was hard to see. In the beginning those people didn’t have any water, and Helen had Ella take them some every afternoon in a pail. They were rough men who talked loudly, profanely: they had tanned faces and muddy shoes; in the afternoons they could hear their swearwords and Maudie asked her what it was they said. She said, “Hush, Maudie dear, that’s not for you.”

So they’d sit and watch and listen. Ella would go out at three, carrying her pail. From the porch they’d watch her limp off across the lawn, slopping water over, with one hand shooing flies from her hair. Beneath the mimosas the men would flock like cows, leaning over the fence; Ella had a paper cup for each of them. After they had drunk Ella would bring back the empty pail. One day Maudie said, “Mamadear, can I take the water, too?” Helen said, “Yes, darling, if you’re careful. If you go with Ella.”

The summer passed. The leaves began to turn and all along the fence the mimosas bloomed; the bumblebees still buzzed around the flowers. Each afternoon Helen would watch them walk across the lawn together very slowly, Ella carrying the pail, Maudie the paper cups. Both of them hobbling along: it was, Helen recollected, a sight in this world to watch. Soon they’d disappear behind the trees and she’d look away and go back to her knitting or reading, thinking of the strange things that made Maudie happy.

Helen paused in her story.

“If you knew,” she said. “If either of you knew just what tiny little things …” Her voice trailed off. No one spoke. In the silence she turned toward the window, her eyes musing steadily upon the darkness, upon remembered sunlight, remembered leaves, something: they didn’t know. A smile came to her lips but vanished, and she turned again, pointing at them.

She said something about a man named Bennie. His name was Bennie. At least Maudie called him Bennie. Helen saw him only once. Sometimes they were gone for a long time, Maudie and Ella. She’d sit and watch and listen, waiting for them to return. Perhaps they’d be gone for half an hour. Helen would fidget a little and worry, smelling steam from the kitchen. Finally she’d get up and walk across the lawn to the path through the garden. Right here the mimosas were in bloom; she’d stoop down and pick up the leaves which had fallen in the flower bed, calling at first, “Ella, Ella.” Then, “Ella, Ella,” she’d say more loudly, “Ella, you’d better bring Maudie back; she’s been standing up too long.” Then she’d hear a man laughing, and Maudie’s voice and Ella’s and Maudie’s again: “Good-by, good-by,” she’d say, and the two of them would come stumbling with a crashing noise out of the bushes, like those wild animals in the movies, both of them laughing and giggling. And she’d hear Ella say, “Dat man sho’ is some man,” in a marveling voice.

Then, with Ella helping her, Maudie would come up to Helen, her face red from giggling, and repeat just what Ella had said: “Mamadear, that man is sure some man.”

“What man is that?” Helen would ask.

“That man in there with magic,” Maudie would say.

“That’s nice,” she’d say. “What’s his name, darling?”

“Bennie,” she’d answer.

Helen saw him only once. He was a thin little man of maybe forty, with a sad, dark, pock-marked face and black hair raked straight back from his forehead. He wore a red silk shirt and Ella told her he was part colored, part Indian: she could tell. Now each afternoon when they’d sit on the terrace she could hardly make Maudie rest long enough. She’d talk to her, tell her stories, but Maudie would stir and move about and ask her if it was three. Now it was always Bennie. So they’d go at three, Maudie and Ella carrying the bucket and the cups, and Helen would sit and wait as she had before. She was alone then. Maudie was happy. Stronger. The telephone rang, but Helen never answered it. Who, she asked herself, wants to talk to silly women with their silly games? Her life had been prudent and dark. She’d sit alone watching the clouds and the children yards out in the bay, wading, digging up clams.

So, as she said, she saw him only once, which was enough; along with him Maudie would always be remembered. Who would think that she whose lips had been so dark and prudent would not be one to die of pure anguish when she saw this thing, or not grind her teeth and beat her head against the trees? No, it was the other way around. Helen guessed Maudie knew what love was, which (and here she pointed at them again) was more than they would know in a lifetime of looking. Maudie
won,
she said, and thank God dying would be no more fearsome for her than going to sleep.

She supposed she should have been more careful, but she didn’t know. After a while most of the workmen left, the barracks were up, and some of the soldiers moved in. But Maudie and Ella still carried water over, though no one needed water anymore: it was a kind of game with them after that, foolish and absurd, she thought, but so much fun for them that she didn’t care. Often Ella would leave and come back alone, and Helen would say, “Ella, you’d better stay and watch,” but Ella would wink and grin and say that it was all right, she’d go fetch her in a minute.

Once Helen waited for a long time. It looked like rain. She began to be worried. Across the bay the rain was coming down in gray wet sheets and the sailboats raced in to shore. The gulls were flying high above and over the land. She could hear the awning flapping; a piece of tarpaper tumbled end over end across the lawn; through the trees she could see the soldiers racing for shelter, eyes slanted back toward the sky. She got up and stood there for a moment, calling out.

“Maudie, Maudie,” she cried, “come on back now; it’s time, it’s time,” but there wasn’t any answer.

She went down the steps and across the lawn through the flower bed, and stood beneath the mimosa trees. The wind was blowing hard, but there was no thunder. The blossoms on the trees were flung out pink and green like jungle birds about to fly. Finally they let go, whirling upward, and disappeared. She called again, “Maudie, Maudie,” against the wind, but there was still no answer. She went to the mimosas, picking her way among the vines, the lilies that grew there, pushing away branches. The earth was spongy here; it smelled damp, and it was dark. She walked a little way down the fence until she finally saw them; then she stood behind a tree, watching.

He was doing tricks for her. He stood on the other side of the fence, a short ugly little man with a puny pock-marked face and black raked-back hair fluttering violently in the wind. His arms were raised above his head, skinny and straight and motionless like a man supplicating heaven and the sky; he made no sound, he didn’t smile, only his fingers moved: swiftly they clenched and unclenched; gay blue balls appeared in his palms, seemed to dance there for a moment, and just as quickly disappeared.