William Styron: The Collected Novels: Lie Down in Darkness, Set This House on Fire, The Confessions of Nat Turner, and Sophie's Choice (57 page)

did
say that: it’s not any guilt you feel about your sister, it’s something else and apart from that. When I let Maudie fall I saw the bruise come greenish blue with tiny broken veins, but she didn’t cry much. Once Bunny and I went for a walk with Maudie and we got into an argument about birds: it was a thrush, I told him, and he said a mockingbird: it was dead and its eyes were closed, a boy had shot it with a BB gun and Maudie picked it up and stroked its wings. Strassman said I was confused and insincere; you are dangerously abstracted but what was this about birds? He was interested; I wouldn’t tell him. I walked up the avenue; shadows slanted eastward from the buildings and within these shadows I walked, holding the clock and bag close to my breast. “Did you hear about the bomb?” some boy said, and he ran off shrieking into a cafe where the old Italian, palsied and pale, sold lemon ice. We drank espresso in there each Sunday night; there was no clock then, or need for one: the walls were bare, the chairs were made of wire, and Harry spoke Dante in English: now hearken how much love did honor her (looking into my eyes) I myself saw him in his proper form, bending over the motionless, sweet dead, and often gazing into heaven for there the love now sits which (when her life was warm) dwelt with the joyful beauty that is fled. Blessed Beatrice. And I said, “A prophecy?” And he took my hand and the Italian came up to wipe off the spilled espresso with a palsied hand, and Harry said, “You will never die, you are the love that moves the sun and other stars.” I thought of death and slumber, and I took my hand away from his and thought I heard behind the walls the serene, peaceful rustling of flightless wings. Why did Harry come to say I couldn’t love? He should know about my clock; I walked into the awninged shadow of the cafe and took it out of my handbag, holding it up in the light. “Why you lookin’ at that clock?” said the little boy. His face was potty with soot, streaked with moist yellow from the lemon ice. “Because I just bought it,” I said, “and it’s beautiful.” “How much did it cost ya?” “Thirty-nine ninety-five,” I said, “federal tax included.” “Where’d ya get it?” he asked. “At Macy’s,” I said. “My ma——” he said, but I wasn’t listening: the light didn’t seem to come properly through the hole. Perhaps it would get dark after all in there, like day and night, the alternating light and blackness: we’d see dusk and dawning, too, sprawled out drowsing on the springs, darkness blacker than the blackest carbon around us, and stir and dream and touch hands across the constant, clicking, oscillating wheels. At night there’d be no light; because of this the flutter of the wheels would seem louder, more comforting, lulling us to sleep: the dawn would fill it with red sunlight and an azure sky and Harry would kiss me awake. Maybe we’d have babies there: he said, “In your state you not only don’t want the natural things in life; you deny them completely. All right then, we won’t have children,” but I thought I was anyway and when I went to that doctor on Sutton Place he stuck a tube with a warm light up inside me. He was a Hungarian, and when I squirmed because the tube made me feel hot he said, “Does it teekle? Dot’s allride, only pwobing,” and he probed some more and I got so hot I could hardly stand it, looking at the powdered Hungarian face and flicking mustache and insolent, thoroughbred flesh: then the birds all rustled in the sand, their legs unhinged, necks craning, round, unblinking, incurious eyes and I lay down somewhere in the desert topography of my mind, only it was his couch, and he was holding my hand while I trembled in dread and guilt, and said, “Dot’s allride, dawn be ashamed, it’s a naughty leetle instrument.” I put the clock back in my bag, horizontal now, beneath a green silk handkerchief. From under the subway grating came a puff of smoke, sulphurous, scorched, inexplicable. I thought: Something is dying. And I watched the smoke come up and the little boy scuttled away through the fumes, dropping ice behind him in a lemon spatter. Far off some chimes tolled, reminding me of home, but I knew I must never think of that. I walked on up the avenue, looking downward and scuffing my heels, in a way thinking of nothing—this was very hard. There were seagulls in the air, and through the heat, the smell of sea; I saw the gulls winging southward toward the river: one had a fish in its mouth which fell; the gulls flew on. I was thirsty and I thought of going into a bar: then I was more than thirsty and I knew that I would dearly love to drink more than one. Even though: if I drink more than one I will be drowning again, here in the heat, and the heat and what I’ve drunk will not sweep over me thunderously, like a seawave, but will immerse me gently, dreadfully into the drowning day, like an octopus in a tank. So I thought very strongly
I must not, I must not,
to avoid the drowning feeling and also because of Harry: he must see me as I am, sober, gay, respectable and lovely. And
I must not,
I thought, passing the theater: inside 20° cooler, said a blue banner with icebergs, while the cashier, cozy in her air-conditioned box office, gazed at the heat in a chilled reverie, like an orchid inside a florist’s icebox.
I must not,
but the sign said BAR and I pulled open the door. Two colored boys came out carrying a wooden plank; I could hear hammering inside and I passed the colored boys, stepping aside: “Dat man he always want me to go runnin’ around in de midday sun,” said one: he had a smile and a mustache, the color of his skin. I could smell him, sour like wild onions growing in the shade: I wanted to touch him. She always said I must never call them ladies, but women, and when Bunny and I drove the laundry over to La Ruth’s, chickens pecked around in the twilight dust and I smelled that smell inside, looking at the chromos: they had blue skin, I thought how strange they’d have pictures taken. The door swung back, another one opened, and I was in the bar, not 20° cooler but 30° or 40°, and I sneezed, the sweat fading off my back. The bar was almost empty. I shivered in the cold, sneezed again, and the bartender, with a trout’s face, said nothing, wiping the bar. “A dry martini, please,” I said. I sat down on a red leather stool, which wobbled. They were hammering in the rear somewhere; I could smell gin. The radio was on about the bomb but I didn’t listen, thought they’d play music maybe
Schlage doch, gewünschte Stunde,
when the voice goes up and up tragically as a night without stars: thus Harry and I—and I felt the clock in my purse, ran over its form in my lap touching, with my fingers, the necessary buttons and levers to operate. And I thought: Could we not get one wound up forever? Suppose as we soared dozing across the springs the wheels, the cogs and levers, all these should give way, run down; then our womb would fall, we’d hear the fatal quiet, the dreadful flutter and lurch earthward instead of the fine ascent. Then I looked at my face in the quivering martini, and then a soldier came up and sat down beside me: no drowning, I thought, that was for the old days. And he said, “Ain’t I seen you around here before? Don’t you live near Prince? I think I seen you around here before.” He was dark and handsome but when he opened his mouth his teeth were rotten and he smelled of garlic: I was trying to think, I didn’t answer, looking at him in the mirror. The first sip made something happen: it rose up in my womb. When I was a little girl I thought it was diarrhea and she said read that in the Kotex box. Then I went out and sat on the porch with Maudie and looked at the bay, thinking about dying. He said: “Ain’t I seen you around?” I turned and said, “Yes, I live right down the avenue.” “Where you from? You sound like you came from down South. I was stationed at Fort Bragg. That’s in North Carolina.” “No,” I said, “I’m English. I’m from the southern part of England. Dorset, to be exact.” “You sound like you had one of those accents. Just a little bit.” He put his hand on the bar; he had dirt under his nails, I wondered how he could be in the Army with such teeth. I said, “No, it’s an English accent.” “You cold?” he said, “you’re shiverin’. You want to wear my jacket?” “No thank you,” I said, “I’m perfectly comfortable.” I drank more of the martini, feeling water come up beyond my eyes: no, I thought, no. “Ain’t I seen you around with Tony wat’s his name? Cecchino? Me and Tony went to P.S. 2——” But I said, “No,” turning to him, “no,” I said, “I don’t know any Tony Cecchino. I’m just a stranger. I’m from Dorset in England and I’m visiting with my aunt and uncle the Lacorazzas.” “You don’t look Italian,” he said. “You look more like you was from Ireland maybe or Germany.” “I’m from Tuscany,” I said, “they have light complexions there. I was from Perugia and then when I was four my parents moved to Dorset in England.” “Perugia ain’t in Tuscany,” he said, “besides Lacorazza, that’s Sicilian.” “Oh, pooh,” I said, turning away, “the little you know.” He put his hand on mine, but I drew it away. “Don’t gimme a tough time, baby,” he said nicely, “ain’t I really seen you with Tony Cecchino? You know Tony.” But that seemed to be all again: the water came up, and a rustle of wings. For a moment I couldn’t think. What? And when? Perhaps he could see my fingers shake and God, I thought, don’t let me suffer so: they came so serenely across the darkening sand, my poor wingless ones; how could they bear to ruin this day? They rustled behind the walls, staid and unhurried, with plumes useless as hair. I trembled, thinking
no, no
and there were words unsaid which I’d tried not to say or think all day:
and will he not come again? and will he not come again?
no, no, he is dead. There was confusion. But all I could say was, “No. No Tony. I don’t know any Tony.” But Bunny wasn’t dead! A rustle of wingless feathers, flightless wings, they all pranced staidly through the gathering dusk: “How can you be this way, Peyton?” he’d said to me. “Don’t you see what you’re doing to us? Don’t you see? What do you want me to do? I’m not your handmaiden. This is co-operation, not your dependence versus my so-called stalwart, solacing strength. Sometimes I think you’re as nutty as the so-called fruitcake.” What did I
mean
by saying he goosed that girl, that’s what he said. And I just couldn’t bear it, having first this: at Albert Berger’s we were drunk and I felt drowning in the summer night, and Albert Berger snuffled, wiping his glasses, saying Ernst Haeckel, have you never read him, pretty one; beside him Spencer is an ass, a coward and a midget: who else but old Ernst knew the absolute—God is a prayer automaton, a gaseous vertebrate? I felt drowning underneath the heat and gin, yet there were chimes inside my brain and I remembered: how long, Lord, wilt Thou hide Thyself forever, shall Thy wrath burn like fire? “Remember,” I said to Albert Berger, “how short my time is.” And got up and walked through the room smoky and submarine with chattering, eyeglassed faces, to find Harry. He was kissing a refugee girl in the kitchen; her name was Marta Epstein and he had his hand on her tail and I hated all Jews. And he said Forgive. Forgive me, he said. On his knees he said it, but the chimes were still in my brain and I was drowning and I knew something was wrong on earth. Something in me that was wrong refused to forgive, and I thought forever; I said, “You did it while I was drowning, that’s what makes it so awful. I’ll never forgive you.” And I was drowning; the heat that summer was hotter even than this one, and it came up to my neck: I could have died when I saw his hand on her tail, yet not to forgive—was this not worse? He said finally, “Things that shatter you like that, well, they aren’t the things at all, it’s in you, if you hold such bitter vengeance.” And I knew he was right—“one defection so small,” as he put it—it should never have hurt so much. He was right and I hated him for his rightness; how I used it inside as a bludgeon, not to wound him so much as myself: his hands played out against her shiny black satin ass, I could see the hair on his knuckles sprung out tense like whiskers on a butterfly, and those fingers lay on my mind night and day. If I just hadn’t been drowning I wouldn’t have hated, I would have forgiven, but the heat and the gin: later I even kissed a sleepy-looking drunk while Harry watched, though he was queer, I think; we both were blind from drinking and I stuck my tongue in his mouth, I think. That was what had me in the bar—not Marta Epstein but the drowning. I couldn’t think and the soldier said, “What’s the matter, baby?” but the feathers were rustling once more, and the long feet scuffing the sand placidly, carelessly: I couldn’t think, only remember, and I remembered when I lay down in Darien with Earl Sanders we stretched out naked on the terrace; we talked about Dorothy Sayers and we had a quart jar full of mint juleps: then he didn’t wait until I was ready, and hurt me, and it was the first time I saw the birds, alive, apart from dreams, crowding stiffly like feather dusters across the lawn beneath the maple trees. I shut my eyes to close out the ugly Connecticut sun and I knew I was paying Harry back for his defection so small, I drowned on the terrace and when I slept afterwards I dreamt of drowning too. Now I had signaled, one forefinger outstretched wiggling, and the bartender brought me another martini. “Let me pay, kid,” said the soldier, breathing garlic. “No, thank you,” I said. “Aw, come on … tell us your name, kid,” he said. “My name is Mary,” I said, “Mary Ricci.” “Glad to know you, Mary.” “The same,” I said. “My name is Mickey Pavone.” “Glad to meet you, Mickey,” I said. “Where you goin’ tonight?” he said. “I’ve got to go meet Harry,” I answered. The martini hurt my teeth; somewhere hammers were knocking and plaster slid down between the walls. I was beginning to drown some: the water not so much within me as if swallowed, but around me, not touching me, with the shimmering quality of vagrant but surrounding thick light. It seemed to lap at the windows, the mirror, making the air opalescent and somehow milky; yet it was not this water which threatened me so but my own mind: the water remained, like the birds, detached and even aloof, upon the boundaries of my consciousness a submarine wall persistent, but without menace: I wanted to not think about it. “I’ve
got
to go meet Harry,” I said, as if he’d kept on asking me the question, which he hadn’t. “I’ve
got
to go meet Harry.” “O.K., baby, I believe you, take it easy. Who’s Harry?” “Harry’s my brother,” I said, “Harry Ricci.” “Yeah? You got a brother?” “Yes, I have three.” “I got five,” the soldier said. “What does he do?” “He’s from Philadelphia. He’s very rich. He’s a stockbroker.” “I once lived in Philadelphia,” the soldier said, “it’s a dead dump, you know. I lived in Darby. What part of Philly does this Harry live?” “In Shaker Heights,” I said, and thought