William Styron: The Collected Novels: Lie Down in Darkness, Set This House on Fire, The Confessions of Nat Turner, and Sophie's Choice (59 page)

happened
to you?” Yet he didn’t understand about my sudden drowning, these birds, I never told him about them. Harry didn’t know about the birds, or how I felt about Marta Epstein, his defection so small: couldn’t he forgive me for not forgiving him, and for what I’d done? Couldn’t he understand how I suffered over my own hatred, and in my own despair? He could never see that or anything: or when I lay down in Darien with Earl Sanders once we were standing up, in the shower stall, and then the wings and feathers all crowded through the yellow translucent curtain: so I slumped down against him in the pelting spray and I thought oh Harry, I thought
oh my flesh!
I thought poor thing that hungers, poor inch of God, poor man. The cramp went away. I stood up straight from the lamp post, then I took my bag and walked on down the street. The light had sunk more behind the housetops and people were sunning themselves in doorways, slow-stirring and torpid like dozing cats; I wanted another martini but at Lennie’s building I forgot about it. My heart was pounding so. I paused. A woman shook a blanket above, in a thicket of fire escapes, sending down a dust storm, and a baby howled somewhere; the street was deserted mostly and peaceful: I knew I mustn’t think of home. I went into the hallway and pressed the button, heard the bell ring above; it was so quiet here, like a distant telephone chiming in your sleep—once and twice and one more time: on the avenue trucks passed mumbling, and a bus, I could hear it: the hiss of an opening door, another hiss as it closed, and the motor’s labored, ascending roar, fading away. On the avenue; then I was on the bus myself, packed in sweltering among all the shoppers, smelling the fumes, the sweat-stained leather seats, borne uptown and away from all this misery and my pounding heart, with a throttled, hushing roar. Only now, the bell rang five times at least, I was still in the hallway, sweat streaming down my face, and alone. I rang once more but no one answered. And I thought: oh Harry. And sat down on the ledge by the door and took the clock from the bag, but no: then I felt that I was humoring myself, like a child: too much of a good thing was bad, even my clock, so I refused—refused to think even of this the consoling cool darkness and the ceaselessly moving wheels. That I’d save for Harry. But Harry. Oh Harry.
And will he not come again?
I put the clock back in my bag, feeling it from outside, all the levers and buttons to operate. There was a patter of feet outside the door, a flurry of heels, two puffs of light on tossing hair, and a woman’s voice: “Children … come back … Dorothy … Tommy … come back … children … come back … come back.” I sat there quietly, hardly moving, and I thought as surely as my lost love: oh God, I must die today, but will I not rise again at another time and stand on the earth clean and incorruptible? I tried to pray without weeping but when I prayed I wept, for I couldn’t tell what or whom I was praying to. I said there is no God. God is a gaseous vertebrate and how could I pray to something that looks like a jellyfish? So I stopped praying and took a paper napkin out of my purse and dried my tears; I would be a good girl, like Bunny always said: once in school we had a play and I was the Spirit of Light and I had a silver gown on that you could almost see through, then he took me in his lap and when I jumped up I saw his face: it was red and tense like a baby’s when it goes off in its diapers. You must be a good girl, honey; don’t mind what I do, don’t mind what she says. Just remember what Grandmother said, there’ll be pie in the sky for them that keep their pants on: it’s what he said she said, and once Bunny and I went sailing, I trailed seaweed in my hand watching crabs scuttle in the shallows: then she spanked me with a hairbrush or something. It was all very confused, but she spanked me because I made Bunny cut my lovely hair short, like Marlene Dietrich, and then we went sailing, my hands filled with bubbles, periwinkles, and I thought of Grandmother with snuff beneath her lip.
Schlage doch, gewünschte Stunde.
The children had returned: they came back past the door and dragged their heels, looking solemn. The boy had a toy tin watering can; scowling handsomely, he carried it beneath his arm. Outside pigeons whirled giddily in the sunshine, and a garbage truck came by with a clatter. I couldn’t think what to do. I tried to pray: lighten my darkness, I beseech you, oh Lord, and make me clean and pure and without sin; God, give me my Harry back, then, Harry, give me my God back, for somewhere I’ve lost my way: make me as I was when I was a child when we walked along the sand and picked up shells. Amen. Then I opened my eyes, and then I saw the note: a folded-up piece of paper hanging out of the mailbox. It said “Laura,” and I opened it, read in Lennie’s scribble: “Gone to A. Berger’s for what we don’t know except we’re bored. Harry says if P. comes to tell her he’s gone to Peru love and kisses.” I read it three times, just to make sure: my salvation. At least I knew exactly where to look. I refolded the note carefully and stuck it back in the slit in the mailbox, and the door slammed: in came Tommy Givings in tweeds, with his pipe, with kindly blue eyes, a very parfit gentil Hingleshman. “I say, what are you up to, Peyton?” he said. “I’m reading a note,” I said, “I mean I was reading a note.” He had a bald spot, over it he smoothed back nervously a twist of kinky gray hair; expatriate like myself, a happy scholar gypsy. “Dear gull, what’s the matter? You look like you’ve been having trouble.” “Nothing,” I said, “I was just reading the note.” “Ayess, I see.” He chewed on his pipestem, looking at me gravely. “I was hunting for Harry, but he’s gone out,” I said. “Ayess.” He pulled out a huge linen handkerchief. “Now you have smut all over your face. All amongst the tears. Tommy wipe.” He wiped my face, humming some tune, smelling of tobacco. “There now. How’s about a drinkie up at my place? You can wait for Harry boy there.” “No, thank you, Tommy,” I said. “I’ve got to go right now over to find him. He’s gone out with Lennie.” “Dear gull, do you think you’d better? You look all whacked, you know. What on earth have you been doing? Now come on with me——” “No,” I said, “thank you, Tommy. I’ve got to go find him.” I backed down the hall past the mailboxes, holding the bag at my breast, watching him: the pipe in his hand now, eyebrows up, and a smile on his lips, perplexed and concerned. He put out a bony hand. “Dear gull——” but I pulled open the door and went out into the street. Heat smoldered in the air like a living flame. The children had gone, and the mother. Pigeons clucked and rustled on the rooftops. A little old Italian staggered past, perishing beneath the load of an armchair, groaning, sweating; far down the street a hydrant burst in a fountain of silver water, and three boys in shorts scampered in and out, and darted and retreated like slick brown bees toward a silver blossom. Shrill cries in the air, and a plane muttered overhead, but the rest of the street was silent. A taxi came slowly by, I stuck out my hand. He opened the door for me, reaching back with his arm, and I said, “Forty, Washington Mews.” I put the bag down beside me on the seat, kept my fingers on it. His name was Stanley Kosicki,
6808
behind the dust-smeared glass, and he said, “The man on the radio says that bomb’ll finish up the war inna hurry.” I didn’t answer. I took out my compact and put powder on the tear-streaks, then painted my lips. “I was in World War One. In France. Argonne, Belleau Wood, Shadow Terry. You know how many times I was wounded? Take a guess.” “I don’t know,” I said. “How many times?” “Take a guess,” he said. “Oh,” I said, “three times.” I looked out the window; we were on the avenue, halted at a stoplight, and I watched those who crossed by: a Western Union boy poking along; twins in a baby stroller and their mother, drinking a Coke; a Jewish woman, fifty maybe sixty, with red pancake makeup and a lavender veil thick as a fishnet: she wore a look of anguish, and all of them, sweating, including the wilted, sun-prickled twins, were trailed by two lesbians in trousers, who loudly flaunted their tough, sad voices on the suffocating air. The light blinked green, we went on; he said, “Three times! Guess again.” “Two,” I said.
“Four times,”
he said, “more than any man in my outfit.” “That’s nice,” I said. “I seen it all,” he said, “Argonne, Belleau Wood, Shadow Terry. A buck private I started out, too. Guess what I ended up at?” “I don’t know,” I said. “Take a guess.” “Oh,” I said, “major.” Sweat oozed out in beads behind his ears, through the bristles of his gray hair.
“Major!
Guess again.” “Oh,” I said, “I don’t know. Captain?”
“Captain!
Naw. Master Sergeant. I went in buck private and I rose up higher than anybody I joined up with in my outfit.” I couldn’t think. I was tired from praying, and from weeping, too, and I was ashamed Tommy Givings had seen me: why was it when I thought of prayer I thought of home: why these two things always together, giving me grief? So for a moment thoughtless I glided up the avenue in content, cooled by the breeze, listening to the driver. He talked of Shadow Terry then, we passed Fourth Street, and I thought—it came fast as light, this thought, I surrendered—of Harry meeting me, once more, at Albert Berger’s door.
It’s me,
I’d say,
it is I, Peyton your darling, come home to the land of the living.
Well, there would be that hesitation, only natural, in which his face would darken some, he’d shake his head, but it would be only the puzzled prelude to a smile: he’d take my hand, move out into the hall.
Land of the living indeed,
picking me up and whirling me around in that way, so that my heels would go clacking against the walls.
Land of the living indeed!
Maybe we wouldn’t go back in; no, we wouldn’t go back in to Albert Berger’s and his gang of lost moral libertines, as Harry used to say. No longer the air-conditioned carpet, the dry martini, the wet Freudian soul, as Harry used to say.
Let’s get out of here, baby,
he’d say. And I’d say,
Let’s go where there’s grass.
And he’d get Lennie’s car and we’d bump through the dusk toward grass and trees and rocks—perhaps to Long Island, to his uncle’s house, or maybe Connecticut, where there was an inn we knew. Yet the clock first, in the hall. Yet again, perhaps later, in the darkness:
Darling, I bought us a present, much too expensive, it cost $39.95 but you don’t mind.
And so it would be just that way: globed from the atoms in the whirling night, among the springs and jewels and the safely operating, bright celestial wheels. Our bed transformed, a spring coiled, softer than the feathers from a dandelion, sheltered by steel from the threat of hell or anything. Yet lying. And we could hear the sound of katydids among the trees as we always did, in the pine-smelling, frog-filled Connecticut night. It happened at the inn, where Harry and I. Yet lying. And only I knew it wasn’t Harry at all, and the taxi driver, peering back at me through green sunglasses, must have heard the noise I made in my throat, for he said, “Watsa matter, lady?” only I knew it had not been Harry at all. Remembered that: when I lay down in Darien with Earl Sanders it hadn’t been Darien the second night at all, but the inn, outside Torrington, and the night was filled with the smell of pine, and the noise of katydids: then he pulled back the sheets and said, Baby, you’re good at this, and I smelled woodsmoke in the air and felt his soft, fat flesh; there was the juke box from below: To-night—
we—
LOVE (while the moon is): then in my drowning soul the birds pranced solemnly across the plain and their feathers rustled flightless in the evening, but with a noise, like the chill, fretful chatter of katydids.
How long, Lord, wilt Thou hide Thyself forever?
“Watsa matter, lady, you sick? You shakin’ like a leaf.” I looked straight into his mirrored eyes. “Remember how short my time is,” I said. “You wan’ me to stop at a drugstore? You look like you got the colic,” he said. “No, that’s all right,” I said, “I’m all right. I just don’t have much time.” He swerved past a bus and turned down Eighth Street. “Don’t you worry none,” he said, “I’ll have you there in two minutes. Flat.” He hocked something up, spat it out the window; in the fading afternoon two young men strolling along, one with an earring, both in silk verdigris pants.
Shall Thy wrath burn like fire?
I couldn’t think again, then thought flooded over me with a rustle of feathers, scraping, katydid wings: suppose. Yes. Suppose it was not like that at all, but that he should say you just go to hell. Suppose that turned out to be. Then I should never go home, south again, but always uptown like this, always north: and he shall never come again. I couldn’t help it, with Harry going: once at night at Uncle Eddie’s in the mountains, it was summer and cold and upstairs alone the katydids scared me: she closed the door, sealing me in blackness, with only my child’s fearsome conscience—the alarm clock at my bedside whirring away, bright with greenly evil, luminous dots and hands. I knew nothing about birds then, or guilt, but only my fear: that I should be borne away on the wings of katydids, their bewhiskered faces that nuzzled mine and brittly crackling claws that pinched my flesh, a hum of wings overhead carrying me outward and outward and outward into the alien northern night; more I couldn’t know—only perhaps to land among the rocks and the trembling unfriendly ferns, swooning in the darkness, serf-child to the katydids forever. So in my bed I cried but voiceless, afraid to call really (afraid of her anger), the words strangled in my throat. Instead, I covered up my head with the pillow and peered out at the clock: friend and enemy: I knew that once past my conscience, those wicked, luminous dots and hands, I would find my peace amid the consoling wheels. Yet
alas,
and I knew
alas
for it was what they said in the fairy books, I was thwarted by those evil, luminous eyes; they wouldn’t let me go into my clock, and the gathering shrill wings of the katydids scared me so that I called aloud, “Mother, Mother, Mother.” And she came in her slip, a lovely silhouette against the door. Shame on you, Peyton.
Shame. Shame. Shame. Shame.
Then the door closed and I was alone. Then Bunny came up from the party below, weaving through the furniture: I could smell the whisky and the sweat beneath his arms, he lay down in the darkness beside me and told me about the katydid circus, never be afraid. Then he went to sleep and I put my hand on his chest, and felt his heart beating and heard him snore: could there ever be a love like ours? “Now, lady, you just stick with old Stan Kosicki,” he said, “I know this city like the back of my hand,” and we had drawn up at the corner of Fifth Avenue, another stoplight. I could see the entrance to the Mews down the street, I wanted to get out now. “I’ll just get out——” I began. But he raised his hand and curled his lips, grandiose, in complete command. “Now you just wait, lady, and we’ll go right there. You look sick. Just leave it to old Stan Kosicki.” So we waited, and I tried not to think of home, but. Oh, I tried not to think that way, yet if Harry. So we waited. I looked out the window; the afternoon had grown later, yet nothing had seemed to cool. On the corner a man in droopy, stained white sold Good Humors from a cart: two little girls in sunsuits held out nickels for orange ice, and there was a woman in slacks, with a pointed, insolent face like the Afghan she held on a leash, who bought an ice-cream sandwich: she held it down to the dog and he devoured it with a greedy pink tongue. Heat-worn people, moving languidly through the afternoon, fanned themselves with newspapers; I began to get thirsty again, and I thought of home. Albert Berger had said, “Of course you suffer over that, you have revealed more than you know to me, my pretty; after all (his eyes watering), I am a student of people; it is symptomatic of that society from which you emanate that it should produce the dissolving family: