William Styron: The Collected Novels: Lie Down in Darkness, Set This House on Fire, The Confessions of Nat Turner, and Sophie's Choice (62 page)

Why
, Peyton?” “Why what, darling?” I said. “Why do you do these things? Deliberately, without the slightest twinge of guilt?
How
can you do it?” “I don’t know,” I said. “I forgot.” “So you say your Bunny’ll pay for it,” he said. “Well, somebody better had. I had to borrow from that ass Berger to cover the check. What’s the matter with you?” “I’m sorry,” I said. “It won’t happen again.” “No,” he said, and he went back to the easel. “No, it certainly won’t happen again.” Then I walked past him to the window, and the dread began to move up inside. I couldn’t think: the paradise leaves rustled ever so slightly, turning up their bleached undersides to the dying sun. A cat crawled along the fence and a woman called to it—“Toby!”—from where she stood huddled, a shawl around her shoulders, in a garden, among phlox and roses and crimson zinnias. I couldn’t think, the evening had crept part way up the walk here, and I thought I heard thunder in the distance, but it was something else, a subway train, or a truck or remote, fantastic guns. So I said without thinking then, “Come back with me, Harry.” Over my shoulder. “The three of us?” he said. “That would be cozy. We could get free milk, though. I’ll bet.” And I said, very slowly, “But don’t you see, darling? Tony is nothing, nothing at all. I’m sorry, I really am, and I’ve told you so. I was mad at you because you were right, you know. That I
was
depending on you for everything, and being a spoiled child and everything. But I was mad because that was the truth, don’t you see? And I took out my little vengeance that time you left in a huff. It was cruel to do it that way, I know, but I’m sorry——” “You’ve told me that,” he said, and I heard his voice become more tense, more angry and bitter. “Look, Peyton, I’m trying to work while I’ve got the light. Why don’t you just go?” “No, Harry,” I said, and I turned. “We could have children——” “Those tears won’t help a hell of a lot with me, baby,” he said. “We could have had children a year ago, but that was the time you said I was so unreliable that I wouldn’t know how to be a good father——” “That was the time——” I started to say. “That was the time,” he said, “when I knew the truth and told you so: you are absolutely incapable of love. Oh, to hell with it anyway.” He threw down the brush. “Now will you kindly——” he began, but I said, “Children, Harry, we could——” no sooner than saying it, than remembering again, with a rustle somewhere behind the fading plaster walls and water-stained ceiling, through the stacked-up empty picture frames, of Sightless wings. They came across the sand. Out loud I said, “Protect——” but didn’t finish, remembering that guilt, for the second time, which I had not even told Harry: the doctor, probing, the instrument, the merciless, inside twitching. “Oh, Harry,” I said, “I’m sorry for what I’ve done.” “Protect you from what?” he asked. “From milkmen, from mystery writers?” “No,” I said, sinking down on the windowsill, “from me.” He was gentler with me now. “Where did you pick up your strange code of ethics?” he said. “What’s happened to you? If I could remember you as you were once, that would be fine. At least I could keep my temper. But I don’t think I can even remember that time. When you at least had a few ideals that weren’t product of myth or fairy-book fantasy. That time when you modeled for me and I was fool enough to say to myself that a girl with a face and body as lovely as yours could never be anything but beautiful inside, too. What happened to that time, my lost lady, my blessed Beatrice——” “Don’t,” I said, “please don’t say that, darling.” “I guess I was a fool,” he went on, “with all the suspicions I had, too. Inside. I ignored them. When you’d nag and nag and nag at me for my so-called attentions to other women. Just when you were so Goddamned beautiful that it made me itch just to be in the same room with you. How could I convince you that I had no designs on some other dame, that idiot Epstein girl? I couldn’t. Well, by God I’ve had designs in the past two months. You can bet your sweet life I have. You want to know how many times I’ve got laid——” “No, Harry,” I said. “Don’t, please.” “Weep your head off,” he said. “The shoe is on the other foot. Isn’t that the metaphor?” “Yes,” I said. He was silent then, shaking a bit and playing with a brush. I tried to think as I watched him, both of us silent for no more than five seconds: couldn’t he see, couldn’t I convince him of, instead of joy, my agony when I lay down with all the other hostile men, the gin and the guilt, the feathers that rustled in the darkness, my drowning? Then I would say: oh, my Harry, my lost sweet Harry, I have not fornicated in the darkness because I wanted to but because I was punishing myself for punishing you: yet something far past dreaming or memory, and darker than either, impels me, and you do not know, for once I awoke, half-sleeping, and pulled away. “No, Bunny,” I said. That fright. I spoke: “Please don’t stay angry with me today, darling. I won’t be able to stand it. Bunny’ll pay for the clock.” “Clock, schmock,” he said. “To hell with the clock. It’s paid for. What I want to know is do I still have to pay the rent for you and Tony?” “No,” I said. “No, don’t talk like that.” “I don’t like to talk like that,” he said. “I’d much rather talk about other things. I’d like to sit around like I think I remember we used to and talk about color and form and El Greco or even just which drugstore sold the best ice cream. Like we used to. Blessed Beatrice——” “Don’t,” I said. He went on, “There are a lot of things I’d like to talk about. Do you realize what the world’s come to? Do you realize that the great American commonwealth just snuffed out one hundred thousand innocent lives this week? There was a time, you know, when I thought for some reason—maybe just to preserve your incomparable beauty—that I could spend my life catering to your needs, endure your suspicions and your mistrusts and all the rest, plus having to see you get laid in a fit of pique. I have other things to do. Remember that line you used to quote from the Bible, How long, Lord? or something——” “Remember how short my time is,” I said. “Yes,” he said. “Well, that’s the way I feel. With your help I used to think I could go a long way, but you didn’t help me. Now I’m on it alone. I don’t know what good it’ll do anyone but me, but I want to paint and paint and paint because I think that some agony is upon us. Call me a disillusioned innocent, a renegade Red, or whatever, I want to crush in my hands all that agony and make beauty come out, because that’s all that’s left, and I don’t have much time——” “I’ll help you,” I said. “Oh, Harry, I’ll help you.” “Balls,” he said. “If this had been the first time, maybe so; I’d still be a fool. But it’s not, it’s the fourth or fifth or sixth; I’ve lost track.” “It’s a beautiful picture,” I said. In the dim light the tragic face still looked heavenward, amid the junk and the rubble, through the final, extinguishing dusk, proud and unafraid, my Harry. Who knows our last end, thrown from the hub of the universe into the dark, into everlasting space: once he said we are small blind sea things pitched up wriggling on the rock of life to await the final engulfing wave, yet my Harry: who can tell the eyes of man gazing ceaselessly upward toward his own ascending spirit? “It’s got belief,” I said, “or something. It’s got——” “It’s time for belief,” he said. “Don’t you think? You should know.” “Yes,” I said, “once I had belief. When we walked along the sand and picked up shells.” “Who?” he said, “you and Sanders in the cabaña. At Rye?” “No,” I said, “Bunny and I.” “You and your bloody father,” he said. “Yes,” I said, not thinking all this time. Then I said this: “I wish you’d take the clock. Even if you bought it. Inside there—did you know?” I took him by the sleeve and drew him closer, smelling the sweat and the paint, the blessed flesh. “Look here,” I said, and I pointed toward the alarm hole. “Look, you know? You know what? We could get inside and float merrily along.” I laughed then
, very loudly, not knowing why. “Harry and I among the springs and wheels. It’d be so safe there, to float around and around on the mainspring. The man said there were jewels in there, too, fifteen of them. Wouldn’t it be glorious, Harry, to——” But I felt his hand on my arm then, gripping it tightly; he said, “Peyton, don’t say any more. What’s the matter, honey? Look, there’s something really wrong with you. You’re trembling all over.” “Yes,” I said, “the clock——” Only, “Sit down,” he said. “Sit down here and wait a minute.” And he pushed me down in the chair. “Marshall has some phenobarb around somewhere. Wait a minute——” He started to move away, but I took him by the hand. “No,” I said, “that’s all right, darling, I’ll be all right. I was just afraid.” “Of what?” he said. “I don’t know,” I said. “Have you been taking dope?” he said. “No,” I said, “that’s one vice I haven’t mastered.” “Well, you just rest for a minute,” he said. Then he said, “Awful, awful, awful!” his voice behind me loud and anguished, his worried pacing heels, too, on the floor that creaked: I sat trembling and with a cramp now and the pain rising inside to claw aside every organ, kidneys and stomach and whatever else, and I bent over suddenly, watching the light deepen, turn purple outside above some shingled water tower, the furious pigeons wheeling around: far off there was the sound of thunder, or of guns. “Awful,” he said. “What?” I said. The pain receded, went away. “What’s happened to us,” he said. “That’s what’s awful. That’s what.” “I should see Strassman,” I said. “I think so,” he said. “Why don’t you let Lennie take you over again? On Monday.” “That’ll be too late,” I said. “What?” he said. He sat down and took my hand. “I mean,” I said. “Oh, darling, that’s not what I need. I need! I need——” He squeezed my hand. “Take it easy, darling, take it easy.” “All right,” I said. And he said, “I’m with you, baby.” He said, “I’m with you, baby,” again, like that, and rubbed my hand. “I’ve got the curse,” I said, yet even with this—“I’m with you, baby”—I felt the same despair, no better or worse, and it was strange: I had not anticipated this, but only had foreseen some blossoming joy, where we’d kiss or something, swoon into the clock, and everything would be without fear or dread or pain. The light waved in the sky, sent shadows across the garden, where the cat sprawled asleep in the dusk and the woman came and went in her shawl, picking flowers, carnations. A young man walked out and yawned, looking at the sky, cleaned his spectacles, then went in. The air was hot with guilt; I sweated. Then, Harry, I would say, why are you like this to me? Not for your defection so small, really, did I do my petty vengeance, but just because always you’ve failed to understand. Me. Oh yes, it started out with your hand on the ass of Marta Epstein, so then lying down there was a sweet thing for me. Yet the guilt that always followed: oh God, haven’t you been able to tell how I’ve suffered in my own torture and my own abuse? Why haven’t you understood me, Harry? Why? Why? That’s all I’ve worried about, really: not that you should accept what I’ve done. Of course, no man. But that, once it was done, you should try to understand me, for it lies past memory or dreaming, and darker than either, and once when you were angry at me because these was no toilet paper in the john I could have pitched myself out of the window, so lost did I feel and homeless, and everything. So that when I would come to you screaming about my drowning, and you’d never understand, then I’d have to go back and shriek at him, smothered by the odor of milk. Oh, I would say, you’ve never understood me, Harry, that not out of vengeance have I accomplished all my sins but because something has always been close to dying in my soul, and I’ve sinned only in order to lie down in darkness and find, somewhere in the net of dreams, a new father, a new home. Bother the birds, they were not half so bad as your not understanding. I took my hand away from his. “You’ve just never tried to see my side of the matter, have you?” I said. For a moment he said nothing, nothing at all. I thought he might not answer. Then he said, “What do you mean by that?” Then I wished I hadn’t said it: like always my mouth opened to speak peevish words my consciousness hadn’t thought of, only thought of by that part of me over which I have no authority: my guilt. “What do you mean by that?” he said again in a flat voice. “I mean,” I said and I knew I had to go on, yet even now still was there no escape? “I mean, Harry, don’t you see? All of this, as bad as it is, is just reacting to the fact that you’ve never understood me. You haven’t tried.” He got up. “Haven’t tried?” he said. “What are you talking about? Haven’t tried, my eye! That’s all I’ve spent two years doing, trying to understand you——” And I thought: oh Christ, I said it and didn’t mean to say it, now there’s no retrieving myself, yet I had to go on: “I mean, darling—don’t get angry—I mean every time I’ve gone off like this it wasn’t entirely my fault, don’t you see? Remember Marta Epstein——” I could feel myself shiver at my own words, and then at his groan. “Oh, really, Peyton, you make me ill. Is that all you came for, to give me a tough time about that?” “Oh, no, darling,” I said quickly. “No, don’t get angry. Please don’t. It’s just, I mean that you—that I’ve been at fault, I mean, but that I never did it unless you gave me some cause to. When I felt I couldn’t rely on you, or when you got cynical——” “Cynical!” he cried. “Who’s cynical? Are you trying to tell me now that just because on the few occasions when I didn’t obey your tiniest whim or spoil you half to death, you had a right to cuckold me, and almost in front of my eyes! Why, God damn it——” “Harry,” I said, “don’t get angry. Please——” “Awful!” he said. “No, it’s true. You just can’t love. You come up here on a pretext that you’re sorry and contrite when all you want me to do is to tell you that I’m the one who should be on my knees, begging
your
forgiveness for sins I didn’t commit. Isn’t that right, Peyton, isn’t that right?” “Yes,” I said. “I mean no. No, Harry, please believe me——” But he said, “Why don’t you get out? Get out.” “Oh, Harry,” I said, “you just don’t understand.” “You can dry your tears, baby; they don’t work on me. Get out.” “No,” I said. “Get out,” he said, “get the hell out of here, you slut.” “Oh, Harry,” I said, “there you go again. I’m not that. If you just had any understanding——” “I’ve got plenty of it,” he said. “Right at the moment I understand that you want me to go through the same routine you’ve wanted me to go through for months. To take you on my knee and put my strong arms around you and tell you that I was wrong because there was dirt beneath the bed, that I was wrong for calling you on your extravagance, that I was wrong for not letting you ruin us both by being the spoiled, willful child that you are—now you have the wrong idea. Now get the hell out of here.” I put my arms out to him. “Get out.” Across the margin of my mind they came, the wingless birds, the emus and dodos and ostriches and moas, preening their wings in the desert light: a land of slumber, frightening me, where I lay forever dozing in the sands. Would he never come again, protect me from my sin and guilt? I saw them prance staidly in the far corners of the room, at the edges of the walls, through the piled-up picture frames, all grave and unmenacing in the drowned and stifling dusk. Outside the sparrows chirped and fluttered; someone called distantly; I held out my arms. “Get the hell out,” he said. “I’m drowning,” I said. “Help me, Harry.” “Get out,” he said. I got up. “I’ll never be able to come again,” I said. “Good,” he said. I walked past the easel, past the ruined city, the dusty twilight, the tragic upraised eyes. “Don’t make me go,” I said. “It’s a beautiful picture. I’ll help you.” There was no reply; he stood at the door, unconsciously stiff in a gesture he himself would be the first to think funny: one hand on the knob to the open door, the other arm outstretched and pointing downward toward the hall, classical and stern, the cartoon father to the prodigal, pregnant girl: Go, and never darken my door again. “Get out.” His face was red, fierce, unremitting. “It won’t do you any good,” he said. “I’ve tried. I’ve been through this too many times.” “O.K.,” I said. My pride. Then I said, “It seems that you’d try to understand. I never did it except when——” He took my arm and pushed me toward the hall. “That’s enough,” he said. “Tony’ll understand. Tell Tony. Or tell your old man; he’ll take you on his lap and tell you what a good girl you are. As for me, I’ve had it to my——” And the door slammed behind me. I was standing in the hall holding my bag, his last words—“to my very guts”—muffled, deadened now by the walls. I blew my nose on my handkerchief, stood listening to his retreating, creaking footsteps on the floor. Then the footsteps came back again. I held my breath. He opened the door and said, “Here, take your clock.” I felt it cupped in my hands, the rounded, polished metal, the levers and wheels to operate; then the door closed, the diminishing footsteps, he was gone. I pounded on the door: “Harry, let me in! Let me in!” And until I scraped my knuckles. “Let me in, Harry. I’ll be a good girl!” He didn’t answer. I walked down the hallway and out onto the sidewalk, walked along north, past a florist’s, where red cannas were set out like flags in the dusk. The lights were on inside and I bought a daffodil for a nickel and pinned it to my breast. The woman was small and dumpy, with freckled arms. “Don’t you want to use my comb?” she said. “No, thanks,” I said. Then I walked outside, with everything gone, including the clock: this I took to a drain near the curb. I bent down and pulled it out of the bag, holding it close to my ear: I heard the last ticking, all my order and all my passion, globed from the atoms in the swooning, slumbrous, eternal light. Then I threw it into the drain, heard it rattle below against the accretion of gravel and litter, and vanish far below with a splash. I stood up: to my very guts. I thought I saw an old man fishing in the twilight, his line limp in the shimmering, mirrored water, but it was a string he dangled into a basement grating and groped for money; the bum tipped his hat to me as I walked by, and he smelled foul and of whisky. I had twenty-five cents left, and I gave him two dimes. “God will praise you for that,” he said. “I know,” I said, and walked along. I got sleepy, the brother of death haunting me with a dying memento: Bunny would understand that, perhaps he would understand my going: undivorced from guilt, I must divorce myself from life, in this setting part of time. I would go back to Bunny, but she would never permit that, or understand. I walked along, turned the corner at Fourteenth Street and went down into the subway. I had a nickel left for the turnstile; I pushed through. They followed me, prissing along with their stiff-legged gait and their noiseless, speckled wings. I turned. “Go away,” I called, “go away,” but they came on, and a woman passed giggling, said to a man sweating underneath a tower of packages: “Drunk as she can be.” “I am not drunk——” my mouth working, but I didn’t say it, and walked down the stairs. A train came by with that frightful noise; I put my hands over my ears, watching it in a blur of vanishing light, heading south, a forest of up-thrust arms, all tilted as if by a gale. And I thought: it was not he who rejected me, but I him, and I had known all day that that must happen, by that rejection making the first part of my wished-for, yearned-for death-act, my head now glued to the executioner’s block, the ax raised on high and I awaiting only the final, descending, bloody chop: oh my God, why have I forsaken You? Have I through some evil inherited in a sad century cut myself off from You forever, and thus only by dying must take the fatal chance: to walk into a dark closet and lie down there and dream away my sins, hoping to wake in another land, in a far, fantastic dawn? It shouldn’t be this way—to yearn so for dying, or for that chancy, early fate, when I’m young yet and lovely and braver than you think, my God, and my heart beats stronger than a pump: then too I want to be bursting with love, and not with this sorrow, at that moment when my soul glides upward toward You from my dust. What a prayer it was I said; I knew He wasn’t listening, marking the sparrow but not me. So to hell. I was thirsty enough but even hungrier. I wanted to drink water, gallons of it, but I was hungrier first. So I looked into my bag again for some money, hoping. But there wasn’t any. Then I put my hand in the pocket of my skirt and found, covered with lint in the seam, a zinc penny. There was a machine with chocolates in it, four kinds and a mirror: I stood aside from the glass so I wouldn’t see myself. In it I discovered bittra and nut and bittersweet and plain and I decided on bittra, putting in the penny and pulling the plunger: nothing came out. I pulled it again, but I got no chocolate. Then I tapped the machine but still nothing came out; besides, the subway trains pulled in, red and green lights burning port