The snail made a splash as it entered the sea. To drown or to be eaten alive? the professor wondered. He was waist-deep when he stumbled, waist-deep but head under when the snail crashed down upon him, and he realized as the thousands of pairs of teeth began to gnaw at his back, that his fate was both to drown and to be chewed to death.
THE CRIES OF LOVE
Hattie pulled the little chain of the reading-lamp, drew the covers over her shoulders and lay tense, waiting for Alice’s sniffs and coughs to subside. “Alice?” she said. No response. Yes, she was sleeping already, though she said she never closed an eye before the bedroom clock struck eleven.
Hattie eased herself to the edge of the bed and slowly put out a white-stockinged foot. She twisted round to look at Alice, of whom nothing was visible except a thin nose projecting between the ruffle of her nightcap and the sheet pulled over her mouth. She was still.
Hattie rose gently from the bed, her breath coming short with excitement. In the semi-darkness she could see the two sets of false teeth in their glasses of water on the table. She giggled nervously.
Like a white ghost she made her way across the room, past the Victorian settle. She stopped at the sewing-table, lifted the folding top and groped among the spools and pattern papers until she found the scissors. Then, holding them tightly, she crossed the room again. She had left the wardrobe door slightly ajar earlier in the evening, and it swung open noiselessly. Hattie reached a trembling hand into the blackness, felt the two woollen coats, a few dresses. Finally, she touched a fuzzy thing, and lifted the hanger down. The scissors slipped out of her hand. There was a clatter, followed by half-suppressed laughter.
She peeked round the wardrobe door at Alice, motionless on the bed. Alice was rather hard of hearing.
With her white toes turned up stiffly, Hattie clumped to the easy chair by the window where a bar of moonlight slanted, and sat down with the scissors and the angora cardigan in her lap. In the moonlight her face gleamed, toothless and demoniacal. She examined the cardigan in the manner of a person who toys with a piece of steak before deciding where to put his knife.
It was really a lovely cardigan. Alice had received it the week before from her niece as a birthday present. Alice would never have indulged herself in such a luxury. She was happy as a child with the cardigan and had worn it every day over her dresses.
The scissors cut purringly up the soft wool sleeves, between the wristbands and the shoulders. She considered. There should be one more cut. The back, of course. But only about a foot long, so that it wouldn’t immediately be visible.
A few seconds later, she had put the scissors back into the table, hung the cardigan in the wardrobe, and was lying under the covers. She heaved a tremendous sigh. She thought of the gaping sleeves, of Alice’s face in the morning. The cardigan was quite beyond repair, and she was immensely pleased with herself.
They were awakened at eight-thirty by the hotel maid. It was a ritual that never failed: three bony raps on the door and a bawling voice with a hint of insolence, “Eight-thirty. You can get breakfast now!” Then Hattie, who always woke first, would poke Alice’s shoulder.
Mechanically they sat up on their respective sides of the bed and pulled their nightgowns over their heads, revealing clean white undergarments. They said nothing. Seven years of co-existence had pared their conversation to an economical core.
This morning, however, Hattie’s mind was on the cardigan. She felt self-conscious, but she could think of nothing to say or do to relieve the tension, so she spent more time than usual with her hair. She had a braid nearly two feet long that she wound around her head, and every morning she undid it for its hundred strokes. Her hair was her only vanity. Finally, she stood shifting uneasily, pretending to be fastening the snaps on her dress.
Alice seemed to take an age at the washbasin, gargling with her solution of tepid water and salt. She held stubbornly to water and salt in the mornings, despite Hattie’s tempting bottle of red mouthwash sitting on the shelf.
“What are you giggling at now?” Alice turned from the basin, her face wet and smiling a little.
Hattie could say nothing, looked at the teeth in the glass on the bed table and giggled again. “Here’s your teeth.” She reached the glass awkwardly to Alice. “I thought you were going down to breakfast without them.”
“Now when did I ever go off without my teeth, Hattie?”
Alice smiled to herself. It was going to be a good day, she thought. Mrs. Crumm and her sister were back from a weekend, and they could all play gin rummy together in the afternoon. She walked to the wardrobe in her stockinged feet.
Hattie watched as she took down the powder-blue dress, the one that went best with the beige angora cardigan. She unfastened all the little buttons in front. Then she took the cardigan from the hanger and put one arm into a sleeve.
“Oh!” she breathed painfully. Then like a hurt child her eyes almost closed and her face twisted petulantly. Tears came quickly down her cheeks. “H-Hattie.”
Hattie smirked, uncomfortable yet enjoying herself thoroughly. “Well, I do know!” she exclaimed. “I wonder who could have done a trick like that!” She went to the bed and sat down, doubled up with laughter.
“Hattie, you did this,” Alice declared in an unsteady voice. She clutched the cardigan to her. “Hattie, you’re just wicked!”
Lying across the bed, Hattie was almost hysterical. “You know I didn’t now, Alice . . . haw-haw! . . . Why do you think I’d—” Her voice was choked off by uncontrollable laughter. Hattie lay there for several minutes before she was calm enough to go down to breakfast. And when she left the room, Alice was sitting in the big chair by the window, sobbing, her face buried in the angora cardigan.
Alice did not come down until she was called for lunch. She chatted at the table with Mrs. Crumm and her sister and took no notice of Hattie. Hattie sat opposite her, silent and restless, but not at all sorry for what she had done. She could have endured days of indifference on Alice’s part without feeling the slightest remorse.
It was a beautiful day. After lunch they went with Mrs. Crumm, her sister and the hotel hostess, Mrs. Holland, and sat in Gramercy Park.
Alice pretended to be absorbed in her book. It was a detective story by her favorite author, borrowed from the hotel’s circulating library. Mrs. Crumm and her sister did most of the talking. A weekend trip provided conversation for several afternoons, and Mrs. Crumm was able to remember every item of food she had eaten for days running.
The monotonous tones of the voices, the warmth of the sunshine, lulled Alice into half-sleep. The page was blurred to her eyes.
Earlier in the day, she had planned to adopt an attitude toward Hattie. She should be cool and aloof. It was not the first time Hattie had committed an outrage. There had been the ink spilt on her lace tablecloth months ago, the day before she was going to give it to her niece. . . . And her missing volume of Tennyson that was bound in morocco. She was sure Hattie had it, somewhere. She decided that that evening, she should calmly pack her bag, write Hattie a note, short but well-worded, and leave the hotel. She would go to another hotel in the neighborhood, let it be known through Mrs. Crumm where she was, and have the satisfaction of Hattie’s coming to her and apologizing. But the fact was, she was not at all sure Hattie would come to her, and this embarrassing possibility prevented her taking such a dangerous course. What if she had to spend the rest of her life alone? It was much easier to stay where she was, to have a pleasant game of gin rummy in the afternoons, and to take out her revenge in little ways. It was also more lady-like, she consoled herself. She did not think beyond this, of the particular times she would say or do things calculated to hurt Hattie. The opportunities would just come of themselves.
Mrs. Holland nudged her. “We’re going to get some ice cream now. Then we’re going back to play some gin rummy.”
“I was just at the most exciting part of the book.” But Alice rose with the others and was almost cheerful as they
walked to the drug store.
Alice won at gin rummy, and felt pleased with herself. Hattie, watching her uneasily all day, was much relieved when she decreed speaking terms again.
Nevertheless, the thought of the ruined cardigan rankled in Alice’s mind, and prodded her with a sense of injustice. Indeed, she was ashamed of herself for being able to take it as lightly as she did. It was letting Hattie walk over her. She wished she could muster a really strong hatred.
They were in their room reading at nine o’clock. Every vestige of Hattie’s shyness or pretended contrition had vanished. “Wasn’t it a nice day?” Hattie ventured.
“Um-hm.” Alice did not raise her head.
“Well,” Hattie made the inevitable remark through the inevitable yawn, “I think I’ll be going off to bed.”
And a few minutes later they were both in bed, propped up by four pillows. Hattie with the newspaper and Alice with her detective story. They were silent for a while, then Hattie adjusted her pillows and lay down. “Good night, Alice.”
“Good night.”
Soon Alice pulled out the light, and there was absolute silence in the room except for the soft ticking of the clock and the occasional purr of an automobile. The clock on the mantel whirred and began to strike ten.
Alice lay open-eyed. All day her tears had been restrained, and now she began to cry. But they were not the childish tears of the morning, she felt. She wiped her nose on the top of the sheet.
She raised herself on one elbow. The darkish braid of hair outlined Hattie’s neck and shoulder against the white bedclothes. She felt very strong, strong enough to murder Hattie with her own hands. But the idea of murder passed from her mind as swiftly as it had entered. Her revenge had to be something that would last, that would hurt, something that Hattie must endure and that she herself could enjoy.
Then it came to her, and she was out of bed, walking boldly to the sewing-table, as Hattie had done twenty-four hours before . . . and she was standing by the bed, bending over Hattie, peering at her placid, sleeping face through her tears and her short-sighted eyes. Two quick strokes of the scissors would cut through the braid, right near the head. But Alice lowered the scissors just a little, to where the braid was tighter. She squeezed the scissors with both hands, made them chew on the braid, as Hattie slowly awakened with the touch of cold metal on her neck. Whack, and it was done.
“What is it? . . . What—?” Hattie said.
The braid was off, lying like a dark grey snake on the bedcover.
“Alice!” Hattie said, and groped at her neck, felt the stiff ends of the braid’s stump. “Alice!”
Alice stood a few feet away, staring at Hattie who was sitting up in bed, and suddenly Alice was overcome with mirth. She tittered, and at the same time tears started in her eyes. “You did it to me!” she said. “You cut my cardigan!”
Alice’s instant of self-defence was unnecessary, because Hattie was absolutely crumpled and stunned. She started to get out of bed, as if to go to the mirror, but sat back again, moaning and weeping, feeling of the horrid thing at the end of her hair. Then she lay down again, still moaning into her pillow. Alice stayed up, and sat finally in the easy chair. She was full of energy, not sleepy at all. But toward dawn, when Hattie slept, Alice crept between the covers.
Hattie did not speak to her in the morning, and did not look at her. Hattie put the braid away in a drawer. Then she tied a scarf around her head to go down to breakfast, and in the dining-room, Hattie took another table from the one at which Alice and she usually sat. Alice saw Hattie speaking to Mrs. Holland after breakfast.
A few minutes later, Mrs. Holland came over to Alice, who was reading in a corner of the lounge.
“I think,” Mrs. Holland said gently, “that you and your friend might be happier if you had separate rooms for a while, don’t you?”
This took Alice by surprise, though at the same time she had been expecting something worse. Her prepared statement about the spilt ink, the missing Tennyson and the ruined angora subsided in her, and she said quite briskly, “I do indeed, Mrs. Holland. I’m agreeable to anything Hattie wishes.”
Alice offered to move out, but it was Hattie who did. She moved to a smaller room three doors down on the same floor.
That night, Alice could not sleep. It was not that she thought about Hattie particularly, or that she felt in the least sorry for what she had done—she decidedly didn’t—but that things, the room, the darkness, even the clock’s ticking, were so different because she was alone. A couple of times during the night, she heard a footstep outside the door, and thought it might be Hattie coming back, but it was only people visiting the w.c. at the end of the hail. It occurred to Alice that she could knock on Hattie’s door and apologize but, she asked herself, why should she?
In the morning, Alice could tell from Hattie’s appearance that she hadn’t slept either. Again, they did not speak or look at each other all day, and during the gin rummy and tea at four-thirty, they managed to take different tables. Alice slept very badly that night also, and blamed it on the lamb stew at dinner, which she was having trouble digesting. Hattie would have the same trouble, perhaps, as Hattie’s digestion was if anything worse.
Three more days and nights passed, and the ravages of Hattie’s and Alice’s sleepless nights became apparent on their faces. Mrs. Holland noticed, and offered Alice some sedatives, which Alice politely declined. She had her pride, she wasn’t going to show anyone she was disturbed by Hattie’s absence, and besides, she thought it was weak and self-indulgent to yield to sleeping-pills—though perhaps Hattie would.
On the fifth day, at three in the afternoon, Hattie knocked on Alice’s door. Her head was still swathed in a scarf, one of three that Hattie possessed, and this was one Alice had given her last Christmas. “Alice, I want to say I’m sorry, if you’re sorry,” Hattie said, her lips twisting and pursing as she fought to keep back the tears.
This was or should have been a moment of triumph for Alice. It was, mainly, she felt, though something—she was not sure what—tarnished it a little, made it not quite pure victory. “I am sorry about your braid, if you’re sorry about my cardigan,” Alice replied.
“I am,” said Hattie.
“And about the ink stain on my tablecloth and—where is my volume of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poems?”
“I have not got it,” Hattie said, still tremulous with tears.
“You haven’t got it?”
“No,” Hattie declared positively.
And in a flash, Alice knew what had really happened: Hattie had at some point, in some place, destroyed it, so it was in a way true now that she hadn’t “got” it. Alice knew, too, that she must not stick over this, that she ought to forgive and forget it, though neither emotionally nor intellectually did she come to this decision: she simply knew and behaved accordingly, saying, “Very well, Hattie. You may move back, if you wish.”
Hattie then moved back, though at the card game at four-thirty, they still sat at separate tables.
Hattie, having swallowed the biggest lump of pride she had ever swallowed in knocking on Alice’s door and saying she was sorry, slept very much better back in the old arrangement, but suffered a lurking sense of unfairness. After all, a book of poems and a cardigan could be replaced, but could her hair? Alice had got back at her all right, and then some. The score was not quite even.
After a few days, Hattie and Alice were back to normal, saying little to each other, but outwardly being congenial, taking meals and playing cards at the same table. Mrs. Holland seemed pleased.
It crossed Alice’s mind to buy Hattie some expensive hair tonic she saw in a Madison Avenue window one day while on an outing with Mrs. Holland and the group. But Alice didn’t. Neither did she buy a “special treatment” for hair which she saw advertised in the back of a magazine, guaranteed to make hair grow thicker and faster, but Alice read every word of the advertisement.
Meanwhile, Hattie struggled in silence with her stump of b
raid, brushed her hair faithfully as usual, but only when Alice was having her bath or was out of the room, so Alice would not see it. Nothing in Alice’s possession now seemed important enough for Hattie’s vengeance. But Christmas was coming soon. Hattie determined to wait patiently and see what Alice got then.
MRS. AFTON, AMONG THY GREEN BRAES
For Dr. Felix Bauer, staring out the window of his groundfloor office on Lexington Avenue, the afternoon was a sluggish stream that had lost its current, or which might have been flowing either backwards or forwards. Traffic had thickened, but in the molten sunlight cars only inched behind red lights, their chromium twinkling as if with white heat. Dr. Bauer’s office was air-conditioned, actually pleasantly cool, but something, his logic or his blood, told him it was hot and it depressed him.
He glanced at his wristwatch. Miss Vavrica, who was scheduled for three-thirty, was once more funking her appointment. He could see her now, wide-eyed in a movie theater probably, hypnotizing herself so as not to think of what she should be doing. There were things he could be doing in the empty minutes before his four-fifteen patient, but he kept staring out the window. What was it about New York, he wondered, for all its speed and ambition, that deprived him of his initiative? He worked hard, he always had, but in America it was with a consciousness of working hard. It was not like Vienna or Paris, where he had worked and lived, relaxed with his wife and friends in the evenings, then found energy for more work, more reading, until the small hours of the morning.
The image of Mrs. Afton, small, rather stout but still pretty with a rare, radiant prettiness of middle age—scented, he remembered, with a gardenia cologne—superimposed itself upon the European evenings. Mrs. Afton was a very pleasant woman from the American south. She bore out what he had often heard about the American south, that it preserved a tradition of living in which there was time for meals and visits and conversation and, simply, for doing nothing. He had detected it in a few of Mrs. Afton’s phrases that might not have been necessary but were gratifying to hear, in her quiet good manners—and good manners usually annoyed him—which anxiety had not caused her to forget for an instant. Mrs. Afton reflected a way of life which, like an alchemy, made the world into quite another and more beautiful one when he was in her presence. He did not often find such pleasant people among his patients, but then Mrs. Afton had come to him last Monday in regard to her husband, not herself.
Eleven Page 9
