Back to Wando Passo

by David Payne

  And if I were she, Addie thinks, if I were Clarisse and I believed that Harlan thought about me almost as a sister, if I spent weeks preparing a wedding party, and then discovered he was actually ashamed of me…might my eyes not burn and simmer as I looked at his bride, as hers burned and simmered when she looked at me? Addie has stopped before the window now. She’s gazing out, yet her stare is caught up in her own reflection, floating, ghostlike, on the pane and fails to penetrate the dark. “That’s all it is,” Addie tells herself aloud, decisively. “Surely, that is all it is.”

  Perhaps it’s the absence of her maid, but as Addie sets about her preparations—as she releases her corset, as she feels the familiar dropping down, the return of fuller breath, as she changes into the peignoir she chose so carefully, so specifically for this one night, as she sits before the mirror and contemplates her face—Addie feels more like a guest at someone’s country house than a new bride, a mistress and a wife. As she brushes out her hair, her thoughts turn to the argument downstairs….

  Harlan’s comportment, it’s true, left something to be desired. (All that bellowing and pacing, all the waving of the hands, the mopping of the brow—and such perspiration! She’s never seen the like, yet it’s a meanness to think less of him for a physical affliction—a medical condition, possibly—that’s beyond his power to control.) What matters is a man’s character, his intellect and heart, and isn’t there, in point of fact, a great deal to be said for Harlan in this area? For instance…Well, even if nothing springs immediately to mind…But, no, she’s thought of something now. Surely, it would be a shame, a great shame—as Harlan said—for Wando Passo to lapse into decline. When God favors us, the people of our class and race, she thinks, with wealth and property, He entrusts us with a duty—a sacred duty, one might even say—to keep it up. Harlan made that point, and it is true. Very, very true. And, clearly, too, the DeLays have bestowed significant advantages on Jarry. How well he spoke! And his recitation—he seems to have a more than rudimentary grasp of iambic tetrameter, and in fact, if called upon to judge, Addie would have to say she preferred his delivery to Paul’s—Paul Hayne, who admired her once and has now achieved a minor fame (she heard him read some patriotic verses at the Agricultural Hall not long ago). And Jarry’s tone, the dignified and undemonstrative way heframed his argument—so sympathetic, so much easier to navigate than Harlan’s rambling, explosive rant! And his clarity of countenance, Jarry’s limpid eyes (somehow it was their expression of fatigue that she found most affecting)…

  “What this family made me is a slave….”

  And what was it, the hush that descended on the room, like church? What was the opening she felt in her spine when Jarry spoke those words, the stinging in her eyes? Were those her own ancestral spirits, the voices of fifty or a hundred Anglo-Saxon generations crying up from the abyss of time? And what message were they trying to impart? Addie has stopped brushing now. She’s staring into her reflection in the glass….

  “It was the truth, the truth!” She cries the words aloud. She cries them in despair. Her hands are at her mouth. And will she do that violence to herself, to call the truth a lie, and lies, the truth? They made this man a promise—what matter if he’s black! “A promise kept, and Hell hath wept”—from Mme Togno’s school, the rhyme comes back. “A promise broken, and Hell hath opened.” Whom have I married? Addie thinks. I will never love this man. Love will never come. Not if I live a thousand years.

  Yet what of it? She’s known she didn’t love him from the start, hasn’t she? And now she starts in brushing again quite vigorously, furiously, in fact. Didn’t Blanche know, too, and never bat a lash? And don’t people marry all the time for reasons other than true love—for family, children, class alliance, out of simple loneliness? A hundred times, Addie gave herself these reasons and forgave herself on ninety-nine. So what’s different now, the hundredth time? Why does she feel on the verge of panic at the thought that, at any moment, the jovial and undistinguished man she’s married to will enter through that door, expecting intimacies she will henceforth and forevermore be obligated to provide? (For she’s made a promise, too, as grave as Percival DeLay’s, to love and honor Harlan till they are parted by death.) What has turned that flitting, inoffensive sparrow into the large, obstreperous black crow that’s cawing in the corner of the room and clearly in no mood to leave? However it is, Addie, who’s leapt with gratitude into this marriage, is staring gravely in the mirror, thinking, What in God’s name have I done?

  And now the knock. Now Harlan enters from the bath in his shirt and stockings. He’s blushing like a bridegroom—which, in fact, he is—grinning in a way that seems wicked, boyish, and good-naturedly naive. The subject of his curious humor, which Addie can’t fail to perceive, is the erection protruding through his parted shirtfront, jouncing, as he walks, like a joggling board on a Pawleys Island porch.

  “This came upon me by surprise,” he says. “There I stood behind the door, cringing, waiting for it to subside, and then I thought, What are we about here? Freedom? Frankness? Where’s your courage, man! What is there to hide?” He laughs. “Ho ho.”

  Seeing her expression, though, he comes to a dead stop. His northward-pointing member takes a turn toward east.

  “But I hope I haven’t miscalculated, dear. Have I embarrassed you? You look rather pale. I don’t wish this to seem fearful or unclean….”

  “No, Harlan, no, it isn’t that…. I’m only…”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, dear, it’s something of a shock.”

  Deciding how to take this, he blinks his hazy ginger eyes, in which there is that eager, childlike, reckless something that seeks confirmation of its effect in her and appears, upon consideration, to find insufficient grounds for disappointment. He laughs again. “Ho ho ho,” says he. “Yes, well, I can tell you, dear, though you have no standard of comparison, I’m considered rather well endowed. Hung like a bull as some…But never mind. Come, let me introduce you to my small, strong friend. It’s best to be forthright with him, Addie, to shake his hand or shake him whole.” He holds his tumid member for her close perusal, twisting it between three fingers and a thumb, the way he holds his Lonsdale to his ear before he lights, listening to the telltale crepitation of the leaf. “Go on now, touch him. He won’t bite. Is he not a handsome fellow? But I warn you, his character is suspect! He’s a rakish type, a bounder! Now, let us have a look at you.” He takes her hands, small and cool and lifeless, now, as a china doll’s, in his great, hot, meaty ones. He lifts her to her feet and spreads her robe. “My, my…Yes, as I suspected, your bust is small. Shapely, though.” He appraises like a connoisseur.

  In his grasp, her thin shoulders feel as insubstantial as the wafer of the Eucharist. He runs his hands down her slender arms and up the undersides. He touches her breasts, gently, then not gently, hungrily. He lifts them to look at them; his face changes as he looks; he excites himself in this lifting and looking, and, yes, in Addie, there’s a tingle, a slight uptick of arousal. She looks to him, but he does not look back.

  “See how white they are!” he says. “Like driven snow, and this charming little pink bit at the nipple! I must confess, dear, I don’t like them with the large brown circles. May I touch? A little pinch? A bite?”

  He takes her silence as permission, and Harlan’s teeth prove sharper than a mink’s! Addie startles, winces.

  “Oh!” she says, and still he doesn’t look. He’s like a sailor who’s weighed anchor and is off and gone to other parts, other ports, and the other ports and parts are her. Her body is the sea on which he sails, but after that brief quiver of desire, that single waking tingle, Addie is no longer on the trip.

  It’s best to be authoritative, though, thinks Harlan. She doesn’t know the facts of life, of course. How could she? (And, frankly, if she did, what good would Addie be?) Given her age, the fact that she is somewhat past her hour, a certain gratitude is due him. Not that Harlan would ever allude to this in word or deed. Tha
t would be indelicate, ungentlemanly, but it would be equally false to pretend that she is au courant. The notion of an older woman, grateful to him, with the seasoning to look squarely at the facts, once presented—all to the good. Harlan has no intention of forgoing pleasure in the bedroom and must therefore set the tone. No horse, after all, welcomes its own breaking, but they’re happier, aren’t they, when it’s done? And as he falls deeper into delectation over Addie’s body, sucking the tender meat on the small bones as though she were a quail in sauce, a memory of Grace Peixotto flits through his head, the great madam, whose brothel on Beresford Street Harlan discovered in his teens. At their first encounter, Grace made him a merry compliment over what she called his “equipage,” which gave him the confidence and barnyard matter-of-factness he’s carried into such encounters ever since. He used to fall asleep on Grace’s ample bosom in those days and paid for the whole night, though his father railed at the expenses he ran up.

  And behind this memory surfaces an even older one, of the house in Matanzas, the quinta with its mango avenue, and the maguey hedge, and the red tile roof and glassless windows with their bars, and the smell of melado, thick and sweet, drifting from the batey on days when they were grinding cane. One Sunday—he could not have been more than five—Percival ordered the volante and took them, Harlan and his mother, past fields of cane in violet tassel and others of plantains lined with stones of coral rock on a drive to the Cumbre, the high ridge north of Matanzas, and they ate a picnic of simple country food, jerked fish and plantains, and drank panales, which his mother made for him specially from sugar and the whites of eggs. They stared out at the broad bay of the city with the ships riding at anchor and north to the aqua sea, and south into the beautiful valley of Yumurí, with its sharp peaks and the pea-green color of the cane in the bottomlands through breaks of mist. Harlan lay with his head in his mother’s lap and fell asleep, exhausted from too much sun, and she stroked his hair and sang some old English lullaby he’s long since forgotten, though snatches of it come to him from time to time, as they do now, with…Addie. It takes him a moment to remember where he is, and with whom. And she caught the country fever, his mother, and died that very year, and then there was Paloma, who kept him clothed and fed, who was never harsh with him and always fair, but only fair. It was Jarry, when he came, to whom she sang the night’s last song, who received the soothings and encouragements, the almost sexual confidence a loving mother, with her eyes, puts into a son, while to Harlan she was fair. And so he went to Grace, in the big brick house at number 11 Beresford, and sometimes paid for the whole night, and if Percival railed at the expense, then damn him—his father owed him something, didn’t he? And Harlan remembers, too, hearing them, his father and Paloma, their animal cries and gruntings through the glassless windows with their bars, and he’s waited a long time to be loved again and not to have to pay for it, to see that warm, melting look Paloma reserved for Jarry and his father in some woman’s eyes for him, to be on the receiving end and know that it is meant. And at last his time has come.

  He’s fallen to his knees now, to Addie’s great surprise, and is pressing his face into her belly. He kisses, licks, and laps like some hungry animal or like a nursing child. She looks down at the gleam of his bald head and feels the way she remembers feeling as a child, playing with her older cousins, when they ran ahead to get away from her, and Addie wanted to go with them, to be included in their games, but they went on in cruelty or gay indifference, leaving her behind. Being left behind by Harlan now, Addie gently rests her hand atop his head, trying to summon back that tingle of arousal, trying to catch up. She feels the film of oil from the long, hot day outside, like something you might use to oil the mechanism of a watch. Suddenly Harlan touches her, he spreads her open. She feels his tongue touch her in that place. There’s a tingle, but it’s too intense, like tasting some hot food, a single bite of which takes you the balance of the evening to recover from. The sensation has crossed the border into unpleasantness, a country there’s no returning from. The uptick of arousal is slipping irretrievably into the past now, ever farther away. Something is failing, going terribly wrong. Addie will not catch up. Any chance of this is past. Harlan must realize this and stop. He must wait for her, but Harlan has been waiting all his life, he can’t wait anymore. This woman is his wife.

  He’s pushed her back onto the bed. Like a lamb at slaughter, Addie gazes up, imploring with her eyes, but Harlan, slow to entertain the possibility of disappointment, ignores her look or misinterprets what he sees. His weight on top of her is crushing. Addie finds it hard to breathe. And now he’s reaching down between them. He finds himself and shoves it in her like the handle in a churn. There’s a drumming sound in Addie’s ears. She feels burning, tearing. Oh, the size of him. Oh, the hurt…

  “Harlan, please, please be tender….”

  “I will. I am,” he whispers in a perfunctory tone, like someone talking in his sleep.

  “No, it hurts! Stop. Stop!” Panicking, desperate for air, she shoves him with both hands.

  And now he heeds. He lifts away. He looks at her and blinks.

  “Please…” Her face is anguished; she’s wheezing, small pants, not of passion, but of grievous damage. “I have to catch my…breath….”

  And her expression is clearly different, very different from the one he has expected to receive. In Harlan’s hazy ginger eyes the spark of play has dimmed. It is, in fact, extinguished. The eager, childlike, reckless something that seeks confirmation of its effect in others and doesn’t entertain the possibility of disappointment encounters now, in his new wife, a disappointment it is, finally, all too familiar with.

  He pulls out of her, away. He sits, in a null state, on the edge of the bed, staring into vacancy.

  “God,” he says, “oh, God…” With both large hands, he covers his large face.

  “I’m sorry, Harlan, you must teach me,” Addie says. “Let us try again.” She touches his shoulder.

  He pulls away. “How you must despise me….”

  “No,” she says, appalled. “No, dear…”

  “God…oh, God.” There’s such loathing in his voice. Is it for her? For a moment, Addie can’t quite tell. But, no, it’s for himself.

  Harlan rises now. As he starts toward the door, he stumbles and goes down on one knee. Looking crippled, defeated, he pulls upright, using the doorknob as a crutch. He disappears into the darkened bath.

  “Harlan?”

  He doesn’t answer.

  In the silence, Addie realizes the drumming is real and coming from outside.

  A door opens on the hall. Footsteps, rapid footsteps, pass the door.

  “Harlan?”

  Gone.

  Downstairs, the front door opens. She’s at the window as a swath of light falls on the lawn. And there is Harlan, striding off into the park, into the black shadows of the trees, like one of them.

  Hurriedly, she puts on her dress and follows.

  From the piazza steps, she sees him by the stable, lighting a cigar with nervous hands. Angry at the match, he curses it and waves it out.

  A black man with a lantern—is it James?—leads Runcipole out of the barn. The restive stallion tugs backward at the rein, as though resentful to be importuned at such an hour. When the groom tries to soothe him, Harlan pushes the man aside. Cinching the saddle girth himself, he mounts.

  “Harlan!” Halfway across the lawn, she cries his name, and Harlan stares toward the shout with a cold concentration in his face, the way a warrior regards his enemy across a plain. As she walks, then runs in his direction, Addie stumbles, and Harlan rides away in the direction of the firelight through the trees.

  A hand now firmly takes her arm and helps her from her knees.

  “Where has he gone?” she asks, recognizing Jarry, who has come out of his cottage.

  “You’d best go in the house,” he answers with the look he gave her on the dock, a look of foreknowledge and compassion that Addie understands far b
etter now.

  “Please,” she begs. “I’m asking for your help. Tell me where he is.”

  “I’m trying to help you,” Jarry answers. Gently, firmly, he leads her to the house.

  It is hours later, when she’s finally drifted into fitful sleep, that Addie hears footsteps in the hall. They pause outside her door.

  “Harlan?”

  They move away again. By the time she opens the door, the hall is empty. On the floor lies her book, her Byron in red morocco. Only when Addie lights the lamp does she see the feather and open to the place it marks.

  From the wreck of the past, which hath perish’d,

  Thus much I at least may recall,

  It hath taught me that what I most cherish’d

  Deserved to be dearest of all:

  In the desert a fountain is springing,

  In the wide waste there still is a tree,

  And a bird in the solitude singing,

  Which speaks to my spirit of thee.

  Her eye floats upward to the title: “Stanzas to Augusta.”

  SEVENTEEN

  Whap. Whap. Whap.

  “Mr. Hill?”