The Theoretical Foot

by M. F. K. Fisher

  A bee blundered low. Nan looked up at it with wide and staring eyes and saw its soft brown belly in the silver blur of wings at its sides.

  Oh, Timothy, she cried, you are all I want, your love and compassion. Why do I feel so, why am I a slave to my little brother, my child brother walking beside me on the long streets, standing close beside me in dancing school, lying wasted and sad at my house after the war? Where are you now? Why do I break my good friend’s heart staying here, when I see that you no longer need me? Lucy needs me and I hate her for it. You do not as you have Sara. But I stay on here. I must stay.

  All this summer I have never felt stronger inside. Why? Is something happening to me to make me see you more clearly? Soon, now, soon I shall know. But know what? What do I want to know? Will all my sadness end? How do I know this? Inside me. Yes, I simply feel this is so.

  She thought with a strange dispassionate bitterness of years behind her. Work had filled them, but they were empty. Would work make her happy now? Would love? Would religion?

  Since she was twenty-two or twenty-three—it seemed too long ago to count one year either way—she had worked numbly, resolutely. She had studied the writing of other than her own people and had learned new tongues. She twisted the words in her mind into a trillion meanings and had put some of this on paper. And her people, the other humans around her, had heard in her verses some sound of truth. They had lapped up the crumbs of comfort from the dishes brewed for her own hunger.

  Yes, for too many years now she had injected into others that fine needle of her own spiritual narcosis. It made them feel less of their secret agonies. And she knew herself not their benefactor, but their evildoer.

  I doped, she said sternly to herself beneath the cherry tree, because I was doped myself. Work is no cure-all. Work can absorb one, like a blotting pad or Pantopon, or like a creeping cancer behind the Pantopon. But what is the cancer? Why have I had to work so hard for so long? Am I afraid to stop? Have all these years of research, of best sellers, of ships’ reporters and press photographs, been dragged on because I was afraid to stop?

  Is it my love, my little brother, that has pushed me? Is it because I have nothing else that I try to hide behind this ghastly curtain of literary importance? Oh, Timothy, why did we have to grow up? Why could we not stay small and loving, meeting only each other without question, without cavil?

  But I have stopped. I have stopped work. And Timothy is still here. I see him all day long. I see him in the mirror even when he is not here. And yet I seem to be able to go on without him. If I should stop work today, or if I should write a book today, I could do it without asking him, without begging for his thoughts, his opinions, his most secret reactions. I could burn it in the fire without thinking, What will Timothy say? What would he have said? I am no longer afraid. I do not know why but I know now that if I write again it will be because I can see clearly, not because I am blind. Not yet, but soon.

  And love? Oh, dear God—and Nan looked up through the immovable branches of the trees with amusement in her eyes—how much I have thought of love all these years! How much I have read of it! How much I have written! But I know nothing.

  When Lucy Pendleton, so ostentatious as she safely spares me, leaping into my conversation with gallantry and thoughtfulness at the mere breathing of my husband’s name when I let my voice falter then, lowering my eyes with the required hint of heartbreak, what do I remember really? Where is George Temple? Was he ever my bedfellow, that quiet little Wall Street magnate with his potbelly and his exhausted grateful eyes? Did we ever love each other? Did he ever see my aching womanhood?

  And others? All the young men at literary teas and that boy who seized my hand in the harbor at Rio and pressed it against the hot satiny skin under his shirt and before that all the shy eligible dolts at teas and coming-out parties . . . Oh, you poor youths, how could you find what I really was behind all my walls of fright and mother-taught propriety? How could you dare look further than my stiff face and my archly fluttering fingers? How could you know that I was sweet and true and aching to be loved?

  How could George Temple ever have known? Or had he? Did he know the dreadful fear and the hatred I felt for him, the scorn? Did he ever know, years later, the sad pity and all the yearning tender love I felt when I saw him old before he should have been and suddenly weak and shy before me? Did he ever know how much I liked him, years too late?

  Oh, Timothy, why did you never tell me all these things about love? When I was young and burdened with manners taught me by my elders? Why did you not tell me of their silliness? Why are you always there, so still and sympathetic? Was that your way of helping me? At Saturday-night circles you would dance with me so solemn and young in your white kid gloves and I would look at other girls whirling decorously on the arms of older men and love you passionately for making me look popular. I would long for the compliments of some perennial bachelor upon my proper girlish clothing, and when you told me I was beautiful I loved you for it. Why, why did you never tell me to just be calm and easy and not to care?

  Why did I have to learn for myself when I’m sure you knew all the time? You could’ve told me about poor George Temple and those young men everywhere and not being stiff and frightened of them. You knew. And all these years I have been waiting to learn. Now it may be too late. You are gone. I am past those clumsy fumblings of the boy in Rio but I feel no disgust for them, no impatience now, that kind of love, and the love I have waited for from you, are past me now. I’m ready for something. I am waiting. I am no longer sad.

  Is it religion then? When I was eleven and again when I was seventeen, I knelt upon a prie-dieu, waiting for a vision. I felt wings about me and I yearned to be holy. Now, sometimes, going into a dim church, hearing the music that beats out about the clerestory and underneath the arches of the chancel, smelling the dark overtones of incense and feeling the brush of the priest’s robes past my closed hands and my down-bent head, I still think I have a vocation, that this is my life. But later I know that that is the beauty, the sensual ecstasy that sweeps me toward faith. I am not a true believer, unquestioning. The crucifix above my bed I leave there because it is a pure example of the fifteenth-century German carving, not because it is for me a symbol of the body of Jesus Christ, my Lord. I am not religious, though at times I long to be. I long to kneel with Timothy in the little chapel in San Marco and see tears creep down between his fingers, past his ring of amethyst.

  All this is wrong. I do not need a Lucy to tell me. I need no one. No one.

  Nan sat up. She was almost gasping and felt herself to be on the verge of some great and terrible discovery. She looked wildly about her at the swing, grasses that bent over her, and at the close curving branches of the cherry tree and at the far lake. What instinct had she brushed? Where had she wandered in her thoughts?

  She felt excited. But she knew, surely, that there was nothing more. She must wait.

  She stood up, rather stiffly, and slid down the little bank to the terrace. It must be time for tea.

  As she walked toward a rendezvous with Lucy and Honor, she felt as small and secret as an amoeba. They cannot even see me, she thought scornfully. They do not know me. They think I’m there, loving them and needing them, and I am really here, within myself, waiting.

  vi

  Tea was good. Nan ate avidly. She heard the hard crust of bread beneath her teeth with pure delight and felt the tea flow hotly down her throat. She’d been hungry.

  Lucy sat opposite her talking quickly, obviously happy that Honor was not there too.

  All I have to do, Nan thought with a certain amount of complacent cunning, is to be wide-eyed and funny. All I have to do is say, Oh yes! and open my eyes wide and pretend to need people. That makes them feel important. I’ve always known this. I knew it when I was six and Father with his silky beard would tell me how he wanted to protect me. I know it now when Daniel dances with me as if I were made of porcelain. I know it when poor Lucy scolds me.


  She is not scolding me now except in her own way. I have made her happy by talking of concerts we have heard together, pictures we have seen, people we have laughed at. She knows nothing about me.

  Timothy is the only one who knows anything about me. He’s the only one I love. It’s because he stands alone, I think. He is not like Father or young Dan or Lucy and all the others, taken in by my cringing will to be loved, my need to be needed.

  Oh, hurry, hurry, she prayed, her face smiling vaguely. Something is getting ready. Something is forming, slowly, surely, through all this strange summer. I am learning. But what is it?

  She stood up. Lucy had begun to sob and Nan stood looking down at her, seeing the straggly brown hair, the fat hands clenched over the face, and beyond them—and more importantly—the blue waters of the ageless lake.

  What is she crying about? Tea was good. I was good. What does it matter that Joe and his Sue are not married, if my own Timothy is not married to his love, if Daniel and his quiet sister Honor are not married, even? All that is immaterial. I am not shocked by Susan. I am not jealous of Sara. I am but faintly interested in the gawky Tennants. Lucy, this poor harried weeping wreck, is not much more than an interruption. I do not care anymore, ever, if I wound her sensitive feelings.

  “I’m sorry, Lucy,” she heard herself saying. She listened to her own warm sympathetic voice with a terrible glee. “I must stay with him,” she heard herself say. “He may need me.”

  Poor stupid blind woman, she thought. You hear me talking of my brother. You think I love him, perhaps incestuously. Do you not know that I’m waiting for something else? You must think I stay here in this place you hate with such a venomous jealousy because I am held by an unnatural love for Timothy. You can never see that it is my love for him that is freeing me.

  They walked on without speaking. Behind them the little terrace of the café settled into silence and a striped cat leapt up on their table and licked at the plates where a butter pat had been.

  vii

  When they rounded the last curve of the road, Nan saw Dan Tennant leaning on the iron gate. She glanced quickly at Lucy.

  Oh, I hope he goes before we get there, she wished fervently. Will he notice that Lucy has been crying? Will Lucy lilt over him, the way she usually does? Will he stop me and make me talk? No, no! I want to go to my room and lie on the bed. I am thinking of something.

  But Daniel stood resolutely there and—as they approached him—Nan felt her face smiling. She looked up into serious deep eyes, which were so ridiculously like Sara’s green ones, yet different because of his maleness.

  “Hello, Dan.”

  “Hello,” he said. “Hello, Lucy.”

  There was an awkward pause. Finally Lucy sniffed and smiled gaily and said, “Well! Well, I don’t know about you young people but I must go and get ready for Sara’s little entertainment. Don’t stay out here too long in the cool of the evening, Nan darling.”

  She hurried away, her head held high. Nan looked at Dan half in apology, half in amusement. He raised an eyebrow.

  “The sun still rides the heavens, ma’am,” he said in his deepest voice. “The cool of the evening is yet far from us. Mrs. Pendleton exaggerates somewhat.”

  Nan looked up at him again as he stood leaning his bare elbows easily upon the wall. She then came through the gate and stood beside him. She was impatient, also bored by his queer unformed pomposity, but he excited her. She was almost startled to admit that she liked to be near him. He was clean and he smelled good, like all the Tennants. She leaned nearer, sniffing imperceptibly, enjoying herself in a minor way and at the same time hating herself for hoping her nearness would upset him.

  For a moment or two they said nothing. Then Dan swung around abruptly and cleared his throat.

  “Lake’s nice now, isn’t it?” He sounded grumpy.

  Nan turned with him and stood leaning against the warm stone wall without touching him.

  “Yes,” she said in a small voice. Inside she said, I really am a bitch.

  The idea was surprising to her—it made her feel almost complacent. Then she was ashamed of herself and although she thought she wanted to be quite alone in her room for a time before she dressed, she said warmly, “Do you want to help me find the one blossom of Queen Anne’s lace, Daniel? It must be tall and about three inches across.”

  He looked down at her and raised one eyebrow slightly and answered in a stiff way, “Yes, I’d rather like to, thank you.”

  Suddenly Daniel smiled.

  For a dreadful moment she wondered if he thought she was a silly old woman, but now Nan felt all right again and she took his hand.

  “Hurry then,” she said. “It’s growing late. Lucy will scold me if I keep dinner waiting. Party tonight, too, and I have a new dress for it.”

  They slid down the steep bank instead of walking properly out along the path, Nan feeling excited and happy. The shadows lay long and blue on the meadow. Birds called softly and flew shudderingly from one heavy bow to another. There was the faint smell of rotting plums.

  “This is the best part of the day,” she murmurred. She started to pull her hand from his, but he held onto her. His fingers felt chilled now and sticky suddenly.

  “Nan,” he said harshly.

  Nan looked up at him and felt terribly sorry for his pain. She knew he was not really in love with her but that the world here at this moment, so beautiful, must seem terrible to him.

  “Nan,” he said, looking down at her and scowling, holding her fingers in his own moist hand, “do you know anything about:

  ‘Blue-veined and yellowish,

  Ambiguous to clasp,

  And secret as a fish,

  And sudden as an asp . . .’

  And so on and so forth, something like that?”

  Nan slid her hand. Her mind raced as furiously as an important mouse among all the phrases and old stanzas that were stacked up in neat tremendous piles in her memory. She sometimes hated the way she went on saving them, more and more. They were good. They were apt. If she gave herself time, as now, she could always pull out the quotation for a given moment. She knew all this to be impressive and once or twice this summer she had felt that perhaps young Daniel was teasing her, trying to catch her out. And once or twice she’d been almost piqued to find that his brain, so much younger and less ordered, held line after line of some of her best reserve of more or less immortal doggerel. So now she looked sharply at him in the soft twilight, before she went on in a slow voice:

  “It doubles to a fist,

  Or droops composed and chill;

  The socket of my wrist

  Controls it at my will.

  It leaps to my command,

  Tautened or trembling lax;

  It lies within your hand

  Anatomy of wax.”

  Her voice sank to a whisper. She could not hear Daniel breathing although he stood very nearby, but the sound of the little brook came clearly to her, borne from the end of the meadow on a current of blueing air.

  “There’s more,” Dan said finally.

  “Oh, oh yes, something or other . . . I forget and then:

  “Now, compact as stone,

  My hand preserves a shape

  Too utterly its own.”

  “And now come help me, Daniel,” she said, “or it will be dark and I must find one more flower. Come on.”

  Nan ran across the grass without looking back at him. Why had he made her go on? What might he think of her for so obviously leaving out that stanza? Why had he thought of that poem at all?

  If I had seen a thorn

  Broken to grape vine bud;

  If I’d ever borne

  Child of our mingled blood;

  Elixirs might escape . . .

  The little brat! Nan felt too cross and disappointed. Why did he push his own youthful agonies impertinently into her life? She wanted things to be as they had been earlier in the summer, easy and silly. She remembered with nostalgia the giddy way
Dan and Honor made her feel and how she’d laughed and how poor Lucy had disapproved to see her young again with them. And now things were growing solemn. She wished parts of time would stand still. It was tiresome to have Daniel this way.

  It was an interruption. She was waiting for something. She knew this now with her whole being. Daniel and his quotations and his would-be sardonic face above his long delicate body were keeping her from waiting as she longed too. She felt a dreadful impatience and was frightened to find herself on the edge of screaming at him to go away. Be gone! she wanted to yell.

  What would he think? She smiled involuntarily seeing his horror, knowing how his dream of her as the moon creature, the goddess in an eggshell, would be torn apart by her shrill shout.

  “You win, Nan, that time anyway,” he observed. Was he mocking her again? “Your fund of famous quotations, ma’am, is limitless. I’ll catch you before the summer’s over, though. What will you do for me if I win?”

  This is better, she thought, looking up easily now at his brooding young face and his twinkling eyes. He’s stopped being solemn, but I wish he’d go. Go, Dan, hurry, leave me!

  “Dan, I was going to ask you . . .” She hesitated, appreciating the timid and ingenious note in her own voice, savoring half-ironically the subtle girlishness. “Dan, would you mind taking me out sometime this winter? I mean, to places like Harlem, and . . .”

  “Oh God, Nan! That would be marvelous!” His voice cracked, he cleared it in a perfunctory way. “What about . . . well . . .?”

  And as he talked, Nan felt almost excited with the part of herself that was not willing him still to leave. It would be fun to see strange places with this boy and to hear music played in the smoky little rooms she’d read about.