The Theoretical Foot

by M. F. K. Fisher

  “How about joining us?” Joe had added eagerly, as he started up the stairs with two glasses of vermouth and soda. Daniel had shaken his head. If he could not go up the hill alone with Kelly he preferred to be by himself as he wanted to get away from women for a while.

  He felt for the first time in his life that he was conscious of ten thousand looks and sounds and meanings and all of them seemed to come from women. Had women always been so clear and so complex while he was blind to them or was he suddenly imagining a lot of nonsense?

  Out on the terrace, a few minutes earlier, he had abruptly recognized a deep understanding of Sara. She had become a sensitive and intelligent creature, one who existed as completely as he, instead of something to which he was thoroughly accustomed. He had known that she was tired because Lucy Pendleton was a troublemaker. He wanted her to be alone for a time with Timothy, wanted it as strongly as if he were Sara herself, worn out and depressed and bored with always being polite.

  Daniel sat down on the cold floor and leaned his back against the leg of the high bar table. His drink was icy. He shivered in the dank air and wondered with some complacency how he had dared tackle Joe Kelly and whether Kelly had realized how strong Daniel would be. I’m a pretty deceptive fellow, he thought, deceptively tough. I’ll bet he was amazed.

  Why did Joe seem so queer when he saw that Tim and Sara had fled? He’d looked sick for just a moment as if he’d lost something, as if he was hopeless. Maybe I’d hurt him? Hell no! It’s bad enough that I have a lot of hypersensitive women around me without crediting one of the hardest guys in America with tender feelings . . .

  I like Joe Kelly. He seems like an oaf at first. He’s all right, though, or Tim and Sara wouldn’t bother with him. Otherwise he’s independent. It would be good to be an orphan in some ways, free and clear and self-sufficient as Joe Kelly is. There’s no complication, no compulsion to love, no need to hate anyone, no one like Sara to have to think about.

  But I’m free. I come and go and have my own life. Then every once in a while, like now, I suddenly feel that the only place I can really have fun is where Sara is and I don’t think that’s right. Then I get peeved at her and think she’s trying to interfere with my life, when I’m just being a bastard.

  Right now I’m living here because I’m here instead of working at French verbs in Grenoble. Did she order me to come here? Is it her fault that I got fed up with sitting in classrooms taking notes on Molière with a lot of dingy Armenians and wide-eyed Poles, then going back to the boarding house and being silly once a week on cheap vin sold to us at champagne prices by the pimpish husband of the cook? I tell myself that this is perhaps my last chance ever to be a student in France. I tell myself that this is the chance of a lifetime. But maybe this is the chance of my life. I love it here in this beautiful house with Sara and her good food and not having to think of laundry and with Tim. I love it here because I can be close to Nan Garton. When this summer ends . . .

  Daniel closed his eyes as if they pained him. He swore not to think about the end of these weeks. He shut his brain, patiently and again and again, to the cruel knowledge that he would need to be an American undergraduate once more and that Nan, the beautiful tiny alluring girl, would become a famous literary figure who was nearing her fifties. It was as fantastic as it was hideous. He was a man and she was a woman, that was all he could think of, really. It was hopeless . . .

  Tim had said to take a drink to Honor. Daniel half stood up, then slumped down again onto the cold hard floor. She shouldn’t drink so much. She was too young. In actual years she might be a little older than he was, but girls were less able to absorb alcohol than were men. It coarsened their muscles or something, or was it that it gave them bad labor pains? How soon would Honor start having babies? Of course it would simplify things if she’d fall in love with somebody instead of yearning over the starving revolutionary. It was so ridiculous to think that she thought she knew anything about real love yet.

  Did any women? Did Sara even? She seemed independent. But he knew that she loved passionately, deeply: life, Tim, Daniel himself . . .

  He was sick of love. There was too much about it, in the world.

  Nan, Daniel said this all but soundlessly, I love you. Will you be my wife? I have only three more years of school and I’m sure I could make you love me.

  Upstairs, music had started and was playing on and on, sounding like notes heard underwater. He whistled softly through his teeth. He hoped Kelly would not find the record of the “Valse Triste.” Now he was playing a Brahms concerto. The piano came thick and faint and the deep chords of orchestra vibrated thinly on the wooden table legs. Daniel could feel them inside his skull.

  “. . . behold in thy body

  The yearnings of all men measured and told,

  Insatiate endless agonies of desire . . .

  What beauty is there but thou makest it?”

  He thought vaguely of other lines, which came and went to his memory like flatfishes flickering at the sides of a glass bowl. He heard himself, suddenly, whistling the “Valse Triste.” Damn them for playing it now! He leapt to his feet and walked stiffly from the dark coolness of the lower rooms, his face scowling.

  Upstairs on the terrace, the air was warm. He stretched out and felt as his irritation changed into a sweet melancholy. All about him were the small sounds of twilight, swift dartings of birds through the upper branches, an occasional late bee. The last notes of his waltz faltered and stopped. He strolled quietly along the path to the gate, past the thick climbing banks of iris leaves. Petunias in the window boxes in Honor’s room sent down their first heavy perfume of the evening.

  He leaned against the wall by the gate. It still felt warm with sunlight. He heard the scream of the hungry pig from the farm up the hill. It sounded as a man might. Daniel shuddered and wished he had a cigarette.

  Down the road, through the air that seemed now blue in the shady places, Nan Garton came softly, her hat dragging by its ribbons on one arm and her hips pushed easily under her full golden skirt. She looked small and tender. He compressed his lips to keep them from trembling and when she and the lumbering shattering of Lucy Pendleton that followed her were by the gate, Daniel said in his deepest voice, “Hello. Hello, Lucy.”

  viii

  Honor looked pleasantly in the long mirror at herself and her buckled silver sandals as light and supple as gloves over her small brown feet. She was ready for supper.

  She went silently down the steps. The air throbbed with easy beautiful notes from a violin. It was Lalo’s Spanish business, such lovely crap, she thought.

  She walked swiftly across the terrace, praying that little Susan and that young man of hers with his pouting baby-puss would not call to her. What did Sara and Tim see in such a lout? What did anyone see in his own friends, though? How could Nan Garton stand poor Lucy, with her stupid selfish face? How could Daniel stand the awkward squeaky boys that he brought home from school? How could she herself bear to look at, even, the pretty little painted mouths and childish eyes of the girls she lived with at the university? How could she ever again listen to their chatter, knowing that they would marry and have children and raise them to chatter or to hate chatter?

  Through the kitchen window that opened widely onto the path to the tool room, Honor saw that someone had put out silver, linen, and plates. Sara had been there, getting things in line. She was serious about this party tonight, but why? Was it some secret anniversary or had she simply had enough of routine suppers, where they drank sherry, then sat down and tried to be gay and happy and to ignore poor Lucy’s ghastly good manners as she subtly criticized everything that anybody liked?

  She thought with love of Sara and Tim and prayed that they had driven far and fast and had felt they’d got away from all their relatives. I want to escape from mine, Honor thought, and probably Sara wants to get away from me. That shows I’m a grown-up. That I can stand to know this. When Tim ran up the hill and jumped into the little car with h
er, I could see through the window that her hand was on his knee and that she looked happy. Sara needs peace. I would give it to her if I could. But she needs no protection. She is mature. I am going to be cold and to stop all this subjection, all this thinking of her and what she would like and what she would do and think and wear.

  Except for a gray light that came through the high windows half masked by plants on the banked earth outside, the tool room was quite dark. Honor switched on the light and smiled triumphantly.

  She’d known Nan would leave her vases here. Often she looked, when nobody knew it, at the flowers sitting there after Nan had fixed them and was waiting for François or for Timothy to help her carry them into the house. Always she guessed, with excitement and even glee, where Nan would place the various strange and beautiful bunches of flowers, and almost always she was right, Honor’s knowing instinctively what Nan was trying to say. She shook with inward amusement at some of the arrangements of blooms that appeared on certain desks and mantles.

  Where was Nan? It was late. Would it be wrong of her to put the vases where she thought Nan might want them? François would be busy with supper as soon as he came and Nan was probably still at tea.

  Honor carried a heavy pewter bowl of asters and nicotiana to the curve of the hall and put it down solidly there against the green tiles. In the dimness the lavenders and blues seemed to almost disappear like rounds of smoke.

  She put a graceful, almost gaudily proper bouquet on Lucy’s cluttered bookcase. But at least it’s paintable, Honor thought, not without a touch of malice. Just look: It’s utterly shattering in the intensity of its tonal values. With a background of old Chinese mud and dead junipers!

  She carried the vases all over the house. Some of them were tiny, like the stiff little posy of marigolds for Tim’s bathroom. Some were enormous and heavy like the jug of Saint John’s wort Honor propped up against Daniel’s closet door, placed in a manner that would force him to look at it before he dressed.

  As she passed the kitchen window on her last trip to the tool room, Honor saw François. He stood with one long bony finger pressed against his temple and, as she looked at him, he sighed and said, “Ah, music.”

  “The ‘Valse Triste,’” she said. “Monsieur Kelly has played it several times this afternoon.”

  “Mademoiselle does not love music, then?” François asked, sighing as dramatically as an old clown.

  Honor smiled in a perfunctory way at him—the man was boring and he always managed to make her feel a little queer, as if he were the real part of the shadows of other people. She shivered with this thought and went again into the hard blaze of the tool room light.

  The two vases that were left were for her own room and Nan’s, she knew. There was a soft meaningless blob of pale lavender Scabiosas from the meadow with a few late yellow heads of clover. Then there was a glass battery jar filled with water over a drowned china doll holding a little ring of field daisies. It was for her, Honor was sure.

  Nan might be cross to see that Honor suspected her long game of flowers but the temptation was too strong. She carried the heavy glass jar carefully along the terrace and up the stairs to Nan’s room, where she set it down.

  Honor laughed: it did look crazy there as it sat looming in deep shadow on the mantelpiece. What would Nan say when she saw it? There were silver bubbles on the petals of the daisies, more on the pink curvesome body of the little Kewpie.

  She got the last vase of flowers and turned off the light in the cold tool room. As she left François darted toward her. “Mademoiselle Honor!” he cried. “Has Mademoiselle the time to stop one moment? One wishes to show her something.”

  Honor grinned and followed him into the living room. In the corner Joe Kelly lay alone with his eyes closed. Something quiet and reassuring was playing on the gramophone: Bach. There was no light in the long room except what came softly through the wide French windows.

  François had pulled the carved table into the center of the floor and put out a rough lace that looked like fishnet to cover it. The bowls of dwarfed nasturtiums and wheat and bluebells that Honor had left in the kitchen for this table were placed carefully now down its middle. Polished wine glasses shone in the dim light, as did the precise lines of silver.

  “It’s lovely, François,” she said.

  He sucked in his breath and whispered sharply. “Oh no! The mirror!”

  She looked past the table to the wide mirror that made a window from the floor to its curving top into a clearer room that held more light. At the mirror’s base, just at the entrance to this other world, he had placed a row of fine begonias. Even in the trickery of twilight Honor could see that they were the most beautiful flowers she’d ever seen. The leaves curved and sprung with virility from their juicy stems and the shell-like petals of scarlet and gold and the delicately shaded blossoms glowed twice, once against the darkness of the floor and the low mirror and once again in the glass itself where the colors were stronger and more intense.

  “Oh, François,” she said. “It is lovely! Monsieur Garton will love them.” And the man stirred happily.

  “Is it not providence,” he said, “that François raised them himself especially for this fete? It is fatality!” Then he sighed at the drama of his own words before slipping into the kitchen again.

  Honor knew how pleased he was. It was as if she could lay her hand against his side and feel him purring.

  She looked at Joe Kelly’s dark bulk in the corner. His eyes were still closed. It was almost the end of the record. She hurried silently from the room and up the stairs.

  Honor was startled to see Susan sitting on her bed looking somewhat woebegone. Honor had all but forgotten about the little widgeon. She placed the bowl of meadow flowers on her desk then looked at the girl.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked. “How’s your cold? Would you like to take a shower?” Honor heard that her own voice sounded abrupt and almost cross. She was ashamed to see Susan’s small head holding itself haughtily, like that of a wronged child.

  Honor sat down with her on the bed. “Cigarette?” she asked, and when Susan nodded, she stretched to reach the table, gave one to each of them, and lit them.

  Susan puffed then blew a great cloud of smoke expertly through her nostrils, saying, “Are you going to dress for dinner?” The casual tone of Susan’s voice made Honor suspicious.

  Then, before Honor could answer, Sue went on, “I know you’ll think I’m crazy, but definitely crazy! But I don’t have anything to wear. Isn’t that silly? As a matter of fact I haven’t worn anything but sweaters and skirts since I got off the boat three months ago. It will be funny, but definitely, to start dressing like a human being again when I get home.” She then laughed nervously as she stubbed out the cigarette she’d just lit.

  “And, yes!” she added. “I would like to take a shower. You don’t think Mrs. Porter will mind, do you, if I just wear what I have on?”

  Her mouth was tense as Susan tried to smile at Honor. Her eyes, however, under the ridiculously tight gold cap of hair, were warm and audacious like a spunky little cat’s.

  “I have an idea,” Honor told her as she stood up. “Go run and take a shower and I’ll be right back.” She then hurried from the room.

  And now as Honor stood at Nan’s door she wondered how she even dare ask such an intimate thing of her as the loan of a dress from a woman for whom she’d never felt anything but timid admiration. Honor wanted to talk like, to be like her, ever since she’d met her but felt somehow that the difference in their size—with Nan at least—would pose an irrevocable barrier. Often this summer she’d seen in Nan’s warm and friendly face the most speculative look she’d ever seen in a human’s eyes, and this surprised her. It made her feel queer and as if it would be impossible to be quite free from constraint when they were together. The secret of the flowers was the only real bond that Honor felt between herself and Tim’s intense and well-bred sister. How dare she be so impudent as to ask a thing like
this? Honor wondered.

  Hearing Lucy stirring about in her own room, Honor knocked on Nan’s door as softly as she could, praying the other woman would not hear.

  Just then Nan came running down the hall making hardly a sound as she moved along the hard floor. She looked strangely excited and more beautiful now than Honor had ever seen her.

  It was easy, somehow, to ask her to loan Sue a dress as Nan was in a kind of dream, as if she had just been embraced.

  She’s an odd one, Honor thought, as she now stood by the door, her arms filled high with the fine golden tissue of the dress that Nan had never worn—as she knew—and had been thrown at her helter-skelter. She looked at the small square face that seemed to float in the light of the bedroom, only then remembering the flowers on the mantle, that silly teasing vase that had been meant for her. She smiled almost involuntarily and in a rush of sudden understanding and amusement, she bent down and kissed Nan’s cheek, which was hot and oddly furry.

  “Oh, Nan,” she said, “you are so beautiful.” Then she hurried away feeling very shy.

  Back in her own room she threw the dress on the bed and called impatiently, “Susan.” She saw the tiny white panties lying beside the neatly folded skirt on the chair and laughed. “Susan!” she called again.

  Honor slipped off her burnoose and pulled her long tight green dress with the silver leaves around its skirt carefully over her piled-up hair, then looked at herself quickly, seeing if everything was all right.

  Susan came in from the shower with a towel wrapped properly about her body. “Oh, Honor,” she said. “You are so beautiful.” And Honor smiled to hear the words she’d said only a few moments before.