Evening Performance

by George Garrett

Rozanne noticed these things. She was an artist, a sculptress, and, without intellectualizing, without thinking a word, she could feel the graceless self-satisfaction of him. What she felt was as true to her, as much a fact, as if he had made some direct, obscene gesture with his hands, as real and ineffaceable as a dirty word scrawled on some public wall. She had never met Roger before this. She had known Frances, who was now his wife, for some years. They had both come originally from the South, met in New York, and through some bleak years shared an apartment in the Village. Just today, this Friday afternoon, Rozanne had come from New York to visit Frances for the first time since the wedding.

  In one way it was a shame about Frances. Frances had been studying the classical guitar before she married Roger, and she had a fine talent, a very special gift; not so much of technique, for she had to struggle to master each new piece technically, but the rarer thing, an inner and immediate sense of the meaning of music. The rigor of learning was a discipline simply, its sole purpose to cultivate the music she already knew, heard, felt, into life. It was a gift altogether different from Rozanne’s, but she respected it. For herself technique was a keen weapon, creation a kind of conquest. Of course, Frances had given up all that when she married Roger.

  “She’s getting better all the time,” Roger was saying, speaking of his wife’s cooking.

  Rozanne recalled the picture he had presented at the dinner table, amid candles, good silver, china, glass, all those middle-class symbols of security, hunched over his plate like a hungry dog, eating in huge mouthfuls, talking, while he chewed, of politics, of television, of his own insurance business, gesturing with an intense, gravy-dripping fork as if all these subjects were profoundly significant, taxing him to summon up all the subtlety and imagination he surely must have thought he was displaying (or did he care?), the stained fork winking light from its slender tines. Frances was sitting now in a high, antique rocking chair, bought at one of their auction excursions it was likely, smiling, too, modestly proud, it seemed, of her languid husband. Her rich dark hair and the smooth and even softness of her, which was explicit in a round pale face kindled by bluebright eyes, made her seem wholly alien to this man, to this time and place. There was something mythical about her. To Rozanne she had always seemed like a cameo figure or, perhaps, a graceful virgin in a tapestry with unicorns. She was one of the few, perhaps the only woman, that Rozanne had admired without the least shiver of envy.

  “At first, right after we got married, I had to make do with hot dogs and baked beans,” he said. “But things have taken a turn for the better.”

  “You seem to be thriving nicely,” Rozanne said.

  He grinned and stretched and she noticed his hands. They were large and strong, veined and possessed by a movement and rhythm of their own, something which did not seem to belong to him. She found herself wondering what in the world his mother had been like.

  “You ought to plan to stay awhile with us this summer,” he said. “Some suburban air and a few regular meals would be good for you.”

  “Oh, Roger,” Frances said, apparently amused. “Rozanne’s not too thin, really. She was always the center of attention in a bathing suit. I remember one summer half the lifeguards on the Cape—”

  “Well, we’ll see,” Roger interrupted. “We’ll all go for a swim tomorrow if the pool fills up in time.”

  The swimming pool had been empty when she arrived. There she had seen Roger for the first time, standing in the empty cavity, scrubbing with a long-handled brush, sweating in the late afternoon sun, pale and soft in his bathing trunks. He had looked up at them and laughed when she and Frances peered over the deep end of the pool from the mowed and green, bee- and bug-lively lawn. He said he was glad to meet her and that he had heard so much about her. He apologized for being practically naked at the moment, but thought, laughing again, that a sculptress must be familiar enough with the male form and physique to let it pass.

  “I’d love to stay with you-all for a while,” Rozanne said. “But I’m afraid I’d be completely unnerved by all the furious activity in a commuter’s house.”

  “It’s not as gruesome as it seems,” he said. “Maybe you could do some work here, or just rest.”

  “I really do need a rest,” she said. “It’s a lovely idea. But what I’m really afraid of is that I’d get used to it. That would be terrible. I’m afraid if I stayed any longer than a weekend, I’d start to take all this comfort for granted. I’d become quite stout and complacent.”

  “You don’t have to become complacent unless you want.”

  Without a doubt he was the most insensitive man she had ever known. She had known her share, oh more than her share, of sensitive men. She had drawn them to her, really in spite of herself, cradled them briefly and destructively, as a small flame captures for an instant the brief joy of the moth. From childhood there had always been sensitive men—her father, henpecked, browbeaten, ineffectual—her older brother, cruel then, pitiable now, in the state mental asylum. This, however, was rather amusing. It might have been genuinely funny if it hadn’t involved poor Frances.

  “I guess,” he went on, “after the wild bohemian life, you find us terribly dull.”

  “On the contrary,” she said. “Most of the men I know are so energetic, so ambitious, such anxious people. They’re all trying to do so many different things at once. It’s refreshing to discover that there’s someone in this world who’s relaxed and content with things just as they are.”

  “Really?”

  Frances was still smiling, obviously not bothered, not in the least embarrassed by either of them. Roger rolled over onto his stomach and laughed, giving the globe a savage spin. Quite suddenly, as he was laughing, his face seemed to change. His eyes brimmed with light, an unexpected light like the occasional glimpse of wildness seen for an instant in the eyes of a family pet. There was, after all, something satirical about him that she hadn’t observed before. It was as if he had really been hiding, just as her brother used to do when she was little, around some corner, behind a curtain or some piece of furniture, and had suddenly leapt out to frighten her. She was offended to realize that he was perhaps being not quite honest or straightforward in the guise which he had been presenting for her inspection.

  “You must think we’re awful,” he said. “If you do, you’re right. This is a naughty life we’re leading, sort of like living in sin. I guess it is a kind of sin to be happy these days.”

  “It is a little new to me.”

  “Yes, it must be strange, almost exotic,” he said. “There’s a paradox for you—you people are fond of paradoxes. Given the right set of circumstances and even the commonplace becomes exotic.”

  He stood up, yawned and stretched, then returned the globe to its proper place on a table with reference books.

  “Well, it’s nice to meet you at last,” he said. “You’ve been kind of like a ghost in my life until now, but here you are in flesh and blood. I hope you’ll plan to stay awhile.”

  Roger left the room and, soon after, she heard him outside in the darkness whistling for the dog.

  Frances came to talk with her in her room before they went to bed. They sat on the bed, smoking and talking, trying to recover some of the ease and intimacy they had known before. They talked of names and places, but for Rozanne there was something elusive and strained about their reminiscences. Frances seemed now to possess an untroubled secret which she didn’t wish to share. In those other days it had been Frances, in her innocence, her rare and literal virginity, seeking after the knowledge Rozanne owned. Rozanne, faced with wide-eyed wonder, able to parcel out the truth as she pleased, had discovered that her own life, sad and sordid enough, was transformed into something desirable, enviable. Seeing herself in Frances’s eyes had made even the most ordinary aspects and events glow as from a Midas touch. Now, though they talked freely enough, Rozanne felt a little shabby, baffled, and insecure.

  “You look wonderful,” Rozanne said. “I think you must be
very happy or very lucky. Maybe both.”

  “Do I? I hope you like Roger. He’s so different from everyone else we know. I want you to like each other.”

  “You have my blessing,” she said. “He’s a very attractive husband.”

  “As husbands go,” Frances said, and they both smiled.

  Looking at Frances, Rozanne thought of a cat curled by a fire and the way that a cat’s body at rest, in perfect purring contentment, still somehow conveys, suggests, implies all the beauty of wildness, the furred speed, stealth, and the satisfaction of realized dexterity.

  “Do you ever find any time to play the guitar?”

  “Only once in a while,” Frances said. “There are so many different things to do. You’d be surprised how many things have to be done.”

  “I can imagine,” she said. “Maybe you’ll find time later on to pick it up again.”

  “Maybe,” Frances said. “With children it will be difficult. It would be nice to play again. I miss it sometimes.”

  “Yes, I suppose you do.”

  After Frances said good night and left, Rozanne snapped off the bedside lamp, but instead of trying to sleep, she lay awake watching the red glow of her cigarette in the dark. She felt vaguely sad, listening to the muffled sounds from their bedroom. The radio was playing dance music and she could hear their voices above the music without being able to hear what they said. Their voices rose and fell and intermingled, softly, like a woodwind duet. After a moment she heard his bare feet lightly in the hall, and then a knock on the door.

  “Are you still awake?”

  “Yes.”

  “Frances tells me that you’re a bird-watcher. Maybe you’d like to get up early and see our birds.”

  “That would be very nice.”

  “Okay. I’ll wake you,” he said. “But I warn you it will be early.”

  “All right.”

  “Well, good night.”

  “Good night, Roger.”

  She heard him going on tiptoe back to their room. That would be his own kind of instinctive delicacy, to tiptoe, even in innocence, from the bedroom of another woman back to his wife. After a little while they turned off the radio and then the light. There was not a sound. She was listening, like a household spy, for even the least sign of movement from their room. A voice, laughter, any sound would have been some solace to her at just this time while she lay still and uneasy and alone in the dark. Of course she had always been alone in the dark like this, even when her bed was anything but empty.

  Rozanne sat up and turned on the light. She rose and stood looking at herself in the mirror. She hated him, oh yes, despised him completely. Still, she had an answer to his challenge and contempt. Compared to Frances, she was lean and hard-muscled, almost boyish, but she knew well the virtues of her singular attractiveness, as cruel as shears. Given the chance (and the whole weekend was still ahead) she would repay him in kind. She would expose him after her own image. At the right time, in the right place, a gesture would reduce him to all fours. Sooner or later, like any other, he’d howl like a lost dog. It was wrong to think of doing this to Frances, but necessary. There was purity even in this feeling, this desire, a purity she intended to keep intact, inviolable. Her naked image stared back at her with solemn assurance she could not be wrong. She turned off the light again and lay down. As she dozed, eased into sleep, she felt her lips compose a tranquil smile.

  THE SLEEPING BEAUTY

  THE FISHERMEN STOOD at a long wooden table, heavy in black hip boots, each holding a knife in his hand, waiting. Boys carried heaped baskets of fish from the boats to them, staggering up the rock-strewn slope of the beach, and dumped them in a cascade of squirm and silver on the table. Then the knives flashed in the sun. They worked smoothly, swiftly, cutting off the heads at the gills with one stroke, then, with a deft scooping, gutting them clean. Yellow and blue and red, the guts fell on the table like a tangle of wilted flowers. In another moment, a quick scraping, they were scaled and each man dipped his cleaned fish in a barrel of salt water, tossed it into a waiting basket. The guts and fish heads were wiped into another barrel and they kept on working. At the lapping water’s edge oil and grease floated in spreading rainbows. Overhead gulls screamed whitely.

  “Can we go now?” Anne asked.

  “Just a minute,” her husband said. “I want to get a couple more pictures.”

  He crouched down on his plump thighs, squinting into the viewfinder of his camera. He was a handsome man, but, she thought, a little absurd juxtaposed against the rude scene in his American tourist clothes. Those brilliant sport shirts and the expensive slacks made any man look rather like a boy in a sunsuit. She glanced at the table, furtively intrigued by the laughter and the shouting in the curious French dialect among the fishermen, the air of hectic festivity. In the elephantine hip boots they seemed like mythical beasts, the colossal legs and lower bodies merging with more fragile human shoulders and heads. Their faces were darkened, wrinkled by wind and sun like cured meat, and their eyes, vividly contrasting, were lively, satiric, cruel. The young boys, pale and straining under the weight of the baskets, hurried anxiously from the boats to the table, awkward on slime-slick rocks; like acolytes, she thought, like uninitiated novices. On the table with trained, impersonal hands the fishermen were performing the sacrifice. She stared at the weathered hands, identically crude and functional as if whittled out of hard wood. She shuddered at the glory of the knives.

  “Did you ever imagine anything like this?” her husband asked rhetorically. He was still crouched on his haunches, winding the film. “Of course,” he went on, “when I show the slides, it will turn out looking scenic and pretty like the pictures in National Geographic. I wish I could get the excitement of it all, but you can’t do that with a camera.”

  “No,” she said. “I suppose you can’t.”

  Anne could not look at the table anymore. She had a dizzy, empty feeling and she knew she couldn’t trust her eyes. She was possessed by the vague fear that if she looked again, if she dared, she would be witness to some unspeakable barbarity. She looked out at the bay and high, higher than the savage acrobatics of the gulls, into pure blank depths of sky, so clear, so chill, she felt if she let go of herself for even an instant she would fall into that immense distance, go tumbling head over heels to drown in infinite brightness. It was the rare, faint sensation she had known as a girl during Mass, when her family was still in the Church. She could not bear it, kneeling on the cold stone, seeing the distant and symbolic sacrifice. She had always looked away, up into the loft where, amid the purest fractions of coined light from stained-glass windows, she could discern the starched whiteness of the nuns. Overhead, abstracted, they seemed to poise like white birds, gulls or swans, in a keener atmosphere than flesh can know.

  “You ought to be in the movies,” her husband said, and she turned to see him fixing her in the viewfinder. She saw his index finger tightening on the button and she smiled forever, for posterity, hearing the little click of the lens.

  “Shall we head back to the hotel?”

  “If you’re ready,” she said.

  They walked along the beach in the direction of the hotel. Earlier that morning in their room they had been awakened by the noise and then from the windows seen the fishing boats coming in, multicolored pennants streaming in a light breeze, moving in slow formation into the bay, each boat comically dignified by a bristling white mustache of foam. “We don’t want to miss this,” Fred had said, and they had scrambled into clothes and, almost forgetting the camera, run down the wide stairway, dodged among startled guests in the lobby, raced out onto the beach, laughing, excited. “What will all those respectable people say?” she had cried. “Oh nothing,” he said. “Just those crazy honeymooners, they don’t know any better.”

  They had seen it all, arriving just as the fishermen came ashore. There had been the knot of women who stood at a little distance, in wooden, unsmiling attitudes, watching their men come laughing and shoutin
g ashore. The men were busy, setting up the long tables on a row of sawhorses, arranging their gear, struggling into the great hip boots. Around them young boys fluttered like shrill birds. The men seemed self-contained, unconcerned, though from time to time one of them shouted to the women on the shore. As they began the job of cleaning the fish, the women turned silently away, following a path in single file that went through the dunes to the cluster of the village and the shacks where they lived.

  That had been a warm feeling for her. She wished vaguely to be one among them, inconspicuous in rough clothing, wearing a plain apron like theirs, and she knew she would have felt a wincing joy, too deep, too simple for smiles or tears, seeing her own husband leap blithe from the sea to the land. “I wish,” she had said, “we could have sneaked a picture of those women’s faces. I’d like to remember that.” “Those old biddies?” Fred had said, laughing. “A waste of colored film.”

  Now they walked in the soft sand and it was hard going. They saw a path in the dunes that led to the road behind and they turned away from the shore following it. She felt her husband’s hand in hers, small-boned, frail, and tense, she thought, as a musician’s must be and strangely incongruous with the well-being of his body. It was as if the hands belonged to someone else, another man, a creature of imperceptible delicacy, concealed within the flesh and blood of Fred’s good health. Ahead of them was a cliff, a sharp jutting among lesser dunes. There was a path from the road to the top.

  “Let’s go up there,” she said. “It might be a marvelous view of the whole bay.”

  “Don’t you want to go back to the hotel and have breakfast? I’m hungry, myself. I don’t know about you.”

  “Oh we can wait,” she said. “Do let’s climb up and see. It’s such a lovely morning.”

  “All right,” he said. “Follow me.”

  The path was steep and narrow. Anne followed him, watching the muscles in his legs and buttocks quiver with the effort of climbing as the sea breeze blew against his slacks and thin sport shirt, outlining the whole shape of his body as neatly as a glove conceives the shape of a hand. She hurried behind him, breathing hard, wholly conscious now of the rhythm of her own body in a subtle awareness she had not known before. Not, certainly not, on the wedding night, dazed and tired from the public splendor, when the hotel room had seemed so shabby and his hands on her flesh had seemed no more than the wind from the wings of a startled flight of birds. Nor the second night, which they spent in a motel driving to get there. Then, that night, she lay placid under the weight of him and felt only a kind of calisthenic monotony. She had felt, too, a caged animal within her, dark and supple as a panther, crying in terms too precious and remote for speech. She had burst into tears and he had been gentle, troubled, fumbling to comfort her. She pretended to sleep and when she heard him at last begin to breathe in sleep she opened her eyes and watched his boy’s face on the pillow and cried silently. But now as they were climbing the cliff she abandoned herself to the thought of her flesh and his, a rich hazy thought in her blood, her breasts and loins, like a raw warm liquor. She wanted to be naked. She wanted to tear off her clothes and race to the top of the cliff.