A Mind of Winter

by Shira Nayman

  I could no longer imagine my life without either of them; they had, alarmingly, become one. And then, an odd crashing fear that made absolutely no sense, and yet made all the sense in the world: that were I to break things off with Barnaby, I would also lose Simon. That our marriage could no longer bear the weight of—what? Of the depths of my own shameful, human need? The need to merge with another person in order that I might more fully own myself?

  But then, that night, I closed my eyes again and forgot about Barnaby, forgot about Simon, forgot about the mess I was in. In the midst of the gentle cacophony, I thought about that dusk moment at Ellis Park, after the members of the quartet had packed away their instruments—the violin and viola in their velvet-lined cases, the clarinet and flute disassembled and wiped—and before the evening meal, when an agitated silence would fall on the house.

  When I opened my eyes once more, we had slowed to the slowing music, we were hovering at the rim of the dance floor. On the far side of the room, through the parting crowd, I saw Oscar, standing in a rectangle of bright light. On the tables lining the walls, blossoms floated in glass bowls; the scent of jasmine and lilac drifted over and mingled with the hot dampness of the dancers. Above plates of salmon, and pastries filled with caviar, three towering ice swans melted into cold, crystal lakes.

  The following afternoon, at lunch, Oscar invited me to go out riding. We rode for a time through the grounds and then headed into the woods. Where the trail ended, we tied our horses to a tree and took off by foot. We walked in silence, crunching over bark peelings and dried leaves, the summery air alive with birdsong.

  “Oscar, I was wondering.”

  That frozen pause; I’d noticed it before—whenever Oscar was posed a direct question. Perhaps one of the reasons people seldom seemed, with Oscar, to inquire.

  “Yes?”

  “Barnaby has had so many adventures—you know how much he talks! But I have no idea what he did during the war. Do you?”

  Oscar came to a halt: the practiced opacity, I could almost see it settle into his face. “Barnaby’s a man who likes to speak for himself. But I don’t need to tell you that.”

  His gaze lingered a little too long; I felt a slow blush rise in my cheeks. It was getting late, the sun had sunken behind the trees. Oscar leaned up against an oak tree and pulled a pipe from his pocket, along with a red leather pouch, then packed the bowl with tobacco. I’d asked about Barnaby, but now it occurred to me to ask about Oscar too—about his famously mysterious past. I opened my mouth to speak, but Oscar, as if intuiting an unwanted question, spoke first.

  “You know,” he said, puffing on his pipe, “in India, they have a saying. That when a man’s head is cleaved with an axe, nothing is really changed. Matter has been rearranged, but not altered, in the scheme of things. A variant, I suppose, on the thermodynamic principle of entropy. Nothing in the universe is created, and nothing destroyed. It’s all just rearranged.”

  There was a gentleness in his voice that seemed to have nothing to do with what he was saying. He looked up at where the setting sun had scattered coins of red and gold.

  And then, Oscar cast me a secretive look, as if he had cleverly cheated someone and knew he would get away with it. It was an uncharacteristic expression that nevertheless seemed to capture some deep truth about him. In that instant, everything else I knew about him, which at other moments had the force and reach of his beloved oak trees, seemed suddenly less real: not faded, but the opposite—heightened, disconcertingly transparent, ghostly and illusory, like an overexposed photograph.

  Why the alarming frisson of something sinister? I felt thrown: the questions—And you, Oscar, where were you during the war? Did you fight?—stuck in my throat. Unfathomably, another question lodged right behind it: And on whose side?

  Oscar looked at me oddly, took two steps forward, a kind of fierce tenderness in his face. I stiffened, felt the desire to flee, but found I was unable to move. He stopped only inches from where I stood, raised his hand to my cheek. He leaned toward me, as if—as if to kiss me.

  “Christine,” he whispered, his eyelids fluttering strangely.

  I jumped back. “Oscar!” I called out, feeling ridiculous. “It’s Marilyn!”

  He slowly lowered his hand, blinked once, twice, and smiled. “But Marilyn, why on earth would you feel the need to tell me your name?”

  I blinked myself. Had I imagined it? Was the uncommonly lovely sunset playing tricks on my senses? I let out a little laugh, hoping it would erase the evidence of panic I’d felt a moment earlier. Had Oscar slipped into a moment of transient insanity? Reaching up to touch my face, leaning toward me with eyes I did not know as he uttered the name of some other woman?

  His normal, gracious expression returned, along with the distinctive mixture in his pale-blue eyes of careening sadness and a love fit to bursting: for his trees and gardens, for the stately house, wide and generous as a brood mare, for his guests, every one of them, no matter the folly (and there was a lot of folly). He sees it all, I thought, the world stripped to its barest realities. And yet believes in it just the same.

  Oscar let out a good-natured laugh, looked at me in that knowing way he had, and waved his arm before him, as if to say the truth of it, whatever it was—the truth about Barnaby, about me, about himself, about everyone at Ellis Park—was nothing but a trifling problem we could leave for somebody else to solve. He crooked my arm in his, then pulled aside a low-hanging branch.

  When he spoke again, his voice was buoyant: “Come on, I know we could both use a ride.”

  That night, the last before Simon’s departure for Montreal, Simon and I stayed up until almost dawn, and then crept downstairs for a private toast. In the breakfast room, sitting together on the floral couch, I rested my head on his shoulder. The ceiling fan gently sliced at the air, making the heat flutter around us.

  I felt Barnaby’s presence before I saw him: looked up to find him in the doorway, a drink in his hand.

  “Well hello,” he said.

  Involuntarily, I stiffened. I didn’t know what to say, though I felt I should say something.

  “Simon leaves tomorrow for Montreal,” is what I said.

  “I’d heard a rumor to that effect,” Barnaby said. “Fabulous city. I’ve spent time there myself.”

  “A prior incarceration?” I inquired, attempting a smile.

  Barnaby looked down at us coolly from the doorway.

  “Self-inflicted, actually,” Barnaby answered. He halfraised his drink in Simon’s direction. “Bon voyage.”

  Simon gave a slow dip of the head by way of reply. I fumbled for a cigarette. I could feel Barnaby’s eyes on the crown of my head. And then: release—the warm air gone back to being stirred only by the fan. I leaned forward toward the flame Simon offered, glanced up to see that Barnaby was gone.

  Simon waited for the cigarette to catch alight, a distant look in his eyes.

  “You don’t like him, do you,” I said.

  “Should I?”

  “I don’t suppose so.”

  “You like him, though, don’t you, Marilyn,” Simon said steadily. He shook out the match. I met his gaze, disarmed, as always, by its unwavering intensity.

  “I’m not sure that I do,” I replied.

  Up the stairs, Simon’s hand rested gently on my hip. In our room, the tender, slow caresses. He brushed the hair away from my face, in silence he removed my clothes—quietly, quickly; it felt as if they were simply falling away of their own accord. Still fully clothed himself, Simon took me wholly naked in his arms. With one hand, I unbuttoned his shirt; with the other I pulled it off, letting it slip to the floor.

  “Simon?”

  “Yes, little squirrel?”

  “I’m going to miss you.”

  Nestled against his chest, sliding down, floating up, disappearing into that alive, burning place. I marveled for an instant at the startling possibilities of human travel: each of us pungently alone and yet quietly accompanied.
/>   Oscar called me that week in the city.

  “Why don’t you spend the rest of the summer at Ellis Park? Now that Simon’s away,” he said. “There’s no one much around during the week; you could work in peace.”

  Weekdays in the hot city were jangling my already frayed nerves. There seemed no reason to turn down Oscar’s invitation. I loaded up the car and left the steaming grime of the city behind.

  The next morning, the first of my full-time residency at Ellis Park, I awoke feeling unsettled. The mood hung around me all day and by the time evening came around, I didn’t want to go down to the little shed and wait about in the darkness for Barnaby, or embark on the walk, by now so familiar that sometimes I took the lead. But we had planned to meet, so I went.

  Curiously, Barnaby seemed unperturbed by my mood. As we walked, I could feel his lightheartedness, which made me more ashamed of the glumness that lodged rock hard in my chest.

  In the glass house, he coaxed the life back into me, communing with my body as if he had a private, direct access that bypassed my conscious faculties. And yet, something in me was trained on the darkness outside.

  Barnaby was in my arms, cooing endearments, running two fingers up my arm, over my shoulder, along the edge of my collarbone. I could not see his face but I knew he was smiling, I could feel the contentedness lift from him and mingle with the fraughtness of the room. For the hundredth time I scanned the windows, one pane at a time, teasing apart the layers of darkness outside: branches, bark, an endless variety of leaves.

  * * *

  The next time we made our way through the bushes and trees, the ground ferns flapping at our feet, I eased the thought of the face from my mind by counting our footsteps, listening to the alto chant of an owl, charting the subtle alterations in the air as we moved farther away from the sea.

  Instead of our usual highballs, we made coffee, heating the water with a small electric element Barnaby had in his suite. Barnaby also brought some squares of dark chocolate, which he put on a little plate.

  “I feel as if somebody’s spying on us,” I said.

  Barnaby paused in his stirring of the coffee, a teasing look on his face. “An ill-wisher of some kind? Intent on exposing illicit doings?”

  I shook my head. “It isn’t that. I don’t think it has anything to do with you and me. I know it’s silly, but I have the feeling that something terrible is going on.”

  Barnaby placed his hand on mine. “What do you mean?”

  I didn’t know what I meant so I shook my head again. I studied our two hands resting together on the tatami mat. The feeling was of a piece with that unseen electrical flicker that had made me trip back into the apartment building to retrieve my portfolio that long-ago Friday morning at the beginning of the summer when Simon and I were packing up the car. An image flashed through my mind: a crumpled voodoo doll peering out from under coils of red cotton hair, its marble eyes growing feral.

  I wondered what Oscar was up to, closeted away in his study, but I didn’t want to intrude by asking. Working alone in the darkroom it was comforting, in any case, to look up from time to time, through the high window of the basement, to see the curtains of Oscar’s study on the second floor glowing with light—to know that he, too, was awake, immersed in work of his own.

  Deep into the night, I glanced up to find the opaque curtained window rent by a bright splinter. Through the crack, I glimpsed the wood paneling of the far wall. Oscar’s fair, neatly groomed head passed the opening, trailed by a plume of pipe smoke. Again, the appearance of his head, another waft of smoke. He was pacing, lost, no doubt, in his thoughts. I turned back to my work.

  When I looked up again some time later, I was surprised to see the back of a smaller head covered with chestnut hair, a man who appeared to be several inches shorter than Oscar. He turned for a moment, revealing his profile. He lifted a thin cigarello to his lips, drew on it sharply, then exhaled, twisting his head toward the window so that I could see a slice of his face full on.

  Around the perimeter of the courtyard, Oscar had installed streetlights from England: old gas lamps, of the kind still found on some London streets, which he’d had converted to electricity. After the guests went to bed, all but one were extinguished, and it was across the distance of the courtyard, in the light of that one transplanted wrought-iron lamp, that I intuited, rather than actually discerned, something disturbing about that unfamiliar half face, something inert and decided, closed to discussion. An instant later, the man disappeared from view. I studied the empty oblong of light. Then, Oscar’s face appeared. He peaked quickly through the opening before pulling the curtains shut.

  I put this occurrence out of my mind and was reminded of it a few days later. Hours of scrabbling through notes for my essay had left me feeling more at sea than when I’d begun. I left the studio in a state of distress—not knowing how to proceed or whether I could entirely trust my senses.

  We were in the midst of a heat wave. It was Wednesday; as far as I knew, Barnaby and I were the only guests at the house. I moved slowly down the darkened hallway: around me, sleeping servants, empty rooms. The hallway windows must have been fastened because I remember that even in my light voile dress, I was sweltering. I leaned against the wall and fanned myself with the straw hat I was carrying; the hot fluttering of air around my face was pleasing.

  I became suddenly aware of the sound of voices drifting toward me in fragments from the other end of the corridor. I continued down the hall. Yes, they were coming from Oscar’s office. I stopped outside his door. Two voices—men—speaking in a foreign language, their voices so low I couldn’t make out what language it was. Harsh though, and guttural. It was then that I remembered the man with the chestnut hair I’d sighted through the half-open curtain of Oscar’s study. And only then that the memory of the man on the beach from earlier in the summer, that night of the terrible storm, flashed into my mind. There had been something imperious about him—I recalled how clearly I’d felt this—and now, hearing the throaty cadences coming from the other side of the door, I imagined it was the same man. Knowing how protective Oscar was of his evening hours, I couldn’t fathom why he’d receive anyone at this time, or why the men would be speaking in whispers. I trained my ear on their voices, trying to penetrate the meaning of those opaque words. A burst of shame—what was I doing eavesdropping like this?—made me turn. I was still clutching my straw hat, which now felt as absurd to the moment as a freshly caught fish. A little louder, now, first one voice, then the other. German. The men were speaking German. I had not known that Oscar spoke German.

  The sound of a door handle turning: the inner door of Oscar’s study. I slipped off my shoes and hastened down the corridor. Whoever it was must have lingered a moment before opening the outer door as I had time to round the corner and start down the stairs without anybody appearing. The person who had left the room—the chestnut-haired man? Alone? Accompanied by Oscar?—must have used the back stairs and exited through the tradesman’s entrance.

  I took the long way back. And though I was very soon on the other side of the house, well out of earshot of the service entrance, I imagined the sound of riding boots clicking on shiny stones, and a whooshing as made by a cloak through the air when a rider swings onto his mount.

  I went on a quick walk before dinner along a path I did not usually take, which wound behind the house and away from the Sound: through the kitchen gardens, past rows of curly headed lettuce, a bushy green quadrant of turnips and carrots, vines heavy with beefsteak tomatoes, and into a shady orchard of apple and pear trees in full summer leaf. Beneath the trees, the fallen fruit collected in mounds. I watched a sparrow choose a shrunken brown pear and set about his fastidious pecking.

  I noticed somebody on the far side of the orchard, sitting under a tree on a rock. It was Oscar, immersed in a book. I was again struck by how young he appeared, a fact one seemed to put aside when engaged with him. His gave the impression of being seasoned, a man surely into his for
ties, though his boyish, unlined face suggested a man not yet thirty. I drew back behind a tree so I would not be seen, and peered around the trunk to observe him; I’d never before seen him alone in the open, away from the house. I felt a pang of guilt for spying on him but also felt unable to move. The person not a hundred feet away, intently studying the page, was strange in that baffling way that somebody you know well can defy your assumptions about them. From our first meeting on the second-floor landing of Ellis Park, I had known there was an elliptical quality to Oscar, but this was something else entirely.

  How can I explain?

  Long ago, I’d noted the unusual effect Oscar had on his surroundings, and the way this would waver and change. He did not so much fill a room as empty it of extraneousness. In his presence, people and objects acquired a salience, a relationship to one another, an order that seemed harmonious and precise and at the same time ultimately random. There was something translucent about his being, though not the least ill-defined—as if he were a glass sculpture through which one could see the world.

  The effect was this: you were never quite sure whether Oscar was actually present at a gathering or not. You might turn to scan the room, expecting to see him leaning against the doorjamb, attentive and bemused, only to discover, having made a thorough search, that he was not to be found. Rattled, disappointed, you would feel as if someone you trusted had deliberately let you down. Then there was the opposite experience. Out with a group on a morning walk through the woods, knowing Oscar’s habit was to eat breakfast alone in his rooms, I would turn my head and catch sight of him a little ways behind on the curved path, moving in and out among the trees.

  Removed from the context of the group, Oscar was different again. The wide-ranging beam of his social attentiveness would narrow to become acute, and yet also gentle.