Ilsa

by L'Engle, Madeleine;

  After a second she said, “We could drive down to the beach tonight if you like.”

  “Uh huh,” he said, and pushed his chair back. “I don’t feel like dessert. Going to see a man about the hounds.”

  “On Sunday?”

  “Why not? Be back in time to go down to the beach tonight. About eight-thirty?”

  “Very well.”

  Monty got up and left. He had to walk carefully to keep himself steady.

  After we left the dining room Ilsa sent Brand up to the nursery. I knew she was trying to run the huge house with only Mattie Belle, her skinny little cook.

  “Come on up to the bedroom if you don’t mind, Hen. It’s a little cooler.”

  I followed her upstairs. The bedroom seemed to have much more of her personality than the big room downstairs. The walls had been repainted a cool sea-green-gray. There were no curtains at the windows, only Japanese bamboo blinds which kept the sunlight out and allowed the breeze from the river in. The raffia rug on the floor was the same color as the walls. By the bed was a small bookcase; in a silver frame on this was an enlarged snapshot of Dr. Brandes on Calypso, a pair of field glasses in his hand, his eyes squinting against the sun.

  Ilsa flung herself across the foot of the bed, kicking off her shoes in order not to soil the white seersucker bedspread. She rubbed her fingers over her forehead with a tired gesture that was unlike her. “Oh, Hen, I’m glad you’re back. I haven’t had anyone to talk to. These last few years your Cousin Anna’s been even less communicative than usual. She keeps feeling that she ought to talk to me about Elizabeth and Father, but she can’t do it without emotionally experiencing everything all over again, and she can’t bear to do that.”

  I sat down on the bench in front of her dressing table, looking at her little bottles of perfume.

  “I love good smells,” she said. “Did you notice the wonderful scent Silver had on in church? I gave her that for Christmas.”

  “Um um. It was nice.” I looked around the room, thinking how clean and cool it was. The bamboo blinds stirred slightly in the breeze. I sat there silently while she lay stretched across the foot of the bed, her eyes closed, her face relaxed, deliberately devoid of expression. I noticed with a kind of agony that there were little lines about the corners of her mouth and her eyes that she couldn’t will away. After a while she sighed, opened her eyes, and rolled over.

  “Oh, Hen, I’m tired. Not physically, not mentally, just tired. I don’t know quite what I mean, so I know you don’t.”

  “Maybe I do,” I said.

  “It’s just,” she went on, “that there’s a funny deadness somewhere that I can’t quite track down. A slightly out-of-love-with-life feeling. Sort of matter-of-fact and unenchanted. I need something—something to excite me—to do I don’t know quite what. I want to go back to the ocean and find my roots again.… And then there’s something else. If only I could be sure one way or other—”

  “What?”

  “Oh, nothing.”

  “Ilsa,” I said.

  “What?”

  “May I ask you a very personal question?”

  She smiled. “Why did I marry Monty?”

  “Yes. It seems so—so out of character, somehow.”

  “What do you mean by ‘out of character’?”

  “It’s—it’s just not like you.”

  She laughed. I thought that as long as I could hear Ilsa laugh, with her beautiful, exquisite sanity, nothing could quite be entirely wrong. “Darling Henny, you haven’t any idea what I’m like. You’ve made me up. I don’t know why you’ve bothered.”

  “I think I’m the only person in the whole town who has any idea what you’re like.”

  “Your Cousin Anna knows me,” she said. “She knows every thing that’s wrong with me: my stupid arrogance, my false pride, my uncontrollable passions.… To go back to your question, I was in love with Monty when I married him. Don’t ask me why, because there’s never an answer to that question—not an answer you can put into words, at any rate. But I was in love with him all right. Don’t ever doubt that, just because you’ve always hated him.”

  “Well,” I said, half to myself, “maybe it was because you didn’t have any basis for comparison. Monty and Eddie and I were all you had to choose from, and God knows Monty was the likeliest then. And you were awfully young.

  After a moment I realized that she hadn’t heard me. She was sitting up, hugging her knees, and she said very softly, gently. “It was a lovely feeling, being in love that way.”

  “You’re not in love with him now?” I knew she had every right to be angry with me for asking that.

  But she answered, simply, “No.” After a while she went on speaking in an unemotional voice that reminded me of Cousin Anna. “You don’t understand Monty any better than you do me. I know you’ve never liked him, and I suppose because you’re a man his charm is quite lost on you. But I can assure you that he has charm. I can still feel very fond of him. I can also feel quite in love with him—although he’s made it impossible for me to love him.… Do you see what I mean?”

  “I think so.”

  “I’m terribly sorry we were both so awful before dinner.”

  “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “Oh, yes, a lot of it was.… It’s funny, you know—he’s really very dependent on me in a strange sort of way. Sometimes, when I find myself quieting him down, calming him, I feel as old as the moon, and just as burnt out. Twenty-seven’s really not so ancient.… Sometimes I feel as alive and violent as the sun.… I can’t stop him from drinking or carrying on the way he does, you know. I’ve honestly tried. But me being me, and Monty being Monty, the chemical reaction’s just wrong. When I try to stop him I make him worse. For his sake it would probably have been better if he’d married Silver. She might have been able to manage him, with her little sphinx face. For her sake I’m glad she married Eddie, even if she is ashamed of him for earning a good living. Henry, you seem to act on me like ’shine liquor. I haven’t talked like this since you went away. How long is that?”

  “Eight years.”

  “That’s quite a time.… I’d like to ask you to drive down to the beach with us tonight, but I guess with Monty in this mood I’d better not.”

  “I’ve got to get back home anyhow,” I said. “Papa wants me to start work in the mill office tomorrow and I guess he’ll want to talk to me about it tonight. I’m not looking forward to it.”

  “No, I guess you’re not,” she said.

  I suddenly thought of something. “You know what might be fun?”

  “What?”

  “There’s a stock company going to be in town week after next. I’d like to go.”

  She sat up, that quick interested excitement flashing into her eyes. “Let’s! I’ve never seen a play.”

  “I don’t suppose it’ll be any good.”

  “I don’t care how awful it is. It’ll be fun and a change. You haven’t been home long enough to remember how much the same every day is in this town. At the beach every day’s different. Henny, let’s go to the play the very first night. Will you get the tickets?”

  “How many?”

  “I don’t know—let’s see. I know what would be best. We’ll get Silver to phone and ask Monty to take her. He’s more apt to go that way. I don’t think Eddie’ll be back. She said he’d be gone till the end of the month. Four tickets, then. Henny, you’re an angel to have thought of it.… I suppose you saw lots of plays in Paris.”

  “Quite a few.”

  “Henry,” she said, “do you realize that here I am twenty-seven years old and the farthest I’ve ever traveled is from here to the beach and back again? I didn’t even get to Miami that time. You don’t know how lucky you are.”

  “I don’t think I’m lucky,” I said, hearing the echo in my ear of her voice saying that I was like her kid brother, that she felt practically incestuous when Monty talked of me as “another man.”

  “I suppose you’ve see
n snow,” she said.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Is it very wonderful?”

  “No. It’s horrid and wet.”

  “You’re crazy. I know I’d love it. And mountains—have you seen mountains?”

  I nodded. “Telcide and I went to Switzerland once for two weeks.”

  “Telcide?”

  “My—friend.”

  “Tell me about your—friend,” she said, grinning.

  I tried to tell her a little about Telcide. She listened lazily, still lying stretched across the foot of her bed.

  “My darling immoral Henny,” she said. “I’m sure you felt terribly guilty about her.”

  “I guess I did, with part of me.”

  “Did you offer to marry her?”

  “Of course.”

  “And she’d have none of you?”

  “She didn’t want a husband.”

  “And a very wise girl she is.” Her voice was mocking in a way I didn’t like. But after a moment she went on, in her usual candid tones. “I think I’d like your Telcide. Do you miss her very much?”

  “Very little.”

  “That’s not nice of you.”

  “I’m sure she doesn’t miss me at all.”

  “Of course she does. You’re very attractive.” She looked at me again, mocking, teasing, and I wanted to cry out, “Stop! Don’t you know what you’re doing to me!” But I just sat there for a long time, trying to miss Telcide, looking at Ilsa’s three bottles of perfume and the silver comb and brush on the clean top of her dressing table. A pair of spectacles lay carelessly by her comb and brush.

  “Are these yours?” I asked.

  As I looked toward the bed for her answer I realized that she had fallen asleep. Her bright hair and the coral dress made splashes of color on the white spread. From the distance came the restless calling of a train. She didn’t hear me as I tiptoed out.

  31

  We went on Monday to the opening night of the stock company—Monty, Ilsa, Silver, and I. The old Lyceum Theatre is gone now, a modern movie house in its place, but in the old days it used to get the best actors in the country: Mrs. Drew and John Drew, Joseph Jefferson, William Gillette, and all the others. Everybody used to buy tickets by the season. Papa always took a pair, but he seldom used them, because Mamma didn’t approve of the theater. The ushers used to stand around and chatter; they seldom had anything to do, since people had the same seats year after year.

  I knew that the stock company that was going to introduce Ilsa to the theater must be a Second-rate one, or it wouldn’t have been there. None of the good companies played this far south any more. But Ilsa was so pleased with everything that it didn’t seem to matter. As she looked around with her blue delighted eyes at the tarnished gold of the boxes, the faded, moth-eaten velvet of the curtain after the asbestos went up, the restless perspiring audience, fanning itself with programs or palm-leaf fans as it waited impatiently for the tawdry curtain to rise, I thought that, in spite of everything, Ilsa was still very like the little girl at the beach who had talked with such vivid interest to the chain gang.

  I was so hot in my white linen suit that I thought the curtain would never rise. I looked over at Monty and his face was blanched and wet. When the rest of us got crimson from the heat Monty grew paler and paler, and if you touched him accidentally, his flesh felt cold and clammy. Neither Silver nor Ilsa, in their short-sleeved dresses, seemed as unbearably hot as Monty and I and the mass of heat-flushed humanity surrounding us, but I could see that Silver was becoming as sleepy as I from the oppressive atmosphere. I had spent the afternoon at her house across the river admiring the little boys and the chickens; between them they had run us ragged. And Silver had picked that afternoon to visit the grove, which was not doing too well. She allowed her head to droop down to my shoulder now, and was half asleep when the curtain rose—on Hamlet. Well, I thought, it couldn’t be a better play, or a worse, for Ilsa’s first. Silver sat up with a jerk, furious with herself for having made what she would have termed a spectacle of herself in public by leaning so openly against me, and glued her eyes to the stage. I looked across at Ilsa, who was leaning forward, her eyes brilliant, her lips eagerly parted. Then I slouched down in my seat to watch, trying to diminish my awkward narrow height, bored and disgusted from the first with this production, which I compared most unfavorably in my mind with the plays I had seen in Paris.

  Queen Gertrude was not a day under sixty and wore a horrible red wig and a fuchsia-velvet dress that clashed with it; she struggled indifferently through her lines, obviously about to pass out with heat prostration. The king was what I had learned to call an old ham, who should never have been allowed in a pair of tights; nevertheless, he rolled out his lines with a kind of authority, though not until he had walked to the footlights and deliberately looked the house over. Ophelia was a desiccated girl with huge feverish eyes. Her blond hair was unhealthily stringy, and even her make-up couldn’t hide the fact that she was ill.

  But Hamlet—Hamlet infuriated me just because he was so damn good and I knew he shouldn’t have been. He spoke with a distinctly foreign accent; peering down at my program I saw that his name was Franz Josef Werner. Physically, he made a beautiful Hamlet, dressed in inky-black tights, with masses of soft black hair waving back from a high moon-white forehead. His nose was a thin, handsome beak, his lips full and sensuous, his eyes dark and romantic enough to cause at least a minor flutter in every feminine heart in the audience. His fingers were long and had a kind of flexible strength that he evidently knew was a great asset, because he used them as much as possible, or rather more, I thought, than possible. I realized that he was overacting abominably, and yet one couldn’t help believing in his performance. In spite of everything I knew to be wrong with him he had the power to make an audience care about him.

  When the curtain went down at the intermission I was surprised when Ilsa turned to me and said, “I want to come every night!”

  “You really like it?” I asked.

  “It’s probably nothing compared with the plays you saw in Paris,” she said, “though I wouldn’t know. But I’ve never seen words brought to life like this before and it’s a wonderful thing.”

  “Go as often, as you like,” Monty said, in a surprisingly tolerant voice. I think he was ashamed of his last Sunday’s outburst. “Stock companies don’t come down to this hell hole much any more. God knows when we’ll get another. Just don’t expect me to come with you. Got better things to do with my evenings. If you can persuade Henry, all right with me.”

  “Would you, Hen?” Ilsa asked eagerly.

  “Of course,” I answered, equally eagerly, delighted at the prospect of spending so many evenings with her.

  The curtain went up again. Hamlet leaped about the stage like a hunted animal, agonizing his way to a most graceful and lingering death in, Horatio’s arms. Ilsa clapped until her palms were scarlet, and almost every nose in the audience was blown with emotional violence.

  32

  The second night’s show was a western thriller during which Hamlet played a noble and sharpshooting cowboy. Even Ilsa couldn’t help laughing at the ludicrous foreign accent, though after the first moment we somehow forgot it and all shrieked and cheered when he finally flung the villain over an embankment.

  “You really don’t mind coming with me, Henny, do you?” she asked.

  “Of course not. What a silly question,” I said.

  “It isn’t just—just being frivolous. Although I’m much more frivolous than you think I am. But I do have a particular reason for wanting to see things and have fun right now. I don’t mean to sound mysterious. I’ll probably have to tell you about it soon.”

  The third night was Hamlet again. I had managed to get seats in the center of the front row, and before the first speech I realized that Franz Josef Werner had spotted Ilsa. I was miserable with mortification because he so obviously directed his entire performance at her; people were staring at us. But Ilsa s
eemed completely unembarrassed. I wondered if she realized what he was doing; heaven knows I should have given her credit for that much perspicacity.

  After the performance we stopped in the drugstore next door to the theater for sodas. As I was paying the check I paused to buy some cigarettes, and bumped headlong into Franz Josef Werner, who was buying cold cream.

  We both apologized profusely, and, gauche as a schoolboy in spite of my backstage experience with Telcide and her friends. I stared at him standing there in his beautifully tailored linen suit, and stammered. “We—we enjoyed your performance very much, Mr. Werner.”

  Ilsa had come up and was standing beside me. “Especially Hamlet. Thank you very much for Hamlet, Mr. Werner. It was beautiful.”

  His mobile actor’s face flushed with pleasure. In a spontaneous gesture he reached out and clasped Ilsa’s hand. “I am so happy. You do not know how happy that makes me. You—you have come every night, have you not?”

  “Yes,” she said, withdrawing her hand thoughtfully and put-ting it in her pocket.

  “You don’t mind that I noticed you?”

  “Why should I mind?”

  “You are coming again tomorrow?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ah. Would you and the gentleman perhaps care to come backstage for a moment after the performance and see me in my dressing room?”

  “We’d be delighted.”

  “Splendid! I will see you tomorrow night, then!” He bowed and left us, forgetting his cold cream.

  33

  The play the next night was a violent and rococo tragedy about Cardinal Wolsey. Mr. Werner met us at the dressing-room door after the performance, still in his costume and make-up. He was perspiring under his grease paint and the heavy filthy costume that reeked of cleaning fluid, but he bowed to me with old-fashioned courtesy and kissed Ilsa’s hand in the grand manner. Her eyebrows went up, and she grinned.

  He waved his long fingers at a dilapidated chaise longue covered with tattered brown-and-green chintz, and we sat down.