I glanced at the overleaf. This was the first note with scribblings on the back, scribblings I say, for the hand that wrote told as eloquently as the thoughts it served the story of the sick-room. Hesitant scratchings, blotted here and there by a quick hand, the quill chewed and the fine tip bitten to a rough end, that splayed and spilled over the page. And so the gestures of grief are often mere sketches, the full force and colour of misery takes too long to tell.
Perhaps I am much to blame, but let not that keep you from her though it might from Me … and if I am to blame, it is you who have always stood in my Stead, far better than I believed I could, my Son, so I retreated … then, above all Things, you must come now to serve the Purpose my negligence – true, my sickly Will – nonetheless has thrust upon You.
Then another came, joined its white brothers at my elbow, scattered like the feathers of some ominous bird. How small the world of death seemed, confined to the black bones of ink. And how I was tempted, with a blot here, an omission there, the simplest of corrections, to change with a fine penmanship the tale before me, and alter by the stroke of a pen what no other hand could do.
Your Aunt, frail woman, is quite inconsolable. Rages and Rants and Rends as if she herself were afflicted or possessed. Bubbles and I waste all our Energies on quieting the poor thing, so that Annie may sleep a little, and have short Time to attend to her greater Needs … but Beth Rages so and has beat me where my bosom is blue and marked red with her finger’s ends as I restrained her and her struggles were spent and we both fell quiet sobbing … Bubbles is a Tower … though she has lost all her Delicate Ways in Reuben’s Slaughter-house, she has learned the strength of Ten, and marches about the house like an Army defending all in their Turn and chiefly poor Annie … for Bubbles always had a heart for Outrage at the miseries of others and she Tirades at the Doctor – who to speak plainly is a foolish Illusionist, till he does not Trust himself to Come any more nor Retire when he does …
We all feel the Need of you greatly, our much-loved Sam, and do all entreat you to Come, though not if it be inconvenient.
Your loving Father Bubbles Aunt
Sam had stopped reading, I could see, like a sprinter who had spent his wind, his shoulders slack over the splay of his elbows, a patch of sweat beneath his arms from the hot summer morning. Had he not galloped over miles and miles of words? But with a new breath, he pushed the latest letter across the sunshine on the breakfast table, and turned himself to the next note in the pile, while I read this:
Indeed now Bubbles has grown Inconsolable, and we can no more support her Grief than we can the loss of her kind offices. It is cruel to say it, my Son, but I think that her long usage to the Slaughter-house has taught her to bear the sight of Blood; and like the digger in Hamlet, she has grown callous to her Employment. She alone has the stomach to nurse your Mother, whom we have begun to Bleed; and when Bubbles loses the Heart for it, there’s nothing to be done. The Doctor is an Imbecile and Fool, and Annie flows and groans at the sight of him; but there is no Alternative when Bubbles is in one of her fits; for your Aunt Beth will not enter the Room for Horror; and I dare not touch your mother myself. Indeed it is all Tears and Bedlam at the moment; and Women, and I am scarcely any better …
I wished to avoid an Account of Annie’s condition, for fear of distressing you, but Bubbles clamours in my Ear and will not rest – ‘tell him tell him tell him’ till she scarce knows what she says or distinguishes the words or indeed remembers what it is I am to relate. She grows hoarse and insistent as a Parrot, and she frightens me. But perhaps it is best that you know, for you have always been the Pillar of the house, my Son, I know, for which you blame me greatly, but Uphold us now …
Mother lies in bed like an Udder or a pricked Waterskin, for the Doctor bleeds her from every vein, and she is so full of evil Blood poor loving heart. She is nothing but Holes and Openings, and is coming out almost before we can stop Her. We have always afresh basin at hand; but it is only Bubbles as can bring herself to bear the blood away through long Custom as I believe, for the clear Red quite terrifies me it sits so placid in the bowl. Your mother is not placid, is a Volcano; and bleeds even without the Doctor’s lancet. This morning Aunt Beth summoned the Courage to sit by her poor Sister, when Shrieks of Alarm brought us all to the bed, where Beth lay swooned quite to the floor – away from Annie, poor thing, for her sensibility – and we saw the abhorred Cause. Her Nose had begun to spout and gush Blood and it ran over her Mouth, where she lacked the Civility to remove it, but she Muttered and Garbled on in the most outlandish tongue, her Tongue itself dabbled with red like Macbeth’s Hands, and I could not bear to look on her. We feared she had been drinking again, which Beth denied, confessing that her sister moaned so horrible, she had given her a Bottle of Laudanum at last. This we found under the bed at Beth’s feet all run to the floor. Bubbles was a splendid Creature, and staunched the flow with a cold Cloth and cleaned her face, till the skin was quite rough with rubbing and Annie’s lips bent indifferent like a babie’s Mouth when you wipe it. Beth ran for the Doctor, while Bubbles staunched the blood with cotton wads poked in Annie’s nose, and indeed she looks more like a Bandage than a Human Being. Bubbles is splendid, but is beyond her Strength; she shivered and quaked after her exertions, and became so pale that I had to attend to her myself. She lays in bed beside me now while I pen these lines and beseech you, my only Son, to return to us. And I beseech the Gods of Chance and Tiding, Mercury if he still answers to the Name, that this letter reach you in time, for we are all quite Desolate without you, and expect every footstep on the Threshold to be your Own.
Your loving etc.
I became aware of a strange lapse. The events of the sick-room seemed to be acted out before my eyes as I read. But it was not so, I heard only an echo of the tale. I looked up and saw Sam read two or three letters before me. The room was the same clean-boarded wooden summer cottage of an hour before, only the air was loud with the growing morning and the sun fell thicker through the open window. Tom still sat in the rocking chair by the door, though he had ceased to rock. I saw him looking at us, quite still and shrunken in his corner, as if he knew some game was up. James clattered in the kitchen, then came and stood in the doorway. He exchanged a glance with his cousin. Neither moved. Indeed, I heard only an echo’s echo, for the first cry rose far from these belated pages. I looked at the heads of the letters, and saw ‘June 29, June 30, July 7, the 12th, Tuesday 17’ in quick succession. The next note came rasping across the table.
I live in a Mad-house and you will not think me over-nice when I say that I cannot support such Clamour any longer. Bubbles insists on dose after dose of Laudanum to comfort Annie’s pain; and the Doctor agrees that there is little else to be done. But though the Laudanum quiets her bloody Rage, the delirium that replaces it is nearly more terrible. Where before she bled, now she Sweats quite calmly, and speaks as matter-of-fact as if she merely directed Nancy to clean the Larder; but the Contents of her Dreams are horrible and Cantankerous. And all the while she grows Thinner and Thinner; though her face is red and her pores Sweat at every instant, she has quite wasted away to Girlhood and Loveliness, only III, grown very III, as I knew her once, though I cannot reach her now, on her great Mountain of Hallucinations, and I hear only their Echoes, and cannot bear their Nonsense. Come come if only to share the burden of her Mutterings.
Your desperate, etc.
Father
I looked up. Two more letters lay on the table before me, but the air seemed heavy and about to break, as it did on that much happier occasion when the rains came down on the tiny church in Perkins. Sam sobbed, soft as the first drops of rain to prick and bend the leaves before a shower strikes. Tom simply stared from his unapproachable distance by the door. James went in the kitchen and clattered, too cheerfully for my ears. Sam began to clamour, and his sobs broke now as loud as guffaws in their upheaval. He was a powerful man, and his grief was as strong as anger. Tears climbed his high cheekbones and fell towar
ds the salty corners of his mouth. His face grew puffed and fat. Every four or five seconds (I was calm enough to note the intervals), his violent sobbing sucked mightily for air: O, O, O, O. The cry hurt my chest in sympathy, not with the grief that made it, but the lungs that shouted it. Then I was up, while Tom sat dumb, and my chair fell back as I came across the table to hold Sam’s shaking shoulders in my arms.
His head fell towards his chest, and his chin pressed the knuckles of my hand, and hurt me a touch. His grief cleared like a choked spring and flowed freely now, without the impediments of social usage or dry, hardened happiness to keep it back. I remember best the smell, the odour of grief as I thought, from the chafed blood of Sam’s body, from the wet patches beneath his arms, and the hairy haft of his neck. Strong as the smell of a horse, as if it came from the hair of our animal parts. The stench of a body’s misery.
I stood awkwardly, half-crouched in the legs, for Sam still sat in his chair, and I had to bend to grapple his neck. My knees ached above the bone, but still I held him fast, though my eyes had leisure in his blind, continuing grief to read the note that lay before him on the table. We seemed alone in the room.
It was a long letter and Sam had come to the second sheet.
… all evening … and the flowers we laid on her stone that afternoon were all ripp’d apart by the force of the water, as I saw for I visited the next day. They lay in strewn heaps; branches had fallen to the ground among the gravestones and all was untidiness and Confusion, but only of the ordinary kind of a morning after a storm, to be soon mended, or rak’d away. You must remember the storm; a real howler. Your Mother has already found her Mending. The house is much better now that she is gone and with her the Devils that beset her at the End, poor body. Beth has returned to her husband, and for once I miss her Clatter about the house. For God knows I have little Heart in me to cavil at poverty now or even coarse Manners. Bubbles stays on with me, for a time at least, at her Husband’s forbearance, to such uses have I fallen Horatio! Come to me now, then, though not if it be inconvenient. She awaits our convenience now. The first absence is always of our Duties and I have found that quiet Space …
Tom rose, hesitated a moment, then advanced, and (as I seemed occupied) took the letter from the table. He returned to his chair and read silently. James had not stirred in the doorway behind me. I saw him reflected in the opened window by Tom’s chair. The cousins stood together, image and man, equally quiet. All the outside world called to me under that blue air. Sam had hushed. Though he still shook lightly, his noise was spent. I felt the relax of his body after his violent grief. He had been taut for several days with the approaching lecture, and all his nervous powers collapsed at the news of his mother’s death. She afforded him some relief, at least in dying. I pressed him hard once and stood up straight, wiping the thick ichor of misery from his eyes with my palm. I sat beside him and took his hand from between his legs and laid it on the table under my own. He had my every love, then, and all quick perceptions fled from me in the simple contemplation of his loss and my love. Tom at least for a time remained where he was.
Time must be filled though there is nothing but dross to fill it. An hour passed with a hole in it. All our thoughts turned to Sam’s great grief and disappeared there. Even the cottage seemed drained of life, as if a sea had receded and surprised us by the objects it left behind: a few chairs, a table, a bright window. I had my own private sorrow to contend with, for I did not tell the others of my father. That thought lay like a looking-glass in the summer cabin. When I chanced upon it, I saw myself in that room and wondered how I had come there.
Sam was the first to raise the matter. ‘Tom,’ he said, nevertheless twisting his head to look at me, ‘I wish to turn home.’
‘We shall,’ he answered. ‘After Philadelphia, there is nothing to keep us.’
‘There is nothing to keep me now.’
I stood at his back with a hand on his shoulder, and looked at Tom. I felt the release in his bones. Sam had not the fibre for a contest. Tom picked up the chair I had knocked over, an age ago, and stared at the two of us. This was our second council of war, but now I was at the heart of it, not outside the door.
He said, ‘Too much has been ventured to turn from our course now. We hope for too much from this one engagement to sacrifice it for a durable grief …’
Sam’s force was spent and he sat mum, a mass of silence. Then I spoke, feeling the sad arch of his neck beneath my hands. ‘Now is not the time. Another chance will come, Tom. He must give a space to his grief, or it will crowd him later. Who could talk of crowns and vacuii, when all our thoughts turn to another hollow, six feet deep? Bubbles needs a brother and Edward a son.’
‘They can wait three days.’
‘I have my own reasons for returning,’ I said.
‘Then go.’
Sam still sat quiet between us, so I spoke for him. ‘Mourning is also an occasion and a chance to be missed, Tom. Besides, he does not have the heart for it.’
‘Is this what you feared, Tom, in the end?’ Sam broke in at last. But I could not guess his meaning, though Tom’s answer was clear.
‘If you do not attend the great gathering in Independence Hall in three days’ time, which lies directly in our route, and for which we have laboured all summer, I have done with you, Sam. You still bear all my love, but my services are over.’
‘There is no service left‚’ Sam said.
‘Another chance will come,’ I cut between them.
‘Without me‚’ Tom said and left through the kitchen into the garden. We heard the door shut. A fly buzzed and banged in the room, and I turned again to all the loud blue summer air tugging at my heart a stone’s throw through the window. It was a heavy question, but suddenly my heavy heart was gone. Sam looked up at me and said, ‘It is only Tom’s love, you know that. It does not matter now.’
‘I will go out to him if you wish.’
‘Do. I need an hour to myself.’
I found Tom sitting with James in the glorious afternoon sun, in the wind-shadow of long white sheets hung from the washing-line. James turned shyly away and lay on his side, picking at the grass. He had the trick of inconsequence, and Tom and I did not heed him as we fought over Sam’s prospects.
‘I am not deaf to his grief‚’ Tom said, gently at first. ‘I wish him the best. But it would have been a rare occasion, Phidy, like the passing of a comet, that holds our attention though nothing follows from it. A last chance, and he could be miserable for eternity and be damned to him. She was not so kind a mother to call him down from such an eminence. Do you not see it? The packed hall, the mayor and his wife, a gallery of scientists, the indescribable heat of half a thousand bodies sitting side by side, and the timbre of a clear voice speaking loudly, to its full dimensions for once, filling the walls around it without fear. I would like to see Sam with such space around him.’
I confess I was moved by Tom’s picture. But I was too happy under my rising star. For six months I had waited on them, bending beside them even in my own thoughts. I was not grown to live in such cramped quarters. At last I felt I could walk straight again. And I knew then (in the thoughtless way one knows vast things, like one’s own death) that there was no substance to Sam’s dream, and that Tom was indeed a shadow’s shadow.
‘Sam could bring the world to his feet, if he chose‚’ Tom said.
‘Perhaps he does not wish it.’
‘Of course he does,’ Tom snapped, as though I were a child.
‘I will not help you, Tom, I will not tear him from his mother’s grave to please your own ambition,’ I answered, angry myself. ‘Not when my own father needs me.’ (Of all my reasons, this had the least virtue in it) As I stood up to go, James turned over in the grass. I ducked beneath the laundry-line into the house.
If I was cold to Tom, I had the most insidious of serpents to tempt me: the harmony of my own nature. Who can deny the call of their own good health, so innocent a tempter? My thoughts
were no longer corrupted by humility. I saw and spoke clearly for the first time. How easy to think such good brings all good with it, when it is only the taste that grows clear, not the food that becomes wholesome.
Sam had not moved from the table, though the sun now fell at his back, casting his hands in shadow. ‘I’m afraid I fell asleep, Phidy‚’ he said. ‘Is there anything to eat? For I’m starvation hungry.’
‘Of course, Sam.’
‘Call Tom.’ I stood at the door and shouted, as anyone might on a summer afternoon, into the garden, through the thick, wet sheets. I heard Tom’s face against the cotton and then he stepped quietly inside.
‘I will come‚’ Sam said, ‘for you, Tom.’ He had only postponed the argument, and he was angry. A thin, sharp line had come between them, which cut them the nearer they moved in their ways. I stood between them now.
Towards Philadelphia we journeyed, heavy of heart.
HE WAS ALWAYS BEST AT BEGINNINGS, my father, made a great fist of them. Pitt Snr enrolled in night school in high spirits (his briefcase stuffed to the gills with paper pads, pencils in martial array unsharpened, sharpener, note cards and course catalogues, stapler, hole-punch, one sandwich bag full of paper clips, one sandwich bag smeared with peanut-butter sandwiches, a copy of Goldfinger wedged in the buckle for casual access) at the Mesa County Community College to study, of all things, History. He had never finished high school, enrolled instead upon another venture, Korea; and settled into construction work when he got back. Then he signed on for MCC; and there he met my mother, Jinny Meeks, making a fresh start herself after an ‘unpleasantness at college’ in her sophomore year at UC-Davis, involving a boy and a degree of coercion Pitt chooses not to think on. My father made a beginning of her and they both made an end of their education.
The Syme Papers Page 47
