Three Short Novels

by Gina Berriault

  12

  Uncertain about which door was the right one, someone was bungling along the landing, knocking at all of them. The dog inside the apartment next to Ilona’s clawed at the door, banging against it, and its bellowing bark caused the walls of her room to vibrate. Then the caller knocked at her door.

  “Ah, it’s you,” Claud said, surprised he had found her. “I want you to join me in an act of supreme cruelty. You remember Jerome, our host? If not his name at least his suffering face? We’re going out to the ocean and we’re going to make a bonfire and we’re going to burn his manuscript. His only one, that one about his wife and Neely in the coils of a boa constrictor passion.”

  One second of perverse pleasure—it sprang so fast to her eyes she had no way of concealing it from him. If all those pages, all those years of labor were to go up in smoke, then the woman herself might end up unremembered, her life unknown.

  “That’s an awful thing to do,” she said, “burning up all that labor,” her dismay as true as that shameful pleasure a moment ago.

  “It’s cold out there at the ocean,” he warned. “Dress warm.”

  “I don’t want to see him.”

  She wanted to back away, close the door. They were two of a kind, herself and that husband. There was a shame about them both for their fear of loss and for the loss that had come about.

  “Oh, but he looks great. He’s skinny and he’s got a haircut and he’s wearing suits again, and he’s got himself a big desk in the trust department at the Bank of America or Bank of the Cosmos. One little thing left to do, burn up his obsession, and he’ll soar like a big pink flamingo.”

  He found her raincoat and held it up for her and she slipped it on. At the foot of the stairs he took out a black knit cap from his jacket pocket, a watch-cap like the one he was wearing, and drew it over her head, down to the eyebrows.

  “You and me,” he said “I’m the executioner and you’re the priest. Say a prayer over the ashes.”

  The time was midafternoon, but their host was lying asleep on Claud’s bed. He sat up, hampered by the blankets over him, struggling up from the exhaustion that precedes an act of finality. Ilona would not have recognized him in a crowd. He was somebody else or more truly himself than on the night of his party. His face, that night, must have been padded with hope that everything would stay the same, the tolerable same, despite the man up in the air.

  Claud pushed a chair firmly against the backs of her knees. “Sit down, sit down.” And to the host, “Sit up, sit up. I’ll brew something bitter.”

  Jerome sat on the edge of the bed, head down. “How’ve you been?” he asked his shoes.

  “I’ve been fine,” she said.

  “Me too.”

  She had wanted never to see this man again. The night of the party, his prophetic fear of losing his wife to Martin had diminished her, Ilona. His confession had been direct as a statement that she, Ilona, was not one to keep a lover when that lover was to come into the presence of his beautiful wife. He diminished her further, now, by the loss of his flesh, by the grief and rage that had brought him here and entangled him in his friendly enemy’s blankets. She was not loved beyond reason, as his wife was loved. She was not loved anymore within reason.

  “You want to tell Ilona what you did? What he did,” Claud went on, “was hide out by her house and wait for them to come out. He bought himself a Triumph because it’s easily hidden under a bush, the sort of car a rodent can drive. He told himself he wasn’t going to hurt anybody, he just wanted to see them together. Maybe he hoped the sight of them would bring on a heart attack and he’d collapse and die, like those primitives who fall down dead at the sight of a sacred person even if it’s their own cousin. But when they showed up he began to shake, like this. He was shaking so hard he thought he was going to shake himself right out of his car and across the street on his hands and knees. They didn’t see him and he got away. He got back across the bridge all right because those Triumphs drive themselves. Then he came over here. I thought he came to kill me because it was me who brought Martin Vandersen into his life. I was afraid he had a weapon on his person, like a lady’s ivory-handled revolver that belonged to his grandmother, maybe with a blood-red ruby in the handle. The rich kill you with the very best, it’s a matter of noblesse oblige. So I pleaded with him for my life, I said ‘Martin Vandersen’s relieved you of a life-threatening wife.’ I said, ‘Unless that’s what you want, an early death with her kneeling by you, floor, street, wherever, so the last thing you see is her beloved face.’ That was too much to think about so he toppled over. But before he fell asleep he told me his manuscript was in his car and he was going out to the beach to burn it. I said, ‘Why don’t you do it in your fireplace?’ and he said, ‘The smell of human flesh. The neighbors will call the cops.’ If he talks that way in his novel it’s good he’s burning it.”

  The bitter brew fumed up over the percolator lid.

  “You ever see that painting Paradiso?” he asked them, bringing black coffee in chipped mugs. “Where everybody’s dressed up in their Renaissance best, finding each other again, falling into each other’s arms? Well, the people in that Paradise are forever in the shape in which they were last seen on earth. There’re people of all ages, kids and middle-aged ones and old, old ones. I’ve always puzzled over that painting, it wakes me up in the middle of the night. I think, Well, it’s all right for the young, it’s real nice to spend the rest of eternity looking the same. But what about the older ones? I bet when they get a little time to be alone up there and to think, maybe the old ones say to themselves ‘It was me at six years old and it was me at twenty and it was me at forty, so why does it have to be me forever when I was ninety-one? Why ninety-one forever even if my arthritis is all gone?’ Myself, if I could have a word with God, I think I’d tell him ‘Look at me, God. I’d hate to go through eternity like I am now at forty or like I’m going to be, even worse. I resemble a bullfrog now, my chin is adhering to my chest because you took my neck away, and look at my sad froggy eyes. I used to be good-looking, God. I was good-looking for a long enough time to give you time, God, to think about keeping me that way forever.’” And to the host, who had scalded his mouth with the hot coffee and was bent over in pain, head down to his knees. “I’m telling you this as an argument for an early death. You ought to make it up there before you look any worse. Maybe all you need to do to get there fast is persuade your wife to come back to you.”

  No one spoke, not even Claud, on the drive to the ocean. They went in Claud’s rattling car and, by a trick of his, the manuscript lay in Ilona’s lap. Its weight was impressive. She guessed there must be close to a thousand pages in the brown wrapping paper tied with string. No matter if he had revealed nothing more than how trapped he was in his own life and how oblivious to the rest of the world—his pages ought not to be burned. Why, then, was she riding along with the manuscript in her lap?

  Claud slowed down along the Great Highway, selecting the site with care. On the landward side of the highway the old houses and the new stucco motels faced the sea, and on the seaward side the high sand dunes, some ten feet high with purple iceplant clinging to their slopes, belonged somewhere else on the earth, an ancient port on a desert coast.

  Claud parked before a green stucco motel aglitter with specks of gold. She was about to say No, not here and said nothing. Martin’s house had stood there, and she knew that when the pages had all gone up in smoke and they were climbing back over the dune, Claud would pause at the top and say You know, I think Martin’s basement was along about here. In fact, right there. You see that green motel? And the specks of gold would be flashing and sparkling in the rays of the setting sun.

  “Somewhere else,” she said, “might not be so windy.”

  “No wind anywhere,” Claud said, and got out first.

  They climbed the dunes and were met by a fitful wind, the ragtag end of a storm yesterday. The wind, though not strong enough to break up the glaring overcast sky
, was lifting foam high off the breakers. A fisherman in hip-high rubber boots was casting his line into the breakers, a very small figure in the glare of sky and water. Far down the beach a few lone persons and a dog were either approaching or retreating in the mist along the water’s edge.

  Claud led the way down the slope, past three seated figures facing the sea. It was obvious in their calmness, the disciplined erectness of their backs, that they were meditating. Ilona, trudging down last, saw that they did not move a muscle. It was as if no one passed by. Up ahead, Claud stopped at the foot of the slope, turned, and waved his arms. The spot he had chosen was only a few yards from the three figures who were seated in an arc, above.

  “Why here?” Jerome asked. “Look, there’s nobody for miles.”

  “These dudes don’t see a thing,” Claud assured him. “They won’t laugh at you, they won’t cry. They’re above it all, they’re floating above all human suffering. You used to be into it yourself.”

  The figure in the middle was a girl, her long hair drawn back, her face blanched by the cold, her heavy clothes shapeless. The young man to the south of her was bearded, his dark hair hanging thickly to his shoulders, and the young man to the north was beardless, his wisps of thin blond hair lifted and laid down by the wind, his eyes closed. The other two held a steady gaze on the horizon.

  “We’re disturbing them,” she said.

  “We can’t. Nothing can.” Claud took the package from her and dropped it straight down at his feet. The package scooped a shallow place for itself, scattering sand over his boots.

  They searched a long way, up and down the beach, for enough dry sticks and driftwood. From far Ilona saw Jerome moving about, a figure in an excellent suit a shade darker than the sand. He stumbled over a mound, and she expected to see him drop to his knees and stay there. A dog, running along the beach in zigzags and loops, stopped to nose the package and dig furiously with its hind legs, throwing sand over it. They came back with their arms full.

  With a show of expertise, Claud arranged wood and newspapers and set the pile ablaze with Jerome’s cigarette lighter. “The rest is up to you. Don’t throw it all in at once, you’ll smother the fire. A few pages at a time and don’t try to read them.”

  Kneeling, Jerome untied the string, unfolded the wrapping. The wind lifted the top page and began to slip it away, left it to riffle through the pages just underneath. Then, leaping up, waving his arms, he was shouting at the three figures above them. “Look what’s going on here, fellas!”

  He took off running, he ran in circles, searching for something he must have seen earlier, and swooped down on it at last—a yellow plastic pail, or part of a pail. Waving it above his head, he ran down to the water, waded in, filled the pail, ran back and past the fire, and stopped before the girl.

  “Fellas, look!” he shouted, holding the pail over his head. “I’m going to burn myself up. I’m like your Buddhist monk over in Saigon. See! I’m pouring this gasoline over myself. See, fellas?”

  Ilona saw no change in the faces of the three, no smiles, not even annoyance. The one with his eyes closed did not open them, and the other two continued to gaze out to sea.

  Jerome tipped the pail and the water splashed over the crown of his head and streamed down his face. He threw the pail away, leaped down the slope, ripped off his shoes and socks, and thrust his bare foot into the fire. He kept his foot in the fire beyond the limits of even Claud’s endurance.

  Claud shoved him off, and he went hopping away. Hopping back, he picked up the entire manuscript and dropped it into the fire. The fire was almost extinguished. Sparks, burning bits of wood shot out all around. Claud handed him a long stick, and he stirred the fire to life again. The flames flared up, the corners of the pages turned brown, curled up, the words in black ink turned brown and lost their meanings. The top pages rippled, rose up and fell back and vanished, and the pages below, facing suddenly the vast white sky, shriveled into evanescent shards. The bulk of the manuscript remained almost untouched, too heavy and dense for the air to enter and lead the way for the flames.

  Jerome limped away fast and Ilona followed him. For a long way he waded through shallow water, cooling his burned foot. His trousers were wet to the knees. She could tell by his back, by his lifted shoulders and bent head, that he was crying. In the white glare of sky and ocean she lost sight of him. When she found him again he was sitting on the sand, up away from the water, gripping his ankle.

  She sat beside him. The skin on the sole of his foot was burned away. “That monk,” he said. “I wasn’t ridiculing him. God no. I wish I were him. The man had something to burn himself up for. The world’s over there, that’s where it’s at, and I thought it was waiting to hear what’s going on inside my head. The rot up here, up here. What I did in that novel to her and old Neely, Willy Nilly Neely, poor old cocksman! You look at your pages, you look at the type, it’s like barbed wire. You’ve got your victims, your prisoners inside there. Years ago I read about what those syndicates down in Mexico do to the prostitutes who try to escape. They roll them up in barbed wire. I was doing that to her. Elisa.”

  The wind was colder, it seemed colder. It stung her face, hung back, slipped by, came around and struck her face again. She could say that the ones he thought he’d imprisoned behind barbed wire were not there, that he had imprisoned only himself and not forever, and someday he would forgive himself for the attempt on their lives and his own, but the roar of the ocean filled the sky and her voice would be unheard.

  “Well, I guess I set them free,” he said. “I guess I’m free myself, free of her, free of her boy. He always reminded me of his father. I think I loved that boy, I think he loved me, but I’m glad he’s gone. I loved his father, too, but he shook me up, the son of a bitch. But I can’t say I’m free of Martin Vandersen. Maybe I’ll never get rid of him, maybe I’ll become one of those nighttime teeth-gnashers, and if I ever get married again my wife will sleep in a separate bed. The only way I can ease myself of him is to imagine him when he’s old, you know what I mean? When he’s old and his fame gone, and all those seraphic curls gone, all those red curls shining under all my goddamn lamps, maybe we’ll embrace in Paradise. ‘Goddamn, Martin, glad to see you again!’ Maybe that’s where we were in a dream I had a couple of nights ago, but I didn’t know that’s where until Claud reminded me there’s a Paradise. Joe Neely was there, too, and we were standing on a sort of balcony, the three of us, me and Neely and Martin. We had on white robes like angels or maybe they were hospital nightgowns, but we weren’t old yet, we were like we are, or Neely was, and all the pain and envy and anger were gone, and there were all these women down below, women and children looking up at us, and I said to Martin or he said to me or Neely said to him or to me, one of us said it anyway, ‘Which one did you say was Elisa?’ We didn’t know and it didn’t matter. Maybe that dream made me decide to burn the stuff.”

  It was a long way back to the fire. He walked all the way in the shallow water, limping. The three meditators were gone, the fishermen gone. The only ones left were a lone figure far down the beach and Claud, poking the fire.

  “It’s got to be ashes,” Claud said. “You don’t want somebody to come along and read a fragment and take it home. It could trouble him the rest of his life—What came before and what came after?” At the end of his stick the last page burst into flame.

  They climbed the sand dunes, Claud in the lead, and at the top he paused. The green motel was flashing a million promises of glamour and ecstasy to the overcast day. No blazing sunset was necessary.

  “Claud, don’t say it,” she begged.

  Jerome came up the dune last, shoes in hand. His hair was wet, his trousers wet, his face pinched closed by the cold wind and the loss of his captives. A white line, like salt, sealed his lips.

  They went down the sand dune together, no one leading, no one straggling, and all the way back into the city they spoke not one word.

  13

  One night she hear
d Martin’s footsteps on the stairs. She knew they were his footsteps, always light, rather slow, those of someone led by a reason not yet known to him. The room where she slept and where she wrote faced the landing. The lamp was on, the curtains closed. He tapped at the window.

  “Ilona? It’s me.”

  It began, the trembling of desire and resistance to it. Her hand was trembling so much she had trouble with the simple lock.

  Avoiding the room where the lamp was lit, he went on into the kitchen.

  “You’re working late.”

  She was wrong about his footsteps. He knew why he had come. He was troubled over what she was doing in her own way about the end of love. Or, as usual, she was only imagining what went on in someone else’s eyes.

  “It’s not about us,” she said.

  Relief in his eyes, and then a doubt, and then, perhaps because he chose not to doubt her, his eyes accepted her words. “Some say it’s best to wait ten years before you say anything about any experience. If you did that you’d give me time to escape and yourself, too, if you want to escape.”

  Was he cautioning her to wait until balance was restored by time, to wait until the memory of love would suffice to soothe her and redeem her? She had only to wait and wait.

  “What’s it about, then?”

  “It’s about my brother.”

  “I forgot,” he said. “I forgot you had a brother.”

  Strange that this man by leaving her was leading her more deeply into herself than he had when he was with her in those few years of love. Like a guide who has no idea where he leads.