‘What do you mean?’ she asked.
‘Oh, I don’t know. When I’ve been away and then come back, I’m always slightly dismayed to find that nothing is ever quite as it was before. The impression isn’t the same; but, then, it’s never different enough for me to know what has changed – if anything has changed. Doesn’t it seem that way to you?’
She nodded her head. ‘Nothing seems to fit,’ she admitted. For it was an admission; when she thought about it she felt guilty and wanted to keep it to herself. Then, remembering that Nancy was Basil’s sister, she added hastily, ‘Basil hasn’t changed, though. He is just the same.’
Nancy’s mouth opened in surprise, and at the same time her eyelids dropped until they all but covered her eyes. She put down her coffee-cup with a small clatter and shifted uneasily in her chair. ‘Is he, really?’ she asked.
She pretended not to notice Nancy’s surprise. She picked up her own cup deliberately and held it to her lips, but it was only with difficulty that she opened her mouth and swallowed the hot coffee. ‘But that may be because I haven’t stopped seeing Basil,’ she said, watching her companion closely. ‘He came to the hospital every visiting day, you know. He was very good about it.’
Nancy started to smile, and then stopped. ‘Of course, you are the best judge of that, darling,’ she said, speaking slowly and not unkindly. ‘If I were you, though, I’d expect some change. Men are queer animals.’
She laughed and the sound of her laughter annoyed her because it was forced and discordant. ‘You forget that Basil is so wrapped up in his music that he isn’t likely to know what goes on around him for months at a time. Unless, that is, you know something I don’t know…’ She paused, trying to decide whether to ask the question she wanted to ask and, if she did decide to ask it, whether to pose it bluntly or casually as if it did not matter. Then, before she had decided, she laughed again, this time even more loudly and harshly than before. And the question asked itself – she certainly had not willed it, the words, as they came out one by one, seemed strange to her, and the voice that spoke them did not seem her own. ‘He hasn’t fallen in love with someone else, has he, Nancy? That isn’t what you’re trying to tell me, is it?’ And her fingers stretched themselves compulsively, her nails scored the table-cloth, her body trembled.
Nancy’s face turned serious, but only for a moment. Then she was smiling again, while she looked in her purse for a comb and a mirror with one hand and patted her hennaed bob with the other. ‘Darling, how should I know that?’ she asked. ‘I’m only his sister. I’d be the last to know.’
Nancy lived in a tall apartment building that overlooked Washington Square. Basil paid the rent for the roomy studio, which had great, wide windows and a sky-light, just as he paid most of her other bills. The furnishings, however, were old and well-worn; they had come from their mother’s home in Connecticut and were sufficiently out of date to be fashionable. Nancy had arranged them with an artist’s talent for dramatic effect – everything faced the huge windows, viewed the Square; only her easel turned its back on the sky. So, when one sat on the ponderous horsehair sofa, as Ellen was doing now, one felt as if one had been launched into space, catapulted from the earth to the clouds, delicately suspended in the empyrean.
She did not know why she had come home with Nancy. It had not been her intent to stay with her any longer than was necessary; when they had finished their coffees at Julio’s and were squabbling over who should take the check, she had been on the point of remembering another appointment, of making her excuses and abandoning Nancy. There had not been another appointment, of course; what she had wanted to do was to walk in the Park, visit the zoo, wander freely for a couple of hours. Yet when her companion had suggested that they find a taxi and come down to the Village – ‘I want you to see my new canvases, Ellen – I want your opinion on one of them’ – she had nodded her head and agreed. It was not that she had wanted to be with Nancy – if anything she had wanted to escape her – but Nancy’s mysterious manner, her off-hand warning, when coupled with the doctor’s parable, had whetted her curiosity and encouraged her insecurity. If I stay with her, she had reasoned – sensing as she thought this that her reasoning was merely after-the-fact rationalization and that it was fear that was her true motivation – she will keep on chattering and may say something else that is even more meaningful, that will let me know where I stand with Basil.
But Nancy had been more taciturn during the drive down-town. After having given the address to the cabdriver, she had settled back on the seat with her pet in her lap and had passed the time stroking his back and patting his head. When they reached the tall building and had gone up in the elevator to one of the topmost floors, Nancy had unlocked the door to the apartment, ushered her into the studio, taken her hat and wrap and disappeared. Ellen was still waiting for her to return, facing the great blue deeps of sky, clotted with massive cloud-formations, that disrupted her equilibrium and all but convinced her that she hung perilously above the pit of the world, staring down into it with sickening dismay, beckoned by its immensity, taunted and harried into flinging herself down, down, down, to destruction. But I am only sitting on a comfortable sofa looking out of a high window, she cajoled herself, stretching her legs forward, making them long and tenuous, ambiguous appendages. I could not throw myself out and down from here. I would first have to stand and walk to the sill, to loosen the catch, lift and climb and heave. All I need do is to remain calm and quiet on the sofa, to shut my eyes and pretend I have not seen the sky; after all, this feeling is nothing new, I have fought it off many times before.
But when she shut her eyes, she saw the lattice-work, the diamonds of sun and stripes of darkness, the cool green facets of lawn and elms; and she remembered the helplessness of that other vista, the caged loneliness, the night panic. The blackness crept upon her, shutting out even the image of the bars, smothering her, forcing her breath to rush past her teeth, her mouth to part and moan. She opened her eyes again, quickly turning her head about, by this legerdemain avoiding the window and the immeasurable view. She found herself looking backward towards the hall that led to the other rooms, listening to a queer scribbling sound, a rapid scuffle, as if death had resorted to little feet, to rat’s claws and a tinkly bell. Her mouth still open, her eyes fixed in terror, she tried to rise, to jump up, to scream. But her position was an awkward one, her body was twisted and her legs, still outstretched, acted as props rather than levers. She was caught and held, pinioned by her own limbs, a cold, anonymous hand caressed her spine, her throat was contracted and numb, incapable of speech. If I weren’t so frightened, I would be amused, a part of her thought – the cynic inside her who could only scoff – for I have tricked myself into being my own jailer. But the scrabbling sound came nearer, mixed now with an aspirate murmur, a hideous snuffling, seemed behind her, every moment nearer, at her feet. I cannot bear it any longer, she told herself, her fingers prodding into the hard weave of the upholstery, her back arched and cataleptic in its effort to shrink away from the source of the sound – and she made one last effort to swerve around, remembering this time to attempt to bend her legs, striving to recall the mechanics of sitting up, of changing one’s position, but frustrated again by the stiff hasps of her knees. And then the horror touched her, a cold, tiny wetness at the ankles – the black mists swam before her eyes. A coarse, grating noise, sharp like a gun’s cough, broke the silence. And reason returned, mingling for a moment with confusion’s retreat – as sun and rain exist together on a summer’s day; she went limp and at the same moment blindly reached out a hand, felt backward and downward, still too panicky to turn – not yet remembering how to face about, reached short, bristly fur and a cold nose just at the time Nancy bustled into the room, a tray with a decanter and glasses on it in her hands, crying, ‘Dangerous! Where did you go? Where did you scamper to, you nasty thing? Oh, there you are, you brute! Why, you’ve frightened Ellen!’
She began to giggle, her hand
at her mouth to hide her grimacing lips and stifle the witless sound; her body, released from the tension of terror, went limp; she felt herself to be a grinning rag doll out of which the stuffing had leaked. Nancy turned from berating the dog, from setting the tray on a low table, to a proper, social concern over her fright, sat beside her on the high, old sofa, chafed her hands and smoothed her brow. ‘He really is a nasty thing,’ she said. ‘What did he do? Jump at you and make an awful fuss? There’s nothing to his tantrums, you know. All bluff and bluster. All you need do is scowl at him and he sulks. Just look at him now!’
And it was true. The absurd puppy, abashed by his mistress’s voice, was crawling towards them on his belly, his tongue lolling, his eyes idiotic with craven humility. The sight was sobering, and she managed to stop laughing, although the obvious harmlessness of the animal that had frightened her so badly made her wonder again. Was there something, still undiscovered, that lay beneath the surface of her mind, hidden except on occasion when some accidental association – what had it been this time? the blue depths of the sky? the memory of the barred window? the blackness of the past? – allowed it to bob up into consciousness, a submerged monument resting on an unknown foundation, a landmark of her disorder? And if there were something there, something not so remote that it could, in an instant, come near and overwhelm her, how might she get to know it and, by knowing it, vanquish it? Would the old trick suffice, the pretended separation of judgement from emotion? Could she stand aside, even now, and inspect herself, lying flaccid on the sofa, listening to Nancy’s cooing noises, discover the flaw and eradicate it? No, she could not; for once she was certain that it was impossible – and, what was more to the point, she did not want to.
The dog, laboriously creeping, had reached their feet, and Nancy stooped to pet him. Her touch was magic, galvanic, transforming his propitiation into ecstasy; with demonic verve he began to yelp and cavort, to chase his tail. A shower of chromatic notes sounded in her head as she watched the puppy rejoice; Chopin and his little waltz descended upon her, illogically – or was it logically? He had written it after watching just such a frolic, hadn’t he?
and she was able to laugh sensibly at her fright. ‘I have been silly, Nancy,’ she confessed. ‘Please forgive me.’
‘But, of course, darling,’ Nancy replied, pushing past the dog, who was barking explosively, to grasp the decanter and pour wine into one of the glasses. ‘Have a little of this. It will clear your head.’
She had more than a little; she had many glasses. She sat and drank the slightly bitter wine while Nancy displayed her canvases, great red and yellow blots they all seemed – although here and there she descried something, a worker, a building, a conjectural tree – one like another. But she nodded her head and hemmed and hawed over each; several she professed to like particularly; she even made a play of choosing one that she preferred above all the rest. Actually, she did not mind being with Nancy as much as she had supposed; perhaps it was because she had drunk enough wine to be comfortably hazy, or it might simply be that one could grow used to Nancy. And then she was glad for someone’s presence; she did not wish to be alone after her fright.
A set of Westminster chimes echoed portentously, and Nancy, who was putting her canvases back in the closet, bending over, pushing, pulling, straightened up and exclaimed, ‘That must be Jimmy!’
‘Who is Jimmy?’ Ellen asked.
But her friend had already run into the hall, leaving behind her the open closet, from which a pile of paintings protruded. Nancy’s face had seemed suddenly flushed, from bending over or from embarrassment?
She turned her head towards the door, which Nancy, having opened, was now standing in, effectively hiding whoever had pressed the doorbell from view. They were holding a muttered conversation, or, at least, Nancy was. She was talking rapidly, but not loudly enough to be heard from where Ellen sat. Then, as she watched and strained her ears, the door opened more widely, Nancy backed a few steps, and a man came into the studio. She turned her head quickly – she did not want them to know she had been watching – too quickly to see anything more of him than a shock of uncombed hair. She busied herself with the decanter, pouring herself another glass of the tangy wine, and affected indifference as she heard them walk into the large room.
‘Ellen,’ said Nancy, ‘this is Jimmy. Jimmy is one of my closest friends.’
Stubbornly, only partly out of the shyness that usually overcame her at the moment of meeting, she at first refused to raise her eyes. She saw only his shoes – shabby, brown oxfords, run down at the heels like her Jimmy’s. Why did I think that? she asked herself. I haven’t thought of him for months. Not that I can’t think of him. I can review the whole past, recall every separate incident, with equanimity, even that part. Thinking this, she raised her eyes, looked upward far enough to see a pair of baggy grey flannels, the same kind of unpressed slacks that the Jimmy she had known had always worn. She shut her eyes, then opened them quickly, glanced higher yet, to see a scuffed leather jacket with a zipper down the front, a pair of tanned, short, muscular arms and large thick-fingered hands that lay placidly along the flannels, seeming to contain the thighs, as the jacket wrinkled neatly at the middle, and she was aware, pleasantly and confusedly, that this Jimmy had bowed. She blinked again, saying to herself: what an odd way to look at a man! – and then she gazed all the way up at him, expecting to see a new face. But the face she saw was dead, lying on its cheek, its dark hair tangled on the pillow, its lips drawn back torturously, its eyelids half-opened, as if the dying man had found he could bear only a glimmering of sight. She gasped again and saw the black blood, the battered head … she turned again and tried to run but, as once before, she felt the invisible wires that held her up sag and collapse … it was not that she was falling, just as it could not possibly be Jimmy who was dead, who had been dead, who is dead, who must be dead, it was not, it could not…
‘Damn!’ said Nancy. ‘She’s fainted.’ (Her voice came from far away and wavered, rose and fell, repeated itself.)
‘Devil take it!’ drawled Jimmy. ‘Have ah done anything?’ (His voice, his soft tenor, mingled with the wang of a carelessly picked guitar – contrasted sharply, in jarring counterpoint, with the steely perfection of the harpsichord’s falling cadence, so distinct, so distant – his voice hummed, then sang to her against the casual chords that were not chosen, that seemed to be born):
Jimmy crack corn, and ah don’t care!
Jimmy crack corn, and ah don’t care!
Jimmy crack corn, and ah don’t care!
My massa’s gone a-waa-ay…
The strong, assaulting, pungent stench in her nostrils made her jerk her head back, made her eyes stream with tears, made her say loudly, ‘Now, now, I’m all right!’ But Nancy was pressing the little bottle on her, forcing her to whiff the ammoniac, saying, ‘The poor thing! she’s so on edge – why, just a while ago the puppy barked at her and nearly frightened her to death!’ And the soft, slurred voice – his voice – was saying, ‘Ah’ve had gals makeover me afore, ma’am – but ah’ll swan if that ain’t the fust time one’s fainted dead away at the sight of me!’ And she sat up straight – as much to get away from the flask of smelling-salts as for any other reason – and stared into his lean, weathered face, the face that had always reminded her of homespun and worn saddles and, paradoxically, of cramped rooms, bad air and a blue spotlight, the face she had thought no longer existed. Now, not knowing what to do, seeing that Nancy, her ministrations spurned, had gone away – probably to put the bottle back in the medicine cabinet – she winked at the face. And it winked back, slowly masking its eye, boldly, dramatically, announcing a conspiracy.
‘You’re feeling better, ma’am, ah trust!’ he said, even before finishing the wink.
Ellen withdrew farther along the sofa and Jimmy advanced. She saw that he had brought his guitar – how like him that was! – and had laid it on the table next to the decanter. ‘Yes, I’m mu
ch better now,’ she said. ‘It was nothing, really. I’ve been sick a long time you know, and I still get a little hazy, sometimes.’
‘You must mean dazey, ma’am. You said “hazy”.’
‘I meant hazy. You see, I’ve been in a mental hospital.’
‘Have you now, ma’am?’ He did not pause, but went on with the silly act, pushed her along, maliciously. ‘My grandmammy’s gone to the State Hospital; but she’s old and a little teched. You’re not old.’
‘Do we have to go on like this, Jimmy? It isn’t funny.’
‘Ma’am?’ His eyes widened, but his mouth was tight to hold back the grin that longed to be there. ‘Did ah understand you rightly, ma’am?’
Before she could answer, Nancy was back – Dangerous prancing around her, nipping her skirts – and Jimmy was on his feet again.
‘Do sit down,’ Nancy said. ‘What a fuss you make – you Southerners are all alike! I see you’re getting acquainted?’ This last to Ellen.
‘Yes,’ she said, knowing she should say more, that it was imperative that she should say more so that Nancy, of all people, would not suspect. But she could not say anything, only, ‘Yes.’
‘Jimmy is quite the rage in the Village – all over town, for that matter. He sings folk-songs – the way they really should be sung, not jazzed up. You would like them, Ellen.’
‘Yes.’ (It was as if she had learned to speak that one word, as if she knew no other – yet it had no meaning, no phrasing, no sound; it was nothing but a mechanical action, a formation of lips, a button pressed, a light lighted.)
‘Won’t you sing something for us now, Jimmy?’ Nancy was trying to be pleasant, but she could see that her curiosity was aroused. She knows that something has happened, something that I hadn’t foreseen – she is wondering what it is. If he only doesn’t sing…
Devil Take the Blue-Tail Fly Page 8
