Listen for the Whisperer

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  “That is the way with Norwegian parties. Before you leave, we must give one for you. You will never know what being toasted is like until you have been toasted at a Norwegian supper party. We begin very formally with great dignity. We do not loosen up easily. But as the aquavit flows, we become extremely witty and clever. Or so we like to believe. Of course no one drives his car to such parties, since the government does not look kindly upon those who drive after drinking. So we all come in taxis, and in the early morning hours, feeling very gay indeed, we all go home in taxis.”

  He was speaking lightly, with the unexpected ability of the Norwegian to laugh gently at himself, and his inconsequential talk had the effect upon me that he intended.

  I was quiet now. Now I could tell him without tears the story Laura had given me of that time in Stockholm. The time when she and Victor had been in love. He listened intently and did not speak until I was through.

  Then he said, “What a fine gift she has made you.”

  “Gift?” I was startled.

  “It is a good thing to know that one has been born of so tender a loving.”

  Something in me hardened against him. “I don’t think Laura Worth knows anything about love. Or about tenderness. She’s only played at it, acted it.”

  “You are here,” Gunnar said. “And she even remembers the saffron sky over Stockholm. One does not recall small things unless the moment was important. But now you must tell me the rest. Tell me how the throwing of the paperweight came about.”

  Calmly he guided me away from arguments or attack. I had to go back to the beginning before he could understand about the broken window. I told him what Laura had said about hearing a whispered voice. I told him about the costume in the trunk, and the dragon candlestick, and how Laura had fainted. I told him about Donia’s behavior, and about the voice I had heard in the night. And though I didn’t want to—because of the aftermath—I told him about her sleepwalking, about the scarred picture, and of Miles Fletcher coming to take his wife back to bed.

  Gunnar minimized nothing I said, but in the end he questioned me. “Do you think she would really do such a thing—deface her portrait, even in her sleep?”

  “She had the scissors in her hand. And when I looked at them later, I found bits of canvas and paint stuck to the blades.”

  He shook his head solemnly and there was a frown between his dark brows. “I do not like this. Did she waken? Does she know what she has done?”

  “She didn’t know then. Dr. Fletcher apparently got her back upstairs without waking her. And Irene said he’d told her nothing. But she knows now.”

  “How is that?”

  I could not look at him. “I lost my temper this morning when we were talking. I was so angry that I blurted out the whole thing. I told her just what she had done. That was when she threw the paperweight through the window.”

  Gunnar’s long narrow hands rested upon his knees. I saw his fingers curl under and clench upon themselves, and I knew he was angry—with me. All the kindness and tolerance had gone out of him. There was nothing I could do to lessen his indignation over my actions, no extenuation I could offer, but I found myself bristling against him. He couldn’t know what Laura had been like—how cold and removed from me, how indifferent to anything I might be feeling. How she had said that each of us was her own person—and that was the end of it.

  When he spoke there was a chill disapproval in his voice that I had not heard to this degree before. His anger took a cold, wounding turn, like the thrust of steel.

  “So you have succeeded even better than you expected in your purpose in coming here? I should never have let you see her. I should have torn up your father’s letter and sent you home at once.”

  I swallowed hard against the shock of his words, but I met chill with chill.

  “I’ve wondered why you didn’t. Perhaps now you can tell me what the letter said.”

  “It was a kind letter. Perhaps kinder than you deserved. Your father was concerned with you. He wrote that while you might bring some healing of old wounds to Laura, it was not she who mattered. He said that she had lived her life and made her choices—and if she was hurt now, he did not think it was very important. But you were important to him. He felt that you could not make a life for yourself until you were rid of the angers that consumed you. There was nothing he could do about these, though he had tried. He felt to blame that it had happened this way to you, but he did not himself know the cure. He hoped that this meeting with Laura might accomplish what nothing else could. You mattered to him very much.”

  Tears burned behind my eyelids, and I blinked furiously to keep them from falling.

  “It was foolish of him to believe that,” I said.

  “Yes, it was foolish. I cannot agree at all with Victor that Laura does not matter. He could write that because it was so long since he had seen her, and he felt you were more important, being young. But I am here. I know and respect her. I have a great affection for Laura Worth. She is not all artifice as you think. There is a woman deep inside who deserves to escape from some prison in which she has enclosed herself. It could have been your opportunity, indeed your privilege to free her. But now you have failed in this.”

  I wanted to fight him, to fling angry words back at him, but they would not come. I couldn’t tell him so, but with part of me I knew how right he was. He would have been quite justified in sending me away, and never permitting me to see Laura. I had begun, all too successfully, the purpose for which I’d come to Bergen, and I could take no satisfaction in my success. I would still finish what I had come to do, but I would not enjoy it as I’d expected to.

  I got abruptly to my feet, and he rose with me.

  “If there’s more mountain to climb, let’s climb it,” I said.

  He answered me as curtly. “There is more.”

  I went with him down from the rocky place where the bench was set, and as we started up the road a change came over him. He moved a little ahead of me, as if he were alone. He seemed to forget me in the sheer satisfaction of being where he liked best to be—in the outdoors, under a sunny sky, with great trees all around harboring glens cushioned with pine needles, a stream that rushed noisily under a bridge we crossed, and the black rock of the mountain shining above us in the clear air. He seemed to be following the road toward the top as if new life flowed in him again after the long winter. He made me no part of this, yet, strangely, I too seemed to belong—as though I had lived here and knew the endless black days, the rain and snow, the darkness of the water, the storms—and now was released to the warming sun.

  We did not talk. I had lost my chance to learn what he thought of the earlier happenings at the house in Kalfaret. We needed our breath for the fast walking. The road turned inward away from the panorama of view, and moved less steeply over the broad top of the mountain. Flöyen had no sharp peak like Ulriken. It simply flattened out into rolling ground. Under the trees were great patches of snow, and sometimes these covered portions of the road, so that we crunched through the melting crust. Around a turn in the path the vista opened before us and I saw the high mountain lake he had brought me to. Its clear, shining surface was a thin coating of ice, with occasional cloud shadows drifting across it. All around, tall fir trees stood like dark guardians, and beyond them rose another mountain peak, its snow fields brilliantly white in the sun. This was Norway as I had imagined it. Now it spoke to me.

  “To come this way is the long road around,” he said. “But I thought you might wish to see this place.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and perhaps he heard the slight lift in my voice. He glanced at me briefly and then looked away.

  “It is not worthy of you to be jealous of her,” he told me unexpectedly. “You have no need to resent the fact that you do not resemble her outwardly. As yourself, you are undoubtedly a cause of great envy for her, even pain. You are young and attractive and talented. And you have certain strengths in your character that are equal, perhaps even s
uperior, to hers. Life is very much ahead of you. It cannot be easy for her to discover you, and to make her own comparisons.”

  He spoke impersonally, from a distance, and I wondered why I had ever thought him perceptive. He could think of Laura Worth, but not of me. What I was, what I might have felt and suffered, and longed for, he did not in the least understand.

  “If you think I’m jealous, you know nothing about me,” I said, and walked faster than before. He came with me in silence, and I only wished I could be away from him, free of his condemning presence.

  We saw hardly anyone now. Most hikers had turned off to take the shorter route to the restaurant that topped the mountain. We met a boy and girl in bright sweaters and slacks, and an elderly gentleman in the knickers that were commonplace walking wear for the older generation. They smiled at us politely in passing.

  The road at last wound away from the lake and we had only a short walk before we came out upon a flagstone terrace in front of the low building on top of Flöyen. Here there were small white tables with black chairs set about them, well occupied with people of every age sipping beer and soft drinks. Dogs had arrived up the mountain along with their families—rather well-behaved dogs which did not run about and make a disturbance. The baby carriages had arrived too, though not all had been wheeled up the road. There was the funicular on the far side of the terrace, making its regular trips up and down the heights, servicing the streets along the mountain from several stations. Flags of Norway and other nations rimmed the terrace, blowing in the wind from their high poles. Beyond lay the steep drop of the rocky cliff—with all of Bergen and its waters and far islands spread out below, clear to the North Sea.

  “Shall we find a table in the sun?” Gunnar asked.

  I nodded, but before we could seat ourselves, a waiter in a white coat came hurrying toward us.

  “There is a table inside,” he told us. “The lady is waiting for you.”

  Gunnar and I looked at each other—and knew.

  My spirits plummeted. She had come here to accuse me, to reproach me before Gunnar. There would be further dreadful scenes.

  “I won’t have lunch with her,” I told him. “I don’t want any more of this. I can take the funicular down. You needn’t bother about me.”

  He took my arm gently, but firmly, brooking no resistance. “I insist. It will be better if you see her now. After what you have done, you owe her that.”

  I owed her nothing, and I wanted only to cross the terrace to reach the funicular, leaving them to each other. But Gunnar drew me with him in a manner that allowed no opposition, and we followed the waiter into the building.

  A long, glassed-in veranda was set above the terrace, with white-clad tables in a long row, where diners could sit sheltered and still look out upon the terrace and the view. The ceiling slanted steeply overhead, and there were skylights and hanging lamps. At a table halfway down Laura Worth sat waiting for us.

  She wore a gray wool suit that became her, and a tiny gray hat of uncertain but charming vintage, and she looked beautiful and young and happy. Both hands were held out to Gunnar, who bent to kiss her cheek. Then she greeted me with an outstretched hand and drew me into a red chair beside her.

  I sat down stiffly, unable to follow with ease this emotional transformation. Gunnar accepted it more readily than I, though he threw me a watchful glance, sensing my astonishment at this turnabout.

  “I knew I could get here ahead of you by the funicular,” she told us. “I’ve been watching for you to appear. Your cheeks are pink, Leigh. Norway is good for you.”

  Gunnar took the chair opposite us, and the waiter brought menus. I was glad to study mine. I could find no words to speak to her. What had become of her horror and shock over being told that she had done such a dreadful thing to her own portrait? What had become of her anger with me? I simply couldn’t change gears like this. She had ordered me from the house. She had been furious enough with me to break a window by flinging the paperweight through it. And now she sat smiling at me as though some of her affection for Gunnar had spilled over to me. Such amiability left me astonished. And helplessly indignant. I had been put through an emotional upheaval, I had alienated Gunnar thoroughly—and all, apparently, for nothing.

  “Unless you want something heavier for lunch,” she said to me, “we must introduce you to our open-faced sandwiches. Will you order for us, Gunnar, please.”

  The waiter went away, taking the menus with him, and I had nothing to distract my attention. I could only look at Gunnar and Laura as they took frank pleasure in each other’s company. He was clearly devoted to her, and despite the difference in their ages, she was still woman enough to provide that fillip of spice in the company of an attractive man.

  I watched the terrace for a while, noting the pink legs of little girls, the clear white skin of a blond mother, the beards on the faces of young men. Below the edge of the cliff gulls swooped and soared, enjoying the air drafts formed by the mountain.

  I felt thoroughly upset and confused and uncertain. Laura’s smile was radiant, her eyes bright, and there was that illusion of youth about her. If I had shocked and injured her in any way, it didn’t show, and I felt somehow that it should have. Gunnar need not have worried, but he had, and he had not forgiven me. His formal manner toward me told me that.

  “What do you think of all this?” she asked him. “That at this late date I find myself with a daugher. A young girl of twenty-three who is very much like me.”

  “Like you?” I echoed in exasperation.

  She touched my arm lightly with one of her small, caressing gestures. “Of course. Before you stormed out of my room in a temper, I looked at you—and saw myself. We were mirroring each other, the two of us—all those lost tempers and furious reactions. But we’re over it all very quickly, aren’t we?”

  If she could dismiss her own desperate actions so lightly, I could not. I couldn’t dismiss either hers or mine. What had happened had been real.

  “I can’t fly around like that,” I said. “I don’t forgive so easily.”

  She paid no attention. Perhaps she took it for granted that she would be forgiven—as she always was. “I saw you in the garden with the paperweight in your hands. I hope it wasn’t damaged. I’d like to have it back.”

  “It’s not damaged,” I said. I didn’t know whether I would give it back or not. It was in my handbag, but I didn’t bring it out. “Mrs. Jaffe is convinced that you threw it at her head. She thinks you tried to kill her.”

  Laura’s laughter was as delightful as I remembered it on the screen, and as free of any darkness. “That’s wonderful! I didn’t know I could frighten the little beast. I’ll have to try it again.”

  Gunnar was watching us both, his manner sober, unamused. “You object to Dr. Fletcher’s sister?”

  “I detest her!”

  “Then must you have her stay in your home?”

  “I don’t want her there, believe me. Miles is sorry for her. He says she has no place to go, and I can’t hurt him by insisting that she leave. Sometimes there is a close tie between brother and sister, and the rest of their family is gone. Perhaps it will only be for a little while. I think he doesn’t entirely realize the spite she feels toward me.”

  Gunnar accepted her explanation. “Tell us now,” he said, “—you did not come up here merely to surprise us.”

  “No, of course not. Miles had no plan for the holiday, after all. So I ran away. I went out and found a taxi to take me to the funicular. I came for myself—for the pleasure of lunching with you both on the mountain.”

  She was still playing at being young and carefree, but now the edge of the mask had slipped a little, and I was aware of something tense underneath. All this gaiety was covering something up. It was not to be taken entirely at face value as I’d thought.

  “Leigh has told me what has been happening,” Gunnar said. “It is not going well with you, Laura?”

  She had kept her veined, betraying hands u
nder the table, but now she brought them out in a little gesture of pleading.

  “Will you intervene with my daughter for me, Gunnar? Please ask her to come back to the house and stay with me for as long as she can. Please ask her to forgive me.”

  “You can ask her yourself,” he said gently. “If forgiveness is necessary. Perhaps it is the other way around as to who should forgive.”

  She turned to me and her great eyes were liquid with pleading, though she said nothing more. I felt increasingly exasperated, but no longer as emotional as I had earlier. Whatever her pretense, it was not as a daughter that she wanted me in her house. She wanted me there because she was afraid of something, and I was for the moment some sort of buffer between her and whatever trouble she feared.

  “What are you afraid of?” I asked pointedly.

  A nerve twitched near the corner of her mouth. Her fingers played with two silver pins on the lapel of her jacket. Pins, I noted, that depicted the two masks of tragedy and comedy.

  “We cannot help unless you tell us what is wrong,” Gunnar added.

  “I—I’ve made a terrible mistake. Perhaps I’ve ruined my own life and that of others. Now I can only live from day to day. I ran away when I came up here, but that was only make-believe. There’s no place to run where the whisperer won’t follow. I know that now.”

  Here on this bright veranda, with diners around us, and sunshine outside, with family groups at the white tables on the terrace, young couples with knapsacks walking hand in hand, all seemed wholesome and normal. Laura’s words had a melodramatic ring. Yet—I could still remember last night with a terror that could be fully recalled.

  “Laura,” I said, “I heard the voice last night. It sounded in my room after I’d been asleep for a while. Who is playing this trick?”

  She had paled visibly and her hand fumbled at the silver pins in a blind, lost way. “I’m afraid,” she said. “I’m bitterly afraid.”

  “Then you must move out of that house,” Gunnar told her practically. “My mother would welcome you at our home. You must come there to stay for a time—until whatever troubles you is cleared away.”