“I suppose it shouldn’t, but it does. If he hadn’t had polio he’d be as tall as I am, too. Maybe taller. So. This is something I have to cope with myself, isn’t it? Vee, your mother said for us to stay only a minute. So I’m afraid we ought to go.” She stood up and went over to Gertrude’s couch. “Good-bye, Madame de Croisenois. I always feel less full of puberty and more of a reasonable human being after I’ve talked with you. Thank you very much.”
“Thank you, Mimi,” Gertrude said. “Come talk to me whenever you feel like it. I like it. And try not to fret about being taller than Sam. We all tend to let our bodies become more important than we are. But they aren’t.”
Virginia came over from the window. “She’s not that much taller, anyhow. Good night, Madame de Croisenois. Olive oil.”
“Abyssinia,” Gertrude said.
“Let’s walk,” Mimi said. “I don’t want to go home yet.”
“Okay.”
—Home. I don’t have a home any more. There are two people living in that house, that horrible, cold, draughty house, and I don’t know either of them. And when they put on the faces of my mother and father it is as though they wore masks.
“What are you thinking?” Mimi asked.
“I’m writing a poem,” Virginia lied, knowing that it was a safe lie. But then she said, “Even Connie’s changing. She’s not a baby any more. She’s getting thinner. She’s growing up.”
“You wouldn’t want things not to change, would you?” Mimi asked. “Think how deadly dull everything would be. And anyhow, scientifically speaking, everything would be dead in thirty seconds if things stopped changing. Life is change. Without it we’d be petrified. Frozen.”
“As though we’d looked at Medusa,” Virginia said, momentarily diverted by the image. And now words that might one day turn into a poem began to weave through her mind.—Where has the world been out there in the dark sea of infinity? What dread Medusa’s head has chilled its life to stone, has sticken it to marble, dead, alone? What has the world seen?
They were approaching the open snow fields, and she said, “I thought you told Madame de Croisenois mother told us to stay only a minute.”
“She did. But because of Madame de C. Not us. Didn’t you see how tired she was beginning to look? I thought she’d had enough.”
—Mimi’s more observant than I. A poet is supposed to be observant.
“Oh,” she said. “But let’s go back now anyhow.” Slowly she turned around and led the way back down to the villa.
Emily was at the piano. She had started with Bach and ended up with “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep,” and Connie was sitting on her lap singing in her high, surprisingly true treble. She climbed down as the front door slammed against the wind, and ran to greet the girls.
“Vee, you had a call,” Emily said.
“Oh. Who, mother?”
“Your boy friend.”
“Not Beanie!” Mimi cried. “What a Thing, Vee, he’s really taken a topple for you! What’s he want, Mrs. Bowen?”
“He left a message for Virginia to call him as soon as she came in. I wrote his number on the pad by the phone.”
“I don’t want to call him.”
“Oh, come on, Vee,” Mimi said, “don’t be so stubborn. If it’s because of the cracks he made about me, forget them. I have. You can learn a lot from Beanie as long as you take him for what he is and aren’t fooled by his glamor. Go on, call him.”
“Come with me, then,” Virginia said nervously.
“Now play ‘Away in a Manger,’” Connie demanded of Emily.
Virginia went into the hall and dialed the hotel number. “I wonder what on earth he wants?”
“Only way to find out is to ask him,” Mimi said.
It was several minutes before Virginia was connected with the Beans’ rooms, and then Mrs. Bean answered the phone. “Oh, yes, dear,” she said as Virginia identified herself. “Just a moment.” Virginia heard her calling in a high, rather nasal voice. “Snider! Sni—i—der!”
Then Beanie’s voice came. “Hello, Virginia, my pretty little pussycat, and how are you today?”
“Fine, thank you.”
“And how’s our pal Mimi?”
“Fine, thank you.”
“I don’t suppose you could throw her for a couple of hours this evening and come highbrowing with me, could you? There’s a concert at the casino. A string quartet and a pretty good one, I’m told, and I’d be enchanted to take you.”
“Oh, golly, Beanie, it sounds awfully nice, but I don’t think I could.”
“You mean because of Mimi being your guest?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you know what, I think our pal Samuel would be very happy to entertain her. I might suggest it to him if you think that would cover the situation.”
“Oh, golly—” Virginia said.
“What’s he want?” Mimi demanded.
“Just a minute, please,” Virginia said into the mouthpiece of the phone, and turned, flustered, to Mimi. “He wants me to go to a concert with him this evening.”
Mimi put a practised palm over the mouthpiece. “Go on and go. It’ll be good practice for you.”
“I didn’t want to go without you,” Virginia said, “but Beanie said he thought maybe Sam might want to do something with you and he’d suggest it to him.”
“That’s the greatest idea since the invention of the wheel,” Mimi said.
“Well, I’d better ask mother, then.” She turned back to the phone. “Beanie, could you wait just a minute while I ask my mother? I’m sure it will be all right, but she likes me to check with her first.”
“Sure,” Beanie said. “Go ahead and ask.”
Armed with permission Virginia returned. “She says it’s all right, Beanie. Thank you very much.”
“Good,” Beanie said. “I’ll pick you up around eight, then. And tell Mimi Sam’ll call her in a moment.”
Virginia went back in to her mother and stood waiting while Emily played “Bobby Shafto.” “That’s enough now, Con,” Emily said. “I’ve sung myself hoarse.”
Connie climbed down from her mother’s lap. “I have to go talk on the telephone, but I have to wait because the lion is busy and you can never talk while the lion is busy.”
Virginia leaned up against her mother. “I think I’m scared,” she said. “I think I don’t want to go.”
Emily put her arm around her. “I know, Vee, and in spite of the fact that there isn’t a thing in the world to be scared about you’ll probably be scared until you’ve had a good bit more practice and gain in self-assurance. And the only way to get the practice and stop being scared is to accept every invitation like Beanie’s that you get. You’ll have fun when you get there and you’ll enjoy the concert.”
“Oh, sure,” Virginia said, “but I’m not a one for chamber music the way you are.”
“That’s another thing that takes practice,” Emily said, “so you’ll be getting in lots of practice in one evening.”
“Beanie has kind of pursued me, hasn’t he?” Virginia asked.
“He has indeed. And Mimi’s quite right. You can learn a lot from Beanie.”
“In spite of what I think of him?”
“In spite of it.”
“I think I like being pursued even though I am nervous about him,” Virginia said. “Play something for me, mother. Something kind of gay. Maybe Mozart. No, I know. Play the Poulenc Suite.”
Obediently Emily turned back to the piano. Virginia curled up in one of the chairs. From the dining room they could hear Connie’s peals of laughter as Mimi played Slap Jack with her.
“Ready for dinner?” Emily asked. “I’ve got a good, thick stew simmering on the back of the stove, and we’d better have it, so you and Mimi’ll have planty of time to change for your dates.”
“Not quite yet,” Virginia said. “I’m still sort of churned for some reason. Play one more thing.”
“How about Granados’ Goyescas?” Emily asked. “I feel like tackling
that.”
“Fine.”
“And then we must eat,” Emily said, reaching for the music.
After a moment of listening Virginia picked up an anthology she had left lying on the table and began turning the pages.
“You know what’s one of my favorite poems?” she asked, “and I just discovered it at school this autumn. We had it in English.”
Emily finished her phrase, took her hands from the keys. “What, Vee?”
“‘The Hound of Heaven.’ Do you know it?”
“Yes, Vee, it’s a beautiful thing.”
“‘I fled him, down the nights and down the days,’” Virginia read softly.
—I suppose it’s perfectly natural, Emily thought, remembering the words of the poem, that I should take all things like this as though they were directed particularly towards me, that I should twist their original meaning around to one applicable to me, And in the midst of tears I hid from Him, the words of the poem went. All things betray thee, who betrayest Me. “You haven’t read me any of your poetry for a while,” she said to Virginia.
“I read you the one about the woman by the guillotine,” Virginia said.
“Yes, and I liked it very much. Haven’t you something else?”
Virginia pulled a piece of paper out of the book of poetry. “Well, this is one daddy liked. I sort of got the idea from reading science fiction stories.”
“Read it to me.”
Virginia cleared her throat:
“I am fashioned as a galaxy.
Not as a solid substance but a mesh
Of atoms in their far complexity
Forming the pattern of my bone and flesh.
“I’ve been writing a lot of sonnets this winter,” she said, looking up from the slip of paper.
“Go on,” Emily said.
“Small solar systems are my eyes.
Muscle and sinew are composed of air.
Like comets flashing through the evening skies
My blood runs, ordered, arrogant, and fair.
Ten lifetimes distant is the nearest star,
And yet within my body, firm as wood,
Proton and electron separate are.
Bone is more fluid than my coursing blood.
What plan had God, so strict and so empassioned
When He an island universe my body fashioned?”
“I like that, Vee,” Emily said. “I like that very much. Your poetry has improved a lot this winter.”
“We’ve been studying atoms in chemistry this year, too,” Virginia said, “and they kind of fascinate me. And God. God is so tremendously exciting, mother. He’s so much bigger, so much more—more enormous—than most churches let Him be. When you look at the mountains—or when you look at the stars and think how many of them probably have planets with life on them—and maybe life entirely different from ours—Mother, why do people all the time try to pull God down so He’s small enough to be understood?”
Emily stood up and put her hands on Virginia’s shoulders. “I suppose because most people are afraid of what they can’t understand.”
“Mother, do you suppose I’ll ever be able to write poetry that will give people gooseflesh the way ‘The Hound of Heaven’ does me?”
“Who knows?” Emily said. “The main thing is to be as aware as you can, every single minute. Never be bored by anything. Because everything, no matter how trivial, is grist to the poet’s mill. And now, my sweet, ‘The time has come, the Walrus said.’ We’re all starved and I’m going to dish out the stew. But I did like your sonnet very much.”
Out in the dark Virginia went with Beanie, into the dark and cold, warmer than the villa. This was escape, not only from the villa and from fear and anger, but escape also from childhood, for here she was walking through the night with someone beside her who was tall and handsome and assured, and surely it would not be too difficult to pretend that he was not Beanie, but that he was someone like her imaginary companions, strong and full of knowledge and (strangest of all) extraordinarily interested in her. Surely there was some way in which she could pretend safety out of Beanie.
“Why so silent, lady bug?” Beanie asked.
“I don’t feel like talking.” She was no longer afraid to say this because the real Beanie was not important, he did not even exist except as a stage prop, and the imaginary Beanie at her side would understand. She looked up at the sky, and although there were no stars and the mountains were obscured by clouds, words that might turn out to be poetry began to come.—Here I am! God said. Why don’t you see me! I am speaking! Why don’t you hear!
Beanie broke across the words by taking her hand. “I like the way you look tonight,” he said, “angry, and sort of excited. Are you still angry with me?”
“With you. Why bother?”
He held her hand more tightly. “Stop diminishing me, Virginia. You’ve squelched me to a pulp already. Come on. I’ll be a good boy. You be a nice girl.”
She smiled at him radiantly, because tonight he wasn’t Beanie. “I’ll be delightful!” she said, swinging his hand. “Only I don’t like your name. Either Snider or Beanie. What can I call you?”
He looked at her in surprise. “What a pussycat of moods you are! It just happens that Snider Bean is my name.”
“Don’t you have a middle name?”
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
“It’s creepy,” he said. “It was my mother’s maiden name. They had to stick it in somewhere so grandfather wouldn’t forget to leave us his millions.”
“Well, that is it?” she asked. “It couldn’t be worse than Snider or Bean.”
“There’s nothing particularly wrong with either Snider or Bean. There is with Amadeus. And if you call me by it I’m taking you home right now, tickets for the concert or no.”
“I shall call you Wolfgang,” she said, “after Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Wolfgang ought to suit you just perfectly. Mimi says you like to think of yourself as a wolf.”
“Call me anything you like, little Virginia, as long as you keep on being the way you are tonight. I like you this way. Not quite such an unhatched little chicken.”
They were in the village now and the door to the Splendide opened, letting out a wedge of thick, stale air, and Kaarlo and Gertrude, their breaths hanging on the cold air white and like smoke, their laughter deep and happy as they brushed by without seeing Virginia or Beanie.
“We’ve got a while before the concert,” Beanie said. “How about going in and getting a lemonade?”
She shook her head. “No lemonade.”
“Coffee?”
“No coffee. I don’t drink coffee at night.”
“What, then?”
She grinned at him. “Champagne.”
He whistled. “Expensive tastes.”
“Champagne or nothing,” she said.
“Okay, champagne, then.” He pulled open the door and they went into the hot, heavy room. Beanie pushed his way through to a table, still holding her by the hand.
She sat down across from him and pulled off her warm gloves. Her fingers were cold and damp and a little shaky. She had never had a full glass of champagne before but tonight she was not a child, she was a woman, and Chekhov drank champagne on his deathbed and Chopin and George Sand drank champagne in a draughty palace, and surely there must have been someone with whom Wolfgang. Amadeus Mozart drank champagne, because champagne was the poet’s drink, the artist’s drink. She smiled across the table at Beanie.
“Hi, Wolfgang.”
“Hi, honey,” he said. “This is more fun than I thought it was going to be.”
A waiter brought the white-wrapped bottle and poured, a few drops in Beanie’s glass, then a glass for Virginia, then the rest of Beanie’s and smiled at them tenderly.—He thinks we’re in love, Virginia thought, like Mimi and Sam, like—but that thought was like a hot coal and she dropped it, sizzling, onto the wet floor, and picked up her glass, holding it aloft. “Here’s to—to life, Wolfgang
.”
Beanie held his glass out towards hers and they clicked. “Hey, not so fast, little one. This stuff isn’t ginger ale.”
She coughed and put her glass down. “A very fine vintage,” she said dreamily.
Beanie poured a little more champagne into her glass. “But not too much,” he said. “I like you exactly the way you are and I want you to be because of you and not because of champagne. Also I want you to enjoy the concert.”
“Do we have to go to the concert?” She looked at him over the champagne glass.
“What a funny little thing you are tonight! Yes, we do have to go. It’s a good quartet and I want to hear it. The ’cellist is particularly good and it happens that I don’t play a mean ’cello myself.”
She looked at him in surprise and smiled warmly. What a fine Wolfgang he was turning out to be! The top of her head felt light and airy and free and her body full of a happy warmth. “You do, Wolfgang?” she asked, and it was working, her game, it was working beautifully. “Are you going to be a musician?”
He shook his head, the lines in his face tightening. “Nope. A lawyer. I’m reading law in my spare time already.”
“Do you like it?”
“No.” His lips and nostrils were compressed.
“Then, why, Wolfgang?”
His thin fingers clenched. “Because I believe in making life as comfortable as possible. If I know law I can protect myself. Thanks to my middle name I’m going to come into a good deal of money when I’m twenty-one and I want to be able to know how to handle it the way I want to handle it.” He shut his teeth tightly together and the corner of his mouth twitched nervously. This unhappy boy was indeed Wolfgang, and not Beanie; this was the maladjusted one, the frustrated ’cellist, the artist crying under the slick veneer.
“You don’t believe in being selfish, do you?” he asked harshly. And as she didn’t answer but sipped at her champagne he continued, “I do. I believe in getting exactly what I want out of life, no matter who I have to walk over to get it.” Abruptly he relaxed. “Come on, little Virginia. Let’s go drown our sorrows in music.”
Again she grinned at him, easily, teasingly, “I’d rather drown mine in champagne,” and reached for the bottle.
His fingers caught her wrist. “Oh, no you don’t. I want your parents to let me take you out again. You be a good girl now and I’ll give you some more champagne on our next date.” He came around to her chair and helped her into her coat. To her surprise her legs felt watery and she held tightly to his arm.
A Winter's Love Page 19
