In the kitchen Emily, too, dropped what she was doing and started to run until she realized that Mimi was ahead of her. She stopped, then, in the cold hall, waiting until she could tell the call was for Mimi, Abe’s son, not Abe, and returned to the kitchen.
“A giant has fallen,” Mimi told Sam. “A marble figure has toppled off her pedestal and disclosed feet of clay.”
“Mimi, dear,” Sam said, “I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”
“My heart is dry as a bone with disillusionment. Here I thought she was a little tin god and now I discover she isn’t any different from half of Clare’s friends.”
“But who?” Sam asked. “Not Mrs. Bowen!”
“Good heavens no” Mimi cried. “Madame de Croisenois. It really isn’t important, Sam. It’s not that she’s in any way changed. It’s just that I never saw her before as she really is. I’m sorry to have gone on so about it. Did you call about anything in particular?”
“No. Just to talk. Dad’s gone over to Kaarlo and Gert’s place, as a matter of fact, and he said I might give you a buzz.”
“Good. I’m glad you did.” Her voice softened. “Thanks again for the sleigh ride, Sam.”
Sam’s voice in his turn cracked with shyness. “It was nice, wasn’t it? The way the snow blew up in clouds in front of us, and the way behind us it sprayed out like the wake from a boat.… Wish we could do it again. Might keep us both from feeling blue.”
“Are you feeling blue?” Mimi asked. She stood with the small of her back pressed against the cold damp of wall, her legs stretched across the narrow passage so that her feet pushed up against the opposite wall.
“Kind of. Dad seemed upset this evening and that always bothers me.”
“Why?”
“Well, wouldn’t you be bothered if your father was upset?”
“No, but Jake’s always getting upset. It’s his temperament. What I meant was, why was your father upset?”
“That’s just it. I don’t know. We had a wonderful day on the mountain with Kaarlo, but then all through dinner instead of relaxing the way you usually do after a day like that he was—well, tense and sort of—I can’t describe it. I hate him to be upset and not know why and not be able to help. Maybe I wish dad would fall in love and get married again after all, but somebody like—like Mrs. Bowen, not Betty.”
—Like Mrs. Bowen, Mimi thought dryly.
Her cheek against the wood of the phone box, she stood there silently. She felt so sad that she was almost tempted to drop the earpiece and sob out loud there in the dark hall, to return, as Tante Léonie had wished her to, to childhood, where everything, as in fairy tales, was obliged to turn out all right in the end, and adults on their Olympian heights were never hurt, or betrayed by passion, or confused, or sad.
“Hey, Mimi, you still there?” Sam asked at last.
“Yes, here I am, Sam,” she said.
By the time Emily had finished the dishes Mimi was through her phone conversation and was back at her game of solitaire; Virginia and Connie were deeply asleep; and Courtney was settled at the kitchen table with a silk handkerchief about his throat and a pile of books before him. Emily turned to the piano, withdrew her hands as they stretched out over the keyboard. Connie would not stir, but it might bother Courtney at his books and it might waken Virginia and Virginia had had more than enough disturbance for one day.
“I think I’d better go up and see if I can find out what happened at Gert’s to upset Virginia so,” she told Courtney, and set out. At the top of the first steep rise beyond the hotel she stopped, standing there in the dark and cold, raising her eyes, lifting them unto the hills for help. The Alps like guardian angels, she thought, were the first things to waken in the morning and the last to darken in the evening. Before night had given any indication of leaving the valley, the white peaks would flush a faint, pearly pink; then, as wisps of mist began to be visible ribboning about the trees and houses, the mountains would turn deep rose, and, as the mist began to disperse, crimson. When the mountains finally shone in blinding silver light, day would have come to the village. At night, long, it seemed, after dark had fallen, there would remain a faint flush on the mountain peaks. It was too late now for even the faintest lingering glow, but later the mountains would turn to silver as the old moon slowly rose above them. She stood there in the shadow of the sanatorium gates looking up at the sky and after a moment she shivered and started walking again.
As she passed the church she heard someone at the organ and she pushed open the door and went in. Several other people were there, but there was no service going on. They sat apart, one or two praying, each alone, wrapped in his individual problems. Emily sat down in the back and the music from the organ poured over her and it was healing, as music almost always was healing to her; and the dim lights and the small glow from the scattered votive candles gave her a quick hope that perhaps here she might find the answer, for if she had set out for Gertrude’s and Kaarlo’s hoping on the conscious level to find out what had so disturbed Virginia, there was also the hope that she might find Abe there, and she could not keep from acknowledging it.
She sat there in the church for several minutes, leaning forward, her head bowed over her hands, unable either to pray or to think. When she heard the outer door creak she looked up and back and saw a woman coming into the church, a dark, tall, handsome woman, with the traces of tears still wet and incongruous on her cheeks.
—I am not alone, Emily thought, as the woman half fell onto her knees in front of the rank of candles beneath a statue of St. Jude. Everyone here tonight is seeking for an answer and if I cannot pray to St. Jude it is perhaps my loss and not so very clever of me after all.…
She knelt then on the wooden bench and pressed her face against her hands and she had no answers. She was confronted with problems and varieties of love and she had no knowledge with which to solve them, or even any understanding of the people she loved. She did not know why Virginia threw Courtney’s drink against the wall. She did not know why Courtney was less real to her than Abe and yet it was Abe who was in the dream. The more she tried to reach Courtney with her love the further he withdrew, until it was as though she were looking at him through the wrong end of a telescope. She did not know Courtney: she did not know anyone. She did not know a mountain or a tree or a flake of snow. We are, as Plato says, like prisoners in a cave, and all that we see of things as they are is the shadow on the wall. And this cave, she thought, this prison, is the limitations of our own bodies. When she looked at a tree she was not seeing a tree. She was only receiving impressions on her five senses. She saw the tree, its dark branches laden with snow, through the sense of sight. She could hear the wind in its branches and the wind in pine trees sounded to her like the rushing of water or the beating of wings. She could feel the bark of the tree with her fingers, could feel the long, resinous needles. She could break off a handful of the needles and smell them. She could even, if she was so minded, taste them. She could receive these impressions. But is this a tree? Did she, Emily, know the tree? Or was it just the shadow on the wall?
—So how can I expect to know a human being?
—How can I hope to know Virginia?
—Or Courtney?
—Or Abe?
Shuddering, she thought consciously the dark thing that had lain, an unacknowledged and heavy shadow on her mind:
—I would like to have a child by Abe.
—That is a terrible thing.
—How can one love two people at the same time? Is it some sick and fearful flaw in my nature?
She was shivering as one shivers with the onset of fever, her face burning hot, her hands and feet icy. She rose from her knees and stumbled from the church.
She went then, not quite knowing why she had hesitated so long, to Kaarlo’s chalet. Abe was there, as she had known he must be, and when he greeted her she thought she saw in his eyes that he had known she would come. Gertrude was drunk, not badly drunk, as
she must have been when Virginia and Mimi were there, but talkative. Kaarlo offered Emily a cup of coffee and she realized that if there was any liquor left he had put it away. He handed Gertrude coffee, too, and for a moment Emily thought she was going to knock the cup out of his hands, but then she took it and drank down half the steaming cup, black.
“Did you ever have gas at the dentist?” Gertrude asked, but she expected no answer. “When I had my wisdom teeth pulled I had gas, and I played a kind of game with myself as I went under.”
“A game?” Kaarlo asked.
“Yes. The point was to see how long I cared whether or not I was me, how long it was important to me to be Gertrude de Croisenois.”
“How long?” Kaarlo asked.
“I don’t know,” Gertrude said. “It doesn’t really matter. What matters is that while I was under the gas I discovered the secret of the universe. Lots of people discover the secret of the universe under gas, but I don’t know of anyone who’s ever remembered it. Except me. Or is it I? You can’t possibly say except I. Anyhow I remembered the secret of the universe when I came to, struggling, unwilling to resume consciousness, to accept again the burden of individuality.”
“What is the secret?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“What?”
“It doesn’t matter. That’s the secret. Nothing matters. Whether or not I’m Gertrude de Croisenois, whether or not I’m conscious, whether or not anything—simply doesn’t matter.”
“You know that’s not true,” Abe said.
“I know,” Gertrude said. “The trouble with the secret of the universe is that once let the mind grab its hold on individuality again—and, my God, how we do grab—and everything does matter. Everything matters terribly. You may remember the secret of the universe that was vouchsafed you during the four days you had your four wisdom teeth pulled, but it no longer means anything. That’s the trouble. We’d all be much happier if things didn’t matter.”
“How could we possibly be happy if things didn’t matter?” Abe asked. “If nothing mattered being happy wouldn’t matter either.”
“Oh, Abe, you’re so literal,” Gertrude said. “You’ll never marry again if you’re so literal. Do you want to marry again, Abe?”
Before Abe had to answer Kaarlo said. “We were going to have some music,” and went to the phonograph.
Emily sat on the couch near Abe, not quite touching him, and she wanted terribly to reach out and take his hand for comfort and assurance. Normally she was unable to offer or receive any overt demonstrations of affection except within the close circle of her own family, stiffening up with prudish obviousness at the casual kiss, turning aside her face so that lips glanced off her ear, removing her hand from the lingering hand-clasp, trying to cover her inhibitions with too eager a flow of conversation; but now to put her hand in Abe’s, to press her cheek against his, would have been the completely natural thing for her to do, and she had to will her muscles away from him.
Kaarlo played a Bach record and then Gertrude said, her voice over-casual, “Oh, I meant to tell you, Emily, Oscar Troyat’s getting up a little concert to be held at the casino the day after Christmas, and I said I’d ask you if you’d play a couple of things.”
Emily looked up, appalled, but she spoke quietly enough. “That was rather pointless, wasn’t it, Gert? You know I don’t play in public.”
“Oh, I knew you’d squawk in honor and say no,” Gertrude said, “but I told Oscar I’d try. What is this about not letting anybody hear you?”
“I’m not good enough.” Emily looked down at her hands. “I get into a panic. You know that.”
“These damn perfectionists,” Gertrude said. “Kaarlo’s one, too. That’s why he won’t play the violin. Because he can’t be Isaac Stern. So he won’t play. Why can’t you be satisfied with just being damn good, Emily? No, you have to be Rubinstein. And you’re like that as a person, too, always trying to be more than you are.”
“What do you mean?” Emily asked in a stifled voice.
“Nobody’s as perfect as you’d like to be,” Gertrude said. “Stop trying to be so damn good. Go on and say you hate it here. Go on and say you’re bored stiff with everything about your life.”
“But I’m not,” Emily protested, knowing that she sounded pompous.
“Then if you’re not, you ought to be. And don’t try to kid me. You know you’ve been ready to yap all winter you’ve been so miserable. And why the hell won’t you play a couple of things for Oscar at the casino? You play well enough for that. Afraid he’ll make a pass or two at you? So. He probably would. He does at me any time I’m there alone and I don’t think it’s because of my life of sin, it’s just the nature of the beast. I bet you’ve never kissed anyone besides Courtney in your life.”
“I’m not sure I want to start with Oscar,” Emily said, trying to keep her voice light. “He’s not exactly my type.”
“Who is?” Gertrude demanded. “Why don’t you make a pass at her, Abe? Somebody ought to thaw her out.”
“I might try it at that,” Abe said. “But I didn’t realize she needed thawing so terribly.”
“Then you don’t know her very well. Mid-Victorian inhibitions. You name ’em. She has ’em.”
“What about me?” Abe suggested. “Do I need thawing, too?”
“Oh, no,” Gertrude said in her definite way. “I have a feeling you’re capable of being quite predatory.” She stopped suddenly and said, “Oh, hell, I’m going out to the kitchen and make some sandwiches. We never got around to dinner.” At the door she turned, her voice suddenly thin and child-like in its intensity. “Kaarlo, come with me! I don’t want to go alone!”
Kaarlo followed her, and through the passway into the kitchen Emily could see him put his arms around her. Abe stood up and stretched and then put another log on the fire. “Getting cold in here,” he said. He moved about the room aimlessly, like an animal. Then he crossed to Emily and stood looking down at her, smiling. “And so we see ourselves as others see us. I really don’t think I’m the wolf Gert thinks I am. I don’t know why she does. I look more like a skidding prizefighter than Valentino.”
“But you’re a football hero.” Emily smiled up at him.
“And you, my darling,” he said, “are not inhibited and you don’t need thawing. Wouldn’t Gert be furious if she knew how wrong her diagnosis of you really is?”
—Tonight it will be all right, Emily thought. Tonight we will start down the hill together and then I will go with him wherever he says.
“I like your earrings,” Abe said.
She put her fingers up to touch them, silver and amethyst ones Gertrude had given her for her birthday. “A present from Gert,” she said. “I don’t—I don’t like to wear things from Courtney when I’m with you.” (So she was admitting that she had expected he would be at Gert’s and Kaarlo’s that evening.)
“I know,” Abe said. He reached his hand out for her. “And I can’t give you anything.”
“But I don’t want anything from you—” she started to protest stupidly, lying; and stopped because both of them knew that she was lying.
“You know the little shop right by the casino?” Abe said. “I saw a necklace there I wanted for you. And a dress. Silver-blue like a Renaissance princess’. And I can’t even get you a little thing. I can’t get you a box of scented bath powder. I want to get you small intimate things that can be shared only by lovers.”
She bowed her head. “I want that, too.”
“I want to take care of you,” Abe said. “I want you to be able to play the piano wherever you want to, whenever you want to. And for me whenever I want you to. I don’t want you to get tired and cold and over-worked.”
“I’m not over-worked,” she started to protest, when Gertrude called out, “Hey, Abe, put on a record, will you?” sticking her head through the passway and looking in at them, a bread knife brandished in her hand.
“Okay,” Abe said. “Hold your horses
while I look for something.” He squatted before the record cabinet Kaarlo had made to house his precious collection. “Still more seventy-eight rpms than thirty-three-and-a-thirds,” he said, “which has its advantages. In the first place technically the thirty-threes are never going to beat some of the seventy-eights, and in the second place it’s a lot easier to play just a single movement or part of a movement when that’s what you want, and that’s what I happen to want right now.” He pulled out an album.
Emily stood close to him, looking down at the records. “What is it?”
“The third movement, the adagio, from Rachmaninoff’s Second Symphony.” He looked up at Emily as though asking a question; then, as she did not speak, he held the record carefully over the turntable, saying, “My second wife, who could not tell one note from another, considered Rachmaninoff the nadir in low-browedness.”
“Did she?” Emily asked. “I like him. Physical music, but I love it.”
Squatting before the turntable Abe looked up at her. “That’s exactly the word. Physical. This particular movement of this particular symphony in particular.” Then he added in a low voice, “So I’m probably a fool to be playing it now.” He lowered the needle carefully onto the record and the music began to wind out into the room, aiming not at their minds but at their bodies, not through their ears alone, but through every pore and sinew and nerve. For a moment Emily felt weak and she sat down on the floor near the phonograph.
“It’s too cold there,” Abe said. “Come nearer the fire.” He held out his hand to her. She took it and moved closer to him.
“Just this one side of the record,” Abe said in a low voice. “That’s all I can—”
“Nice schmaltzy music,” Gertrude said, coming in with a plate of sandwiches, followed by Kaarlo with coffee. “Let’s eat, kids.”
Abe took the record off and returned it carefully to the album. “Now what?” he asked. “Any requests?”
“Oh, something gay,” Gertrude said. “That thing always makes me want to weep.”
A Winter's Love Page 22
