The Small Rain

by Madeleine L'engle

  “My poor sweet,” Julie said.

  “Mother—”

  “Yes, my baby?”

  “Where are we going to live? Are we going home?”

  “No, darling, we aren’t going home.”

  “Well, why? Doesn’t Father want us to come home?”

  Julie was silent, and after a while Katherine asked again, “Doesn’t he, Mother?”

  “Katherine,” Julie said, “I told you that I was a very dreadful person for a while after the accident, and when your father wanted to love me and help me I pushed him away. You can only push people so far, or they’ll really go away. And that’s what happened. Because how could he know that the harder I pushed the more I wanted him to come close, the more I told him to go away and leave me alone the more I needed him with me … I’ve always been a definite person and when I told him to go away enough times, he went … Did he ever talk to you about me?”

  “No. I only see him for Sunday dinner, you know, and we don’t talk much. I play for him, sometimes, or we just sit together. He’s been writing lots and lots of music. Most of it’s awfully sad and funny. You feel it in your stomach. When we hear it on the radio Aunt Manya cries. She—” Katherine stopped suddenly, remembering Manya reading from the book of poetry and weeping.

  “She what, Katherine?”

  “She cries a lot, doesn’t she? I mean, it doesn’t hurt to come out. It’s right there and I guess it stops the pain in your chest if it’s like that. I don’t cry easily. It gets all stopped up and I can’t. If we’re not going back to Father, where will we live? Will I still have Sunday dinner with him?”

  Tears didn’t come easily, but Katherine knew that words were coming out much too easily now. Her words came out too easily because Julie’s words hadn’t really gone into her yet. She walked along the stony path with bits of rust-colored grass sticking up through the snow and ice, and stared at the black charcoaled lines of stone walls drawn across the snow-covered fields and the black charcoaled branches of trees and the gray sky, old lemon-yellow at the horizon. Julie’s words were clear and black against the snow, like the trees and the fences and just as far away.

  “Where will we go, Mother?” Katherine asked again.

  “I’ve sublet a small apartment on West Tenth Street,” Julie said. “We’ll stay there till your play closes at any rate. You’re a very fine little actress, my baby.”

  “Have you seen me? Mother, have you seen me?”

  “Of course I have. Several times. I couldn’t keep away. You don’t know how proud of you I was on opening night. And reading the reviews the next morning. And seeing you helped me to decide that I was strong enough to be with you and that you were old enough and strong enough to help me. So tomorrow afternoon we’ll go to Tenth Street. You’ll go on having Sunday dinner with your father. Are you cold? You’re shivering.”

  “I guess I am cold, a little.”

  “Shall we go back?”

  “All right.”

  They turned around and started back to the house. It was far up the path ahead of them, but they could see it high up on the hill between the bare branches of the trees. They walked in silence until Julie asked suddenly, her voice hard and tight, “Have you ever seen your father with your Aunt Manya? Do you see them together often?”

  “No,” Katherine said, and the wind blew through her coat and into her bones and she pressed closer to her mother, trying to shove her mittened hand even deeper into her mother’s coat pocket. “Why?” she whispered, and although Julie couldn’t possibly have heard the whisper, she answered the question.

  “Katherine, I know you’re not going to understand this. Your mind is a clear and clean one. Don’t try to understand what I’m going to say with your mind. It’s something you’ll understand with your heart someday.” She paused, and they continued up the hill until they had almost reached the house. Then Julie stopped and took her hands in their cream-colored pigskin gloves out of her pockets and put them on Katherine’s shoulders and looked into Katherine’s eyes. “Your Aunt Manya and your father love each other,” she said. “They’ve loved each other for quite a long time now. And it’s good; for them, it’s right. You must know that.”

  Julie turned away and started to walk quickly down the path. Katherine made a movement to follow her, but stood still after she had taken a few steps, and waited. She stood in the middle of the path, kicking against the snow with one toe, looking down at the path for a long time. Then she walked slowly over to the stone wall at the edge of the path, stepped ankle-deep into the cold snow, and clambered up onto the stones and sat there. The yellow at the horizon was gone now; the entire sky was the color of the inside of an oyster shell and seemed to press against the naked earth, to be clamped over it like a shell, so that it became more and more difficult to breathe. Katherine sat on the wall motionless and thoughtless. Her mind seemed completely empty. Her mind felt the way your chest feels when you are running hard and fall flat and knock all the wind out of you. And thought coming back into her mind hurt just as much as breath coming back into your body.

  Slowly she pulled off one of her mittens and drew her finger across her cheek and down onto her neck several times. Then she put her hand back into the mitten, back into her pocket. “I love your mother more than I would my own sister, and the last thing I want in the world is to hurt her,” Manya had said, and again Katherine remembered Manya reading from The Oxford Book of English Verse and weeping. She tried to remember her father from Sunday to Sunday as she had seen him for the past three years, but he seemed always the same, shabby, vague, preoccupied, listening intently while she played the piano but the rest of the time not paying much attention to her.—I should have been told—she thought.—I should have been told about Mother nearly dying and about everything. I should have been told.—

  She sat there on the stone wall saying over and over, I should have been told, until her mind went empty again, and she felt the icy cold of the stones through her coat and the wet cold of the snow that had slid into her shoes. Her hands, curled tight in the mittens and pressed into her pockets, were numb. She climbed off the wall, looking down the road. Her mother was nowhere to be seen, so she turned around and walked back toward the house.

  The door to the library was open, and Manya was standing there waiting. She stood very straight in the center of the doorway, watching Katherine come toward her. She stood there in the center of the doorway like a criminal awaiting sentence. And looking at Manya, Katherine knew that what she did or said would matter tremendously to her aunt, that all Manya’s passionate intensity was concentrated on waiting for Katherine to speak. Katherine stopped still for a moment in the hall, looking at Manya Sergeievna in her black wool dress with the heavy Russian silver cross, and knew that she couldn’t speak. So she pulled off her mittens and her beret, hugged herself, and said, “I’m cold.”

  Manya stood in the doorway, quivering, for a moment longer; then she looked at Katherine’s body instead of at Katherine’s mind, and came toward her. “Katyusha, you’re frozen.”

  Katherine slipped past her through the doorway and crossed the library to the fireplace. She crouched down on the hearth bench, shivering. Manya followed her into the library.

  “Katya,” she began, and bent down and put her hand on Katherine’s head. Katherine did not move, but her whole body stiffened; the deep shivers that were shaking her stopped. Manya took her hand away.

  “You shall have some hot wine,” she said, and went out.

  Katherine sat there staring into the fire, and the touch of Manya’s hand on her hair burned into her head. She sat there until Manya came in with a glass of hot red wine and sugar with a cinnamon stick in it and gave it to her. She held the glass in a white linen napkin and drank slowly, while the comforting warmth from the sweet, spiced wine began to fill her body. Manya stood by her, watching her dumbly. The heavy silence hung unbroken until Charlot came in, and announced, “Masha says lunch is ready, Aunt Manya. Where’s Mrs. F
orrester?”

  Manya turned to Katherine, “Where is Julie, baby?”

  “She’s still out walking. She wasn’t ready to come in. I was cold.”

  “I’ll go and find her.” Manya went out.

  “No, please—” Katherine stammered.

  Charlot squatted down beside her on the hearth bench. “It’s too bad you don’t look like your mother,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “My mother knew your mother.”

  “She did?”

  “My mother was American, too. She was a dancer. My father was French. He was a poet. My mother and your mother and Aunt Manya all knew each other in Paris. My mother and father were both killed in an automobile accident last year in Aix-les-Bains. So Aunt Manya sent for me, because I didn’t have anybody and there wasn’t any money. But I work for her. I’m not just living on charity. I work hard. I milk the cow and take care of the chickens and I help in the garden. I’ll do a lot more in the garden when spring comes. I earn my living here.”

  “That’s sort of ungrateful, isn’t it?” Katherine asked.

  “What do you mean?”—indignantly.

  “When people like Aunt Manya do things for you, they don’t want to be paid back for them. And when you do things for people like Aunt Manya, you don’t do it because you owe it to them. You do it just because you want to.”

  “My mother said you shouldn’t take things from people. And she said you should watch out about doing things for them. She told me an old Russian proverb that says, ‘Now I’ve done you a favor, when are you going to kick me in the behind?’”

  “I know what your mother was talking about,” Katherine said, “but you don’t.”

  “You think you’re awfully clever, don’t you?” Charlot glared into the fire.

  “No—no, I don’t.”

  “Aren’t you going to finish your wine?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Because if you don’t want it, I’ll drink it for you.”

  “No. I want it.”

  “Well, drink it, then.”

  “I am.” Katherine took a big gulp and stared at Charlot. Charlot had thick dark hair and large, dark eyes, with the longest lashes she had ever seen. He had thin tight lines at either side of his mouth that made him look grown up, not at all like a child, but the lines disappeared when he smiled, especially when he smiled at Julie, and made him look almost as young as Katherine. She stared at Charlot and he stared at her, at her dark-blue eyes that looked accusingly into people, that were difficult to read.

  “You don’t look like your father, either,” he said.

  Again Katherine stiffened. “How do you know? You don’t know my father,” she said.

  “Oh, yes I do.” Charlot stuck his feet out in front of him, almost into the fire. “He’s very tall, and he has lots of hair that’s sort of no color, more brown than anything, I guess, and he looks at you and doesn’t see you and talks to you and doesn’t remember what he says, and he sits and fiddles at the piano for hours, and then he suddenly starts writing things down, and he yells like anything if anybody interrupts him.”

  “How do you know?” Katherine demanded. “How do you know?”

  “He’s out here lots.” Charlot pulled his feet out of the fireplace.

  “All by himself?”

  “No. With Aunt Manya.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “No. He’s out here lots.”

  “It’s crazy. I live with Aunt Manya. She’s in town all week. She just goes out to the country Saturday nights. And Father couldn’t be with her then, because I have Sunday dinner with him. Every Sunday.”

  “He comes out with your Aunt Manya Saturday night and takes the eleven o’clock train into New York on Sunday. Sometimes I drive him to the station. Then he comes back on the four o’clock train. He’s a very nice man.”

  “Yes …”

  “They’re all three of them very nice people. Your mother and Aunt Manya and your father.”

  “Yes …”

  “Aunt Manya and your father talk about your mother lots. At the table, I mean. That’s when I hear what they talk about. They’ve told me lots about her. They love her a very great deal. But I guess your father would, anyhow, wouldn’t he? It’s too bad he didn’t come out this week end.”

  “Yes …”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing. I—I’m just cold.”

  Charlot sprang up, his face suddenly twisted with unhappiness, the lines on either side of his mouth standing out white. “I’ve said something wrong.”

  “No. I’m just cold.”

  “Please. What did I say?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I always say the wrong thing. I always make people hate me. Please don’t look at me like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Hating me.”

  “I don’t hate you.”

  “I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful to Aunt Manya. I love her very much. Would your mother think I sounded ungrateful?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But would she?”

  “Sort of, I guess.”

  “It’s really because I don’t want to be ungrateful, you see, only I make it sound wrong.”

  “I know.”

  “You’re not hating me?”

  “No.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t look at me like that.”

  “I can’t help it.”

  Charlot knelt down in front of her and stared at her solemnly. “If anything’s wrong, your mother can make it all right.”

  Katherine bent her head and looked at her feet, at her wet brown shoes and the little dark wet stains on the rug where the snow had melted off them. Charlot put his hand gently on the back of her neck, and stroked it. Katherine sprang up and crossed the room quickly.

  “Don’t be nice to me—please don’t be nice to me. I mustn’t cry. It would be awful if I cried.”

  The front door banged and she went back to the fireplace and sat down. Charlot sat down beside her, putting his arm around her. “It’ll be all right,” he said. “Everything’ll be all right.”

  “Don’t be nice to me.” Katherine whispered fiercely, turning around as she heard footsteps. Julie and Manya came in.

  “Have you and Charlot made friends?” Julie asked. She had her arm around Manya as though she were giving her strength.

  Charlot stood up and smiled at Julie, and the lines on either side of his mouth disappeared.

  “Come along,” Julie said. “I’m ravenous. Charlot, take Katherine in to lunch.”

  THREE

  Manya and Julie and Katherine drove into town just in time to go to the theater. As soon as she had her make-up and costume on, Katherine went to Pete’s dressing room.

  “Are you busy, Pete?”

  “No, kitten. Come in.”

  “Pete,” she said, before she got in the door. “I saw Mother. Aunt Manya took me to her and I’m going to live with her.”

  “Are you happy, baby?”

  “Yes.”

  “But something’s wrong?”

  “Sort of. Things are always funny. They’re never the way you think they’re going to be.”

  “I know. Is your mother different? Is that it?”

  “Oh, no! No! That isn’t it at all! If it were just Mother it would be wonderful, except for her not playing. That isn’t it at all. I told you because I thought maybe you’d like to meet Mother.”

  “I’d love to, kitten.” He didn’t ask her any questions, and she had a feeling that he knew, that he’d known she was back with her mother, that he’d known about Manya and her father all along.

  After the play she introduced him to Julie, and then Julie took her downtown to Tenth Street, to a small delightful apartment looking out on a garden with a little naked statue in the center. She gave Katherine her bath and some milk toast, and Katherine felt lulled and happy again. The next day she played for her mother, while Julie stood by her, nodding a
pprovingly, then sat down next to her, and worked with her for several hours. Every day they worked together, and other lessons were forgotten.

  “You read too much, and you’re way ahead of yourself anyhow,” Julie said, “but if you want to be a pianist, you’re way behind.”

  They went for long walks together, and Julie made Katherine take fencing lessons. She wasn’t very good at the footwork because of her hip, but her handwork was highly praised, and the atmosphere of the Salle was so warm and friendly, there was so much sincere appreciation for true artists and for anyone who was struggling to be one, that Katherine looked forward to her lessons three times a week.

  For a month they were peaceful and happy together. Even the first Sunday, when they both went to have lunch with Tom and all three of them were strained and miserable, seemed just one bad isolated day, and didn’t color the days that came before or after it.

  In the evening, after the theater, Julie called for Katherine and took her home. Sometimes they stopped at a drugstore and Katherine had a milk shake, but usually they went straight home and Julie made Katherine soup or hot chocolate or milk toast. Once on a Saturday evening Dr. Jack Bradley came back to the dressing room to get Katherine. He sometimes came to the apartment to have tea, and once had re-examined Katherine’s hip thoroughly in his office, promising Julie that the limp would be quite gone by the time Katherine was grown.

  He knocked on the dressing-room door that Saturday night, and called, “Katy!”

  Katherine called back, “Come in.” She was pulling a gray-blue sweater over her head, and her face emerged still shiny with traces of cold cream. “Where’s Mother?” she asked.

  “Talking to your Aunt Manya.”

  “Did you see the play tonight?”