The Small Rain

by Madeleine L'engle

  “I cried.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “I wish I hadn’t. Now I just want to lie down and cry.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “I mustn’t. Mother said I mustn’t give in to things.”

  “She never gave in to things, did she?”

  “No.”

  “Are you going to be a pianist like your mother?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you play for me?”

  “If you like.”

  “Do you play well?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you play for me now?”

  “Where’s Father?”

  “He’s probably in the lodge. That’s where he works. Aunt Manya had it fixed up for him. She had one of the pianos put there for him. Will you play now?”

  “All right.”

  They went downstairs. Katherine sat down at the piano and began to play. She didn’t hear Tom when he came in and sat down by the piano just out of sight. She played for over two hours. Then she turned to Charlot, saying, “I didn’t mean to play so long. I’m sorry.”

  Tom got up and lumbered around to her from behind the tail of the piano, where he had been sitting, and put a sheet of music manuscript in front of her. “Try this.”

  Katherine played, recognizing her father’s music—a simple little melody in B minor, almost like a folk song, but with great passion and strength underlying its simplicity. When she had finished, Tom said nothing about his composition. He took it back and stood looking down at her. “You play Bach very well indeed, my dear,” he said at last.

  Katherine looked down at the keyboard. “Mother said when you were unhappy or confused, Bach was the person to play. With almost everybody else you can think, but with Bach there’s nothing but the music. It’s true, you know.”

  “Yes, I know,” Tom said. He stood leaning on the piano. Twice he seemed about to speak; then he waved his arms a little, helplessly, and wandered out.

  The summer dragged by, hot and sluggish. Long hours spent at the piano. Walks in the evening with Charlot. Walks in silence up the narrow path to the mountaintop, Charlot leading, pausing every once in a while to pick a delicate green fern, to look up at the evening sky through the green-and-gold light that filtered through the trees. Occasionally rabbits with small jaunty tails scurried across the path, so close that their warm fur brushed against Katherine’s feet. The birds sang more freely in the dim green light on the evening mountainside than anywhere else, sang with a peculiar piercing sadness,

  Annihilating all that’s made

  To a green thought in a green shade.

  When she had practiced until she ached with fatigue, when dinner with Manya and Tom had seemed almost unendurable—so difficult did she find it to fight against the warm blanket of love and tenderness and pity they were constantly throwing over her, in this heat, when all she wanted was coldness—then the path up the mountain seemed the only bearable thing in the world; and even it stretched out, with its roots reaching up to trip her, its stones pressing into her shoes to bruise her feet; and Charlot stalked on ahead, indifferent, selfish, lost in his own thoughts, whistling Ma Mie over and over again, up and down the scale, up and down the scale. On these evenings it always came as a slap of surprise when the trees cleared, and they came out onto the flat top of the mountain. It was strange how bare the mountaintop was; red-and-green clumps of sumac were the tallest growth. Mostly it was bare patches of flat rock, with sharp green grasses growing around, grasses on which Charlot used to blow with a raucous knifing whistle. A low crooked stone wall ran along the edge of the flatness; on its other side was a ledge of rock that seemed to lean out over space. Beneath it was a deep drop to a small useless field filled with stones, which ended in woods again; from the ledge, too, they could see a great sweep of mountains curling in purple shadows around the horizon.

  If the horror of dinner had been prolonged or if she were too tired to climb as quickly as usual, by the time they reached the clearing the sun would have just dropped behind the mountains. On such nights Katherine wanted to wail at the lost sun, “Why couldn’t you wait! Why couldn’t you wait!” and she would glare at Charlot’s back silhouetted ahead of her against the streaks of red and yellow splashed above the mountains.

  One evening she turned and ran from the stiff silhouette of his back, as her anger at the sun’s having already set brought tears to her eyes; dashed through the long grass into the dimness of the woods, not stopping or turning as Charlot called after her, “Katherine!” but plunging, down, down, blinded by tears. There was no path and she had to leap wildly over fallen trees, slide down bare rocks already slippery with dew. Once she ran through a long bramble vine and felt the sharp thorns tearing at her ankles, but she was going with such momentum now that she couldn’t stop herself, until at last she felt herself falling and she saw the ground coming up at her. It didn’t hurt, because she fell onto a bed of soft springy moss, and suddenly she realized that she’d fallen headlong into a ring made up of the smallest and most delicate toadstools she had ever seen. Beyond the ring was a pool, almost as round as the ring, almost the same size, lying delicately in the evening light like a bubble of quicksilver, surrounded by moss and ferns. Around the ring of toadstools and the ring of the pool was a larger ring of white birches that spread up and down the mountainside and mingled with the pines and firs. Katherine drew in her breath at the beauty of the spot; she was still sprawled on the moss where she had fallen, tears wet on her cheeks, her braids swinging a little as the wind shook them. She crawled on her hands and knees to the pool’s edge and lay down by it, listening to the deep throatings of frogs as the last color drained from the sky and the stars came out.

  The birches around her were silvery and mysterious, holding in themselves the moonlight and starlight of years gone by. The pool had caught it, too, and when she put her hand in and started little ripples moving in clear perfect circles to the edge of the pool, she could see the hidden silver for a moment until the water was quiet again. She lay there, listening to the whispering in the trees, the low chunking of the frogs, the sweet lapping of the water. For the first time since Julie’s death she felt a kind of peace that was not the nervous hypnotism of work at the piano, but that seemed to reach all the way inside her and suddenly made her exhaustion a simple thing, almost beautiful, because now she could close her eyes and sleep.

  SIX

  Late in August they sailed, two weeks after Charlot, who had to get to Paris early. Katherine wrote to Pete Burns, hoping she might see him, but he was away with a summer stock company, and she spent the day in New York shopping with Manya. They went on board a little after eleven. Tom had arranged for Katherine and Manya to share a cabin, while he had an adjoining one, but after the boat had slipped out of the harbor and the last lights of the shore had vanished in the haze of a summer night, Katherine turned to Manya, who was leaning back against her pillows, smoking, and said, “Aunt Manya.”

  “What, Katyusha?”

  “I think it’s awfully foolish for you and Father not to be in the same cabin when you know you’d much rather. And I’d rather be by myself anyhow.”

  Manya looked for a long moment at her stepdaughter, sitting with her knees hunched up, her fourteen-year-old body very childish in her white cotton underclothes, looked with her warm dark eyes into Katherine’s deep blue ones. Then she said, “All right, darling. If you think you’d be happier.”

  “I would.”

  Manya got up and went into Tom’s cabin. Katherine could hear them arguing for quite a long time before Manya came back and said, “All right, Katya. I’ll help you move a few of your things in for tonight. The steward can change the bags in the morning.”

  It was a small, slow boat. Manya loved the voyage and knew that Tom hated the publicity that invariably would come with their passage on one of the large fast liners. They spent the days lying in their deck chairs, reading or gazing at the ocean; often Manya would disappear into one
of the salons to write innumerable long letters; sometimes she would drag Tom and Katherine up to the sports deck for a game of shuffleboard or deck tennis, or take them for long walks around and around the promenade deck, while the wind blew her dark hair back tight against her temples and whipped bright color into her smooth beautiful cheeks, so that the occupants of the deck chairs could not help looking up from their books and admiring her. Once, playing a game of deck tennis, Katherine felt her bad hip giving way and fell, breaking her fall with her left arm in order to protect her hip, and giving her wrist a slight sprain. Before Manya or Tom had a chance to say anything or to follow her, she announced that she was going to the ship’s doctor to have it strapped, wheeled about and left them. She could feel the pulses in her wrist pounding in time to the engines. She held it in her right hand, not tightly, because that hurt, but just enough to give it support. The ship lurched, and she grimaced a little. The nurse, writing busily in a red-and-black ledger, looked up at her and smiled. “It is very rough today, no?” she said in slow English.

  “Quite rough, but I don’t mind.” Katherine smiled back at her, because the nurse, in every other way undistinguished, had hair that reminded her of Julie’s.

  “Oh. But do you know,” the nurse leaned forward confidentially, “I do, sometimes. I feel so strange—here—” She put her hands over her stomach and looked at Katherine plaintively. Then she turned back to her ledger with a brisk nod. “The Herr Doktor will be out in a moment.”

  The door opened, and a young man with a blue-striped dressing gown and a sea-green face came out, followed by the doctor, looming tall and resplendent in the doorway. He looked at her over the young man’s head, caught her eye, and shaped the words “mal de mer” carefully with his lips. The young man staggered out, clutching a little box of pills; and the doctor sat down in a creaking chair opposite Katherine, held his sides firmly, and shook back and forth with silent laughter, throwing his head far back so that the innumerable scars slashed across his face caught the light.

  “Herr Doktor,” the nurse said, “the young lady has been waiting.” Katherine was pleased because the nurse had called her a young lady and not a little girl, as so many people still did because she was so small and her dark braids so long.

  “Aha!” said the doctor, sitting up very straight and fixing his round blue eyes on Katherine. “Not seasick?”

  “No,” said Katherine, very thankful that she wasn’t. “I fell playing deck tennis and I think I sprained my wrist.”

  “Aha!” said the doctor again, pinning her against the wall with his pale-blue stare. Then he sprang out of his chair, helped her up, and holding her elbow with so firm a grip that she could feel each finger pressing separately into her arm, he led her into his little office. “So!” he said, seating her in the chair by his desk. “I am Doctor Barna. Doctor Otto Barna. Your name, please?” He sat down and leaned far back in his chair, so that again the light fell on his face.

  “Katherine Forrester.” Katherine’s glance wandered from his scars to the portrait in a silver frame on his desk.

  The doctor followed her gaze. “Ah, you look at my wife, Miss Katherine?”

  “She’s very beautiful,” Katherine said, studying the pale face of the girl, the shadowed eyes, the firm, sad mouth.

  “Yes. She is very beautiful,” Doctor Barna said abruptly, clipping his consonants with sharp precision. “Let me see your wrist, please.”

  Katherine held her wrist out to him, trying not to wince as he felt it. She watched his eyes suddenly lose all trace of feeling, watched them become cold and sharp and clear as a microscope. After a moment he put her hand carefully in her lap, and his eyes once more became intimate, personal. “You are still in school?” he asked, reaching for a large roll of adhesive tape.

  “Yes,” said Katherine. “At least, I ought to be.” The doctor’s blue eyes darted over the top of the desk until he found a pair of bright scissors that seemed to Katherine inexpressibly cold and cruel-looking. “Are you going to strap my wrist?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “You will please come to the office again tomorrow morning during office hours.”

  “All right.” She held out her wrist again and he began to strap it, talking briskly.

  “You are perhaps going to school in Germany, Miss Katherine?”

  “No. We’re getting off at Southampton.”

  “Aha! But you should come to Germany. I’m sorry—I hurt?”

  “A little.”

  “I will try to be careful.” Then he looked at her quizzically for a moment. “You will be dancing tonight?”

  “Oh—I—I don’t know.”

  “But yes. It will be quite gala. The first dance of the voyage.” He cut off the adhesive tape and slid his fingers up her arm. “May I have the honor of a dance with you?”

  “Oh! Yes—” Katherine stood up a little hastily.

  “Until tonight, then, Miss Katherine?” He smiled at her warmly, intimately, and pressed his fingers against her arm.

  “Yes—” She half smiled back; he loosened his fingers slowly and led her to the door.

  Manya was waiting outside. Katherine smiled at herself in a kind of grim satisfaction because Manya had not presumed to follow her into the doctor’s office. “Darling Katya,” she said, “Are you all right? You took so long that I came down. Nothing more than a sprain, is it?”

  “No. I had to wait a while, Aunt Manya, that was all.”

  Katherine moved to lead the way out, and the doctor stood in the doorway to his office, smiling a little.

  “Until tonight,” he called as she left.

  “What was that?” Manya asked.

  “He asked if he could dance with me tonight,” answered Katherine, staring with guarded eyes at Manya’s quickly pleased, open ones.

  Manya burst into a peal of delighted laughter. “Darling, how lovely! You really are growing up, aren’t you? And your father and I still thinking of you as a baby.”

  “Don’t be silly, Aunt Manya.” Katherine reddened and looked down at the black-and-white-checked linoleum floor of the passage.

  “But wait till I tell Tom you’ve hooked the ship’s doctor!” Manya clutched the child’s arm as the ship lurched and Katherine fell against the wall.

  “Ouch, my wrist,” she said, jerking away.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, darling!” Manya’s teasing smile quickly became kind, although the shape of her lips hardly changed. “Don’t you want to lie down until lunch? Come along to your cabin.”

  “No, I’m all right. Let’s go up on deck.” Katherine walked forward impatiently, and Manya followed with the puzzled, affectionate stare that came so often to her face when she was with her stepchild.

  That night she helped Katherine dress in the blue taffeta evening dress she had bought for her in New York. She sat on Katherine’s bed, smoking, wearing a crimson silk embroidered blouse she had brought from Russia and a long, black evening skirt. “He’s really most gorgeous and divine!” she said, smiling at Katherine’s reflection in the mirror.

  “Who?” Katherine asked, bending down and fastening the strap of her gold evening slipper.

  “Your doctor, my sweet. All those wonderful scars he got at Heidelberg. It must have been Heidelberg. I knew a student once from Heidelberg—” She checked herself as she looked again at Katherine. “Would you like to wear my moonstone clip in your hair, darling?”

  “If you’re not afraid of my losing it.” Katherine fastened her other slipper, fumbling with the clasp.

  “Come here. Let me do your hair. We’ll put it up in honor of the occasion, even if Tom does have a fit.” She held out her hand for the comb, looking keenly at Katherine’s cheeks, which were red from stooping. “Darling …”

  “Yes.” Katherine knelt down and bent her head as Manya began to comb and brush the thick, dark hair.

  “Don’t be—” Manya hesitated a moment. “Don’t be too excited about his asking you to dance tonight.”

  “I
’m not quite a baby,” Katherine said quickly.

  “Of course not, Katya. I know you’re a little old woman, but—” Manya shrugged her shoulders. She held the shimmering moonstone clip against the dark hair first in one position, then in another, until she was satisfied. “There! You look really lovely, Katya. Wait a minute and I’ll be ready. It’s late. Your father will have a tantrum if we keep him waiting.”

  “All right … Thank you, Aunt Manya.” Katherine sat on the edge of the bed where she could see herself in the mirror, and waited.

  As usual, she was silent all through dinner. Every once in a while Manya looked at her and smiled, and then she began to eat savagely. Once, as she was looking about the room, she caught sight of the doctor sitting at the captain’s table. A large woman in a dress covered with bronze-colored sequins was sitting on one side of him, a thin woman in stringy black lace on the other. He was talking intimately to the woman in sequins, leaning toward her and smiling up into her face, but all of a sudden he turned and saw Katherine, and his blue gimlet eyes lit up with recognition. He smiled and nodded at her, and when she half-smiled back, a little shy, he lifted his arm and waved violently. Katherine looked away from her father and Manya as she waved back; but her hand was undecided, her cheeks crimson.

  Her father looked at her, his eyes losing their usual vagueness as he saw her waving at someone across the dining room. “Well, Katherine. What is this?”

  Katherine’s cheeks became redder and she took a sip of water, pressing her teeth against the firm edge of the glass. Manya squeezed her knee under the table and answered Tom laughingly, “He’s the doctor who strapped her wrist after you knocked her over playing deck tennis, darlingest. And so he’s asked her to dance tonight and I think it will be lovely. We can all admire his divine Heidelberg scars—so romantic!”

  “How is your wrist, kitten?” her father asked. “Feel any better?”

  “It’s all right. May I have crêpes Suzettes for dessert?”

  They went into the grand salon for coffee. The floor was bare, the orchestra tuning up. The conductor was a little man with a sly, black mustache; the first violinist had mustaches that drooped like those of a wet walrus. As the conductor stepped up on the platform, Katherine saw the doctor come in and head for their table. She caught her breath and looked at Manya out of the corner of her eye, but Manya had just seen the lady in bronze sequins sitting under the balcony beside a long man with an ascetic, cadaverous face, and was laughing as she pointed them out to Tom.