The Small Rain

by Madeleine L'engle

  “Yes.”

  “And I’m not a bit, am I?”

  “Not a bit.”

  “I’ve inherited a strong head from Mother. Shall I play for you when we get back?”

  “Don’t you want to go to bed?”

  “No. Do you? Are you tired? Do you want to go to bed?”

  “No.”

  “Shall I play for you, then?”

  “All right, darling.”

  “Shall we talk about Shakespeare?”

  “All right.”

  “Why are you unhappy, Charlot?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why are you so unhappy?”

  “I’m not unhappy.”

  “Yes, you are. Every time I’ve seen you you’ve been unhappy. The first time when I went to Aunt Manya’s place in the country you were unhappy and it made you try to be horrid, only you didn’t want to be inside you, so you weren’t. And then that time after Mother died, you were unhappy and you said such dreadful things; because you were so unhappy about them, you had to say them to someone, and maybe you were right, I don’t know. I don’t know anything any more except that I’ve got to believe in something, and I do, I don’t know exactly what it is. Because I don’t think many of us are enough in ourselves to say anything great in our work; I know I’m not, but I do think if I work hard enough and make myself ready, things can be said through me that are much bigger than I am, and I do believe there’s something great somewhere to say them, if I should be ready enough to be chosen. But that wouldn’t be enough, you know, if we stop being ourselves, ever, it’s not fair, none of it’s fair; we’re only given a chance to begin and there’s no point in beginning if we’re not allowed to finish. We’re only given enough brain to ask questions, that’s the whole trouble, we’re only given enough brain to ask questions, not enough to answer them. I’m sorry—I was talking about you. I didn’t mean to get off on all this. And you’re unhappy now, too. I can see your eyes in the rear-view mirror, and I could see them all the way down the mountain when you didn’t know I could, and it was really worse then, because it’s somehow a different kind of unhappiness now than it was then. It was so tight and despairing I couldn’t bear it, it was the kind I had to try and help you from my soul with, away from you; I sort of had to try and will help into you, but I couldn’t touch you. This kind, I could put my arms around you and try to comfort you. I don’t like you to be unhappy. Partly unselfishly, because I love you very much, Charlot, and partly selfishly, because when you’re unhappy yourself, you don’t want anyone else to be unhappy, because that takes away from the importance of your own unhappiness. But it’s mostly because I love you that I don’t want you to be unhappy. Why are you unhappy? It isn’t because of your work, is it? Aunt Manya wrote me that you’re considered one of the most brilliant students they’ve ever had, and that you’ve earned all kinds of scholarships and things. It isn’t because of your work, is it?”

  “No, I love my work.”

  “Have you had an unhappy love affair?”

  “No, darling.”

  “Have you had a love affair?”

  “Sort of ones.”

  “My hair smells nice. Aunt Manya’s perfume. I smelled them all and chose the one that smelled most like me, and it still smells. You just sort of don’t like people, do you?”

  “No. I hate them.”

  “I hate them, too. But all the world isn’t people. That’s the point. Do people like you?”

  “No.”

  “Not anyone?”

  “No one. There isn’t anybody in the world I can talk to.”

  “You can talk to me. That is, if you want to. I know it isn’t any good just to have someone you can talk to. If it isn’t someone you want to talk to it’s really worse than nothing. But if you ever want me, I’m here, Charlot. Everything’s going around and around. It’s a lovely feeling. Sort of like when you just begin to go under the laughing gas at the dentist’s. I know you need someone to talk to, Charlot, and someone to talk to you.”

  Charlot drove in silence for several minutes. Then he burst out, “There’s so much love in me, and nowhere for it to go!” He laughed, a little bitterly, and went on, quietly, “I thought at first I wanted to be a veterinarian because I love animals so, and I hate people, and animals need good doctors almost more than people do. They can’t tell you where they hurt or how. You just have to know. But then I found that love and hate are so close it’s sometimes hard to tell which is which, and my love for animals doesn’t satisfy me, isn’t enough; it isn’t enough to have them trust me and to know I can help them. I think I really want people to trust me in the same way, and by my helping them, turn them from things I scorn and despise and hate into things I can love. And sometimes I meet people I want to turn to; I want to give them all the love I have in me, and always I’ve been pushed away. I talked once to a priest about it, when I was terribly in love with someone and terribly unwanted. I said that I’d never had an unhappy love affair, because I’ve never been allowed to come close enough to the people I’ve loved to call it that, and the people I might say I’ve had affairs with I’ve never really cared about, nor they for me, thank God. Your mother was the only person I ever really loved who never pushed me away or hurt me, and with her it was more worship than love, and I only saw her that one week she stayed at Aunt Manya’s. But I’ll never forget her. She’s an awfully important part of my life. I think she’s an important part of lots of people’s lives. More people than we know.”

  “Yes, I think so, too,” Katherine answered.

  “The best way I have of knowing what is right and what is wrong is whether or not I think she’d approve. I’ve done a lot of things she wouldn’t approve of. I’ve been cheap often, because I was lonely and unhappy and frightened because of always being pushed away. When I talked to the priest about it, he said it was because I’d never really been in love with anyone, that my pride and my love of Charlot were always stronger than my love for another human being. I don’t know whether he was right or wrong. I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. It’s because I’m drunk. I’ll regret it tomorrow.”

  “Oh,” Katherine said. “Will you?”

  “Undoubtedly.”

  “That’s not fair. Unless it made me angry or I took it in the wrong way and let it make things different, you haven’t any right to take it out on me. Mother never did.”

  “All right,” Charlot said. “I won’t, then. Here we are. Back again. It’s raining. Did you know?”

  “No. Is it?”

  “Yes, a little. Stagger out, baby. Here, I’ll take the rug. All right. Come along.”

  They walked back into the house. In the great hall the fire was blazing, and it was warm and light. Josef told them that Manya and Tom had gone to bed and left them a tray of sandwiches and milk.

  “I don’t want anything to eat,” Katherine said.

  “Neither do I.” Charlot sat down in front of the fire. “Are you going to play for me now?”

  “Of course. What do you want?”

  “Do you ever improvise?”

  “Um-humh.”

  “Play about tonight, then, will you?”

  “I’ll try.” Katherine sat down at the piano and began to play softly, meditatively, then slowly gaining speed and gaiety, bringing in the jangling rhythm of the merry-go-round music and the Strauss waltzes. She felt as free and as light as the spring rain that was beginning to fall. She knew she wouldn’t be able to remember a note of what she played the next morning, and she wasn’t sure she would still like it if she could. But tonight it sounded wonderful, the insistent music of the merry-go-round appearing again and again, and against it the Strauss waltz, sometimes clear and loud, as they had heard it in the restaurant, sometimes soft and blurred and discordant, as it had sounded from the lake steamer, as it had sounded heard from the top of the ferris wheel.

  Charlot lay back in his chair, his eyes closed, and she thought he might be asleep. But as the music di
ed away, he opened his eyes, got up and came over to her, and sat down on the piano bench beside her.

  “Did you like it?” she asked.

  “Every second of it.” He put his arm around her and drew her close to him, and she put her head down on his shoulder. They sat there that way with the firelight flickering over them, and Katherine’s mind felt strange and detached from her, and nothing really mattered, because her mind, which was really thinking quite clearly, was just waiting for her body to come back to it, only it didn’t matter how long it took. Charlot pressed her close to him, so that her face was buried in his neck and it was difficult to breathe, and he kissed her softly on the tip of her ear several times, and his breath came quick and hard. Then he pulled her head around with a sudden movement and kissed her on the mouth, lightly, and then, as she lay quietly in his arms, long and passionately. When he released her and rose abruptly and walked over to the fireplace and stared down at the fire with his back to her, she watched him, and still her mind, which was thinking clearly, was detached from her body; and now her body was something she had never had before, something new, and she did not know when it would become part of her mind, or if it ever would, and it really didn’t matter.

  After a while she called softly, “Charlot—”

  He turned around and faced her. “Well?”

  “Hello—”

  “Hello,” he said, and sat down in front of the fireplace. “Let’s talk about Shakespeare, shall we?”

  “Oh. All right.” She sat down on the floor beside him. “All right. You talk.”

  “I’ll talk about Falstaff. Shall I talk about Falstaff?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “You know Henry IV well?”

  “Naturally.”

  “Well, I think Falstaff was a hell of a lot more complex than Hal thought he was. I think he was a great actor, but like Aunt Manya, he wasn’t always conscious that he was acting. He fluctuated from part to part, and occasionally fooled himself into thinking he was sincere. But mostly he was the cynical and disillusioned courtier—the man of the world who has seen life and knows everything and therefore doesn’t bother to reason it out—doesn’t bother to be introspective—for after all, what’s the use? Life is a pretty grim affair, honor is an empty shell, so why not be merry?”

  “Oh,” Katherine said. Charlot leaned toward her, then he drew back and went on, and his voice had the strange sound it always had when he was forcing himself to talk, as though his voice had to go around a hard cylinder.

  “Why not play with words, with personalities,” he said, “and enjoy the laughter and adulation of friends and the mob? Falstaff, if you could see him in tails, is almost Noel Cowardish in his attitude. But in spite of his cynicism, Shakespeare has made him extremely sensitive, with the deep, hidden kind of sensitiveness, the hidden ability to be hurt, that it seems to me all Elizabethans had to a large degree. Falstaff had terrific pride. He adored making quips and jests, but he wanted them to be appreciated. He didn’t mind if his friends didn’t believe his stories, as long as they listened to them. He adored acting. He thought himself great at it, but he was never as good in the scenes where he and Hal were deliberately assuming parts as when he let the parts assume him. He couldn’t bear to let anybody think he was hurt or discomfited. When Hal disclaims him in Part II, he quickly turns to Shallow and the others to assure them that he is not hurt. Hal has to be like that in public, and he, Falstaff, would think it very strange if he weren’t.”

  “Oh,” Katherine said again. “Yes, you’re right, Charlot.”

  Charlot smiled at her with his mouth, but his eyes probed deeply into hers as he went on. “Falstaff made no bones about being a coward. He isn’t one, and he knows it, but he sees no point in giving up his life before it is time. And he knows that the others don’t really think him a coward—and yet he is so concerned with his histrionics that he doesn’t realize that that is all the others see—that they don’t see Falstaff himself. I think that Shakespeare realized, and it is extremely difficult to realize things about your own age, that it was the very awareness the Elizabethans had for the individual that kept them apart. Each one was so conscious of himself, so passionately introspective, so amazed and overjoyed at being himself, that he didn’t have a great deal of time left over for the rest of the world.”

  “You think you’re a little like Falstaff, the Falstaff you see, don’t you?” Katherine asked.

  “I’m like Falstaff without friends and without an audience,” Charlot said. And he put his arms around her again, and kissed her, opening her mouth. She lay back on the floor after his kiss and rolled over and looked into the fire, her hands pressed against her burning cheeks, her tangled hair falling about her face.

  “You talk about Shakespeare,” Charlot said. “You talk about Shakespeare quickly.”

  “I don’t want to talk about Shakespeare,” Katherine whispered, and she looked at Charlot and he came to her, and she was pressed close against him.

  When she awoke the next morning, the sun was streaming into her room. Manya’s bright Russian shawl was flung over the chair where she had left it, and she realized that her hair was down and a mass of snarls. She lay in bed and focused her eyes on the coat and the shawl, and her mind, which had suddenly come back to her body and claimed it again, tried to collect itself. Her head ached, and she rubbed her fingers against it.

  —Now I know—she thought—now I know what being with a person is like, but I’m really not any different, I’m not any older, I haven’t learned anything except that just the act of being with someone isn’t very important, doesn’t really change you, unless you let it make you cheap, I guess. It’s got to be someone who has part of your soul, someone you want to have part of your soul, someone you want to give the inside of you to, or it doesn’t count. So I still don’t know about it, the thing that generates power. I got more from Mother and Sarah and Justin, as far as being given power is concerned, than I have from Charlot. It’s still something that’s got to happen to me, something I’ve got to learn if I’m really ever to know about things.—

  She looked at her mother’s watch, and it was after twelve. She dressed, untangled and braided her hair, and went downstairs. Manya and Tom were breakfasting in front of the fire. She kissed them both. “Where’s Charlot?” she asked.

  “He’s still asleep,” Manya said.

  “Oh.”

  “Want some breakfast?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Go wake Charlot first, will you, baby? He promised to go to Thônon with me today and get some new shirts.”

  “Oh. All right.” She went upstairs and into Charlot’s room. The blinds were drawn, and the room was dim; only the top of Charlot’s dark head showed above the bedclothes. She sat down on the bed beside him, uncovered his head, and tweaked his nose gently.

  He pulled her down to him and kissed her, and then buried his face in her neck. “You’re not angry with me?” he murmured.

  “Why should I be angry?”

  “Katherine,” he said. “Katherine, I do love you so desperately.”

  “No. You don’t. You can’t,” Katherine said, and her heart began to beat very fast.

  “I do. It’s always been you I’ve loved and wanted, only I never realized it until last night.”

  “But you can’t love me, Charlot.”

  “Why can’t I? Of course I can.”

  “It’s just because of what happened last night.” Katherine clutched his hand desperately. “You needn’t say you love me because of what happened last night. It wasn’t your fault.”

  “I’m not saying it because of last night. Last night, all of it, from the minute you came downstairs with that shawl over your head, looking so beautiful, was what made me realize that I love you, but it isn’t because of what happened that I’m saying it, it’s because it’s true. I love you and I want to marry you.”

  “No—oh, no, you don’t, Charlot.”

  Charlot sat up quickly and caug
ht hold of her wrists so tightly that it hurt. “You don’t want me to love you?”

  “Not like that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I want you to love me but not like that.”

  “Then why did you let last night happen? You didn’t have to let it happen.”

  “I don’t know why.”

  “Was it because you were drunk? I didn’t think you were that drunk. I didn’t think I was that drunk. But if you feel like this now, we must have been.”

  “No. It wasn’t because of the drinking. I wasn’t drunk from the drinking.”

  “What were you drunk from, then?”

  “Unhappiness, maybe.”

  “So you came to me because you were unhappy? Just a cheap second best?”

  “No. It wasn’t that. I don’t know. It was like being hypnotized.”

  “I didn’t try to hypnotize you.”

  “I don’t mean by you. I don’t quite know what it was.”

  “Then you didn’t know what you were doing?”

  “No, it wasn’t that.”

  “Then what, then?”

  “I don’t know. But—but I didn’t think you cared anything about me, Charlot. I didn’t think I mattered to you. That way. I knew you loved me and I loved you, only with me it isn’t that way, and I didn’t think it was with you.”

  “If it isn’t that way with you, how is it? What other ways are there?”

  “Just loving. The way I loved Mother and Sarah. Just loving.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “I just wanted to help you.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about, do you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What will you do if you have a baby?”

  Katherine sat very still for a long time. Then she whispered, “A baby?”

  “Yes,” Charlot said. “A baby. Hadn’t you thought of that?”

  “No.”

  “What will you do if you find out you’re going to have my child?”

  Katherine took a deep breath. It was as though she were drawing her whole body in tighter. She raised her head and looked at Charlot. “I shall have it.”