The Small Rain

by Madeleine L'engle

  “No. You didn’t die.”

  Pete came the next afternoon. He bent over the bed, kissing her gently, smoothing back the hair from her forehead with tender clumsy hands.

  “You didn’t catch anything from me?” she asked anxiously.

  “No, kitten. Look at me. Bursting with health.”

  She pulled him down to her. “Do I look like the last act of Camille?” she whispered. “Marguerite Gautier on her deathbed?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Only you aren’t Armand Duval. You’re someone Marguerite never met. You’d never throw money at me and strike me and knock me down, would you?”

  “If I thought you were unfaithful to me, there’s no telling what I might not do.”

  “Pete,” she said, pushing him away quickly. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

  —Why do I have to tell him about Charlot?—she thought miserably.—After the way he behaved about Mr. LeStrade and everything. I’m so scared. I’m so scared. If he hates me because of it, I can’t bear it; but I’ve got to tell him, and if he hates me and doesn’t understand, it will prove we could never understand or know each other, and I will want to die; I will want to die, but I’ve got to tell him.—

  He took both her hands tightly in his. “You’ve got to marry me. You can’t change your mind, even if you were delirious when you accepted me.”

  “I haven’t changed my mind. But, Pete.”

  “What, kitten little?”

  “There was a boy. Charlot. Charles Bejart. Aunt Manya’s adopted son. He’s in Paris now, and he’s going to be married. He loved Mother very much, and once … once for a while he thought he was in love with me. And we went to a kermesse. Down on the water front. Lake Geneva. Merry-go-rounds and ferris wheels. The man who ran the ferris wheel was horrible and dirty. And I was so unhappy, and Charlot was unhappy, too. And he reminded me of Justin. He looked so much like him. He even talked like him … It wasn’t that I was ever—ever in love with Justin, you know, it was quite different … only that was partly why. And I was terribly drunk. And it didn’t seem wrong, Pete. It just seemed something perfectly natural. And sort of inevitable. But maybe that was because …”

  “Because of what, dear?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because of being drunk … Well … that’s what I had to tell you … If you don’t love me now …”

  Pete’s hand went on clumsily and tenderly stroking her forehead. “Look, kitten little, I think I’d better do some talking, too. How could what you’ve just told me make me stop loving you? I love you more, if anything. But I’ve got to tell you some things, too.”

  “All right, Pete.”

  “I’ve wanted you. I’ve wanted you since the first evening I saw you at Carnegie and you told me you were the same little girl I’d known eight years ago. And it’s only because I knew it was more than just wanting you that I didn’t try to get you right away. But there’s been so much more than just that in my feeling for you, and I’ve known for so long that I wanted to marry you, and I knew I could wait and that I should wait. But look, kitten. There’ve been lots of other girls I’ve wanted, and that was all, and I’ve had them. And I’ve hurt some of them badly. Not for several years now, but I used to do dreadful things to people, and not even care … But I think the fact that I’ve hurt other people and know it will keep me from hurting you … But I’ve been bad, my darling, and I’m not even afraid to tell you, because I know you’ll understand. I promise you that I’m clean and healthy. I haven’t done anything that could ever hurt you in that way. But I’ve been very wild in my day, kitten, and you’d better know it right now.”

  “Oh.”

  His hand dropped from her forehead and lay near her cheek on the pillow. “Have I hurt you badly?”

  She leaned her cheek against his hand. “No.”

  “If I’ve hurt you, it’s the only time I’ll hurt you, kitten.”

  “You haven’t hurt me, Pete. It doesn’t matter. I love you, and I know you love me, and that’s all that matters.”

  New York, like most of the great cities of the world, can be the most horrible place and the most wonderful. Suddenly for Katherine it flared into the most wonderful. Sometimes, after she was out of the hospital, after Manya’s play had opened and settled down to a long run, after Tom had come back from the coast and Pete and Katherine had told them that they were engaged, after Pete had been taken to see Albert Peytz, looked up and down and grudgingly approved, sometimes Katherine would stand in front of the mirror and say, “Look, Katherine. This is happiness. This is what being happy is really like. Don’t be unconscious of it for a single minute.”

  They did so many things together. All the usual things, the drive in a hansom cab in Central Park, so that she could feel like Marguerite Gautier; the riding across and across on the Staten Island ferry; up and down, up and down on the Fifth Avenue bus; the walks in the cold winter whiteness of Washington Square and Central Park; the splurges at the Casino Russe. Then there were things that were special for them, things that belonged to Katherine and Pete. Long talks with the bartender at the Purple Pigeon after the place was closed, chairs were up on tables, and mops and buckets dominated the floor. Pete burning his mouth on anchovy pizza down in the Village in a restaurant that smelled of garlic and strong soap. Long walks all over town, past the red brick walls of the convent on Eighty-second Street, down St. Luke’s Place past the fireman’s grave and the house that had once been a mayor’s with its two slender lampposts in front of it, down Hudson Street where four pale little boys were crouched solemnly in a doorway late at night, singing with intensity:

  “There’s something on the end of the hook

  The end of the hook

  The end of the hook

  There’s something on the end of the hook …”

  Then there was the jelly lady up on Ninth Avenue, where they bought lemon butter and gooseberry jam; and a special restaurant in Chinatown; and evenings when they would just go home and Pete would stretch out on the floor and listen and doze while Katherine played.

  Then there came the night when they went, as they often did, down to the Village to eat pizza and drink cheap white wine. Katherine loved going to the Village. Always they walked past Julie’s old apartment on Tenth Street, and she seemed to gather extra strength, though she felt strong and clear as she had never felt before.

  They went to their usual table with the heavy white tablecloth, so hastily dried and ironed that it still felt damp and seemed roughdried. Pete ordered the pizza and wine, and they sat looking at each other across the damp rough tablecloth, smiling into each other’s eyes.

  “Happy?” Pete asked.

  She nodded. “And you?”

  He nodded, too.

  Katherine didn’t notice when a couple came into the restaurant and sat at the table behind her, until she heard her name spoken in a voice that was very familiar, a voice that had English inflections even stronger than those the school had left on Katherine.

  “Katherine Forrester—”

  Katherine felt the hollow feeling in the pit of the stomach, the sudden jerk of heart, constriction of throat. She turned around.

  It was Sarah. Sarah and a blond young man. Sarah had a gray squirrel coat flung over her chair. She wore a red embroidered wool dress that would have been perfect for Manya but was not too becoming to Sarah’s figure or her pale complexion. Nevertheless, she seemed so secure in her own awareness of her beauty that most people would have complimented her on the becoming dress.

  “Hello, Sarah—” Katherine said.

  Sarah seemed to have become years older since she had left school, to be not at all taken aback by this meeting that somehow hit Katherine in the pit of her stomach. “I saw your Aunt Manya’s play,” Sarah said, “so I thought you were probably back in America. How are you? This is Felix Bodeway, by the way—Katherine Forrester and—” She smiled at Pete, widening those huge, cold, blue eyes. “I don’t know your name.”
r />   “My fiancé,” Katherine said. “Peter Burns.”

  “Oh!” Sarah exclaimed. “That’s why I thought I knew you!” She turned back to her companion. “He’s in the Paul LeStrade play. You remember, Felix, we saw it when it first opened. He had all the wonderful notices … Felix wants me to marry him,” she said to Katherine. “Do you think I should?”

  “Well, I don’t know.”

  “I say, it is good to see you again,” Sarah said. “And going to be married, too! When, Kat?”

  “We promised Aunt Manya and Father we’d wait a year,” Katherine said, “so that makes it next November, I guess.”

  “At the Little Church Around the Corner? Will you let me come to the wedding? A big wedding or a little one? Kat, how exciting! You’re the first of my friends to get married! Sheila wrote that she was engaged, but you know Sheila! I don’t believe it for a minute.” She seemed to have forgotten that there had ever been any doors closed between her and Katherine. “Do let’s pull our tables together, shall we?”

  Somehow, Katherine didn’t want to and looked toward Pete for help, but Sarah and Felix had already pushed their chairs back, so she had to stand while they joined the two small tables with their rough white tablecloths together. Katherine went around beside Pete and sat down, rubbing her fingers over the firm comfort of his knee; Sarah and Felix sat opposite them. Katherine was so busy watching Sarah that she didn’t look much at Felix, though she liked his light well-modulated voice.

  “Do you know this place?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Pete said. “We come here every once in a while.”

  “I’ve been coming here for ages.” Felix opened the fingers of one white well-kept hand, the nails clean and shining. On one finger he wore a ring, a silver ring with a skull. “Mostly Sarah and I go to a little tavern below Washington Square, but I discovered tonight that she’d never had pizza.”

  “I love pizza on a cold night,” Katherine said softly, looking across the table at Sarah in her vivid embroidered dress.

  “Well, Kat, what are you doing?” Sarah asked. “Still your piano?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ll like Felix, then. He’s a musician, too. A composer. And he plays the violin magnificently.”

  Felix accepted her praise complacently. “I’ve long been a great admirer of your father’s, Miss Forrester,” Felix said, twitching his bow tie straight with his white polished hands, which he could not seem to keep still.

  “Oh, but you mustn’t call Kat ‘Miss Forrester,’” Sarah said, and smiling at Pete, she added, “because I’m going to call ‘Mr. Burns’ Peter, if such a well-known young actor doesn’t mind a mere American Academy student being familiar.”

  “So you’re an actress?” Pete asked her.

  “Um-hum. I’m quite good, aren’t I, Kat?”

  “Yes. You’re very good.”

  It had never been difficult for Sarah to talk, either seriously, intensely, or lightly, laughingly, as she was doing now. She ate her pizza, raved over it obligingly, drank her wine, as her conversation seemed to flit across the table like a little bright bird.

  “I say,” she said, “do come up to my apartment for a bit. We’re really just beginning to talk, and Kat and I have so much to catch up on. Do come.”

  “It must be awfully late,” Katherine said, “and I have a lesson tomorrow.”

  “The same old Kat!” Sarah cried. “How’s Justin? Have you heard from him! Oh, do come for just a sec. I shan’t beg you to stay, but just come and have one glass of beer. It’s only around the corner.”

  They went to Sarah’s apartment, a furnished room just off the Square, with two studio couches and a few pieces of very modernistic furniture painted yellow. A large colored picture of Manya that had been the cover of the Sunday Supplement of the News was framed and hung over one studio couch; a photograph of Paul LeStrade, framed with a yellow mat to make it equally large, hung over the other.

  “Know LeStrade?” Pete asked.

  Sarah blushed a little. “No. Daddy got it for me for Christmas. He does income tax for him. I think he’s magnificent. I thought he was wonderful in your show.”

  “He has quite a technique,” Pete said shortly.

  “Do sit down.” Sarah waved her arm in a gesture that took in the whole room and all the yellow furniture. “The couches are the most comfortable.”

  “LeStrade thinks Katherine’s quite wonderful,” Pete said, following his habit of pursuing a subject through thick and thin.

  “Oh, Pete, don’t be silly!”

  “He’s always talking about you, kitten. Gets me off into the wings and goes on about what a sweet, sensitive, little thing you are.”

  The icebox in Sarah’s apartment was an old-fashioned wooden one and it, too, was painted yellow. Sarah peered into it, then turned around with a tragic gesture. “The beer’s all gone!”

  “Oh, well, never mind,” Katherine said.

  “But I do mind! I mind terribly! I wanted us to sit and have a glass of beer, and we’re going to. Pete, would you come to the corner with me while I buy some?”

  “We don’t really need beer, Sarah,” Katherine tried again. “We’ve got to go in just a minute.”

  “But not without a glass of beer. Do come with me, won’t you, Pete? I want so to ask you about your play and your performance, and that would bore Kat and Felix.”

  Pete stood up, giving Katherine’s shoulder a little squeeze. Bending down, he whispered, “We’ll drink one glass quickly and go, sweetheart,” and kissed the tip of her ear.

  As the yellow-painted door slammed behind them, Felix looked at Katherine. “Well, shall we talk or shall we just sit?”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “Shall I tell you about myself?”

  “All right.”

  He sat hunched up on a low, yellow, wooden bench, holding the tip of his nose between two curved fingers in a way that he had. His blond hair was a little too shaggy, and a lock fell across his forehead and over one eye. “I’m a window cleaner,” he said.

  “A window cleaner and a musician?”

  “No ‘and’. Music is my window cleaning. If I weren’t so sick of it, I’d quote the Bible. You know that bit. Through a glass darkly. That’s how people see. It’s as though nobody was out in the world. You know what I mean? We’re all shut up in rooms. Everybody. And nobody can ever get in to anybody else’s room. That’s because we’ve got bodies. And the only way we can have contact with people is through the windows in our rooms. You get what I mean? And some people have more windows than others. And everybody’s windows get dirty. So there have to be window cleaners. I’m one. At least maybe I will be one someday. That’s what I want to be.”

  “Oh.”

  “The trouble is that my own windows need cleaning.”

  “Do they?”

  “Sometimes I read things and I can see out better. Usually it’s music (you must play for me). Or a great actress. Or a painting. Usually I just get drunk, so I can forget I’m locked up all by myself in a room and it’s foggy outside … You know, Miss Forrester—Katherine—I don’t talk this way to most people. I can’t talk this way to Sarah. It’s just easy, somehow, to say things to you. How old are you, Katherine?”

  “Eighteen.”

  “I’m twenty-one. An old man. You haven’t been out in the world long, have you? I’ve been rattling about the Village since I was seventeen. A very fascinating and amusing place. Where do you live? With your father and step mother over on the East River?”

  “Yes.”

  “You see how much I know about you? That’s what you get for being a child of famous people. I make it a point to find out the address and phone number of everybody I admire, whether they’re in the book or not … I’m not in the least in love with Sarah. Nor she with me. But it might be convenient for us to marry. She’s got enough money coming to her, and we get on very well. We could live together very comfortably. Does your Pete have money?”

  “
Just what he makes.”

  “Do you?”

  “Until I’m twenty-one.”

  “What do you mean? Most people—Sarah, for instance—come into their money when they’re twenty-one.”

  “When I’m twenty-one, I will not take any more money from Father and Aunt Manya.”

  “Your mother didn’t leave you any money?”

  “No,” she said, and was surprised at not resenting his questions. But they were asked in such an ingenuous fashion that it would be difficult to be angry with him. Watching him again twist his blue-and-white speckled bow tie into position, she was conscious that Felix Bodeway had a great deal of charm; but it was a kind of charm that made her nervous and excited; she was glad when the door opened and Pete and Sarah came back, Pete carrying a brown paper bag with the beer.

  Sarah poured the beer and sat cross-legged on the floor in front of her low, yellow table. “I saw two nuns today,” she said.

  Felix raised his eyebrows, took off his huge silver ring and held it between his teeth.

  “What?” Pete asked.

  “I was walking down the street and I saw two nuns.”

  “Here we go,” Felix said through the ring.

  “Don’t you know the superstition?” Sarah asked.

  Katherine and Pete shook their heads.

  “If you see two nuns on the street, it’s very bad. It means you have to wait a long time for the things you want most. I’ve never been a patient woman.”

  “And you didn’t use to be superstitious,” Katherine said. “You used to tease me because I always wished on the first star and didn’t like to see the new moon first through a window.”

  “Oh, but I’m superstitious now,” Sarah said, waving her arms airily. “All theater people are superstitious. I’ll bet your Aunt Manya’s superstitious.”

  “Aunt Manya was born superstitious.”

  “Well, some are born superstitious, some acquire superstition, and some have superstition thrust upon ’em.”

  Felix spat out his ring. “I think it’s quite wicked to be superstitious about nuns.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Felix,” Sarah said. “I keep forgetting how awfully religious you are … He keeps going to churches and things.” She turned to Katherine and Pete.