She lifted her hand, pointing, as if she herself were down in the cistern, waiting. “Now, a little trickle. It comes down on the floor. It’s like something was hurt and bleeding up in the outer world. There’s some thunder! Or was it a truck going by?”
She spoke a little more rapidly now, but held her body relaxed against the window, breathing out, and in the next words: “It seeps down. Then, into all the other hollows come other seepages. Little twines and snakes. Tobacco-stained water. Then it moves. It joins others. It makes snakes and then one big constrictor which rolls along on the flat, papered floor. From everywhere, from the north and south, from other streets, other streams come and they join and make one hissing and shining coil. And the water writhes into those two little dry niches I told you about. It rises slowly around those two, the man and the woman, lying there like Japanese flowers.”
She clasped her hands, slowly, working finger into finger, interlacing.
“The water soaks into them. First, it lifts the woman’s hand. In a little move. Her hand’s the only live part of her. Then her arm lifts and one foot. And her hair . . .” she touched her own hair as it hung about her shoulders “. . . unloosens and opens out like a flower in the water. Her shut eyelids are blue. . . .”
The room got darker, Juliet sewed on, and Anna talked and told all she saw in her mind. She told how the water rose and took the woman with it, unfolding her out and loosening her and standing her full upright in the cistern. “The water is interested in the woman, and she lets it have its way. After a long time of lying still, she’s ready to live again, any life the water wants her to have.”
Somewhere else, the man stood up in the water also. And Anna told of that, and how the water carried him slowly, drifting, and her, drifting, until they met each other. “The water opens their eyes. Now they can see but not see each other. They circle, not touching yet.” Anna made a little move of her head, eyes closed. “They watch each other. They glow with some kind of phosphorus. They smile. . . . They— touch hands.”
At last Juliet, stiffening, put down her sewing and stared at her sister, across the gray, rain-silent room.
“Anna!”
“The tide—makes them touch. The tide comes and puts them together. It’s a perfect kind of love, with no ego to it, only two bodies, moved by the water, which makes it clean and all right. It’s not wicked, this way.”
“It’s bad you’re saying it!” cried her sister.
“No, it’s all right,” insisted Anna, turning for an instant. “They’re not thinking, are they? They’re just so deep down and quiet and not caring.”
She took her right hand and held it over her left hand very slowly and gently, quavering and interweaving them. The rainy window, with the pale spring light penetrating, put a movement of light and running water on her fingers, made them seem submerged, fathoms deep in gray water, running one about the other as she finished her little dream:
“Him, tall and quiet, his hands open.” She showed with a gesture how tall and how easy he was in the water. “Her, small and quiet and relaxed.” She looked at her sister, leaving her hands just that way. “They’re dead, with no place to go, and no one to tell them. So there they are, with nothing applying to them and no worries, very secret and hidden under the earth in the cistern waters. They touch their hands and lips and when they come into a cross-street outlet of the cistern, the tide rushes them together. Then, later . . .” she disengaged her hands . . . “maybe they travel together, hand in hand, hobbling and floating, down all the streets, doing little crazy upright dances when they’re caught in sudden swirls.” She whirled her hands about, a drenching of rain spatted the window. “And they go down to the sea, all across the town, past cross drain and cross drain, street and street. Genesee Avenue, Crenshaw, Edmond Place, Washington, Motor City, Ocean Side and then the ocean. They go anywhere the water wants them, all over the earth, and come back later to the cistern inlet and float back up under the town, under a dozen tobacco shops and four dozen liquor stores, and six dozen groceries and ten theaters, a rail junction, Highway 101, under the walking feet of thirty thousand people who don’t even know or think of the cistern.”
Anna’s voice drifted and dreamed and grew quiet again.
“And then—the day passes and the thunder goes away up on the street. The rain stops. The rain season’s over. The tunnels drip and stop. The tide goes down.” She seemed disappointed, sad it was over. “The river runs out to the ocean. The man and woman feel the water leave them slowly to the floor. They settle.” She lowered her hands in little bobblings to her lap, watching them fixedly, longingly. “Their feet lose the life the water has given them from outside. Now the water lays them down, side by side, and drains away, and the tunnels are drying. And there they lie. Up above, in the world, the sun comes out. There they lie, in the darkness, sleeping, until the next time. Until the next rain.”
Her hands were now upon her lap, palms up and open. “Nice man, nice woman,” she murmured. She bowed her head over them and shut her eyes tight.
Suddenly Anna sat up and glared at her sister. “Do you know who the man is?” she shouted, bitterly.
Juliet did not reply; she had watched, stricken, for the past five minutes while this thing went on. Her mouth was twisted and pale. Anna almost screamed:
“The man is Frank, that’s who he is! And I’m the woman!”
“Anna!”
“Yes, it’s Frank, down there!”
“But Frank’s been gone for years, and certainly not down there, Anna!”
Now, Anna was talking to nobody, and to everybody, to Juliet, to the window, the wall, the street. “Poor Frank,” she cried. “I know that’s where he went. He couldn’t stay anywhere in the world. His mother spoiled him for all the world! So he saw the cistern and saw how secret and fine it was. Oh, poor Frank. And poor Anna, poor me, with only a sister. Oh, Julie, why didn’t I hold onto Frank when he was here? Why didn’t I fight to win him from his mother?”
“Stop it, this minute, do you hear, this minute!”
Anna slumped down into the corner, by the window, one hand up on it, and wept silently. A few minutes later she heard her sister say, “Are you finished?”
“What?”
“If you’re done, come help me finish this, I’ll be forever at it.”
Anna raised her head and glided over to her sister. “What do you want me to do?” she sighed.
“This and this,” said Juliet, showing her.
“All right,” said Anna, and took it and sat by the window looking at the rain, moving her hands with the needle and thread, but watching how dark the street was now, and the room, and how hard it was to see the round metal top of the cistern now—there were just little midnight gleams and glitters out there in the black black late afternoon. Lightning crackled over the sky in a web.
Half an hour passed. Juliet drowsed in her chair across the room, removed her glasses, placed them down with her work and for a moment rested her head back and dozed. Perhaps thirty seconds later she heard the front door open violently, heard the wind come in, heard the footsteps run down the walk, turn, and hurry along the black street.
“What?” asked Juliet, sitting up, fumbling for her glasses. “Who’s there? Anna, did someone come in the door?” She stared at the empty window seat where Anna had been. “Anna!” she cried. She sprang up and ran out into the hall.
The front door stood open, rain fell through it in a fine mist.
“She’s only gone out for a moment,” said Juliet, standing there, trying to peer into the wet blackness. “She’ll be right back. Won’t you be right back, Anna dear? Anna, answer me, you will be right back, won’t you, sister?”
Outside, the cistern lid rose and slammed down.
The rain whispered on the street and fell upon the closed lid all the rest of the night.
The Tombstone
Well, first of all there was the long trip, and the dust poking up inside her thin nostrils, and Walter
, her Oklahoma husband, swaying his lean carcass in their model-T Ford, so sure of himself it made her want to spit; then they got into this big brick town that was strange as old sin, and hunted up a landlord. The landlord took them to a small room and unlocked the door.
There in the middle of the simple room sat the tombstone.
Leota’s eyes got a wise look, and immediately she pretended to gasp, and thoughts skipped through her mind in devilish quickness. Her superstitions were something Walter had never been able to touch or take away from her. She gasped, drew back, and Walter stared at her with his droopy eyelids hanging over his shiny gray eyes.
“No, no,” cried Leota, definitely. “I’m not moving in any room with any dead man!”
“Leota!” said her husband.
“What do you mean?” wondered the landlord. “Madam, you don’t—”
Leota smiled inwardly. Of course she didn’t really believe, but this was her only weapon against her Oklahoma man, so—”I mean that I won’t sleep in no room with no corpse. Get him out of here!”
Walter gazed at the sagging bed wearily, and this gave Leota pleasure, to be able to frustrate him. Yes, indeed, superstitions were handy things. She heard the landlord saying, “This tombstone is the very finest gray marble. It belongs to Mr. Whetmore.”
“The name carved on the stone is WHITE,” observed Leota coldly.
“Certainly. That’s the man’s name for whom the stone was carved.”
“And is he dead?” asked Leota, waiting.
The landlord nodded.
“There, you see!” cried Leota. Walter groaned a groan that meant he was not stirring another inch looking for a room. “It smells like a cemetery in here,” said Leota, watching Walter’s eyes get hot and flinty. The landlord explained:
“Mr. Whetmore, the former tenant of this room, was an apprentice marble-cutter, this was his first job, he used to tap on it with a chisel every night from seven until ten.”
“Well—” Leota glanced swiftly around to find Mr. Whetmore. “Where is he? Did he die, too?” She enjoyed this game.
“No, he discouraged himself and quit cutting this stone to work in an envelope factory.”
“Why?”
“He made a mistake.” The landlord tapped the marble lettering, “WHITE is the name here. Spelled wrong. Should be WHYTE, with a Y instead of an I. Poor Mr. Whetmore. Inferiority complex. Gave up at the least little mistake and scuttled off.”
“I’ll be damned,” said Walter, shuffling into the room and unpacking the rusty brown suitcases, his back to Leota. The landlord liked to tell the rest of the story:
“Yes, Mr. Whetmore gave up easily. To show you how touchy he was, he’d percolate coffee mornings, and if he spilled a teaspoonful it was a catastrophe—he’d throw it all away and not drink coffee for days! Think of that! He got very sad when he made errors. If he put his left shoe on first, instead of his right, he’d quit trying and walk bare footed for ten or twelve hours, on cold mornings, even. Or if someone spelled his name wrong on his letters, he’d replace them in the mailbox marked NO SUCH PERSON LIVING HERE. Oh, he was a great one, was Mr. Whetmore!”
“That don’t paddle us no further up-crick,” pursued Leota grimly. “Walter, what’re you commencing?”
“Hanging your silk dress in this closet; the red one.”
“Stop hanging, we’re not staying.”
The landlord blew out his breath, not understanding how a woman could grow so dumb. “I’ll explain once more. Mr. Whetmore did his homework here; he hired a truck that carried this tombstone here one day while I was out shopping for a turkey at the grocery, and when I waited back—tap-tap-tap—I heard it all the way downstairs— Mr. Whetmore had started chipping the marble. And he was so proud I didn’t dare complain. But he was so awful proud he made a spelling mistake and now he ran off without a word, his rent is paid all the way till Tuesday, but he didn’t want a refund, and now I’ve got some truckers with a hoist who’ll come up first thing in the morning. You won’t mind sleeping here one night with it, now will you? Of course not.”
The husband nodded. “You understand, Leota? Ain’t no dead man under that rug.” He sounded so superior, she wanted to kick him.
She didn’t believe him, and she stiffened. She poked a finger at the landlord. “You want your money. And you, Walter, you want a bed to drop your bones on. Both of you are lying from the word go!”
The Oklahoma man paid the landlord his money tiredly, with Leota tonguing him. The landlord ignored her as if she were invisible, said good night and she cried “Liar!” after him as he shut the door and left them alone. Her husband undressed and got in bed and said, “Don’t stand there staring at the tombstone, turn out the light. We been traveling four days and I’m bushed.”
Her tight crisscrossed arms began to quiver over her thin breasts. “None of the three of us,” she said, nodding at the stone, “will get any sleep.”
Twenty minutes later, disturbed by the various sounds and movements, the Oklahoma man unveiled his vulture’s face from the bedsheets, blinking stupidly. “Leota, you still up? I said, a long time ago, for you to switch off the light and come to sleep! What are you doing there?”
It was quite evident what she was about. Crawling on rough hands and knees, she placed a jar of fresh-cut red, white, and pink geraniums beside the headstone, and another tin can of new-cut roses at the foot of the imagined grave. A pair of shears lay on the floor, dewy with having snipped flowers in the night outside a moment before.
Now she briskly whisked the colorful linoleum and the worn rug with a midget whisk broom, praying so her husband couldn’t hear the words, but just the murmur. When she rose up, she stepped across the grave carefully so as not to defile the buried one, and in crossing the room she skirted far around the spot, saying, “There, that’s done,” as she darkened the room and laid herself out on the whining springs that sang in turn with her husband who now asked, “What in the Lord’s name!” and she replied, looking at the dark around her, “No man’s going to rest easy with strangers sleeping right atop him. I made amends with him, flowered his bed so he won’t stand around rubbing his bones together late tonight.”
Her husband looked at the place she occupied in the dark, and couldn’t think of anything good enough to say, so he just swore, groaned, and sank down into sleeping.
Not half an hour later, she grabbed his elbow and turned him so she could whisper swiftly, fearfully, into one of his ears, like a person calling into a cave: “Walter!” she cried. “Wake up, wake up!” She intended doing this all night, if need be, to spoil his superior kind of slumber.
He struggled with her. “What’s wrong?”
“Mr. White!l Mr. White! He’s starting to haunt us!”
“Oh, go to sleep!”
“I’m not fibbing! Listen to him!”
The Oklahoma man listened. From under the linoleum, sounding about six feet or so down, muffled, came a man’s sorrowful talking. Not a word came through clearly, just a sort of sad mourning.
The Oklahoma man sat up in bed. Feeling his movement, Leota hissed, “You heard, you heard?” excitedly. The Oklahoma man put his feet on the cold linoleum. The voice below changed into a falsetto. Leota began to sob. “Shut up, so I can hear,” demanded her husband, angrily. Then, in the heart-beating quiet, he bent his ear to the floor and Leota cried, “Don’t tip over the flowers!” and he cried, “Shut up!” and again listened, tensed. Then he spat out an oath and rolled back under the covers. “It’s only the man downstairs,” he muttered.
“That’s what I mean. Mr. White!”
“No, not Mr. White. We’re on the second floor of an apartment house, and we got neighbors down under. Listen.” The falsetto downstairs talked. “That’s the man’s wife. She’s probably telling him not to look at another man’s wife! Both of them probably drunk.”
“You’re lying!” insisted Leota. “Acting brave when you’re really trembling fit to shake the bed down. It’s a haunt, I tel
l you, and he’s talking in voices, like Gran’ma Hanlon used to do, rising up in her church pew and making queer tongues all mixed, like a black man, an Irishman, two women, and tree frogs, caught in her crawl That dead man, Mr. White, hates us for moving in with him tonight, I tell you! Listen!”
As tf to back her up, the voices downstairs talked louder. The Oklahoma man lay on his elbows, shaking his head hopelessly, wanting to laugh, but too tired.
Something crashed.
“He’s stirring in his coffin!” shrieked Leota. “He’s mad! We got to move outa here, Walter, or well be found dead tomorrow!”
More crashes, more bangs, more voices. Then, silence. Followed by a movement of feet in the air over their heads.
Leota whimpered. “He’s free of his tomb! Forced his way out and he’s tramping the air over our heads!”
By this time, the Oklahoma man had his clothing on. Beside the bed, he put on his boots. “This building’s three floors high,” he said, tucking in his shirt “We got neighbors overhead who just come home.” To Leota’s weeping he had this to say, “Come on. I’m taking you upstairs to meet them people. That’ll prove who they are. Then we’ll walk downstairs to the first floor and talk to that drunkard and his wife. Get up, Leota.”
Someone knocked on the door.
Leota squealed and rolled over and over, making a quilted mummy of herself. “He’s in his tomb again, rapping to get out!”
The Oklahoma man switched on the lights and unlocked the door. A very jubilant little man in a dark suit, with wild blue eyes, wrinkles, gray hair, and thick glasses danced in.
“Sorry, sorry,” declared the little man. “I’m Mr. Whetmore. I went away. Now I’m back. I’ve had the most astonishing stroke of luck. Yes, I have. Is my tombstone still here?” He looked at the stone a moment before he saw it “Ah, yes, yes, it is! Oh, hello.” He saw Leota peering from many layers of blanket. “I’ve some men with a roller-truck, and, if you don’t mind, well move the tombstone out of here, this very moment. It’ll only take a minute.”
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