“Misael,” she said to herself, and her lips formed the lovely name of her companion, “Misael, my love, how sweet it smells.” She had come to the thick green hemlock hedge that for half a mile concealed the grounds of old Sadie Lovejoy’s place and here especially she always walked hand in hand with the make-believe boy who had shared her sorrows and divided her joys since she had first found out that it was impossible to live alone amongst savages and Indians and paper dolls and adults, and holding on to his hand that she really felt, warm and smooth in her own, she turned her face towards him and kissed him, “Misael.”
The path lay long and deserted ahead of her, the green hedge sloped downward into the distance beside it and the pink and pale green sugar maples along the other side of the macadam road almost hid the sky with their umbrella-like shapes. Inches deep beneath them lay the multicoloured leaves they were shedding like big frothy petticoats, and now and then in the stillness of her secret walk Victorine heard one of them groan as big trees do occasionally. It could be the almost painful movement of the chilling sap in their inner structure now that winter was coming, or the lessening pliability of their outermost branches, or the thousand-felt loss, the pinprick severance of uncountable leaves causing tiny lesions and abrasions, a strange inevitable infinite mutilation, pleasurable perhaps, like a passionate itch.
“You are the prettiest,” said Misael, “the loveliest of all,” he said.
“Prettier than Mamma?” Victorine whispered; it was a bold question.
“Yes,” said Misael softly.
“Do you love me?”
A thin-edged curling yellow leaf brushed Victorine on the forehead and startled her, her heart beat fast and she walked on tiptoe, “Misael, are you there?”
A black-and-white fox terrier leaped through the thick hedge as if it were a green paper hoop. His black eyes flashed and he barked hysterically, almost scaring Victorine out of her wits. She froze. The little dog danced around her, dangerously close, and backed off, lifting his nose and smelling for her scent, trying to place her. His short tail was motionless and his hair stood up along his spine. He smelled the unknown, the mystic incense of Victorine’s not-thereness, her nobodyness, and maybe Jesus’ blood, the astringent smell of the holy wafer.
“Good doggie,” pleaded Victorine.
He smelled her fear then and closed in, he snapped at her heels, ran a way off and danced back. No ghost—the smell of her anxiety was strong and it pleased him, he barked joyously and less and less at her, more and more at nothing in particular.
“Go home!” said Victorine.
His bark became less sharp, less decisive. He looked at her questioningly.
“Go home, sir!”
The dog turned and trotted straight through the hedge.
Victorine quickened her step, her victory might not last, she was not at all confident of success, Jesus’ blood no longer supported her and she still had the fences to climb, the wide field to cross. Misael was gone. But she dared not run because she had learned the fear of running itself, how it intensified one’s apprehensions; she knew the panic of the lone stampede, the multiplication of fearsome images behind her, the beat of the pursuer’s feet in her ears, the enlargement of her own heart and the nightmarish weight in her own heels, the freezing of the landscape she could not pass. But the self-control she practised irritated her nerves which in turn teased her insides and her stomach began to ache, she felt a pain in one of her ears from the strain of listening. She listened for the paws of the terrier, the brushing of the tall grass along his sides, the panting in his chest and throat, she tried to prepare herself for his staccato sharp little bark. Bravely she slowed down, and over the last fence, in her own territory, she turned and faced the enemy. She scanned the field of soft yellow tufted grass, her far-sighted gaze peered into the green hedge that looked no bigger than a row of vivid parsley in the distance, and she felt ashamed of her cowardice, the funk she had been in, startled out of her daydream by a fluttering dry and yellow sugar maple leaf. And her shame somehow included Misael, her little lover. “I shall not speak to him again,” she said in the broad daylight of her own back yard. The hired man stood against the barn relieving himself at high noon, his head turned sideways looking into space, he was whistling softly (Put on your old grey bonnet with the blue ribbon on it), he did not see her although he faced her, she saw the gentle look of non-concentration on his face, the look of respite from labour and she felt secure. She did not notice what he was doing and did not turn aside or blush; her blush was deeper than that, an internal blush for the unknown, the mystical, the sensuous and the secret.
In her highly sensitized state, heightened by her Sunday fast and quickened by the holy cocktail at the Lord’s table, she anticipated the fascination of the kitchen and she climbed the back steps feeling a watery weakness in her knees and a slight giddiness in her head. The smell of real food sickened her but not unpleasantly, the taste buds on the inside wall of her stomach, if there were any, there seemed to be, ached with longing but her tongue was dry. She imagined the massacre inside the kitchen as she wrapped her fingers around the dirty doorknob—the evil autopsies performed by Elsie in a bloodied apron on limp fowls with their sad faces turned sideways on pink stretched necks that the hired man had twisted (Put on your old grey bonnet with the blue ribbon on it); the swooning, fainting pheasants tossed in a basket on the sink, their grey rubber eyelids and nervous clutching claws, the glint in their soft feathers like everlasting sunlight, the congealed gore on their beaks. Again the talented Elsie with the precision of a surgeon sawed through the pink porous bones and shivering rosy flesh of the young porkers that did not bleed and yielded easily to the long knives. At other times the hefty perspiring cook indulged in no less than flagellation of the big slices of beef, determined to tenderize them as she had in the old country, slithery as they were, dark and delectable, aged in the cold room, hung on hooks. Fear and disgust and pleasure mingled in Victorine, the voyeuse almost, as she watched Elsie reach in and tear out the entrails of the chickens and split the silent limp pullets with one well-aimed and well-timed swipe; she disengaged them limb from limb as neatly as an executioner, the knuckle bones and cartilages were exposed clean and shining, the chilling flesh swelled up.
Victorine opened the door and went in. She shivered in the sudden all-enveloping heat of the kitchen. Elsie was stuffing big chunks of raw beef into the greedy vault of the meat grinder with one fat finger, under the faucet beneath it she steadily held a small aluminium cup. Soon it was full to the brim with bright red bubbling blood. Victorine was startled in her imaginative and fasting condition to see her raise the cup to her mouth and drink. “Ahhh,” she said, smacking her lips, and good-naturedly turning her big sagging body towards Victorine, “It’s your turn, Miss Victor, sure an’ you’re pale as death, the juice will do you good now, darlin’.”
“Juice!” said Victorine, unable to control her horror.
“Sure an’ it’s juice, I said; did you imagine it was blood now! It’s juice, I said, fine nourishin’ juice and good for the likes of you, poor child, pale as a sheet and thin as a rail.”
But Victorine was unwilling to relinquish the medieval coloration and design of the picture in her mind, the smell and taste of blood in her nostrils and mouth, the sickening pleasurable horror of the occasion, and the big Elsie’s matter-of-fact explanation did not disarm or distract her. Her eyes were drawn towards a thick scarlet steak that leaned against a hatchet-shaped knife and draped itself over the edges of a bloody board (“Take, eat, this is my Body . . .”) Elsie again proffered the aluminium cup (“Drink ye all of this, for this is my Blood . . .”). What evil rites were these! What carnivorous sacrifices to what gluttonous god! What big rolling, lolling god on what kind of a throne! She shivered all over at the nasty sacrilege and she clearly saw as if painted on velvet in giddy colours the obese creature astride a lavender toilet on a fat cloud. Big pink oleanders hung behind his ears and he cradled a foot, hi
s own, in his arms. Pleasure, fear and disgust mingled in her. Infatuated, she felt the need to be alone. The presence of the three-dimensional matter-of-fact Elsie irritated her and she turned to go up the back stairs to her room. As she left the kitchen, she felt a terrible hunger that nothing could satisfy.
“No, thank you,” she said automatically and Elsie went back to the sink; she scrubbed the blood of the beast away and crossed herself. “She’s that high-strung,” she said. It was queer, wasn’t it, that Elsie, the good Catholic, had not sensed the savage transmigration that Victorine, untutored, had seen with her own eyes and felt like a tumultuous upheaval in her viscera.
Misael, the pure and lovely child, the fairy boy whose love had been like candy, where was he now?
Victorine looked at herself in the mirror, her dark eyes were hot, the lobes of her ears were pink as coral, but her smooth heart-shaped face was pale as Elsie had said, as white as a sheet. At the base of her throat she could see her pulse beating, slower now, but hard and even. . . .
“Victorine!”
Suddenly she opened her legs and placed her hand between them; through her gingham dress she felt the heat of desire without subject-matter, the swelling of her virgin mount. She smiled with surprise as if she had come upon something that had been lost for a long time. She gave herself a little slap and felt a stinging pleasure that sent the colour at last into her cheeks.
“Victorine!”
“Yes, Mother,” her voice was husky.
“Luncheon, dear, do come.”
“I am.”
The words were significant. Her first real feeling of centralized desire left her as suddenly as it had come. Again, as unprotected as an amoeba minus its unicellular distinction, her heart and senses, her whole intricate nervous system, lay open to attack.
Her little brother’s screams drew her towards the window. “No, no, bad Elthie!” he was sobbing. He stood outside the kitchen door, gesticulating at Elsie through the kitchen window. In his arms he held his pet duck who struggled to free himself. It was true that through the window Elsie eyed the cheerful duck and imagined his plump carcass, his healthy pimpled naked skin, his very vent. She laughed at his sporting little curled-up tail feathers and longed to pluck him and pop him into the oven. “No!” shrieked Dennis, reading her mind, seeing her big mouth hung open, her merry eyes shining, “it’s my duck!”
“Go ’long with you,” said Elsie, “cry-baby.” She bided her time.
“Never mind, Denny,” called Victorine.
“Vicky!” said Dennis, dropping the duck in a heap. He clenched his little fist and shook it at the kitchen window. “Elthie’s bad. Elthie’s a sthinker.”
Victorine laughed. “I’m starved,” she said as she came into the dining-room. “Mamma,” and she touched her cheek with her own. “Daddy,” and she bent over him, “what an awful tie.” “Hello, Costello,” she glanced at her older brother and he looked her up and down and said nothing.
“Costello, your sister’s chair,” said her father.
Costello sulkily obeyed. His sister’s beauty teased him. He longed to find her weakness and put his finger on it. He wanted at the moment to muss her up, turn her upside down, pull her hair and chew her ears as he used to when they were small. How she had fought back! And then how suddenly she had become limp in his arms, her eyes darkening, her wet mouth shining and he would let go of her, frightened. Now that he was sixteen and mostly away at school or in camp something had happened to their queer relationship and it was queerer than ever. The mystery of his sister deepened. It hampered his growing up. “Does she know about it yet?” he thought, and his own vision made him blush. “Been saying your prayers again,” he said rudely, to protect himself, and it was Victorine’s turn, it seemed, she also blushed, and the two children each reached for a glass of water and swallowed hard, their ears ringing and their hands trembling.
“Fascinating conversation,” said their father banteringly, and their mother shook her head at him and shrugged a little, gave a faint outstretched movement with her lovely hands; they had both forgotten.
“Denny, darling!”
“Denny, son!”
Elsie had caught him and scrubbed him and kissed him all over his face and he shone. His problems were nebulous, his sorrows were passing, his impulses were quickly expelled, his guilt lay buried deep in his subconscious. He was a love and a joy and a relief. “Thoup,” he said, “beeeeutiful thoup—thoup of the evening, beautiful thoup,” and the first spoonful, misguided, he dumped in his ear. “Ha ha ha!” he laughed, “nathty.”
Chapter II
The Hired Man’s Hide-out
“Joe?”
“Miss?”
Victorine was startled when he answered. She had not, as usual, expected anyone to be around the old stables and barns and outhouses, chicken coops and grape arbours. It was her Sunday afternoon private excursion, almost, a place she had come for a long time (it seemed to her), as a little girl to a grown one, to explore and question and receive no answers. It was a place that had no architecture, no furniture, no stairs, and its inhabitants were four-legged and old-fashioned : one handsome red draught horse and one tawny sweet-smelling Jersey cow, with the exception, of course, of the white Wyandottes who were housed off to one side in their neatly laid-out yards; at dusk bold fat rats scudded back and forth and over and under while the hens nestled inside, close together, silent, their eyes half closed, their wrinkled yellow eyelids quivering, their little hearts, no bigger than a thimble, throbbing, waiting for dawn and the safety of daylight, the fun of scratching and pecking at glistening oyster shells, scratching for corn, daintily sipping the cool blue water that Joe always brought them. Even the well-groomed roosters with bright red combs and bloody necks, separated only, as they were, by octagonally shaped open wiring from each other and each other’s hens, scarcely upset them very much or for long. The cocks’ sporadic battles over whose favourites belonged to whom amused only themselves(instinct in them, it really hardly mattered anyway; it was the pageantry, perhaps, that they defended). The hens did not look up and accepted the daily inevitable intercourse, the visitation of the master, unruffled and without question.
“Come in, miss, if you like,” said Joe; he held open a sagging downtrodden door with big black battered hinges.
“What . . .” Victorine was absent-minded, she had never noticed the door before, didn’t know a room, which she glimpsed now behind Joe, was there.
“I kind of live here,” said Joe, “when I don’t live at home in the village.”
“I thought,” said Victorine, “it was Sunday.”
“Yes, it’s Sunday.”
Victorine was too polite to say she had hoped to be alone and she felt, too, a slight fear, an uneasiness.
“I thought . . .” she did not want to finish, “it was your day off,” as it seemed to her that it implied a social difference between them; only working people had days off.
“I know,” said Joe tenderly, easily.
Victorine felt that he had read her thoughts.
“I know it’s my day off,” said Joe, “but my old woman bleeds.”
Victorine stepped back, his words came out so gently as if he were stroking her sides, he spoke to her as if she were a young filly that was jumpy, and the picture of Joe’s wife bleeding from the nose and eyes, that should have horrified her, merely made her hesitate ever so slightly. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“It’s nothing,” he said.
“Joe! How beautiful!”
The dark blood as if from the veins came into his thick round neck and mounted to his forehead. “I didn’t think you folks wanted them any more.”
Quick to sense the guilt of another, Victorine said quickly, “Of course not.”
The four walls of the tiny room were hung almost edge to edge with Joe’s treasures : Costello’s last year’s Abercrombie and Fitch hunting calendar, and the bright slick pages of her father’s garden catalogues displaying giant violet
and yellow pansies and climbing king-size roses and luscious begonias, great Kentucky Wonder runner beans and beefsteak tomatoes, Little Marvel peas as green as grass and neat bunches of bright red radishes. A brilliant circle of light flashed as the setting sun shone in one diminutive window and Victorine looked right into the little mirror of one of her mother’s compacts that Joe had hung up on the wall, and on a thin gilt chain dangled a bejewelled lipstick. Over above it there was stretched triangularly a broken-down rosary (Cook’s?) and some fabulous paper dolls that had been her own marched into the corner pasted beside an ABC book of Denny’s.
“Do you like it?”
“Oh, yes,” said Victorine, but a kind of pity, a thin feeling of misery, had come over her for Joe and his room stocked with left-overs. But she sensed something else in the air besides a pathetic avarice for junk.
Victorine Page 4
