Hermione

by Hilda Doolittle

  four

  Nellie Thorpe in her hand. George. Two people utterly inapposite, never coming together at all in any compartment of her compartmented mind. My mind is breaking up like molecules in test tubes. Molecules all held together, breaking down in this furnace heat. She went into the hall. The screen door was open again.

  She closed the screen door with an irritated hopeless gesture, slam-and-bang-to and trying it again to make sure there wasn’t any odd misfitting rough edge, said, “It’s agacé.” The thing annoyed her, agacé is the word. George was agacé by this, by this in what he called Gawd’s own country. Gawd’s own god-damn country. Agacé. C’est agaçant. The screen door was horribly agaçant. She found the stairhead, her usual formula of running fingers over the carved plaque of grape and flat leaf. Her wrist was still smudged with wild cherry stain. I must get some fresh azaleas. In her room, she decided not to throw herself on the bed, she would drift away. She would feel heavier seated stonily upright before her own desk.

  From her desk, set square in the middle of her desk, Eugenia looked at her. There was a dart in her hair fluffed out, smooth above small ears. The dress was cut mathematically square. The 1880 coiffure was Hellenistic. Eugenia was not Hellenistic, she was Eleusinian. Eugenia is Eleusinian. My father is Athenian.

  From the downstairs hallway Jock was barking, slipping of claw feet on polished wood, scuffling and thud—it must be Mandy chasing him from the kitchen. I told Mandy she should shut the window. Jock like a greyhound would be pulled out like a reflection of Jock seen in rippled water. Jock and Jock would be lightning succeeding lightning in angular bright pattern. Jock must have leapt through the window. I told Mandy she should close it. The broom, it must be the broom, went thud and Jock the other side of the slammed-to screen door said ouch-ouch dramatically. Mandy shouldn’t hit Jock that way. It’s so insulting to him.

  There was a small red Temple Shakespeare one side of Eugenia’s picture, the other side was a blue book matching it. The Mahabharata? One of those translations anyway. Temple Shakespeare. I am out of the Temple Shakespeare. I am out of The Winter’s Tale. It was my grandfather’s idea to call me something out of Shakespeare. Her picked up the limp volume. Leather was limp and smelt of innumerable compartments in her odd mind. Leather, smelling like that, wafted through and through innumerable compartments bringing dispersed elements and jaded edges together, running like healing water across an arid waste of triangle and star-cluster and names of biological intention. Atoms were held together like limp grasses gone arid, filled with healing rain drops. Lilies of all kinds . . . I am out of this book.

  She picked up the other book. It had a like effect upon her but more potently. Water lying filled with weeds and lily-pads . . . lilies of all kinds . . . became even more fluid, was being taken up and up, element (out of chemistry) become vapour. The water lying so pure became vapour, she would be lifted up, drunk up, vanished . . . I am the word AUM.

  Hermione dropped the volume. This frightened her. God is in a word. God is in a word. God is in HER. She said, “HER, HER, HER. I am Her, I am Hermione . . . I am the word AUM.” This frightened her. She slid out of the chair before the desk, still clutching her letters, seated herself in the other little low sewing-chair (in which she never sewed) pulled sideways, three-quarters facing the window. Her back was to the desk, to Eugenia, to the Winter’s Tale, to the other little volume. She tried to forget the other little volume. “I am the word AUM” frightened her. She tried to forget the word AUM, said “UM, EM, HEM” clearing her throat, wondered if she had offended something, clearing her throat trying to forget the word . . . I am the word . . . the word was with God . . . I am the word . . . HER.

  Hermione Gart hugged HER to Hermione Gart. I am HER. The thing was necessary. It was necessary to hug this thing to herself. It was a weight holding her down, keeping her down. Her own name was ballast to her lightheadedness. She would be heavier somehow sitting in the low chair than flung tossed down like some tree branch on the wide bed. I am Hermione.

  George is George. George or Georgio. George is not Georg (she pronounced it Teutonically, heavily stressed Gay-org). Georg is too hard, he is not Georg. Georges (she softened it in the Gallic manner) better suits him. He is possibly Georges but he is nearer Gorgio. There is something harlequin about George making him write simply that on a beautiful light piece of foreign paper. He might have said so much on that sea-grey slip of paper. The paper had been so light, slipped in somehow between the letters; now she realized why she had not given over all the letters to Minnie. She must have somehow known the thin letter was there, slipped sidewise. She must have somehow sensed it. She had not handed over all the letters to Minnie, standing there by the lawn step, covertly demanding them. She had not given in to Minnie. She usually did give in to Minnie. It was easiest in the long run to give in to Minnie. Minnie was obsessed with Minnie. We are all obsessed with something. I am obsessed at this moment by the fear of loosing an. . . obsession. She opened the second letter.

  She began somewhere about the middle, “I never know what to call you, you are fey with the only wildness that pertains to ultimate solution—,” Hermione turned the page, skipped to the end, “so you must come.” She turned back, tried to gather the gist of the matter without being too bored to read it, “Go straight to the telephone.” She gave up, started over again—“You are fey with the only wildness.” Oh here was what it all was, there was someone else who was fey too. “Now get this into your human consciousness if you are so far human as to use a telephone, I am 2231 Spruce. Go straight to the telephone—come to see me—to see a girl I want to see you.”

  Hermione Gart flung aside the letter. A bird rustled the deflowered tendrils of the wisteria, the mock orange bush beneath her window was now, too, all but over. “To see a girl I want to see you.” No, she wouldn’t see that pseudoliterary little snob, Nellie Thorpe. “To see a girl I want you to see—go straight to the telephone.” George had written on that other bit of paper, “I am coming back to Gawd’s own god-damn country” like a harlequin.

  IV

  one

  Gart and Gart sat facing Gart and Gart. Bertrand Gart picked up the salt cellar, was making a pattern with it and the pepper pot and his little pearl-handled fruitknife. He dropped the pearl-handled fruitknife, picked it up again and ran it along the edge of the damask wall-of-Troy pattern on the table-cloth. Hermione watched him, watched Eugenia, slid covert glances at Minnie. Minnie would be too immersed in soup to notice. “I’m sorry mother but you know I can’t eat thick soup.” Minnie would or would not say that, the soup wasn’t so very thick. Celery was the salty thing that flavoured it. Mandy dried their own celery-root, made a sort of dried herb lasting through the summer. Eugenia didn’t like it. Eugenia hadn’t noticed it. Carl Gart was dabbing at his white Pericles moustache with a table napkin. The table napkins had rose-pattern, didn’t match the tablecloth. Minnie was saying “It wasn’t Jock’s fault. It was Mandy’s.”

  Mandy was coming back. Don’t, don’t let Mandy hear you. Mandy hated Minnie. Shoving dishes at her, there was always that moment of waiting . . . Mandy hadn’t heard her. “Coppard tells me the Copenhagen volume hasn’t any more than the last series of Minnenberg’s.” “Minnenberg found his line after the younger Coppard.” “Coppard had the elements but Minnenberg made the final constation.” “Minnenberg simply picked up the thread where Coppard dropped it. He went on and on with the same pattern.” “Coppard is pure design, Minnenberg mere pyrotechnics.” “Coppard missed out through lack of knowledge of psychology.” “. . . his thought applied on the plane of minus-plus as Dorrensten presented it.” “Newton made gravitation accessible to mob mind with his ripe apple. So Coppard designing the parallel of plus-minus (with of course the usual sheer mechanical devices as applied in textbooks of, say, chemistry) made the ultra-violet rays come along in line with mathematics. I mean it’s simply linking up the thing with mathematics.”

  “Mother. I said it wasn’t Jock, bu
t Mandy.” “Shh-shh, don’t let Mandy hear you.” “If you would keep the salt in the oven, it wouldn’t get so grey. Grey salt. If you would tell Mandy to keep the salt in the oven . . .” “The usual demonstration wouldn’t be applicable . . .” “I know it’s Coppard’s doing . . .” “There was the obvious allowance to be made. Coppard was a Dane. Minnenberg a German.” “We don’t agree on that mere nationalistic question. After all . . .”

  “After all” went trailing off into names, people, places. Hermione gave up following. It always ended in “after all” waving like a banner in the tom air. The air was tom, frayed by the sharp electric thought-waves of Gart and Gart feeing each other across a narrow strip of damask. They hurl things at one another across the tablecloth like two arctic explorers who have both discovered the north pole, each proving to the other, across chasms of frozen silence, that his is the original discovery. They would drag up people, things from Ptolemy to Pericles to Phidias (no not Phidias) to . . . up, up, up and down, down the line till one was dizzy. There was no use trying to follow Gart and Gart into the frozen silence . . . “Mother you might make her.” “I can’t insist. Mandy has quite enough work.” “It’s so odd your idea of servants. She ought to wear a white cap. Now Mrs. Banes was saying . . .” “Mandy looks trim enough in her dark handkerchief.” “You ought to get someone younger.” “Mandy’s young enough for us here.”

  How long would mama stand it? Eugenia, Hermione knew, would go on, go on, go on keeping up a secondary line of dialogue with Minnie, for the moment Minnie was left to her own devices Hermione knew, Eugenia knew, Minnie would nag at Bertrand. She was now nagging. “Bertie. You are so awkward.”

  Bertrand Gart had sliced a neat knife-edge into the worn thin linen of the cloth. A neat knife-edge slipped into the wall-of-Troy tablecloth. “Bertie. We were never allowed to play with knives as children.” Minnie accused Bertie of this, of that, getting it across to Eugenia that Bertie hadn’t been brought up properly. “He never hangs up his towel in the bathroom. It’s the wives who always suffer.”

  two

  “I wish you would come with us.” “Thanks, Bertrand.” “I wish you would come along to Point Pleasant with us. You used, to like it.” “I do like it.” I wish you would come with us ran rhythm with their rockers (I wish you would come with us) on the dark porch—I wish you would come with us. Did Bertie really wish that? Bertie. I called Bertrand Bertie. I never call Bertrand Bertie since Minnie started calling him Bert. Bertrand. Bertie. I called Bertrand Bertie. “I wish you would come with us.” Words went on and on across the darkness and a great giant wing brushed down from the dark corner, just lit by some upstairs window, a triangle of light across the upright far pillar of the far end of the porch.

  “Minnie wants us to have the whole thing wired in, netted.” Her said that from somewhere to Bertrand for there was no use, no use at all saying anything to Bertrand about anything that mattered. “Minnie wants—Minnie says.” Minnie was so near, she was probably leaning out of the upstairs window listening. Minnie was always listening. Minnie must be listening somewhere, she was everywhere, she was always listening.

  Clear throat, Em, Um, Hem. Aum. It was AUM. I am the word AUM. God was in a word. A moth was responsible for that giant cloud darkening the clear cut-off edge of light that cut across the far end of the porch. “The upstairs window’s open. It must be Minnie upstairs.”

  Say “It must be Minnie,” drag in Minnie. Minnie was always listening. “Minnie wants the thing wired.” It wasn’t Minnie upstairs. Minnie, a grey-white elemental, emerged inexplicably from behind a pillar. She left the light on upstairs so we would think she was in her room. Minnie crept toward them. Minnie had been listening.

  “When are you and Bertrand going to the cottage?” “Eugenia says immediately. Day after tomorrow even.” “Oh, it’s so ho-ot to talk of packing. Oh it’s so ho-ot” “Yes. Isn’t it? Isn’t it suffocating?” “I suffer so. None of you realize how this heat affects me.” “Yes. The heat. Isn’t it too terrible? Eugenia was saying that she wanted you to get off, to get away immediately.” “Oh—mother.” “Yes. Eugenia was saying—.”

  Rock, rock in the rocking chair, rock, rock in the rocking chair. A great beetle flung in, humped against the window at the back of the rocking chair. Beat his nose on the wire screen, fell with a thud, recovered, crawled limply and darted off miraculously recovered, in another direction. “Now why did that beetle go in that direction?” “Wh-aaat?” “I said, mother was speaking of it.” Minnie had hypnotized her into saying mother. The person Minnie calls mother is not my mother. My mother is Eugenia. “Eugenia was saying . . .”

  Rock, rock, skrun-ccch. “You’ve stepped on a beetle.” “I haven’t.” “Don’t tell me it’s a tree toad.” Rock, rock, skrun-ch. “This place is simply crawling. I think it positively evil to allow it.” “Yes. I was saying to Bertrand that you thought we’d better have it wired in.” Rock, rock, skrunch. It was the noise the rocker made on the uneven floor. There was no one rocking on a beetle. “These chairs creak so. Mother really ought to have them seen to.”

  “Mother really ought to have them seen to. Now I was saying to mother . . .” rock, rock, scrun-nn, scru-uuunch “that she ought to have them seen to. Tim does nothing. Tim does simply nothing.” “Yes Mandy was saying to me today that Tim does simply nothing.” “Now why was Mandy saying that about Tim? Tim told me that Mandy—” rock rock, scru-uunch “Tim was saying that Mandy—” rock, rock, “Tim was saying that Mandy—.”

  How dare she, how dare this little upstart gossip, butt in, interfering with their household, how dare she? Shut up, shut up Hermione, don’t speak, don’t speak, Hermione. You started it, Hermione. You should never, Hermione, have said that Mandy said that Tim, that Tim said that Mandy, that Eugenia said that Mandy.

  But what was there to talk about? Gart and the formula? As soon as she began on the formula Minnie would fly into a temper. “Yon leave me out of everything, you leave me out of everything.” Minnie would fly into a temper, “just because I am a poor girl.” Poor girl. Orphan Annie. Orphan Minnie. Nobody would mind anything if—rock, rock, scru-uunch—she knew how to sew on ruffles. “I know. I know these darkies are so dreadful.”

  Darkies are dreadful. Darkies are dreadful. Mandy is adorable. I adore Mandy. How Mandy ha-aates Minnie. Hermione hugged this to herself. Keep quiet, don’t say anything. Talk down to Minnie but let Minnie think she is talking up to Her. Let Minnie think she is talking. Rock, rock, brrr—“It’s the telephone.”

  three

  Sauvé. Bien sauvé as George would say. Hermione banged the screen door. Curiosity was holding Minnie together. Minnie would decompose, drift off into decomposed atoms if curiosity didn’t so hold her. Minnie should have said (Minnie always did say) “Oh, my head, can’t you ever shut the screen door quietly?” Hermione would have said, Hermione should have said, “I’m awfully sorry Minnie but you know this door swings and won’t fasten till you bang it.”

  Usual dialogue was for the moment suspended, it would all come later. Words said over and over, over and over. They were a stock company playing in a road show, words over and over. All very well cast for the parts, can’t get out of this show, it’s too fu-uunny. I’ll never get out of this show, it’s too funny, Eugenia with her 1880 Hellenistic beauty made a drudge for this thing. Me, me, me Hermione out of Shakespeare made a doormat for this little cheap dressmaker’s-sort-of-assistant person who can’t even hem a ruffle. Funny show, for Gart and the formula. Because if Minnie has hysteria, Bert will sit up all night with her instead of hatching molecules, all so-oo funny.

  “What are you laughing at?” “It’s so-oo funny, Eugenia.” “Are you answering the telephone?” “You ca-an Eugenia if you want to,” was new variant on the old dialogue. Hermione had slipped in all unnoticed by the audience, a new line—“You can Eugenia if you want to.” She repeated it. “You can answer the telephone, Eugenia, if you want to.” “But you know I hate the telephone.” Brrrr-rrr. I
t was the telephone. “Isn’t anybody going to answer the telephone?” “Shut the screen door, Minnie. You know how the June bugs swarm in.” Now this was one on Minnie. Minnie had to shut the door. Hermione saw Minnie, grey elemental behind the grey gauze of the wire netting, elemental held together by her curiosity. Why didn’t Minnie walk in? Now this was one on Minnie. Minnie didn’t dare let them see she was eaten up with curiosity. Minnie’s pet formula (how often had they heard it?) “Now I am never curious.”

  Brrrr-rrr. Minnie would die of this. Minnie would be found dead if the telephone went on burr-ing and nobody answered it. “Come, come Hermione. Stop giggling. It’s what your grandmother used to say when I acted like that” (so Eugenia acted like that), “there’s a black rose growing in your garden.”

  four

  “Ye-e-e-e-es.” Hermione clung to the wavering receiver like a sinking man to a floating, vanishing life belt. Tiny spar floating on the top of things, spar on the top of things, something floating on top, outside the thing that she was sinking into, that was drawing her. This is a tiny thing; I am holding on to something that may in time lead on to something—“Yeess—” holding on, who is it? Far and far a voice out of something, out of nothing, holding something, holding nothing. “Oh it’s—George.”

  Back beat of waves beating now against her, this isn’t fair. I have the whole of the ordinary forward beat and the whole of the sideways beat of waves to fight against, to fight alone against, this isn’t fair. Back beat of waves beat against her and in the beat and the whirlpool, the things came clear; there is that eternal three-legged stain at the top of the wall where the picture moulding used to be where the roof leaked last year. Mother must see to it, mother must see to it. “I didn’t know you were here.” “I’m not here”—more cryptic, why couldn’t he be natural on the telephone? It was bad enough to hold on to the telephone, to say in herself “Mother must see to it,” to feel outside Minnie listening, to feel the nervous strain of Bertrand outside with his thin dynamic hands opening, shutting, his thin fine fingers opening, shutting, never quiet, his thin hands tonight with the tablecloth, wall-of-Troy pattern on the tablecloth. Carl Gart had lifted a napkin that had rose-pattern that did not match the wall-of-Troy. There is a black rose growing in your garden. Why didn’t George leave her alone to it? Why hadn’t George left her alone to it? “I mean, I thought you were in Venice.”