Hermione

by Hilda Doolittle

  The hounds of spring are, indeed, on winter’s traces. Her mind, could she have so formulated thought, would have conceded: I have tasted words, I have seen them. Never had her hands reached out in darkness and felt the texture of pure marble, never had her forehead bent forward and, as against a stone altar, felt safety, I am now saved. Her mind could not then so specifically have seen it, could not have said, “Now I will reveal myself in words, words may now supercede a scheme of mathematical-biological definition. Words may be my heritage and with words I will prove conic sections a falsity and the very stars that wheel and frame concentric pattern as mere very-stars, gems put there, a gift, a diadem, a crown, a chair, a cart or a mere lady. A lady will be set back in the sky. It will be no longer Arcturus and Vega but stray star-spume, star sprinkling from a wild river, it will be myth; mythopoeic mind (mine) will disprove science and biological-mathematical definition.

  She did not think this for her mind was too astonished to perceive how she could turn, perceive as a mirror the whole of the fantasy of the world reversed and in that mirror a wide room opening. She could not say how or when she saw this; she knew it related back to an odd girl and Nellie and a group of non-related midges and a group of gnats enclosed in an acorn spread across by one pink peony. She could not have revealed herself to George who had made harlequin joke of something she had been just about to tell him. George had said, sometime back, mock ironically, “Did you see her on the telephone?”

  She could now answer but she did not, “No I did not see her on the telephone but in a sort of mirror television.” She did not say that, for she was suddenly overcome with the enormity of her discovery. The hounds of spring are on winter’s traces let her fall forward, there was hope in block of substantiated marble, words could carve and set up solid altars . . . Thought followed the wing that beat its silver into the seven-branched larch boughs.

  Breath came in short gasps. Georgio was kneeling, Orlando gesture, by her. Georgio was shaking her, saying “Come, come,” seriously. George was shaking her, her head (marble weight) lay heavy on his shoulder. The back of her head that was slightly convex, that was a polished surface, that was a mirror holding a Dutch-group, a picture, rested heavy on his shoulder. She shut out larch boughs and the bit of jagged open space and little Christmas tree tinsel glitter that was sunlight flung like Christmas tree tinsel here and there tangled and matted and sometimes strewn on carefully, across the seven-branched larch boughs. She shut out larch boughs and odd triangle of sunlight that seemed to fall as from the edge of a half-open shutter. Her head rested heavy, dehumanized on George’s shoulder.

  five

  “But you can’t go on this way.” “Which way?” “You can’t come in late and tired and ill from the woods.” “Ill?” “Oh Hermione. Oh my dear, dear child.” Eugenia saying my dear, dear child didn’t mean that she was dear, didn’t mean that she was a child.

  Now why had Her let her catch her? Eugenia had caught Her, whirling on forest heels, whirling down the hall, about to leap up three stairs, whirl up, up a forest fountain into her own room. “But Her-mi-o-nie. You are late.” Late, late with forest edges to everything, edges of moss about the worm-eaten picture frame, above the little table, worm-eaten edges, moss about the plaque of flat leaves, grape and grape leaf brought from Berne by Eugenia on her honeymoon.

  “But you’re late and what have you had for dinner? Did Mandy save your dinner” and she was caught; swirl about on flat fountain heels and follow Eugenia prim into the living room. Dusk now filled it. Have I sat long enough waiting to bounce upstairs? Am I grateful enough to Eugenia? She hasn’t really been a bit horrid about my being so late with George though she hates him. “But you can’t go on this way” was a merely mechanical device, something you said automatically to your own child.

  “But you can’t go on this way.” Eugenia would say that again and she would say it again. I will give her, Hermione said, seven times to say it. She has said it seven times. Now she can say it another seven times. If she says it another seven times . . .

  “Well, what are you thinking, darling,” “I don’t know, Eugenia.” “I’ve been hurt you know Hermione by the way you call me Eugenia.” “Shall I call you Gart then simply? It’s rather confusing calling everybody Gart. You’re Gart and Minnie is Gart and papa is Gart and Bertrand is Gart. I am Gart too, I suppose. If I say Gart everybody will run including Jock and Mandy for I suppose Jock is rightful Gart and Mandy . . .” Hermione didn’t know what she was saying, didn’t care. Eugenia wouldn’t listen anyway. She went on.

  “Mandy belongs to us. Mandy belongs to me. Mandy is mine. This business of the United States, United States of America doing away with states being separate with separate states and each state with its own laws is what is responsible for all this mob rule.” (Get her off, hare and hounds, you can’t go on this way.) “You get no sort of cohesion out of a thing so immense. You can’t expect every one of us equally to sympathize with Southern Spanish California and New York Dutch and Middle Western and French from Louisiana. This thing that any one can say united we stand is all rot. We can’t stand united. Divided we would probably stand. You’re defying laws of science,” (hare and hounds) “mathematics and chemistry by trying to mix such mobs heterogeneously. You can’t expect things to go on forever this way. You’ll get mob rule and then mob rule and then mob rule.”

  “How can you stand George Lowndes?” Eugenia hadn’t heard a word of what she had been saying. “How can you stand George Lowndes?” Hermione would have to find some other weapon. Eugenia had found something else for “But how can you go on this way?” Hermione was saved this time. She had stopped saying “But how can you go on this way” and she was saying (she would, would go on saying) “How can you stand George Lowndes?” Eugenia’s head rose from the dressing-jacket frill of ruffled spotted dimity (Eugenia called it spotted dimity), hands moving back and forth, quietly, monotonously, back and forth, back and forth.

  “Why are you always knitting? Only old ladies knit and knit like you do.” “I am an old lady. I can knit in the dark. I can’t sew in the dark. Your father likes the light concentrated in a corner. He can work better if I’m sitting in the dark.” Father, your father. Eugenia sitting in the darkness, the green shade, fixed now here, now there over the just one blazing electric light, just one concentrated circle of light across the half of a desk, strewn with papers, only Gart’s papers were always piled in little heaps, folded up in little bundles.

  “Did you catalogue that last lot of papers?”

  She had catalogued the last lot of papers. Hermione said “Yes, I catalogued the papers.” Papers, periodicals, papers from Munich, thicker volume from the Institut de France. France. C’est agaçant. France. French. She had catalogued the papers, printed their numbers on the slips of cardboard, small filing cabinet, her job, doing it automatically. It was easier to do these things than not to do them. She was hypnotized by these things. How long would she go on this way? I am a failure. She must pull herself out, pull herself out of something. She must pull herself out of this at just this moment. “I must go upstairs, mama.” She must get up now. She must get away from Eugenia sitting in the dark like a great moth, dimity dressing jacket, feet crossed on a low pouf thing, hands knitting, hands, hands . . . knitting. Eugenia worked her old charm. She hypnotizes me.

  “You never listen to what I say, mama. Your throat looks so pretty coming out of that ruffle . . . like a moon-flower. You’re soft like a moonflower. You shouldn’t be called Gart. You’re round like a moonflower with a sort of stamen pistil sort of thing, the sort of throat that you have rising out of a moon-ruffle.” “Hermione. You say such pretty, odd things. You ought to go on writing.” “Writing?” “Those dear little stories you did . . .” “Oh, mama, that’s not writing” “You ought to do something, Hermione. You’re looking odd and worried and distracted and not right here.” Hermione didn’t say “Why didn’t you let me go away then, alone then, to the cottage.”

&nbs
p; Watching hands. Hands in the darkness, hands in the darkness . . . you have no midwife power, you can’t lift me out of this thing. Oh, hands in the dim light, for Gart wanted one heady downstream just there, on just his papers, Gart is too terribly in me, light concentrated on just his microscope or on just his little dish of sizzling acids. Light must be concentrated under a green cone, a cornucopia, like you hang on the Christmas tree, cornucopia, horn of plenty, she had told them, Demeter hand hanging little horns of plenty on the tree and always enough horns of plenty to go round. It was right. Oh, she’s so horribly right. Then what is wrong with everything?

  Screw of light that always had been there, burning incandescent in the room, the middle or the side, by the open window, by the doorway, Carl Gart calling to Bertrand across the hall where they had turned a sort of butler’s pantry sort of little slice of a room into a laboratory, little room upstairs that ought to have been an extra linen cupboard turned into a darkroom, rooms eating out their slow and comfortable existence like black acids, rooms here and there, another slice in the cellar for aquariums and Eugenia moving through it powerless, all-powerful . . . one should sing hymns of worship to her, powerful, powerless, all-powerful . . . and what am I between them?

  I am broken like a nut between two rocks, granite and granite . . . “I told you that I met that girl at Nellie’s.” “Yes. Why don’t you have her out here?” Why don’t you have her out here? Why don’t you have her out here? Out? How did one get her out? “I’ve forgotten what her name is. I mean I don’t think I ever knew her name. I don’t know what her name is.”

  She would get upstairs somehow for one did get upstairs somehow. The way of her getting upstairs remained unsolved, insoluble, but one always did get upstairs somehow. “I must go upstairs” . . . for a name, having said that she was nameless, branded itself, indelible acid, fire, across her flaming spirit. Her spirit quiescent, snuffed, so to speak, out by this hypnotic movement of hands, of hands in darkness, of hands in half-light, of hands crossing hands and making a pattern like moonlight across the black leaves of swamp, of March lilies . . . of all kinds, the fleur de lys being one . . . her spirit snuffed out by Eugenia flamed and flared by Gart . . . the spirit pouring down its incandescent splendour was like Gart collecting all the light to fall just there on just that microscopic slide or just that bowl of little sizzling acids. The spirit and the bride say come. The spirit and the bride say come. Her name is Itylus.

  Why didn’t George leave her alone to it? Why hadn’t George left her alone to it? There’s a black rose growing in your garden. Black rose (the outer hallway) opened to receive her, Hermione out of Shakespeare. George had bent forward, George had leant forward, George had appeared above her like a bit of a jagged edge (showing behind a cornice) of the Ducal Palace. I have never been to Venice. I have, in fact, never been anywhere. I would rather go to Point Pleasant alone with a big dog, only Jock isn’t my dog, a silver hound that would scrape sand pattern, that would make pattern of dog feet in the wet sand and deeper dog feet in the dry sand and round sort of cone-shaped hollows in the very dry sand sifting through baked seaweed at the highest tide line.

  The highest tide line ran almost to ribbed grasses that caught wind that hiss-ss-ssed like quiescent and friendly serpents. The girl with those cynical eyes said she was glad I hadn’t been to Luxor. Up the Nile. Everybody is taking things up or going up . . . upstairs is all I’ll get to and I wonder if I will get upstairs.

  I am glued to the heart of this black hall, this black rose, this thing that beats down on me, it must be the heat. Everybody cares for something but I don’t care for anything. I don’t care a bit what her name is. It’s funny, I don’t know what her name is for George was heavy and the sun caught that jade light in his eyes. For a moment he was tawny with his sticking-up hair and his harlequin features blurred out, cut across by jade light from green eyes. His eyes were green, sea-green and wood-green but he would never love a tree. I am a tree. TREE is my new name out of the Revelations. He shall have a new name . . . written on his forehead. The mark of the beast. I have the mark of the beast. I would rather go off alone with a sort of a Jock who was my dog not Minnie’s than to have . . . than to have . . . the temple on the Nile. I am out of the Temple Shakespeare, a small book with leather and George smells of morocco bindings. His heat was symmetrical . . . patches under hot arms . . .

  Now lightning showed her a mirror, the plane square above her dressing table, patches of silver that were the polished backs of brushes and polished handmirror (Mandy was always at them). Lightning pulsed (it’s only heat lightning) above the black line that was the forest where it was banked against their lawn. We are set like a problem on a blackboard. The house is columns of figures, double column and the path at right angles to the porch steps is the line beneath numbers and the lawn step is the tentative beginning of a number and the little toolshed and the springhouse at the far corner of the opposite side is bits of jotted-down calculations that will be rubbed out presently.

  Gart lawn outside the window lay black and luminous, a square this side of the lawn step, a symmetrical square the other side. Gart lawn lies like everything else in and about us, too clear, too perfect; lying there it makes two blackboards across which in a moment lightning, white chalk, will brandish its symbols (give the answer perhaps) from some cruel and dynamic unseen hand making circles across blackboards.

  The sky too is a blackboard, smudged here and there with grey whisps of cloud seen from the underside like half-smudged-over chalk marks on a blackboard gone grey with marks and marks. Someone should take a wet sponge and wipe it all out, make it quite black, not smudged at edges with cloudy chalk stuff.

  Suffocating . . . it’s suffocating. It’s like breathing in a crowded schoolroom . . . the whole place is crowded; schoolroom full of chalk, full of dust, “But you Miss Thorpe, don’t know what dust is.” Nellie Thorpe in the right street, in the wrong street didn’t know what dust is. “But you Miss Gart in that lovely country.” Gawd’s own god-damn country. George had come back, why had George come back to Gawd’s own god-damn country? She bad asked George why he had come back and the smudges of anemone-coloured smudged kisses answered her. His mouth is the colour of a burnt-out red hibiscus. George doesn’t know what trees are.

  Herself flung down, white branch, wilted on the wide bed, repeated from somewhere like some formula remembered from a forgotten textbook, “George doesn’t know what trees are.” Herself, branch wilted, repeated this, “George doesn’t know what I am.” Her hand flung out on the long narrow too-soft pillow sank down, down into the pillow. Her hand was something apart, weighted, a weight of broken-off hand flung down, sunk, smudged out in the soft too-hot down of the long pillow. My hand is a marble hand sunk into the pillow. This afternoon (was it this afternoon?) her head had sunk back and back into moss. She tried to visualize moss under a head that became heavier and heavier. It seemed that her head must sink down into the pillow, through the pillow, through the mattress beneath the pillow. It seemed that her head must sink down through the boards under the mattress, the movable lath-like boards that ran across the bed from side to side of the bed like boards laid across a stream for feet to walk on. She could walk across a narrow log flung across a wide stream. She had so dared walk across the very narrow almost-sapling that spanned the wide shallow stream, the almost-river that had edged Gart woods, that separated Gart woods from the Werby meadow. The Werby meadow ran on across leagues (it seemed) of land, on, on to the Werby station.

  “Werby the horrid name of the horrid little station.” Werby station lay the other side of the field and she had skirted the field, thinking vaguely that George would get as far as that, then turn tracks, go back, look for his coat, find his coat, see Werby station and go straight back on the about-8:30 train to Philadelphia. George had followed her somehow—the hounds of spring are on winter’s traces and somehow George had guessed that she would dodge across the railroad tracks (had they done it last year?) into the Fa
rrand forest. The Farrands liked her plunging into their forest. The dogs knew her. But the Farrands and the dogs were away now (Wolf and Freya). They used to take the dogs to Maine with them before they went abroad. Wolf and Freya loved the Maine woods, great hounds (Jock was at Point Pleasant), enormous hounds; they took the dogs, Minnie had taken Jock too with her. Everybody had something; Minnie had Jock.

  George was like a great tawny beast, a sort of sub-lion pawing at her, pawing with great hand at her tousled garments. George had been like a great lion but if he had simply bared teeth, torn away garments with bared fangs, she would have understood, would have put narrow arms about great shoulders, would have yielded to him. George was neither beast nor man, was not attuned to high beating intellect that had raced ahead of him, that he had not caught for all his wit in finding her flung down under the seven larches, the seven small larches making a circle where moss spread in a circle for Hermione to lie on.

  Hermione tried to visualize moss under her hot flanks. It was too hot . . . was it less hot with or without a sheet. The sheet made creases like white hot metal, white hot creases for iron to flow down. The sheet was iron upon her. She flung off the iron metal of metallic white sheet . . . buzz . . . ping . . . a mosquito flung brass weight against her, giant mosquito as big as a chicken hawk flung against her face. She felt the weight of his weighted heavy gauze wings, wings like grey wire gauze, his wings cut her cheek, gauze of metal cut her cheek bone. Hand lifted automatically from the pillow, bang, jip . . . but she hadn’t got him. Her own hand (bang-jip) against her cheekbone was less heavy than that edge of wing that had brushed her. Bang-jip . . . but she hadn’t got him. He was away, sitting somewhere high above her, as big as a chicken hawk gorged on her own blood. She scratched the bitten bare knee ruefully. She became angry with just this thing . . . there is a limit. There just is a penultimate limit.