Hermione

by Hilda Doolittle

  She sat up in bed, her two arms encircling her bare knees. She pulled her thin garment down tight about her bare knees and sat up in pulse-pulse of lightning like some carved heavy marble, suppliant praying with head bent down on swathed marble knees. Knees in the white pulse-pulse that was the pulse-pulse of heat lightning above the sharp edge of the black woods, made her white, a marble, seated in anguish, a young suppliant with knees covered with marble folds of cloth, of carved stone. She sat, an image on a headstone in the pulse of heady lightning.

  Turned to stone, turned to stone . . . who was turned to stone for something? I will be turned to stone but buzz-zz . . . zzz . . . saved her from that predicament. Weighted hand (Hermione’s?) raised fire and lightning of anger and fell angry, heavy, passionate on the nape of her own neck. The exposed naked nape of her neck at the base of her head (noble suppliant marble head on bare marble) was ignobly gouged by this ignoble creature. She could visualize the mosquito flown off again somewhere as huge, seen under some horrible magnifying glass, sitting leering at her with his enormous mammoth jaws . . . with front legs toward her raking from a black arena.

  six

  “Did you?” “Did I what?” “Sleep well?” “Did you?” “Did I?” “Sleep?” “Oh moderately.” “Did anyone—” “Did anyone what?” “In the whole world sleep at all last night, I wonder.”

  Thunder reverberated across wet lawns, shook the middle forest, prolonged itself like some beast growling under deep-sea water, shook the water above their heads, broke through it and let down more water through a funnel. Water poured through a funnel on the roof above them, slid off gutters, made a sheet across the window, darkened the dining room and blotted out the dining room silver. Silver forks, spoons, a bowl on the side table became lost in silver, mist in and out, a sheet of silver hung permanently across the dining room window. Window tight-fastened, odd shut-in feeling on a summer mornings Outside the odd tight-fastened window, a sheet of thin metal hung wavering ominously. “I feel we’re shut up inside a submarine or a bomb that will burst suddenly.”

  Brrrr-ooooo-ommm—the bomb burst suddenly. “This is ghastly. I thought the storm was over.” The silver went platinum-white in the succeeding sudden flashes. “The whole world’s blown up suddenly.” The silver went lead, less than silver in the reassuring heavy downpour that almost drowned the distant BRRRooming drum, reassuring drum of raindrops beating; we’re coming to help, we’re coming to help, we’re on the way to rescue you from lead and shot and silver turned to gunfire. . . “It may be over sometime.”

  Brrr-oo-mm seemed driven off somewhere, heavy brroom was gradually beaten back, became faint beneath the steady alert drum-mmm of heavy tropic waters. “It must be a cloudburst.” Tropic water receded ever so slightly, they were as it were lifted up from underwater to a higher layer of water. They were still deep underwater but breath came more naturally, not gasp on self-conscious gasp (one listened for one’s breathing) while the heady brrrooommmm was hanging ominous just above them. “It’s like the flood exactly. The animals went in two by two . . . will you pass the honey.”

  “I’m glad you can eat, Hermione. This air is stupefying.” “I’ll open the window, mama.” “Oh you can’t yet Hermione . . .” But Eugenia was braced for fresh effort by that idea, lifted the handle of the coffeepot, poured out coffee slowly, seemed returned to life by that familiar action, looked up with a smile in grey-green underwater features. “It’s funny your smiling that way. It’s like a face seen under bottleglass. We’re all green like faces under water . . . no. Not all green . . .” Mandy was standing with them. “Mandy’s different . . .” “Shsssh . . .” Mandy (exquisite bronze) was a brazier burning in that bleak room. Mandy was bronze like a brazier (they—Hermione, Eugenia—were bottle-green) but Hermione couldn’t say it. Eugenia was shushing at Hermione, not wanting her to say it. I can’t say Mandy is a bronze. I can’t say Mandy looks like Etruscan bronze dredged from the mid-Ionian with colour flashing against her polished bronze . . . I won’t say Mandy is like a bronze giving out iridescence like a flying fish, there is a bluegreen iridescence across the copper polish and her face is fixed like a bronze face, her eyes are set in like agates in a Mena-period Egyptain effigy. I won’t say that. I must say, “What Mandy—not more hot cakes?”

  They (Eugenia, Hermione) were flung now into profound intimacy like shipwrecked mariners after the heavy sweep of waves has numbed them past consciousness of former quarrels, in the tiny morning room. The morning room stood square against the elements. It endured like a lighthouse set edge-square with rising waters. The lighthouse little morning room showed an edge of Virginia creeper, hectic prematurely brilliant colour, that beat against the sea-washed window like seaweed flung up from dense mid-waters. “The Virginia creeper, mama’s touched already.” Swing swing of vermillion-tipped first autumn leaves against a rain drenched window. “Good Mandy. Put the logs here.” Hermione bent to newspapers, matched dried handful of odd shavings. A tiny flame burst up; forest worshiper, fire worshiper (Hermione) enclosed as in a ball of glass, bent to revive life. Eugenia’s face was pale, tipped at the chin edge by phosphorescent line as the light crept up, little live flame into the midst of water.

  Unless you are born of water . . . unless you are born of water . . . they were born of water, reincarnated, all their past million-of-years-ago quarrel forgotten in the firelight. “I never remember such a storm at this time. I mean it’s so uncanny happening at this time of the morning.”

  Hermione had drawn away, forgotten herself. Eugenia had drawn away forgotten herself. Eugenia forgetting herself spoke to herself. “Your father was afraid (the flood the year before had cracked Bolton’s bridge) that the doctor wouldn’t help us.” Eugenia was speaking from somewhere outside herself, beyond the window, slashed with its hectic vermillion leaf-flash, fins of tropic sea fish, seen through tidewave of tidal waters. Eugenia had forgotten Hermione. “It was such a funny time to have a baby. I don’t know why but it seemed a funny time to have a baby. It seems odd having a baby (I don’t know why) by daylight. It seemed such a funny time to have a baby.”

  “It was all over in a few hours . . . it was so funny. It was all over in a few hours. It was so odd. I had you in the morning.”

  The morning stars sang together. Words of Eugenia had more power than textbooks, than geometry, than all of Carl Gart and brilliant “Bertie Gart” as people called him. Bertrand wasn’t brilliant, not like mama. Carl Gart wasn’t brilliant like Eugenia. “Then the doctor came. But she was such a dear nurse, so much better than the doctor, she was like a mother to me . . .”

  Demeter (such a dear nurse) lifting the tired shoulders of a young Eugenia had driven the wind back, back . . . the house was sitting on its haunches. The house sunk down on its haunches. The house took a deep breath, settled down, decided to settle down for another re-incarnation. It was Eugenia who had saved it.

  “The house has decided not to be blown away, mama.” Eugenia looked up with an odd start. “Oh, what were you saying to me? What was I saying?” “I wasn’t saying anything, Eugenia. You weren’t saying anything. I said the house has decided not to be blown to splithers. There’s not even a window broken.” Purrr-rrrrr, the giant voice of a giant panther gouged with destruction, storm blowing over Gart and the lawn and the little springhouse and the toolhouse set down like numbers, had smudged out numbers and the blackboard and the grey slate of lawn were washed clear, clear for another number, for another set of numbers. Giant hand had brandished its weapon, chalk of brilliant sizzling white fire had written insoluble words across the densest blackness. Carl Gart, brilliant Bertie Gart (as people called him) had no power against the numbers. Demeter (“such a dear nurse”) had driven the raging storm back . . . had saved them from the numbers.

  “But you’re crying, birdie.” “Oh no. No . . . never mind, Eugenia . . . the heat . . . last night . . . upset me.”

  She went out odd and unseeing. She couldn’t see anything. Her eyes were statue’s e
yes, blurred over, eye-spaces where eyes should be. Her eyes were a blank covered with a white surface, a statue with eyes of a statue seeing nothing. The early Greeks painted eyes in their statues (coloured prints in the two huge volumes); before that, Egyptians coloured dark wood images, beautifully cut and modelled with eyes of stones. A beautiful stone shining (the print was beautiful) and enlargement of the two agate-dark dark eyes with bright very-white white around them. Mandy’s eyes are set in her head like those eyes. I can’t see things. I’m crying . . .

  She saw things. She realized she had suddenly stopped crying. She saw Carl Gart in high storm boots, rubber boots pulled high almost to his waist like the lifesaving people at the lifesaving station at Point Pleasant. Carl Gart dripped pools of water on the polished hall floor, pools of water ran from his shoulders, his white Pericles beard emerged white and frost-stiff from beneath the wide rim of his felt hat drawn like an assassin’s over his deep eyes. His eyes were blue under the hat like an assassin’s hat, under the hat like a helmet, like a fireman’s hat, like the cap he wore in the little old daguerreotype. Carl Gart (in the daguerreotype in blue uniform and little buttons) had an odd young chin, unfamiliar rather child-sweet chin, chin rather insignificant (he was only seventeen) beneath the beak nose and the young eyes that stared and stared out of the mirror surface of the old daguerreotype.

  “You’re wet, father.” Carl Gart stood, like Proteus, dripping water. He would see that Hermione had been crying. She had stopped crying suddenly at the sight of Carl Gart in his assassin’s hat pulled over eyes that were (she knew) too-blue under the white eyebrows above the beaked nose, above the clever little Pericles white goat beard.

  He said, “The thunder got ’em.”

  Hermione said “Got what, papa?” though she knew from the odd careless way he said it, that the storm must have leaked into the cellar or into the outer toolhouse and and broken something. Something too-precious only brought that too-casual, slightly flung-out tone to his monotonous pure utterance. The little laugh was like a horse that neighs. “The storm sprung a leak in the tool-house but that didn’t so much matter. But the aquarium in the cellar was simply flooded out. The thunder got ’em.” He said “the thunder got ’em” like a formula.

  She said “Got what, papa?” knowing what it was they had got. “The old five year experiment. Bertrand will feel it badly.” He laughed his little horselaugh. “The whole lot swam out, flooded out, the cross section and the cross hatching were simply flooded out.” He seemed to think this funny. “Now Bertie and I will begin another breeding. That took ten years, fifteen in all if you count the first experimental failures.”

  Water dripped from his gumboots. He was rescuing people in a high storm. Something had broken something . . . “Oh, mama will be heart-broken . . .” “Your mother takes these things too seriously.”

  seven

  The sun, after an amazing unprecedented thunderous week, came out making gold runnels in thick jade, making heavy gold layers of light on jade temple fronts. The heavy bull-like forehead of an oak tree was set with a great heavy knob of gold, and gold was set most cautiously and discreetly (yet with immense extravagance) across the pillars of outer porches that were birch trees. Gold was laid discreetly . . . it was gold across silver really. “The world’s changed utterly.”

  Static, upright, parallel, the static upright tree shafts held parallel (or seemed to hold parallel) crossbeams of polished oak wood. The oak wood was unpolished when she came to look at it, great hulk of a tree trunk, rough hippopotamus tree-hide, tree-hide furrowed like a mountain on the moon. The tree trunk was furrowed, a territory, a continent, a planet. Hermione ran her fingers along a mountain range, the furrowed tree trunk, ran her finger along the damp rain-soaked bark, ran her finger along . . . “Then you will come with me?” “I said I would come if I could come.” George Lowndes was waiting for her to say “Yes, I will come.” “I’ll have to get the tickets.”

  “Well why don’t you get your ticket and leave me out of it?” “I can’t leave you out of it.” “Why can’t you leave me out of it?” Words from a child’s primer, words for a beginner, a Slav, a Russian, a Hindu learning to speak English. She ran words along like a child reading out of a first primer, like a Hindu learning to speak English, “But why can’t you let me stay here?”

  “I can’t let you stay here,” he went on like the next line in the Reader for Small Children, “because—be-cause I can not let you stay here.” He answered her in tone, in time, in rhythm and simple beat, do re mi fa so la si do. He ran his words together, he separated his words. “Do you re-alize what this week has been without you?”

  “A week? A week without you. Has it been a week without you?” Has a week been a week that is not somehow broken slashed and tattered by George and his odd disassociating harlequin way with everything? “Is it a week without you?” He said, “You rushed me to the station without the decency of offering me my dinner. You rushed me to the station . . . said in a week you’d tell me.” “Did I say in a week I’d tell you?” “You said Georgio if you catch the 8:15 to Philadelphia you can come back in a week’s time. If you miss the 8:15 to Philadelphia then you can come back—never.” “Did you catch the 8:15 to Philadelphia.” “I did catch the 8:15 to Philadelphia.” “And unto the church in Philadelphia, write—what did they write unto the church in Philadelphia?” “Hermione, you will come?”

  One I love, two I love, three I love . . . how do I know what I love? I love Eugenia but I can not stay here. I love Bertrand and Minnie stays here. One I love, two I love, three I love. Her finger came to a full stop in the mountain. “This is a mountain on the moon, George. This is the moon, George. Why should we go to Europe when we can travel on the moon, when we can follow tropic rivers through our oak wood, when we have the Farrand forest that is like the Chersonese before the oak trees rotted? In Greece, the old forests are dead, in Italy . . .” “Italy—” he caught her hand raised upward to oak beams laid parallel on polished tree shafts, “In Italy, Hermione will find the heart to love me.”

  “But you can’t marry George Lowndes.” “On what compulsion must I—I mean mustn’t I—tell me that?” “Be serious. Do you know what you are saying.” “I am saying George has been asking me to marry him.” “But you can’t, you can’t possibly.” “Why, just why can’t I possibly?” “Well, there are—there is—why—you can’t—there are the university ladies.” “What have the university ladies got to do with me, with George Lowndes?” “Why, why—why—Hermione, you know—surely you’re only joking—surely you must remember—” “What? What exactly mama?” “That horrible—well—fiasco—you remember.” “But I thought that was all forgotten and anyhow everyone knew George took the poor creature to his room to feed her.” “People don’t take people to their rooms to feed them. You’re out of your mind, Hermione. Mrs. Lastrow was saying to me that everyone cut George Lowndes.” “Why, why did everyone cut George Lowndes?”

  Hermione heard Hermione speaking, saying something out of a play, words had been written for her, she was repenting words that had been written, “They cut him because he’s getting on, because he’s had his books published. They’re all a set of provincials.” “Provincials. You’re getting on famously, Hermione. George Lowndes is teaching you, actually teaching you words, telling you what to say.” “George isn’t. He never tells me what to say. I never say anyhow what anyone ever tells me to say. Do you think I have so little spunk, so little character that I would repeat (like a foul parrot) words, words, words out of someone else’s mouth, spew back words that have been already chewed and chewed? Your so-called university ladies are like a lot of old cows spitting up cud that’s already been chewed into a foul mass years back. Have you nothing better to discuss than poor George Lowndes?”

  “Poor George Lowndes. I thought you said he was getting on famously, that all London, Munich, Paris and Berlin were at his feet, that he was chanting his verses to crowded houses, at tea parties—” “I didn’t s
ay anything of the sort. I said that Yeats had praised him in a review, that Madox Ford wanted him to help in a new book he’s doing, that—” “That, that, that . . . Hermione this will kill me.”

  “Now why will it kill you, mama?” Best have it out with mama, go on shelling peas (she was sitting on the porch floor) for Mandy. Dinner will be late. Mandy had missed her usual train back. Best go on shelling peas. “Well, you had the decency at least not to ask him to dinner.” Go on shelling peas. “I asked him to come tomorrow instead. I told him it was Mandy’s afternoon out and I asked him to come tomorrow.” Go on shelling peas. One I love, two I love, three I love. I don’t really love now anybody.

  It’s horrible. Why, why couldn’t George have left me to it? I can’t go away with George, I can’t stay here without George. Something is so horribly rotten in the state of Denmark.

  “These peas are half of them waterlogged, the whole vegetable garden was like a swamp till this morning when the sun so obligingly came out again after a week of this diluvian weather.” “There’s too much for Tim to do on the place. The garden alone is one man’s work.” “I helped all last week.” “Yes. It’s good for you to work, house work, garden work. After that horrible fiasco of yours at Bryn Mawr” (Eugenia had fiasco on the brain) “and all the disappointment and now poor Carl.” Go on shelling peas, go on shelling peas. All life is so horribly disproportionate, we never know in this Uncle Sam country where we are, brilliance and destruction, we live in a sort of thunder storm, with heat and cold and intersecting rays of lightning.

  God, some sort of Uncle Sam, Carl-Bertrand-Gart God, shut us up in a box, with temperatures too high and temperatures too low to breed new specimens like Bertrand Gart, like Carl Gart in their aquariums. There is only one solution . . . there is only one solution . . . “Shall I go on shelling peas for ever?” “Aren’t you almost through?” “I’ll never be through. I think I’ll never finish.” “But you didn’t have to do it.” “No, but if I didn’t you would and you’ve too much to do anyhow. Why can’t you and father give up this house?”