This was better. This was real and funny. The hand thrust out made its habitual movement. “But you haven’t told me yet if you like George?”
“I don’t like George. I don’t care for him.” Words, dynamic twist of a rare mouth. The empress mouth made its down-twist, made its up-twist that scarred the line of the face, that made the face regal. Curled lips long since half kissed away. “Wh-aa-at, Her?” “I said long ere they coined in Roman gold, your face, Faustine.”
A face drew back, luminous and intense. A head was set on space of blue serge, shoulders rising beneath schoolgirl sort of blue serge one-piece dress, made sort of pedestal for the column that rose above it. The throat rose from squared-in space of shoulders, as if someone had come in, said this thing needs furbishing up, needs sandpapering (what do they do to statues?), needs cleaning, had wondered how to move it, had turned it about, found it was too heavy and finally flung a length of dark cloth on it. Someone had thrown a length of blue dark cloth over marble. The blue cloth was flung across marble nakedness but nakedness remained unclothed, remained pure beneath it. Beneath schoolgirl blue serge a marble from some place (Heliopolis? Persepolis?) far and far and far. “I don’t feel now that at all I want to go to Europe.” “Oh—Europe.” Fayne spoke, a society debutante, wearied by suggestion of trunk, of box, of maid, of tickets, of orchids. Fayne put into her low voice the sort of scorn that went with curled lips long since half kissed away. “I suppose some day we’ll get there.”
“Get where Fayne?” “To Europe, little stupid. Don’t you ever listen to what anyone is ever saying?” “George says not.” “Oh George.” Curled lips long since half kissed away came right in the white face. The mouth was straight now, the mouth of a boy hunter. The mouth was a mouth that had hallooed across stones towards some escaping quarry. Across the shoulders there was a strap holding arrows. Marble lifted from marble and showed a boy. “You might have been a huntress.” “I’m no good—no good at anything.” Fayne said “I’m no good at anything” as if one had asked her to play in a tennis tournament or join a bridge club. “I don’t mean huntress like that—like that. I don’t mean country clubs—not things like that. I mean a boy standing on bare rocks and stooping to take a stone from his strapped sandal. I mean you might wear sandals or else boots laced crossways.” “You mean?” “I mean you were so exactly right in that stage tunic. You were so exactly right as that Pygmalion.” Her bent forward, face bent toward Her. A face bends towards me and a curtain opens. There is swish and swirl as of heavy parting curtains. Almost along the floor with its strip of carpet, almost across me I feel the fringe of some fantastic wine-coloured parting curtains. Curtains part as I look into the eyes of Fayne Rabb. “And I—I’ll make you breathe, my breathless statue.” “Statue? You—you are the statue.” Curtains fell, curtains parted, curtains filled the air with heavy swooping purple. Lips long since half kissed away. Curled lips long since half kissed away. In Roman gold. Long ere they coined in Roman gold your face—your face—your face—your face—your face—Faustine.
Seated in cold steel light, drawn back again, away from that blue-white face, face too-white (eyes too-blue, eyes set in marble, black-glass eyes like eyes set in pre-pyramid Egyptian effigy) Her Gart saw rings and circles, the rings and circles that were the eyes of Fayne Rabb. Rings and circles made concentric curve toward a ceiling that was, as it were, the bottom of a deep pool. Her and Fayne Rabb were flung into a concentric intimacy, rings on rings that made a geometric circle toward a ceiling, that curved over them like ripples on a pond surface. Her and Fayne were flung, as it were, to the bottom of some strange element and looming up . . . there were rings on rings of circles as if they had fallen into a deep well and were looking up . . . “long since half kissed away.”
“Isn’t Swinburne decadent?” “In what sense exactly decadent, Fayne?” “Oh innocence, holy and untouched and most immoral. Innocence like thine is totally indecent.” “Innocence? Indecent? What’s the meaning of ‘innocence is indecent? I’m being cryptic, pep-igrammatic as George says.” “Did George say you were—pep-igrammatic?” ‘‘Why yes. Why shouldn’t George?” Circles making pool-ripple came close, came close, they were not any more circles, they were a blank pool surface, the rings on rings were not. “I mean what made George exactly say it?”
“George. George. Is there nothing Miss Her Gart for you to talk about but George, but Georgio?” “Do you call him Georgio?” “Why—doesn’t everybody?” “No. I did. His mother calls him Ginger.” “Oh, his mother. He insisted on her coming to see madre.” “To see?” “Mama. His mother is—eccentric.” “Eccentric? I thought she was most proper.” “That’s what I mean exactly.” “Why is it eccentric for Lillian to be proper?” “Do you call her Lillian?” “Her name is—” “Your name is—” “Is?” “Lily. White out of darkness. You are so simply perfect.” “Perfect?” “In your—your idiocy, I mean perfect.” “Idiocy?” “Oh do let up Her Gart. You are so simply childish.”
Days have done this, said Her Gart sitting upright on the hard floor. She noticed that the floor was hard. The floor didn’t used to seem hard. Days are doing things to me. “How long is it since you saw him?” “Saw who?” “George.” “Oh, George. It was—it was last week.” “He said last week he saw you.” “And what aimless irony did he present you, hoping that I would hear it?” “He said you and I ought to be burnt for witchcraft.”
five
Now drifting into the living room, she knew that they should be burnt for witchcraft. For the living room open fire was lighted and there was pulse and warmth that was the pulse and warmth of the steam heat just turned on (“furnace heat” Her said “has just today started’’). Now drifting into the pulse of steam just started and the extra outpouring warmth from little fires like sparks from a cat’s fur (wool underneath cat’s warm fur was steam heat, and the crackle of little fires the electric sparks of cat stroked) seeing George by the piano, she knew that George was right.
“George you are right as usual.” “How right, Hermione?” “I don’t know.” Her hand was lifted, was pressed by lips that had no power, that had nothing in them to drive heat and pulse from a dead heart to pulse and heat and dart vein-fervour and electric-fervour of exaltation into white wrists. Her wrists were doll wrists. They had no feeling. George was right. “I mean Fayne Rabb left half an hour ago. She wouldn’t wait.” An imperceptible tightening about her doll wrist made her conscious of some slight awkwardness in her emotion. Her emotion so furnace cold, was pulsing as if the furnace had been lit and was waiting for pulse and beat and warmth of fires that were not. Little fires in corners of rooms were her electric odd emotions. George got me loose, lifted, as it were, a tangle; mama knotted to Minnie and Gart to Gart. The web of Gart on Gart and Minnie (though the summer is always worse in any family) were lifted by George but she had been too tired to run and shout. She hadn’t cared to, simply. She had run and shouted at the sight of Fayne . . . had run to far hills, and found foothold on odd continents. Stones were pulsing beneath thin sandal soles and her feet were shod in purple. “Sometimes exaltation makes a curtain open.” “What’s all this, Hermione?” George had dropped her wrist. He had turned to the piano. “Why don’t you ever any more play anything?”
There was that about George. He liked her playing. There was that odd thing about George (Miss Stamberg had called it a vibration) that made him not care about mistakes here and there. Mistakes that tore the fabric for Her, to George were simply vaguely pleasant dissonance, meaning nothing as long as the fabric of the sonata or the fugue or prelude stayed secure. “I’d rather hear you run and sursur that way with your fingers than to hear anyone (save our divine grotesque Aïda) play me anything.” Her ran and ran arpeggios. “I never practice. I gave all that up.” George was George on a divan, with the half of a lamp making a half-orange circle on his shoulders. Her saw him remote with little beginning of a pointed faun moustache and with hair that was brushed back but that showed hair pulsing as if a he
lmet had been pressed down and now was lifted from it. George was Georgio out of Venetian pictures, out of the renaissance section of the two great volumes open on the floor, out of the quattrocento and Giants of Painting selection that came under Florence. Water ran off her fingers. “It’s horrible not really being able to make music.”
“You do, Hermione. Your melic chorosos aren’t half so bad as simply rather rotten.” George sat secure, legs crossed, head pressed against a black square of pillow satin. His face came up white, came up red. His mouth was too red. “Your mouth is too red.” The mouth twisted suddenly, a thin serpent twist of thin red mouth. His mouth in his face was beautiful. “Your mouth is very beautiful.”
“Na-aow” (he was being Uncle Sam, he hadn’t been for a long time, she thought he had forgotten) “Little Miss Her Gart. I aoin’t goin’ to take any of this here fulsome flattery. I said your pomes were rotten.” “I heard you say my pomes, my poems were rotten.” Water ran off fingers. “Just how now are they rotten?”
Under her fingers water ran. Water was running under her fingers. “Mama is out and father is out and Bert and Minnie.” “Oh Minnie-ha-ha.” “Yes Minni e-ha-ha.” She achieved a burlesque of George being funny. I can be funny too, she thought, running water through her water fingers. I can be as funny as Georgio being funny. Sometimes exultations make one feel quite funny. “Gart and Gart and the Gart formula. They’ve all gone out to dinner.” “Oh . . .ave they?” “Yus.” Gart and Gart and the Gart formula. I really should have played things. Science is to music what music is to—what music is to—“Science is to music as music is to what, Georg?” She called him Georg suddenly, hard nice sound; Georg in the bright room, Georg in the shadows in the bright room, Georg like a stone thrown into a well. Georg fell heavy like a stone in a well. George sitting there looked Polish or something, the count of something out of a shocking novel. They were out of a shocking novel. Mandy standing in the doorway (how long had she been standing?) waiting for Her to stop running and sursurring water music was out of a bad novel. They were out of a bad play or a bad novel for it was evident there was no reality. George was right. They should have been burnt for witchcraft. Crouching forward against the keyboard, she thought, I won’t see Mandy. Mandy likes to listen. I won’t let Mandy see I know that dinner’s ready.
Now more than ever she thought “we are out of a bad novel.” Room was set square but it wasn’t the usual room. Emptiness made it different and George made it different. The table was different, the cloth and the china and the glasses and the knives and forks. Everything was different. “George do they really eat like that in London?” George was dangling knife and fork, crisscross chopstick of knife and fork; George was dangling a knife and fork, symmetrically like a drummer. George worried at his cutlet, let the knife and fork fall with a clatter, said to Mandy “Please some water.” “George you shouldn’t ask Mandy for things.” (Mandy had gone for water). “It confuses her. If you ask her for something and she is supposed to be doing something else, she looks at me to know if she is to do what she is supposed to be doing or if she is to break off and do what you ask her to do. If you ask me for water then I will tell Mandy.” “That’s the longest speech I ever heard from you Hermione.” They were in a play and it was easy to make a speech out of a play. The reality of concentric circles had slashed like a knife so that she talked volubly, talked and chattered and talked and George said “I think Hermione that you are going to be a tyrant.” “A—a—?” “Tyrant. I don’t think that, after all, I want you.” “Want me?” “We are, aren’t we, supposed to be getting married?”
A jingle as of harness and bells and the slide that might be sleigh runnels over hard snow. Mandy was clearing things, was padding to the kitchen. Words made jingle like sleigh bells, for he might as well say “We are going to get married” as say anything. Everything he said was out of a bad novel, out of a play anyhow. You might as well go on helping him with his part of the play. Her sleeve caught in the silver basket. “Mandy is so funny. When any one comes she drags out this old silver.”
“Why don’t we take the fruit in the other room and have it with our coffee?” “All right.” She managed an exit that started being stately but she forgot and came back for the little fruitknives. George had strutted forth holding the silver basket of oranges before him.
“Now it’s winter” said Her, sitting on the rug before the open fire space, “oranges make it winter.” She held an orange in her hand not wanting to cut it with the fruitknife and George said “You are so damned decorative.” “I know.” She said “I know” (not having heard George) “oranges are so decorative” and George said “You, you, you, little Miss So-Stupid” and she said, “Have coffee” and she said “But you can’t have more than three lumps” and she said “I don’t smoke very often but I should so much like to” and he said “You’ll have to smoke when you’re my wife, Hermione.”
And she said “Why will I have to?” and he said “Because it’s company.” And she said, hearing her own laugh peal and break and shake against the roof, against the roof of the room upstairs, against the eaves of the attic and then out and out and out to waiting starlight, “But I won’t ever—ever be your wife, my Georgio.” And he said “You’re being very funny.” And she said “You just said you didn’t want me.” And he said “I always say that in case I never get you.” And she said “Anyhow I love—I love Her, only Her, Her, Her.” And he said “Narcissus in the reeds. Narcissa. Are you a water lily?” And she said “No, no, no—George have another orange?”
So sparring against coffee clatter and George having too many little cups and too many lumps of sugar and Mandy taking the things out, she realized a thing that had caught her oddly by the hem of her skirt, that was tugging her somewhere like someone enchanted in a Tale of the Black Forest. Trees made water music, the lamp might be some great autumn branch casting its orange shadow. Trees caught her, a small birch tree might burst suddenly at any moment into violent green flame of first flame, birch leaves of early spring. For something had Her by the hem of her skirt, had her for a moment by the throat. She achieved a note, a song note that brought her back to a body that was vibrating, that was static yet vibrating here and there. Why should one go to Europe? Fire and water made rhythm in Her and she caught a note in her throat and she hurtled it forth, achieving by some miracle the key, pitched too high (could she sustain it?)—Du meine Herzen, du mein Ruhe. She wished George wouldn’t try to join in, he had no voice whatever, neither tenor, baritone nor honest-to-god deep bass. He hadn’t a voice really. It was George with his volumes who was wordless, who was inarticulate; not Her Gart sitting on a hearth rug with Du bist mein Grab going now too deep down into her insides. “I wish I were green fire. I would run along a birch tree. I would run along a pear tree. I would make our pear tree by the corner of the barn burst into flower this moment. Du meine Herzen, du mein Ruhe. Do stop chucking orange peel on the fire George. It’s smoking.”
Odd fumes bit into her nostrils. Orange peel burning created scented warmth, created no Her-mood in the wide room, created something not of her (it was George’s doing) in the space between the piano and the table, in the black pool that lay behind the piano between it and the window that in summer stood wide open. The window was closed now, curtains drawn across it. Anything might exist on the other side of the window if one had (as Fayne hinted) bodies beyond these bodies and these bodies were just nothing, minds beyond these minds and these minds were just nothing. “Fayne says we are underdeveloped, are all of us racially babies in development or sort of moles. We have, she says, only mole eyes that see in the dark, that we are in the dark. She herself sees—we don’t see.” “Oh that girl.” A thing not of Her’s creating, not of George’s had entered the room. It stood heavy in the corner, a hand lifted to adjust a headband. “She’s so—so classic.” George with his affectation pretended to have hysterics. “Oh, Oh, Oh,” he chortled between painful convulsions, “Hermione, you are funny.” “Funny?” “
She’s out of a tu’penny ha’penny” (he said tu’penny ha’penny) “bad playlet. She isn’t in a real play.” “Wh-aa-at Georgio?” “She is so darn theatric.” “Not theatric, not theatrical—dramatic in the best sense.” Again George had convulsions. “My dear, she’s simply shoddy.”
A green flame ran and she realized that George would never make a pear tree burst into blossom, would never raise out of marshes the heads of almost-winter violets. Yellow violets might flower against granite and stone and stones remain for feet to tread on. George languished in Elizabethan doublet in galleries, he was painted upon ceilings. He did not run with a stream’s running, he had not throaty sounds in a long throat that rose from a bath of Tusculum. “George you’ve been everywhere.” He mustn’t see what Hermione was thinking. He had been to Tunis, to Bulgaria. George and Lillian had been everywhere. “George, I am so unlettered.” She used the word advisedly wondering if he could possibly not know she was thinking of the lettered hyacinth. “You are simply witchcraft.” This was the thing that caught her; “Hermione, you and she should have been burnt as witches.”
Now George rising from the divan, drawing nearer became luminous with some sort of phosphorescence. It was phosphorescence a fish gives out, a glowworm or a woodbranch. The thing in him was nebulous, was the edges of things, was the Renaissance, burning with reflected glory. He wanted Her, but he wanted a Her that he called decorative. George wanted a Her out of the volumes on the floor, out of the two great volumes. He wanted Her from about the middle, the glorious flaming middle, the Great Painters (that came under Florence) section. George, regarding Her, was saying “You are so decorative.” There was something stripped of decoration, something of somewhat-painful angles that he would not recognize. George saying “Choriambics of a forgotten Melic” was flattering her, tribute such as some courtier might pay to a queen who played at classicism; he did not proffer her the bare branch that was the strip of wild naked olive or the tenuous oleander. George saw Her at best as some Florentine page or some Florentine girl dressed for a pageant as the Queen Diana. To George, Her was Dian or Diana, never Artemis. To George, she was the Queen of Love, never white Aphrodite. People are in things. I am in Her. George never understood me. Rising to her feet, knowing that he would not understand Her, she was drifted toward the divan. George with a twist and deft knee movement had thrown her on the low couch. So lying she regarded the ceiling; thought “How high, like a palace ceiling; it looks low sometimes.” Thrown on the wide couch, she had no thought but “The flames leap higher and do odd pointed things, make points like a harlequin’s cap, like the Phrygian cap of Paris” . . . Now George had put the lamp out.
Hermione Page 16
