“I’m dead already,” Frances reasoned. “I’m Mary. Mary’s dead. She’s dead to sex.”
Paul pulled down the blinds on the windows. He turned off every lamp except one. He sat on the edge of the mattress, pitching Frances abruptly to one side. He settled her flat on her back; then he cocked his finger and thumb. He pointed his finger like a pistol and aimed at the iodine wound. He made popping sounds, mimicking bullets. In the process, he jabbed Frances’s head.
“That’s the end.” Frances pushed off his hand. Paul aimed at his own head and fired.
“Alone with the corpse of his lover.” Paul was locked in the grip of a theory. “What was he doing for three hours? Passing the time reading Goethe?”
“I’m highly contagious,” said Frances.
“He died in the saddle,” said Paul.
“You’ll get germs if you try it,” said Frances. “I’m infectious and so is my area.”
This appeal to Paul’s health went unheeded. Any artist took risks for his art. Michelangelo was frightened of heights, yet he spent four long years on a scaffold. Paul bent over her. Frances recoiled. His eyes were aflame like a martyr’s. How much easier, urged her weak body, to submit to Paul’s noble experiment. She had always been pliant and obliging. She had worked with good will for Paul’s interests. She worked overtime, double time, and weekends. She worked without benefits or pensions. In a just world, he owed her a sick leave. He owed her two weeks with full pay. She deserved a certificate or a pin, such as volunteers get for long service.
Paul was gifted with powers of telepathy. “I’ll give you a present. Or lamb money.”
“Lamb money?” Frances repeated.
“For being a lamb,” wheedled Paul.
Frances ducked as Paul reached for her shoulder. Quick as a snake, she escaped him. She ran into the bathroom and locked it. Just in time. Paul had vaulted the bed.
“I’ll do something to Lewis!” yelled Paul.
“No, you won’t!” shouted Frances. “I know you.”
He banged on the door with his fists. Frances caught the words “lose” and “abandon.” He rattled and tugged at the doorknob. Frances heard a low animal whimper.
“Come out and I’ll soothe you,” begged Paul. “I’m a bully. You hate me.”
“No more!” Frances cried. “Not tonight. I hate Rudolf and Mary.”
Frances collapsed on the bathmat. She was out of retorts and of stamina. She sank back in the grasp of the virus (on the whole, a more comforting lover). Behind the door, Paul had subsided. She expected a stronger assault. Had he located the screwdriver in her toolbox? Would he lift the door off its hinges? Instead, Frances heard a soft scratching. She looked down at the source of the noise. Paul was forcing a square piece of paper inch by inch through the slit at the doorsill. The paper was blank. She reversed it. It was a snapshot: herself at the zoo. The paper was wrinkled and battered. Did Paul keep her picture in his wallet? If Paul kept her picture, he loved her. She loved Paul, though the term was fallacious. She was staggered by Paul, or pervaded. The term “love” was for mothers and children. Why had Paul shown her the snapshot? It meant he forgave her defection. She looked at her image in the picture: a happy girl, eager and toothy. The toothy girl lacked command presence. She said no; the world heard it as maybe.
Frances pondered too long. She was weary. Her instincts were blunted and stupid. She heard footsteps retreating. A door slammed. Her front door, or a nearby apartment’s. Paul had left, or pretended to leave. If she came out of hiding, he might trap her. Perhaps he had gone for a locksmith. More likely, he had fixed his sights elsewhere; suicide, double or single, was just one of the sources of high drama. Frances had foiled his attempt to study Suicide; that left thirty-five more Dramatic Situations. Which would Paul choose? Revenge? Revolt? Abduction? Hatred of Kinsmen, False Suspicion, or Fatal Imprudence? She might like to explore Abduction when she was better. She hoped against hope Paul would do Revenge without her.
Frances Girard spent the night locked in the bathroom. She slept in the tub, which she lined with layers of towels. She covered herself with the plastic shower curtain, and folded the bathmat underneath her head. In her porcelain bed, which felt as soft as goosedown, she slept through the night and most of the following morning, like a child who has watched the snow outside his window and knows there will be no school till the storm is over.
IV
LOVE LIFE
FRANCES WAS SHARING PAUL’S loft in the old warehouse building, at a ratio of six to one, one part to Frances. Frances’s share was divided into smaller sections: a drawer in the bureau; half a shelf in the bookcase; the space beneath the bed and armchairs; a slot in the toothbrush holder; and a steamer trunk for storing spare blankets. When she moved in with Paul, she sent Lewis to board with Aunt Ada. Paul was frightened of fleas, which were hard to distinguish from soot, and more frightened that Lewis would suck his breath while he slept. Since Paul kept bees in a hive on the fire-escape landing, Frances retained some access to non-human creatures. When the skies were clear, the bees were mild and harmless; on overcast days they raged and stung their keeper. Paul took pride in working the hive without veil or gloves, and bore their stings with stoic calm and patience. These days, Paul was spending the bulk of his time with the bees. He tinkered with the hive like a watchmaker in retirement, making needless improvements and averting imaginary problems. He liked to requeen the hive to increase its yield, and ordered new queens from mail-order houses in Georgia. He fed the bees antibiotics in sugar water, to keep them from sickening with dysentery or foulbrood. He added a swarm of Italian bees to the hive, since Italians resisted disease better than Caucasians. In the name of perfection, Paul worked the bees very hard, as hard as he drove the actors he directed. Directors and beekeepers have characteristics in common, as do actors and bees, who submit to the roles assigned them. Each beehive and each production is a little kingdom, and Paul was accustomed to ruling them absolutely.
Without kingdoms to rule, a monarch grows wan and fretful. Governing bees, however disease-resistant, was no substitute for directing human actors. Paul overworked the hive as compensation. One day the bees struck back and took their vengeance. Frances was reading. She heard a strangled whinny, like a horse who is trapped in his stall when fire breaks out. She looked up and saw Paul leaping through the window with a scarf or snood of bees swarming around his head. He crossed the floor in a series of grands jetés, very graceful for a heavy man in his predicament. He stood in the shower, howling and lamenting, until he had gained relief for his face and scalp. Little bee bodies clung to his beard and lined the bathtub. Paul was weeping because he had been obliged to drown them.
The theatre had turned on Paul like the angry bees. Bald men in suits claimed his plays went over budget. Producers resented Paul’s lack of hospitality. He had ejected more than one backer from rehearsals. Paul treated the moneymen with plain contempt. Producers, like teenagers, liked to voice opinions. In Paul’s view, a backer had enough reward by serving the new ideas of men of vision. If Frances urged tact, or at least polite indifference, Paul responded by plotting public scorn and outrage. One of them, Daniel Matthei, a rich man’s son, had presumed he and Paul were intellectual equals. He made suggestions—or, worse, offered solutions, and handed Paul pages of script he had rewritten. After several such incidents Paul had wadded the pages, had spat on them lightly, and polished his shoes, tops and soles.
When Paul bit the hand that backed him, Frances trembled. Frances was a sheep, though her sheep’s clothing often bound her. At the sight of Paul’s towering pride and indignation, her own heart swelled and applauded his intemperance. In an artist, a haughty streak was a mark of caste. Paul’s gifts gave him rights; Frances borrowed acclaim from others, from the authors who wrote the books she was hired to sponsor. She sponsored Paul for love instead of wages. Her wages, in fact, kept Paul as well as Frances. Paul was not too proud to live on Frances’s earnings. “I’m a cripple,” said Paul.
“I only have one skill. Do you want me to drive a taxi or wait on tables?”
Where his art was concerned, Paul was humble and subservient. He worked long hours, though his hope of reward was fading. Lesser artists lapsed into sloth when their hopes were blighted; they ate from tin cans and neglected their personal grooming. They drew spirals and Chinese boxes, and wasted paper; they sighed heavy sighs, in case the world was listening. Paul trimmed his beard and pared his nails and toenails. While he took his shower, he also steamed his trousers. He rose at seven and tended the bees after breakfast; then he spent several hours reading memoirs and lives of great men. After lunch, a monkish meal of cheese and apples, he sat at his desk and took notes for his suicide play. On good days he outlined whole scenes with their final blocking; on bad days he rewrote the notes and revised the revisions. Frances watched him with tears in her eyes. They were tears of awe. An artist who was out of favor should have sour breath, or bloodshot eyes, or dirt on the back of his neck. By rights, he should pore through boxes of yellowed clippings, or gaze in a trance at his wall of framed awards. Paul never complained or reviled his fellow directors. He did not fall asleep in his chair. He drank plain water.
Day after day, Paul mulled over cases of suicide, single and double, successful and unsuccessful; suicide in children and animals (lemmings and whales); suicide by knife, gun, gas, fire, rope, or adder. Frances checked him for signs of despair induced by his subject, such as playing with scissors, or stockpiling bottles of aspirin. Always before, Paul chose themes of a sexual nature: the incest taboo; primal scenes; or the spoiling of virgins. Sex (plus aggression), as a topic, was happier than suicide, since sexual exploits contained an impulse toward life. Frances was anxious, although she curbed her worries. She took off her shoes in the loft and walked on tiptoe. She wrapped the clock in a towel to dull its ticking. She tried not to rustle the pages while she was reading. When she read, she kept one eye on Paul, like a nurse on night duty. Paul paid no attention to Frances unless she addressed him.
In better times, Paul had had numerous uses for Frances. He requested her favors at night or upon awakening. He solicited Frances on many occasions and surfaces. He craved her indulgence in plain and in fancy positions. He possessed an inquiring spirit in carnal matters that nourished his powers of invention in staging theatre. Once, he had tattooed Frances with felt-tipped markers to see if the effect was exciting or repellent. Sometimes he borrowed a motion-picture camera, set it on a tripod, and left it aimed and running. He found that performing for a viewer, albeit mechanical, in no way curtailed the range of his sensations. Frances liked mating in private and in the darkness, without benefit of cameras, mirrors, false hair, or vegetables, but she would have dialed Ronnie’s Costume Rentals with her own finger, rather than live with Paul as brother and sister.
In normal times Frances had assisted Paul in his work, by enacting parts from his plays, or bits of staging. Several months had gone by since Paul had allowed her to help, even when she had offered her services as Sylvia Plath. Now and then, Paul would speak of his project if Frances urged him. He had hatched an original theory about Abraham Lincoln. By piecing together stray data contained in footnotes, Paul decided that Lincoln had hired John Booth to shoot him. Frances listened and nodded, as she did when Paul related the tale of the suicide pact of his aunt and uncle, who loved Nature and had chosen her as their executioner. In the summer of their eightieth year, a season of storms, they had walked across treeless fields to attract the lightning, standing wrapped in tight embrace as a squall grew nearer, so that one bolt would claim them both and leave no survivor. Paul’s eyes never left her face as he told the tale. When he finished the story, his silence seemed expectant. Frances feared he might ask her to sign a similar pact, and lure her outside when the skies were dark and cloudy. If given the choice, she would rather play Anna Karenina, an exercise that could be carried out indoors with the aid of a ladder laid flat on the floor, for the train tracks, and a teakettle whistling, as the noise of the onrushing train.
Soon Frances and Paul would be living like mice in a garret. Paul had no savings, and editors made meager salaries. A large man required good red meat to succeed in the theatre. For weeks she had stoked his ambitions with beans and potatoes. Frances did laundry in the bathtub, including the sheets. Since washing the sheets bore a strenuous resemblance to wrestling, she took off her clothes and climbed in the tub along with them. As the mistress of an artist, she lacked certain valuable skills. She could not turn frayed cuffs, cobble shoes, or change typewriter ribbons. The right helpmate for Paul would have shoplifted with a clear conscience, or bought day-old bread and made one tea bag stretch for three cups. Frances bought day-old flowers, in the hope they might gladden Paul’s spirits, but the flowers made Paul sneeze, since most artists are subject to allergies. Frances hid unpaid bills in a drawer. Paul preferred to outwit their creditors. He might mail off the checks in good time, but leave out the sum or his signature. Or he stacked all the checks in one pile and the envelopes in another. Then he shuffled the piles, so the doctor got a check for the bookstore, or the landlord received partial payment for filling a tooth.
Whether daring or crafty, these tactics eroded Paul’s patience—not the tactics so much as the straits that required their contrivance. One night Frances sat reading a manuscript sent by a poet. In order to analyze the rhythms, she spoke some lines under her breath. “You are muttering against me,” said Paul as he loomed up behind her. He stalked out of the loft, overturning a lamp as he went. Paul grew restive and wild-eyed. He paced up and down in the loft. He paced on the fire-escape landing, which measured eight steps forth and back. He stooped as he walked, or grimaced and limped like a gargoyle, shutting one eye and jutting his lower teeth forward. He took on the shape of the goblin that lived within him, a vexed, crooked imp, disparaged and disappointed. Paul coined a name for the demon that gnawed at his innards. The imp’s name was Nip: Nip Fausto the Overreacher. Living with Nip kept Frances alert and off balance. Nip was not as responsible as Paul, since Nip had no conscience. Frances might rise in the morning and find the loft empty. Her eyes fogged with sleep, she might open the door to the bathroom. Some days she might pad to the sink to perform her ablutions, but one of those mornings she would freeze on the threshold in horror. Nip (and Paul) would be lying in a tub filled with bloody red water, head lolling, mouth open, complexion as pallid as mushrooms. Nip had worked this illusion with packets of raspberry jello. Nip chortled as Frances screamed, but Paul begged her pardon. “He gets out,” pleaded Paul. “I can’t help it. He makes me obey him.” Nip sometimes tossed eggs out the window, or cold mashed potatoes. Nip enjoyed setting broom-straws on fire, and wearing his trousers on backward. Nip rolled himself up in a rug, and lay waiting for Frances to find him. Paul might pull Frances to him and kiss her; as they kissed, Nip would pass her a grape. Frances lived in some dread of Paul’s kisses. What if Nip chose to pass her chewed honeycomb?
Nip had two faces, like the masks that are emblems of Drama. One was roguish, or comic, and one was pathetic, or tragic. Tragic Nip—the small child within Paul—believed Frances might leave him, that she might not return from the office, or the shop on the corner. Every evening at six he positioned himself on the sidewalk, one eye on his wristwatch and one on the exit to the subway. If she carried an oversized handbag to work in the morning, he checked it for a toothbrush, a nightgown, and a change of clean clothing. Frances tried to be patient, since Paul and sad Nip were in crisis. She tried to get home right on time, or, if possible, earlier. One night when the subway broke down, she arrived an hour late. Nip was crouched on the steps of the building, weeping in sorrow. “I’ve abused your good nature!” he cried. “I’ve exceeded your limits.” His apologies worried her more than his devilish hoaxes.
Nip retreated, in time, to the cavernous depths of Paul’s psyche. He was shortly replaced by the Tod Hassen (which Paul told her was German for Death Bunny). In this incarnation, Paul stood, bare, in front o
f a mirror, deploring the whiteness of his skin and the slackness of his muscles. The Death Bunny lay on the couch and stared at the ceiling. On good days he sat in an armchair and gazed at the floor. When he moved from the couch to the chair, he moved in slow motion. The only activity he engaged in was growing his whiskers. One night, Frances jiggled his shoulder to wake him for supper. “You’re alive,” said the Death Bunny, shrinking in fright from her contact. As a constant companion, the Tod Hassen gave her no trouble. He made fewer emotional demands than a stone or a cheese. Frances wished the real Paul would return to inhabit his body; while Paul was in hiding, she found she preferred freakish Nip.
As fall turned to winter, Paul’s fortunes showed signs of improvement. He left the house carrying a clipboard, and went to long meetings. Frances asked him for names and details. He evaded her questions. When she pressed him too hard, he implied that the meetings were sessions with the pinball machines in a nearby amusement arcade. Frances could stomach large portions of Paul’s aggravation; she might well have had more than one stomach, like a milk-giving cow. Often Frances found refuge at the office from Paul’s teasing humor; her colleagues at Harwood were cordial, benign and predictable. The men wore their trousers on frontward, and properly zipped. The women were friendly and seemed to think Frances was clever. Both sexes drank water from the cooler out of small paper cups, without gargling the water or threatening to spit it at Frances. When she arrived in the morning and started to work at her desk, she never sat down on a chair daubed with library paste. When she went to collect her belongings at the end of the day, she did not find a soft brown banana in the pocket of her coat. She had come to expect no rude shocks from the Harwood employees, only kindness, good fellowship, loyalty, and pats on the back. Frances was grateful to work in a rational setting, with people who practiced good manners and respected her boundaries. Far be it from her to expect thrills and drama at the office; there was more than enough stimulation in her home life with Paul. Living with an artist breeds a craving for ferment, however; there were days when her work and co-workers seemed servile and bland.
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