The Carp Castle

by MacDonald Harris

  “What’s this?”

  “I used to live here.”

  Romer looks around and she sees it through his eyes. The dust is thick on everything, and the small narrow bed looks like that of an invalid or a convict, not a place for love. The single window, which looks out into the rear area, is dusty and almost opaque, with a fly buzzing in the corner of it. It’s not her room at all, it’s the room of an entirely different Eliza. On the shelf there is a can of tooth powder belonging to this person.

  He shuts the door and takes her in his arms. Eliza feels her old illness lurking: a premonition of spots before her eyes, an ache in the liver, a migraine waiting in the corner.

  She turns away from him and looks at the wall. “I’m sorry. I don’t feel well.”

  “Then you—um. What you said in Mainz. Your thing has come on?”

  “No. I thought that was going to happen but it didn’t.”

  “It didn’t happen. Then you mean that …” He stares at her alarmed.

  Eliza is exasperated, at herself for being a woman and at him for being so dense. She doesn’t intend to discuss her clockwork but she would almost rather confess that than the real sickness she feels. “Romer, I thought you understood all about women. It can’t happen that fast. That was only two days ago. It’s just that—I don’t want to talk about it. It reminds me too much of the time when I lived here.”

  He doesn’t meet her eye. He seems thoughtful. “Did you have someone in those days?”

  “Have someone?”

  “Have a lover.”

  “I had Dr. Bono. My body belonged to him. He invaded it whenever he wanted. There wasn’t room for anything else.”

  To her surprise, he doesn’t ask any more questions. They leave the room without locking the door. Outside they mooch slowly down Queensway toward the park. A coolness has come between them, or more precisely a distance. They walk a foot apart now instead of brushing elbows. Whether he knows it or not, he has sensed the existence of his rival, not a flesh-and-blood lover but sickness. It’s dead now but its ghost may reappear at any instant. Eliza feels it lurking behind her left shoulder.

  Then she remembers John in Cornwall. She has forgotten about him for months. It is as though a blackness forms over her eyes and she feels faint. But John in Cornwall is Romer. Moira has taught her to believe in the community of souls and John and Romer are the same.

  “I have a past. You probably do too.”

  They skulk glumly together across Kensington Gardens. Instead of continuing down the walk to the Gloucester Road, they cut off to the left through the trees. It’s a golden summer day, only halfway through the morning and still cool. Canvas chairs have been set up on the lawn and people are sitting in them reading newspapers, smoking cigarettes, or dozing with their eyes shut. If you take a chair, an old woman will come around and make you buy a ticket for a penny. In all the time she was in London Eliza never sat in a chair in the park. Now she thinks: I have a penny for me, and another for him. They sit down and stretch their legs; the sun feels good after the gloomy German rain.

  Some men, in fact, have taken off their shirts, and a small baby is running around on the grass with nothing on at all, while its mother in her chair watches indulgently. Then Eliza notices that, only a short distance away, an elderly woman is lying back in her chair with her eyes closed, naked to the waist. Her possessions are arranged around her on the grass making a little camp: her reticule, her book, and her upper underwear which she had removed.

  Eliza hopes Romer hasn’t noticed, but he has. He could hardly fail to; the woman is only a few yards away. Eliza wonders how this reflects on her England, in Romer’s eyes. But the innocence of the naked baby, the banality of the setting, and the presence of a gentleman sitting in a chair nearby who is fully clothed and wearing a bowler hat lend a veil of the bucolic to the scene; it resembles an Impressionist painting more than an antique orgy of the solstice. Then, at the same instant, they both perceive that the elderly woman is Aunt Marge Foxthorn.

  “We’d better leave.”

  But as soon as they rise from their chairs she opens her eyes and sees them. She does not raise her head from the back of the chair, neither does she smile. She simply regards them calmly.

  When they pass by her chair they pause. Romer says, “A lovely day.” Eliza says, “The sun is nice.”

  Aunt Madge Foxthorn’s face has reddened in the sun, except for the protuberant egg in her forehead, which remains white. Her breasts are grayish with dark-red aureoles, almost brown. They look like creatures that have never before seen the light of day.

  She says, “We must practice for the day when we are in Gioconda.” Then, still without smiling, she closes her eyes again.

  Eliza and Romer go off together across the grass, still walking a little apart. After a while he says, “She knew we would come by. She wanted to show us.”

  “Does she have clairvoyance too then?”

  He shrugs and looks at her significantly.

  *

  Aunt Madge Foxthorn did not always have this name. She was christened Margaret and as a child was called Midge, a name she disliked intensely. It meant a small annoying insect, one that could be ignored unless it needed shooing away. She grew up on an estate in Kent and her parents were county people who almost never went to London. Her childhood and her whole life were marked by the swelling tumor in her forehead, which was not there when she was born, but began when she was two and grew as she grew, reaching its permanent size of half an egg when she was seventeen. Doctors were consulted and one of them, when she was about twelve, inserted a thin needle into it and drew out a sample of a substance which proved on testing to be cerebrospinal fluid, mauve in color with a scent of violets. The oval growth seemed to cause her no harm, and further medical steps were deemed unnecessary.

  Much later in life, when she was in her twenties, she happened to be visiting a fair in Brighton and found herself standing before the booth of a phrenologist. She stood for a while examining his chart of the human cranium with its various areas marked off in numbers, and then she noticed that he was staring at her fixedly. He himself had a head larger than normal size; he was a stocky man with arms and legs like posts and the blunt short fingers of a gecko. His eyes were fixed on the lump in her forehead. He offered to give her a free reading, and she sat down in his chair while passers-by gazed at her curiously. He felt her tumor, determined its exact location with calipers, and told her that it was a Bump of Guessing. She imagined that he meant by this something like Intuition, or Perspicacity. As for the rest of her head, he told her it was quite ordinary except that she had an Amativeness bump and a depression at the place marked on the chart for Veneration, which indicated that she was, as he said, a “septic.” True to his word, he charged her nothing for the reading. His eyes followed her as she walked away into the crowd.

  It was true that she was good at guessing. In her early childhood, when she was four and her bump was two, she saw with her inner eye what was happening behind her parents’ bedroom door, although she didn’t understand it. The pictures she drew of this activity were crudely done because of her age, but her father was identifiable because of his Van Dyke beard and her mother by her topknot. The thing that her father was putting into her mother, which she had never seen with her real eyes, was shaped at the end like a rosebud and had thorns along its shaft. She was severely punished on account of these pictures and after that she kept her guesses to herself.

  The gardens on the Kentish estate were extensive and well kept; they were her mother’s main interest in life. Her father concerned himself with county politics and with fly-tying. Margaret also had a brother older than she was, a good-looking boy who was fond of sports. Her own childhood was dominated by the tumor in her forehead. At school she was taunted by her schoolmates on account of her deformity, and she withdrew into a private world of books. As a young woman she had no suitors except an occasional friend that her brother brought home from the university,
and these soon drifted away. She wasn’t very interested in men anyhow. It really couldn’t be said that she was unhappy; if only they would stop calling her Midge! From the age of fourteen, she spent ten years of her life snapping back “Madge!” whenever anyone addressed her by this name. Finally she trained them, except for an ancient aunt who was too old to learn, and for whom she made an exception. Since there was another girl named Madge living nearby in the neighborhood, everybody called her by her two names, Madge Foxthorn, and this stuck to her for the rest of her life.

  There was no question of her marrying. In addition to her egg, she was far too clever and sharp-tongued, and her gift of guessing produced hostility in prospective suitors. No one knew what was to become of her. As a woman of thirty she did most of the housework, supervising the maids and the cooking, while her mother devoted herself to her garden. It was about this time that her father died of a fistula, and the history of the family came to an abrupt end. Her brother, who was married by this time, inherited the estate and became the master of the house. He let it be known that he wished to live in it along with his young wife, who had fixed ideas about housekeeping and also planned to remodel the garden. With her death settlement, Madge’s mother moved to the South of France; she took an apartment in Nice in which she lived with a paid companion, and went walking with her every afternoon on the Promenade des Anglais.

  There was no place in the house for Madge, and for years, until she was middle-aged, she was passed around from hand to hand by various relatives, chiefly aunts, and one of them a female cousin who was married to a clergyman in Yorkshire. Her chief activity during these years was reading. The Yorkshire clergyman, who had been a missionary in Indian, introduced her to Hindu philosophy, and under his direction she read the Vedantic texts, the Kamasutra, and the Sanskrit puranas.

  One day when she was in her sixties she happened to be on a train from London to Southampton, where one of her aunts had a large house with servants. In the compartment by her was a small trunk with everything she owned in the world in it: her clothes, some mementos of her childhood, and her Indian books. By this time she always wore black and carried with her the large bombazine reticule that had become the emblem of her identity, like a coat of arms. The compartment was empty except for another woman younger than she was, in a long linen dress and a round hat. She had only a small traveling case by her on the seat. Her green eyes and pale skin, and her ethereal emaciation, caught Madge Foxthorn’s attention immediately.

  The green eyes, with a touch of amusement, seemed to be inquiring why she was staring so.

  Madge said, “I am guessing that you are American and of Irish extraction and that you have been mistreated by a man and that you have lots of money.”

  “Guessing?”

  “Yes, I have this gift.”

  After a pause, Moira said with a smile, “I am guessing that you are English, of English extraction, that you have not got a man, and that you are in need of money.”

  “I am going to visit my aunt in Southampton. I have no need of money.”

  “We’re playing the game of guessing. You’re entirely right about me. Are my other guesses about you correct?”

  “I have no need of a man either.”

  “I didn’t say you did. I only said you didn’t have one.”

  “That shouldn’t be so hard to tell. You have only to look at me.”

  “And I know something else about you,” said Moira. “I can make you angry by pronouncing a single word.”

  “What is that word?”

  “Midge.”

  Madge Foxthorn, reddened, then smiled.

  “But I promise never to say it,” said Moira.

  It was all very friendly and candid. Extraordinarily so. Madge Foxthorn couldn’t remember having met a person like this before. She told her, “Now I am guessing that, even though you are wearing that costume, you are not a Suffragette.”

  “No, I only wear it because it’s practical. However, I am interested in the Woman Question.”

  “What is the Woman Question?”

  “Now that we have the Vote, what shall we do with ourselves?”

  It had never occurred to Madge Foxthorn that this was a question. She had envisioned going on living with one relative and another until she died.

  She focused her brow steadily on Moira’s face. “I am guessing that you are going to travel by sea.”

  “Yes. I am going to Southampton to board a transatlantic steamer to return to America. There I am to give a series of lectures.”

  “On the Woman Question?”

  “No. On the Self and its Nature.”

  “Do you travel alone?”

  Moira was thoughtful for a moment. “You must come along with me. You have nothing else to do anyhow but visit your aunt; who is a boring old woman. You can help me find a porter for my trunk. It’s in the baggage car. I’m not strong enough for these physical things.”

  “Are you not well?”

  “I am very well. Will you come?”

  Madge Foxthorn agreed. She shared Moira’s cabin on the voyage to America and accompanied her on her lecture tour. Officially she became Moira’s secretary, but since Moira never wrote letters she quickly assumed the duties of her personal companion and second in command. They divided their time between America and England, with occasional sorties to the Continent. Moira soon acquired more followers: a pair of young Vestals, a half-dozen members of the Frieze, and the two sisters from Oakland. On the next tour of Europe she engaged Cereste Legrand as her manager. It was he who contrived the letters of green fire and made the other lighting arrangements that became permanent features of her séances, as she now called them. It was at this time that she christened her band the Guild of Love and, following the manner of Madge Foxthorn’s own name, decreed that everyone in the Guild should be called by their first and last names, except herself. To some of the younger members of the Guild, especially the Vestals, it seemed too flippant to refer to such a dignified old lady in this way, and it was they who prefixed Aunt to her name. Their example was soon followed by the others.

  For Aunt Madge Foxthorn, Moira was a spirit or force that had come into her life and transformed it utterly. Everything that had happened before—her spinsterhood, the egg in her forehead, her gift of guessing—had prepared her for this. After her readings in Hindu philosophy, Moira now introduced her to the writings: of Madame Blavatsky, who revealed to her the true nature of the Self, divided into seven entities.

  THE PERISHABLE QUATERNARY

  1. Physical Body

  2. Astral Body

  3. Life or Vital Principle

  4. Animal Desires and Passions

  THE IMPERISHABLE TRIAD

  1. Mind

  2. Spiritual Soul

  3. Spirit (Atman)

  Aunt Madge Foxthorn dutifully entered them into her notebook. She finally understood what had puzzled her for so long, the enigma of human life and consciousness, and a hint as to the origins of her own gift of guessing. She quickly accepted Moira as her spiritual mother, in spite of the fact that Moira was half her age. She had never had a real mother, or a real father either. The members of the Guild, she noticed with her shrewdness, were all orphans of one sort or another. But there was more to Moira than Motherhood; there was Sisterhood too, and Loverhood. In her presence, she felt in her Physical Body something like a strange flow of sweet elixir that penetrated every capillary until it became one with the spiritual bliss of her soul.

  Eliza has a little privacy for once, since Joan Esterel is out of the hotel room and not likely to come back for a couple of hours. She gazes out the window into the Strand (Romer might be passing and she could beckon him up with a sly finger), looks into the glass to see if perhaps her freckles haven’t faded a little in the foggy English climate (but it’s only been two days, and it’s sunny in London), ties on a persimmon-colored sash and examines this in the glass too, tries her hair a different way but puts it back the way it was, and perf
orms all the other rituals of a young woman in love who is in a room alone. Then she sees against the wall by the door a large red wooden box with brass corners that she has not noticed before. It has a brass handle, and the word Medical is stenciled in black on the top. She opens it and takes out its contents one by one: bandages and plasters of all kinds, iodine, Epsom salts, antiseptic unguents, clysters, a urethral catheter, and other instruments she remembers vaguely from her medical lessons in Geneva. She sniffs some smelling salts and sticks her tongue cautiously into a bottle of laudanum; it tastes like rotten apples. A shadow flutters in her eyelids and she senses the approach of a delicious but dangerous sleep, one that might be the end of all sleeps. She stoppers the bottle hastily and sets it aside. Turning over more things in the box, she takes out a stethoscope and listens to her own heart. Instead of the steady reassuring thump she expected she hears a sound like a horse galloping over hard ground. It frightens her and she puts the thing away in the box.

  On this same day in London, the Captain leaves the hotel and sets off down the Strand in the sunshine. It is a beautiful day and all the summer green of London is dappling the streets. People turn to stare at his four gold stripes and the emblem on his cap. He wonders what they take him for. With his Nordic good looks and his uniform, he might be the captain of a Norwegian battleship, if there were such a thing as a Norwegian battleship. The more astute of them, he fears, those who are students of history or collectors of obscure military insignia, may guess the truth, that he is one of those who only ten years before rained death on their city from the sky. This is why he feels queer. He would have done better to wear civilian clothes, but he no longer has any civilian clothes; he threw them all away in a spasm of elation when he was made commander of a dirigible. Madame (Mrs. Pockock; Moira) tried to persuade him to wear on his cap her funny little emblem with its squashed world in pastel colors, which has something to do with love; but he is not the captain of love, he is the captain of a dirigible. His attitude toward love, and his experience of love, are matters he does not intend to take up with Madame (Mrs. Pockock). As a matter of fact, he feels that he is on relatively good terms with Mrs. Pockock. (Damn it all, why not just give it up and call her Moira as everyone else does; it seems to be what she wants). She has always behaved correctly with him, her orders are clear and precise, and in her manner he detects something like an affection for him. When she calls him “Captain” he feels that it is only one step from “Zhorzh.” It is true that some of her remarks are a little gaga. When he asks her which navigation charts he should buy while they are in London she says, “You must take maps for every place in the world, and for some places that are not in the world.” And he can’t share her ideas about religion, if religion is what it is. In the Captain’s mind, religion is something that Prussian Junkers beat into their peasants. What Madame (Moira) has in mind seems to be quite something else. But everyone has something different to say on this subject. If there is a supernatural, there is only one supernatural, and she may be as close to it as anyone else. And he finds her an attractive woman, that is he admires her beauty as he would a picture in a museum. Her ethereal fragility, her pale complexion, her piercing green eyes. The Captain (he is hardly the Captain now; he has become Georg, a bad boy) can imagine an extraordinary way of life in which he and Moira might fit together as opposites in a way that no other human beings have ever fitted together as opposites: not as man and woman, not as man and man, and not as woman and woman, but as will to will. She has a powerful will and so does he. His will would fit neatly into hers. They have already recognized each other as extraordinary persons, he thinks. Just as the two parts of a puzzle unexpectedly fit into each other, their holes and protrusions matching without damage to either, so he and Moira might merge in a kind of Schopenhauerian coitus without sex. This would happen in an old German palace with many corridors and a stuffed bear in the vestibule. There they would stroll, past the busts of old Emperors, while he discoursed to her of Schopenhauer, who believed that life was evil and the impulse to perpetuate it should be overcome. In return, she would speak to him of the Infinite. He is sure that the Infinite exists, but he is not sure what it is. He is sure, however, that it is beautiful, decadent, and imperious, something like Moira herself.