“Why are you sleepless?” she asked, seating herself by the fire.
He was searching a bookshelf now, his back to her.
“I am not a good sleeper at best,” he replied absently, “and in a strange house—ah, here’s the book I was looking for, a rare edition of Mallarme.”
“It belonged to my father,” she said.
“But he was a scientist—”
She broke in, “He was everything.”
“Ah, like Jared.”
He sat down in a large armchair opposite her and opened the book. Then, not looking at her, he went on, “I’ve been the worst possible person to bring up a lively brilliant boy. I haven’t dared to let myself love him—fearing myself, lest I love him too much—a poisonous love.”
“Can love be poisonous?” she asked.
He darted a strange sidewise look at her and closed the book. “Ah, yes, indeed it can. I learned that very early. I might say I was—conditioned to it when I was very young—by an older man.”
His lips seemed suddenly dry, and he ran his tongue over them. “I never thought I could ever tell that to anyone. But I want you to—to—know why I have never allowed Jared—to come close to me.”
He lifted his somber eyes and in them she saw a desperate pleading to be understood.
“I understand,” she said gently. “I do understand. And I think it most noble of you to—to use such restraint, such control, such reverence for true love. I respect you very much.”
“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you. I—I don’t know if I have ever been spoken to like that before. But I have never wanted to do anything—or seem to do anything—that would warp the—the meaning of love for Jared. It was better, I thought, to let him grow up without any expression of the love I truly feel for him rather than shape a false image of love. The image of love is so easily warped—misshaped—perverted somehow, so that never again does it appear what it is, the only reason for living, the only refuge, the only source of energy and soul’s growth. The very power of love—the most powerful force in life—makes love produce, when it is warped, or perverted, or even misplaced, the greatest suffering in life.”
He spoke so sincerely, so deeply, that she saw him anew, a man of profound and agonized feeling, and she was silent before him.
“Teach him, my dear,” he urged. “Teach him what love is. Only a woman can do that—a woman like you.”
“I will try,” she said.
…“I want you to come to New York and see how the hand is working,” Jared said over the telephone.
She was at her desk in the library one fine spring morning, the rhododendrons outside the window already showing shades of rose and magenta as she could see. The forsythias at the far end of the lawn were in their final golden bloom, their dying brilliance gleaming against the darkness of the flanking evergreens.
“And why must I come to New York?” she asked. “You know I don’t love that city.”
“I know, but it’s really wonderful to see how the hand is working, so well that the man is going home shortly. Besides, it will give you a reason to see my people.”
She knew by now, of course, that when he said “my people,” he meant the people who needed the instruments he designed to take the place of the hands and feet, the eyes, hearts, kidneys they might lose or had lost. She had scarcely seen him in the months since he and his uncle had spent the New Year with her, but his long telephone calls, made usually at midnight, and of late his short, dramatic letters, had kept him close to her. And she? It seemed that she had done nothing except play the grand piano in the music, room, attend a few committee meetings and dinners and concerts, and wait until he called or wrote. She no longer hid from herself the fact that he absorbed her entire inner life and thought, so that whatever she did was of no real importance in comparison with the necessity of being there in the house when he called. Let him find her always there, ready for his every need! When he wrote, she sent her immediate, answering letter, and in this communication, at once remote and intimate, they began to use endearments that might have lit a flame had they been in each other’s presence. Upon a page, in black ink, even the words “my dearest” remained cool.
“This is Tuesday,” he was saying. “Can you make it tomorrow? Then we will have dinner together—maybe dance somewhere? We’ve never done that. Odd, I never thought of it. There’s always so much to talk about when I am with you. About three? I’ll meet you at the rehabilitation center—you have the address.”
“Tomorrow at three,” she promised.
And how absurd, she thought, five minutes later, the call ended, that she was already thinking of what she should wear! She decided on a pale gray suit with a matching coat, very thin and gracefully cut and fitting her beautifully, with hat, shoes and bag of the same silvery shade, and this gray a foil for her apple-green jade jewelry which Arnold had bought for her in Hong Kong on their last journey around the world. Thus arrayed, she left the house the next day after luncheon, the chauffeur smart in a new black uniform. Though she was accustomed to the luxuries of her life, she felt today a peculiar happiness, as though she were young again, as though she were going to meet the lover she had never had. She put from her mind every small annoyance of her life and drifted away into a mood of total happiness. For hours she would be with Jared, whom now she knew she loved as she had never loved anyone before, so that she felt herself changed and glorified by love. Do what she might, how could she hide from him the truth? But why indeed must truth be hidden?
…“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Jared demanded proudly.
They stood in a large rectangular room, bare of decoration but bright with the afternoon sun streaming through the uncurtained windows. Around the wails were narrow hospital beds, each occupied by men with varied amputations. There was not a whole man among them, she saw as she glanced about her. Only Jared was perfect, cruelly perfect, she thought, and it was to the credit of those pallid men, lying or sitting, that there was no hatred on their drawn faces.
What Jared called “beautiful” was in fact the most hideous object she had ever seen, a two-fingered instrument on a metal arm and coated with a rubbery surface the color of human flesh.
“Let me see how it works,” she countered.
“Show her,” Jared commanded.
The man, very young, to whom the instrument was attached somewhere under his shirt, obeyed. The two fingers moved, separately and together, like thumb and forefinger.
“Now take her hand,” Jared told him.
She controlled the instant desire to step back out of reach and instead let her hand be clasped gently by the two rubbery fingers.
“Can you feel her hand, how soft it is, how smooth?” Jared asked eagerly.
“Sure I can feel,” the man said, and let his right eyelid drop in a mischievous wink.
She laughed and instantly every man in the room was laughing and now she did not mind at all the touch of the rubbery fingers, the forefinger stroking the palm of her hand.
“That’s enough,” Jared said. “You needn’t carry even a good thing to an extreme.”
He was laughing, too, as he spoke, but she could see he was proud.
“You have every right to be proud,” she said, gently withdrawing her hand.
“Thanks—I’m happy, myself,” he replied. “This fellow—he lost his right arm in Danang, didn't you, Bill?”
“Danang it was, sir. I picked up what looked like a bunch of bananas and suddenly they went off—bang!”
Jared clapped his left shoulder.
“Well, what we’ve done together will help a lot of other men, too. Just remember that, will you?”
“Sure will,” the man said.
They moved away then, she and Jared, away from the wounded, and in the corridor she sighed, forgetting for the moment everything except the drawn face, the skeleton-thin body of the man with the hand,
“He’s so piteously young, Jared,” she said.
“Not yet twenty-o
ne,” he agreed, “and I don’t know a greater joy in life than to see that substitute hand working.”
Absorbed in common joy, they forgot each other.
“How much does he really feel?” she asked, “and how much does his imagination supply?”
“Well, darling,” Jared said with a wry smile, “I daresay he’s felt many a soft hand in reality, and memory helps imagination, I’m sure—and eyesight, of course. Your hand looks soft, you know! But some of it’s real—the pressure of a pliant material against warm flesh. Ah, yes, a good deal of it is real, enough to convey pleasure, at any rate.”
What a loss, she thought, that the word of endearment he had seemed to use unconsciously had been so often carelessly used that now it was meaningless! Was it not meaningless? But he had never used it before. She stilled the sudden beat of her heart and spoke softly.
“I hope he will meet a girl someday very soon, who will be able to know what the hand you made for him can feel. Then she will think it is beautiful, too.”
“I hope so,” he said gravely.
He stopped at a door and took a key from his pocket and fitted it to the lock. “This is my laboratory. Remember I told you I wanted to work on the stethoscope? Well, I’m doing it.”
He opened the door and they went in. It was a fairly large room, crowded with machinery of a delicate sort, and at one end, under the windows stood a long worktable with a chromium top. Upon it was a complex piece of machinery.
“I don’t understand any of it,” she told him.
“It’s a method of testing stethoscopes,” he explained. “Very important, you know, that a stethoscope observes accurately and reports intelligibly. It must not have what it hears distorted by some sort of vibrating sound, for example. For this I’ve designed a monitory microphone—this thing here—but then the listening ear must hear properly, too. I’ve designed this artificial ear—doesn’t look much like an ear, does it? But it hears—that is, with a system like this—how much, actually, does the ear hear? How far? How clearly? But I had to check even this artificial ear with another one made of different material, and of course everything has to be checked again and again. I use recordings of the human chest wall—the heart, breathing, and so on—”
She listened, following knowledgeably enough now what he was saying, but while her brain comprehended, some other and more subtle part of her being was tensely aware of his physical nearness, his hands moving about the machinery as he demonstrated its functioning, his voice music to her ear, his profile, clear-cut against the gray walls, his whole dynamic being absorbed in what he was saying. A wave of joy swept through her being. She felt alive as she had never felt in her life before, even in her youth. They were together and bright hours lay ahead.
…Hours later she was in his arms. They were dancing between courses at their dinner in a famous restaurant, an after-theater place which would not be crowded until nearly midnight. They had come early, but the orchestra was already playing a slow waltz.
“I am glad,” she said. “I can’t do the new dances. I can’t dance alone.”
“And who wants to dance alone?” he retorted.
The owner-manager came up and greeted Jared by name.
“He’s my uncle’s friend,” Jared explained.
“I like your uncle,” she said.
Idle talk, but tonight she must speak only idly. They were too near the edge of something unknown, a further step toward each other, which she did not know that she wanted to take, or even whether she could stop if it began.
“Why do you tell me now that you like my uncle?” Jared demanded as they took their seats.
“I don’t know, I just remember him. Perhaps I feel sorry for him.”
“He’s quite happy,” Jared said.
He was restless, she perceived, and she did not tell him that she remembered his uncle because she pitied him, unable as he was to feel such joy as hers.
“Let’s dance,” Jared said restlessly.
He rose and led her to the dance floor. It had been a long time since she had danced, for Arnold had not enjoyed dancing and since his death she had not gone out. Now under Jared’s superb leading she responded with all her old delight enlivened by the pleasure of new love.
“You dance beautifully,” he said.
He laid his cheek gently against her hair and she yielded herself to him while she held back the words of love which waited, impatient to be spoken. Around them a few couples began to gather, but in the dim light she recognized no one and was not recognized, except that a man spoke in passing, a young blonde girl in his arms.
“Beautiful partner you have there, Jared.”
“Thank you, Tim,” he said coldly, and swept her away. “I wish you wouldn’t make older men envy me,” he grumbled in mock annoyance.
She laughed. “But he is with a very pretty girl.”
“Who wants just a pretty girl?” he retorted. “Besides, I didn’t see her. I see only you.”
The spell of the evening held. They sat down to a new course at the table and were silent except for a desultory few words and then he was on his feet again, inviting her, and together they returned to the communion of the dance, he pressing her to him, she yielding to his every movement. Dangerous, she told herself, dangerous but unutterably sweet. Let no word be spoken, let the communication be only this languorous delight of being close together, joined by the rhythm of music and movement. She grew afraid at last of herself, and of him. An inner wisdom restrained her. The spell must be broken now, before it was too late, now before, overcome by her own desire, she let herself be led away into some solitude when, alone with him, she could ho longer control her own longing. It was near midnight and the theater crowd began to fill the room.
“I must go home,” she said as a dance ended and the orchestra retired for a brief rest.
He drew himself from her reluctantly, still holding her hand in his. “Why must you?”
“What else?” she replied. “Of course I must go home.”
He fell silent then, very silent. He paid the check and put her in her car, waiting at the door. He was so silent, his face was so grave as he looked at her in the dimness of the street, that she wondered if inadvertently she had hurt him. His eyes were troubled, or so she imagined, as he lingered after she was seated in the car.
“Good night,” she said. “I’ve had a wonderfully happy evening.”
“Are you sure?” he asked. “Wasn’t it selfish of me to keep you entirely to myself?”
“It was where I wanted to be,” she replied.
Their eyes met in a long, steadfast interchange, a communication. Sooner or later, she told herself, it must be spoken in words.
…She woke the next morning in a mood of resolution. The day in New York had been a double revelation. She saw Jared a man at work, she saw herself a woman in love. What had these two to do with each other, if anything? Surely something, she argued with herself. Surely love had a meaning, a purpose, but for her—what? Even before she rose from her bed, even when she had just awakened, the birds in the English ivy clinging to the walls outside the open windows of her room having roused her by their twittering and merriment, she found herself facing the questions hidden in her mind. She lay for a few minutes, her eyes closed. She must pause, she told herself, she must take thought of what she was to do with herself—and with Jared. The time of mourning for Arnold, even for Edwin, was over. Another spring had come, another love, a new life was about to begin. But what was that life to be? It was still within her power to decide, although such was her obsession with Jared that it might not be within her power if she met him again, unfortified by decision. She was dismayed to realize her own weakness. I am capable of anything, she thought in shocked dismay. I am entirely capable of seducing him. That is what I am afraid I might do! If we are alone together somewhere, some evening, even here in this house, I could do it. And he would not resist. He has passed the point of resistance. He is beginning to think of me in that w
ay.
She was aware of a double self in this thinking. One self delighted in the possibility of seduction, oh, yes, of course a seduction so skillfully brought about that he would appear the aggressor and she the one who yielded. The other self? At this moment that one appeared as vague, as wavering as a ghost. The morning sun shone too warmly into the luxurious bedroom, the bed was too soft, her body too ready with healthy desire. She could only remember last night when, pressed to him, they had moved as one through the slow steps of the dance. For a moment she submitted to desire, then unable to endure her loneliness, she threw back the covers and got out of bed.
This daily ritual, this tending of the flesh! She stood before the mirror and twisted her long loose hair about her head and pinned it, ready for her morning shower. Then she leaned forward and examined her image. She was still beautiful in the morning, but would he ever see her so? Without makeup, she still had color, her lips softly red, a mild flush on her cheeks, her eyes blue under her lightly marked brows. She had good eyes, people always noticed her eyes, and seeing herself, she seemed to see another woman, a woman awakened to new life of some sort, the cool exterior changed, the poise gone, a tremulous, questioning, shy woman, puzzled, perhaps, or not quite daring enough. It was she, and facing herself, she was afraid again. She moved away from the image and made haste to return to the routine of bath and dress, of breakfast served as usual at the small table set for her alone in the bay window of the dining room, and Weston, waiting on her in grave silence while she drank orange juice and ate her usual meal, boiled egg and bacon and a slice of wheaten bread, without butter.
The Goddess Abides: A Novel Page 13
