“Is he at home?”
“He’s just using the phone at Bumps.”
This was ominous. “Italian’s fine. Tell him I’ll be home by five and that I’ll be starving.”
Irini filled the sink for the pillowcases. Claire looked at them doubtfully. “Handmade laces should be basted to cheesecloth before washing,” she said.
“Good golly,” said Irini.
“Good point,” said Claire. “And you can bring out the cream color, by soaking it in a light tea. Very light. Very diluted.”
“How do you know this stuff?” asked Irini.
“I read Maggie’s columns. Don’t you? Maybe instead of basting you can wash and rinse in a glass jar. Fill the jar with suds, and let the pillowcases soak. Shake occasionally.”
“Do you have a jar large enough?”
“I have an old pickle jar. When you get to the copper, use ketchup and steel wool.”
“Really?” asked Irini.
“Cross my heart.”
Irini ate the last pickle. She washed the jar and dropped in the pillowcases, where they floated like preserved fruits or discarded gallstones.
She picked up the ketchup and took the pots to the dining-room table. She spread newspapers on the table and used the steel wool and lots of muscle. By the time she finished, the first load of sheets was done.
It was cool outside but breezy. The sheets would dry quickly once she could get them up. Norma was already sliding down from the roof. “There’s a nest in the chimney,” she said. “I’ll have to come back later.”
“What kind?”
“Swallow.”
“Eggs?”
“Eggs, but no mama. I don’t know if she’s still around or not. I’m going to go look in Mr. Henry’s nets.”
The sheets were large and the day was windy. Irini struggled with the corners; the sheets fought against every pin. They twisted and billowed and slapped her wetly in the face. It was a sort of natural semaphore. Irini decoded it as she worked—“Surrender, Dorothy.”
Someone had let the dogs escape. The boxer ripped a top sheet from the line and dragged it off while Irini chased. Ten minutes later she retrieved the sheet by feigning disinterest. The dogs were so dumb. Fortunately the sheet was so badly ripped and ruined that rewashing it was out of the question. If only this had happened before she washed it.
At two o’clock they broke for a late lunch. Irini shook her pickle jar and ate a peanut butter sandwich. She noticed that Tracy was not speaking to Norma. Apparently Tracy had worked up a temper while vacuuming, and of course this was Irini’s fault. Fortunately Norma was oblivious.
After lunch Irini went to collect the area rugs.
“Beat first or vacuum first?” she asked Arlys.
“Beat first.”
“Vacuum first or dust first?”
“Vacuum first.”
“Just testing you,” Irini said.
She covered her mouth and nose with her scarf like a bandit. Beating rugs was a nasty, gritty job. It was a shame that cleaning should make you so dirty. Irini got a bit of sand in the corner of her eye. She was dabbing at it with one grimy hand when she heard Thomas Holcrow behind her.
“Don’t shoot, Irini,” he said. “You know I’d give you anything you asked for.” He pulled a spotless handkerchief from his pocket, cupped her chin with one hand and poked at her eye with the handkerchief in the other. His face was very close to her face. “I see it,” he said. “Hold still now. Don’t blink.”
Tears streamed from her eyes. She needed to wipe her nose, but his hand was in the way. Tears could be attractively feminine. But this other…
He pointed at her. It confused her for a moment until she understood that he was merely showing her the black speck he’d found. “Say, Irini. It’s as big as your eyeball.”
“Thank you,” Irini said. She could still feel the spot where his hand had touched her chin. It started a hot current which ran down her neck and into her heart. It set up a shivering inside.
“Is Mr. Henry here?” he asked.
“Gone fishing,” said Irini.
“He had some books for me. Maybe I can find them myself.” Holcrow winked at her, put his handkerchief away and vanished into Collins House, as if he were the Lone Ranger or something. Irini nailed the rug with a vicious backhand stroke.
By five the house was polished from front to back, from top to bottom. The beds were made, the chandelier was hung, the rugs were back on the floors, the sheets were back on the beds, the dogs were back in the yard. Holcrow had left, although Irini hadn’t seen it happen.
She walked home to her own disheveled house. Tweed was waiting to be fed. Otherwise the place was empty. About six o’clock, her father called.
“I’m putting him through,” said Cindy.
“Don’t make dinner for me,” he told Irini. “I’m going to eat at Bumps tonight. Norma defrosted some of her kill and Mrs. Baldish is whipping up a casserole. She won’t give me the recipe, but from my bar stool here, it looks to be about four parts wild turkey to one part Wild Turkey. You fiddle with those percentages a bit, and you’ll have what I’d call a casserole. Don’t wait up, Irini, my darling. I’ll be home before dawn and singing as I come.”
21
Maggie celebrated India’s independence and Ada’s return with an all-Indian menu. There was a chicken curry, very mild, served with raisins and red peanuts, a cardamom-flavored yogurt, and a dessert made of batter balls, which had been deep-fried and drowned in a sweet syrup. According to Maggie these balls approximated some Indian delicacy, but Claire had made them more quickly and easily than the Indian housewife by using the hated Bisquick. Only for Ada.
The meal was published in Women at Home, having first been taste-tested at a slide show Ada held in the school multipurpose room to educate the citizens of Magrit in the principles of nonviolence. It was the first slide show Magrit had ever seen. Henry was beside himself. Thirty-five millimeter cameras! A real screen. Real-life colors.
Even Mrs. Tarken came, wearing her best bedroom slippers. Walter was there to run the projector. Holcrow turned up, which meant that most of the Sweethearts also attended. Holcrow spilled curry down the front of his white shirt and was given much fluttery advice about Javelle waters and bleaches. In point of fact it was an attractive look for him, sort of helpless and masculine. It would have been a shame to clean him up.
He gave Walter a hand with the folding chairs and they talked about California, all very friendly. Walter had taken too much sun at the last game; his nose was as pink and shiny as a cooked shrimp. It gave him a boyish look again, fourteen-year-old Walter who’d taken her out secretly to let her jump from the boys’ tree, where absolutely no girls were allowed, into the waters of Upper Magrit, where absolutely no kids were allowed.
“Hello, Walter,” said Irini, and Walter not only refused to answer, but took an ostentatious seat by Sissy. “Hello, Tom,” Irini said to Holcrow, who gave her a heart-stopping smile—as if the sight of her was more than he could have hoped for, more than he deserved—but went to sit with Helen. Irini sat between Margo and Arlys.
Ada was dressed in midnight blue and wore no jewelry. She had stopped in New York to get her hair cut. It was now quite short and lifted in a silvery wave up and off her face. She was understated but elegant, which wasn’t the usual Magrit style. The food wasn’t the usual Magrit fare. In some subtle way, the evening was off to a bad start.
Ada stood before a large map of India and made occasional stabs at it with a pointer to show where the borders between India and Pakistan would be. Even on paper it seemed a very unwieldy arrangement. Then Henry turned out the lights.
Ada was too stiff to be a good public speaker, but she did better in the dark. She described the caste system briefly, and spoke feelingly about the plight of the untouchables. She also spoke on behalf of the women in India. In the Chicago paper last month a Dr. Madison of Mercy Hospital in Cleveland had published the results of a study suggesting tha
t the prime childbearing age for women occured before their sixteenth birthdays. Many of the mothers in India were younger than sixteen and Ada saw nothing beneficial in this.
“Of course Dr. Madison was not advocating young mothers,” Henry said. “Of course there are social and psychological considerations. But a scientist must report his findings no matter what they are, no matter what his personal hopes and beliefs. This is the greatness, the grandeur of science. It is absolutely neutral, absolutely without prejudice or malice—”
He was not finished, but Walter interrupted him by advancing another slide. A woman with many arms and a deadly expression appeared. “The goddess Kali,” said Ada. Having finished with social issues she was turning to aesthetic ones. The next slides showed the temples, the fields, the statuary. Magrit was shocked to see a naked, large-breasted, round-bellied woman on the screen in the school multipurpose room, even if she was carved from stone. Sometimes Magrit forgot that Ada was an artist. The stone woman’s nipples were the size of walnuts and twice as hard.
Walter hurried on to a slide of Nehru, standing with a group of men all in suits, all rather fuzzy and faroff. Ada had not caught up to him yet. “A fertility symbol,” she said.
“As if India needs one,” said Henry. “You could argue, I think, that India’s problems stem entirely from overpopulation. This Muslim-Hindu animosity is merely a symptom. It’s called ‘the crowded cage behavior.’ ”
“Then why are you encouraging preadolescent motherhood?” asked Ada.
He turned the lights on. “Of course, I’m not. I was merely trying to say that a scientist must report a scientific finding and not suppress it.”
“I think we make far too much of science,” said Ada. “Could I have the lights off, please?”
It was humid and close in the multipurpose room. Irini began to envy the thinly dressed Indians on the screen. A cricket had found its way under the stage. It sang ceaselessly beneath Ada’s voice. The rhythmical click of the slides, the cricket, and the heat made Irini sleepy. She put her arms on the back of Mrs. Gilbertsen’s seat and her head on her arms. A vague recollection of a dream tickled her. There had been a sky with several suns. They rose one after another and hung between the clouds like Chinese lanterns, like home runs. The sky was bright and intolerably beautiful. Irini lay below on the clipped grass of a real outfield. She was not dressed, and it seemed appropriate that she be remembering this in the school multipurpose room, the scene of so many distressingly undressed dreams. But this dream was not like that. Being naked had seemed perfectly all right. An unknown man lay beside her on the grass.
The back of her neck was wet and hot. The skin of her arms turned blue and black in the constant shadow play of the slides. She closed her eyes and the shadows moved to the backs of her eyelids. She thought about kissing someone. She thought about someone kissing her first.
Ada apologized for the fact that there was no slide of Gandhi. It was a conundrum, a poser, a Chinese puzzle from the mysterious east. Irini opened her eyes and raised her head to see the no slide. The screen was blank with light. In a way it was the most dazzling picture yet. Irini could see Holcrow’s profile, lit up in the reflected light like a half-moon.
Ada said that she had been permitted to see Gandhi, but not to photograph him. In order to earn the audience, Ada had been forced to learn to spin. Spinning was central to Gandhi’s philosophies and Ada announced her intention to continue it at home in Magrit and to teach the skill to anyone else who wished. She proposed substituting it for the Wednesday bridge game. The only thing this accomplished was to give the members of Magrit’s bridge group a sudden motive to discredit Gandhi.
“Why spinning?” asked Mrs. Fossum, “as opposed to crochet? Or needlepoint?”
“Or quilting,” said Mrs. Baldish. “Or beekeeping? Or collecting spoons,” but neither woman had spoken loudly enough for Ada to hear. Ada finished up with a series of slides of a small wooden building and her promise that Gandhi was inside. Henry turned on the lights. Ada retrieved a set of index cards from her purse and began to read off them.
“Satyagraha,” Ada read, “means holding on to truth and truth, in the Mahatma’s philosophies, is expressed as action, rather than as thought. Satyagraha is a technique for political and social change based on nonviolence and a willingness to suffer in order to find or create truth.”
Two rows to the front Irini could see Holcrow leaning over to say something to Helen. He had probably complimented her. Poor, shy Helen was rigid beside him. Irini would have known how to take the compliment. If Henry would just turn out the lights again, Irini might be able to imagine kissing Holcrow. It was hard with the lights on and the stain on his shirt and these constant interruptions. Irini tried, but was forced to give up long before their mouths touched.
“Has Gandhi considered the fact that aggression may be natural to humans? Has he done studies?” Henry asked. “It might be more effective to channel aggression rather than attempt to eradicate it. Does he understand Darwin at all? In the end, we’re all animals.”
Ada consulted her note cards. “At the core of the Mahatma’s philosophies is the concept of ahimsa, but this is not merely a passive refusal to do harm. It is an active, aggressive benevolence. When nonviolence is undertaken simply because the strength for violence is lacking, then it will fail. The mouse can’t be said to practice nonviolence against the cat.”
“So what are the mouse’s options?” Mr. Baldish asked.
“The same as they’ve always been. The mouse can run and the mouse can hide. The mouse has no obligation to face the cat and be eaten. The truth is not found in this course.”
“This course is dessert,” said Henry.
“Violence is forbidden to man because man is incapable of knowing the absolute truth. What appears to be truth to you, may appear false to another. You must approach those who differ from you in unending openness of mind.” Ada’s voice placed a grim emphasis on the last sentence.
Irini couldn’t put her head down with the lights on, when everyone would see, couldn’t close her eyes, but within these limits she had been drifting, dozing, circling. She thought of a mouse the Tarkens’ cat had caught and the disgusting pleasure it had taken in prolonging the kill, tossing it up, over and over, like a furry, squealing pop fly. And because it was Sissy’s cat this made her think of Sissy and then of Walter and the fight they were having. The fight was entirely her fault, but it had gone on so long now she was forgetting to feel guilty over it. Just how long did Walter plan to hold a grudge? And then Holcrow spoke and she began to pay attention again.
“It seems naive to me,” said Holcrow. “What if we had refused to fight the Germans?”
Mr. Tarken shook his head. “What would we have done without Mr. Churchill? That’s what I’d like to know.”
“It’s become a cliché to suggest that Gandhi’s principles of nonviolence would not have worked against the Nazis,” Ada said, cunningly accusing Holcrow and Mr. Tarken not only of wrong thinking, but of tired, uninspired wrong thinking. “According to this reasoning, Gandhi is just lucky that he happened to be dealing with the civilized British. In fact, Gandhi has faced many opponents, both in India and South Africa, and among the most difficult are some of the Indians themselves. Mr. Gandhi is no stranger to evil.”
Ada told Magrit that the Mahatma had not spoken to her, since her audience coincided with a self-imposed day of silence as well as a day of fasting. This fasting for clarity was not to be confused with the fast as a political weapon.
“An odd weapon to choose in a country where so many are starving,” Henry observed heartily. “May we conclude that Gandhi’s mother said, ‘You clean your plate, young man, before you leave the table’ once too often?” Henry had moved from the light switch to the front of the room. Irini could no longer see him. He had dipped behind the rounded hillock that was Mrs. Baldish.
“The argument about Nazis is based, therefore, on a misunderstanding of the Mahatma’s theories,�
� Ada said. “There is nothing passive about Gandhian nonviolence. It is an active, positive opposition which includes total noncooperation. It is also dialectical, if I may use the word without offending. Your opponent affects your strategies. The methods you use against the British are not the methods you use against the Nazis. The Mahatma didn’t develop the strategies to be used against the Nazis, so we don’t know what they would have been. And always remember, in satyagraha you are committed to the long term.”
Henry affected an accent. “You finish your breakfast, young man. There are children starving in India.” Irini’s father laughed loudly. Everyone turned to look at him. He made an apologetic gesture, and probably only Irini knew him well enough to guess that it was the accent he had found so funny and not the joke. The accent was outlandish, otherworldly, perhaps Scottish with some Hoosier highlights. Henry didn’t hear well enough to do accents.
Ada fixed Irini’s father with a stony stare. “The Mahatma uses no dairy products and drinks no liquors.”
“Gandhi could be depriving people of a prime source of calcium. Has he done studies?” Henry’s disembodied voice cracked once, giving the word “people” a froggy emphasis. “Does he really understand Darwin? We’re at the top of the food chain. It’s a scientific fact.”
“And isn’t that just a pleasant way of admitting that we are food?” said Irini’s father.
“Eat or be eaten,” Henry agreed. “Bon appetit.”
“Eat and be eaten was more my point.”
“It’s not really a method for an individual, though, is it?” said Fanny diplomatically to Ada. “It seems to require masses of people. I don’t see it working in this country. We’re not really a nation of followers.”
“We’re exactly the country which ought to be most interested,” Ada argued. “When must you practice nonviolence? When the weapons you have are too terrible to be used.”
“Who would we use nonviolence against?” Holcrow asked. “The British left some time ago. Not, I might add, without bloodshed. We’re a democracy. I don’t see the need.”
The Sweetheart Season Page 19
