The World in the Evening

by Christopher Isherwood

  Dolgelly Station came sooner than I’d expected. I started out of my thoughts to find that I was staring at its signboard, and I had to hurry to get myself off the train, which only stopped two minutes. The station was just like several of the other stations we had passed, and the drug-store opposite to it was shiny and new. Nothing to recognize there. A taxi was standing at the bottom of the station steps. I asked the driver if he knew Tawelfan. When he said that he did, I felt surprised. It was as if I hadn’t quite believed, until this moment, that the place really still existed.

  When we turned into Boundary Lane, I did start very dimly remembering. It was a proper lane, like the lanes of southern England, with high-banked hedgerows and overarching trees. The fresh foliage was thick already; and, by full summer, the houses along it would be mostly hidden. Tawelfan, I knew, was at the top of the hill, standing far back from the road at the end of a driveway with a long white gate. Sarah had often told me about that gate, and how I’d loved to ride on it, and how I’d been forbidden to because it was set rather crooked and swung violently open by its own momentum, banging against the gatestone hard enough to throw you if you didn’t hang on tight. Finally, it seems that I was thrown off and landed on my head. I didn’t remember the accident, but I still carried a faint scar on the right temple, where they had put in the stitches.

  However, the gate had gone now, and the driveway was shorter than I’d expected. There was no time to register a clear total impression, a real image I could superimpose on my memories of the yellowed photographs in Sarah’s album. But, as far as I could judge, everything seemed to be more or less in place: the tall maple on the lawn, the dark firwood to the left, the great barn to the right and, in the centre, the whitewashed, lopsided stone house. Tawelfan was actually two houses of different ages and sizes, joined together. The smaller and older building, a severely plain little early-nineteenth-century farmhouse, had a porch and a high brick chimney; the larger and newer was a pretentious copy with slightly bogus additions—shutters that were too fancy, dormer windows that were overly picturesque. As was only natural, there were two front doors.

  The newer front door was standing half open, and a little one-eyed dog, a Boston Bull, dashed out barking, as the taxi stopped. He barked around my ankles while I paid the driver, and meanwhile Sarah herself appeared in the doorway; a small compact resolute figure, eager and girlish, despite her white untidy hair. Sarah’s hair had always been untidy; and it seemed to me that the only thing about her that had changed was its colour, in all the years I’d known her. Her eyes and spectacles shone with excitement. ‘Stephen,’ she cried, ‘welcome home!’

  I bent my knees slightly and she threw her arms around my neck, pressing my face against her soft wrinkled cheek. She smelled very clean. I just stopped myself in the act of patting her bottom—a conditioned reflex.

  ‘Stephen, my dearest boy! How was the journey? Not bad, I hope? I was getting anxious. I expected you hours ago.’

  ‘We had to wait a while in Chicago. There was a storm somewhere around.’

  ‘Well, let me look at you. My, but you’re so thin! I’m sure that isn’t Jane’s fault. Too many late nights, I expect? Tell me the truth, now! I’ve heard all about those Hollywood parties.’

  ‘Why, Aunt Sarah! You’ve been reading those mean old gossip columnists. They all exaggerate.’

  ‘And look—you cut yourself! What were you doing? Fixing yourself a midnight snack, I’ll be bound? That’s what comes of letting a man inside the kitchen.’

  ‘Oh—that?’ I looked down, somewhat disconcerted, at the sticking plaster around my thumb. Sarah had eyes like a hawk. ‘That’s nothing. I scarcely felt it.’

  We got ourselves into the house; not without difficulty, for Sarah tried to help me with my bag, and the Boston Bull was jumping and snapping underfoot.

  ‘Thee doesn’t know thy Uncle Stephen, does thee, Saul?’

  ‘Hello, Saul.’ I stooped down and held out my hand. But the dog backed away from me, growling. That was a strange thing about Sarah’s pets; they were nearly always ill-natured. She seemed to be drawn instinctively to problem-animals.

  ‘Saul and I found each other last year, in New York. That was a terribly hot summer, you know, and I working up in Harlem, at the Friends’ Centre. Well, one night I came back to my room—I was so weary that I was walking in my sleep, almost—and he followed me. At first, I tried to shut him out, thinking he must belong to someone in the house. But he stood before my door and barked and barked. And then—well, I’m afraid I said something dreadfully profane—’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘I said: “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” I just cannot imagine what brought the words into my mouth; but that’s how he got his name … Of course, I don’t tell that story to everybody—’

  ‘I should hope not! They’d put you out of Meeting.’

  Sarah giggled: ‘Why, Stephen! You wouldn’t tell on me? I can trust you, surely?’

  ‘I’ll have to think it over. At any rate, I’ve got something on you, now.’

  It was like talking a foreign language again after a long time, a language you thought you’d forgotten. The Sarah-Stephen language had its limitations; there were many things you couldn’t say in it, at all. But how comforting and safe it was, just for that very reason! Once started, the sentences came to me fluently enough, even though they did sound rather like quotations from a phrase-book.

  Meanwhile, I was looking around the living-room for something I could recognize. There was nothing. But this was hardly surprising; for, as I now remembered, the whole place had been redecorated by my arty Uncle George, who had lived here until his death, five years ago. In trying to catch the authentic farm-parlour atmosphere, he had merely succeeded in assembling a self-conscious museum. There were huge mahogany cabinets with glass doors curved like bay windows, and Victorian Gothic wall-brackets, and black Pennsylvania Dutch chests decorated with twin hearts in gold and red. A gasolier wired for electricity hung from the ceiling, which was covered with embossed sheet-metal.

  ‘Well,’ Sarah asked, beaming at me, ‘how does it feel to be back?’

  ‘Wonderful!’ I made it sound as enthusiastic as I could. She was watching every movement of my face.

  ‘Oh, Stephen, you don’t know—you can’t possibly know—how happy I am that you’re here! If only your darling Mother could see us! We’re going to have some great times together, aren’t we, you and I?’

  How small and frail she was! How vulnerable, yet throbbing with an intense life, like a bird. I noticed that the frame of her spectacles had been mended with wire, very awkwardly; most likely, she had done it herself.

  ‘Sure we are.’

  Jane, Jane, Jane, Jane. Suddenly it had started up inside me again, like a toothache. Jane, where are you now? Aren’t you thinking about me? Don’t you want me back? Don’t you even care if I hate you? Don’t you care for me at all? What am I doing here, three thousand miles away from you, talking to this old woman? I have no business to be in this house, infecting it with my nasty boring misery. I ought never to have come here at all.

  ‘I haven’t asked you yet how Jane is.’

  ‘Jane’s fine,’ I said, instantly on guard; I had forgotten about Sarah’s dangerous powers of telepathy.

  ‘Is she coming East, too?’

  ‘I don’t know … Not right now.’

  ‘I suppose she finds a great deal to occupy her, out there?’

  ‘Yes—she does.’

  ‘I must write to her, bless her heart. I want to thank her for letting you visit with me.’

  ‘You don’t have to do that.’

  ‘Oh, but I’d like to. Though I’m sure she knows just how I feel. She must be missing you already, and sorry she ever let you go. That’s the worst of having such a popular husband! But she’ll never complain, will she? Jane’s a very brave little person.’

  ‘Sure. It takes a real heroine to do without me.’ I forced a grin, to cove
r my irritation. That was so exactly like Sarah. She scarcely knew Jane at all—they had met only a couple of times, when we were in New York, last year—and here she was, claiming full possession of her. Sarah used to do that in the old days, with the friends I brought back from school. Within an hour, she would know far more than I did about their homes and families, and be taking a positively vampirish interest in their hobbies, batting averages and school-work. And she never could understand why this made me so mad at her.

  ‘Why, Stephen Monk, I do declare you haven’t changed one particle! Always teasing your poor old Auntie. And you know she just loves it!’ Sarah squeezed my arm. Then her glance fell on the sun-and-moon face of a grandfather clock which stood in the corner. ‘My lands—is it that late? I must be about my business. Let’s see if everything’s to rights in your room.’

  There was a doorway in the wall that separated the two houses. You went down three steps into the low-ceilinged dining-room which must once have been the parlour of the original farmhouse. Sarah led the way across it to what looked like the door of a closet, and was actually the entrance to a very steep, narrow staircase completely boxed in between white-painted boards and lighted only by one small stained-glass window. Whenever I’d thought about Tawelfan, I’d always remembered this window. It had a design of blue grapes and yellow leaves against a diamond of red. I must have spent hours at it, as a kid, peering out at the garden through the different colours of the glass; changing the scene, at will, from colour-mood to colour-mood and experiencing the pure pleasure of sensations which need no analysis. (‘That’s my idea of heaven,’ Elizabeth said once, when I’d told her about the window: ‘A place where you don’t have to describe anything.’) How had red felt, at the age of four? What had blue meant? Why was yellow? Perhaps, if I could somehow know that, now, I should understand everything else that had happened to me in the interval. But I never should know. The whole organ of cognition had changed, and I had nothing left to know with. If I looked through that window now, I should see nothing but a lot of adjectives.

  ‘The house isn’t looking at all the way it should,’ said Sarah, who was climbing the stairs ahead of me. ‘I’m afraid the last tenants were far from considerate. And then there’s such a terrible lot to clean.’

  ‘Why don’t we throw this junk out, then; and put in some of that modern French furniture? You know—all glass and aluminium and string. You could wash it down with the garden hose.’

  Sarah chuckled, after first turning and glancing quickly back at my face to make sure I wasn’t serious. No doubt she thought me quite capable of any extravagance, like some mad nineteenth-century German prince.

  As we reached the top of the staircase, Saul, who had squeezed himself past us, came scampering out through a half-open doorway on to the corridor.

  ‘Saul’s been getting your room ready for you,’ Sarah said.

  ‘Thanks, Saul. I certainly appreciate it.’ Saul’s eyes met mine with a look of most undoglike contempt. I had the feeling that he and I understood each other, by virtue of our mutual antipathy, far more profoundly than Sarah, in her innocence, would ever guess.

  ‘I hope I haven’t forgotten anything,’ she murmured to herself, as she led the way into the bedroom: ‘Soap, towels, an ashtray—you do still smoke, don’t you, Stephen?’

  ‘I’m afraid so, Aunt Sarah. But while I’m here we’re going to lick this thing together. I’m counting on you to help me wrestle with the Demon Nicotine.’

  Sarah spluttered with amusement. She loved that kind of talk.

  ‘Oh, Stephen, you dreadful boy! As if I could ever help you, when you know it’s always you that leads me astray! What about that Martini you gave me at the Barbizon Plaza?’

  ‘Well, I never said to drink it. I just wanted you to know how they smelled, in case you ever led a temperance crusade.’

  ‘If I live to be a hundred, never shall I forget that horrible taste.’

  ‘Listen—you liked it fine. And don’t you deny it. You were pretty happy afterward, when we walked in the Park. I seem to remember you singing—what was it? Jeepers, creepers, where’d ya get those peepers—’

  ‘Why, of all the wicked untruths! I never even heard of such a song! You know I didn’t!’

  ‘Well, of course, if you deny it there’s no more to be said.’ I was suddenly tired of the Martini episode; it threatened to grow into one of Sarah’s many sagas. I dumped my suitcase on the bed, opened it and was starting to unpack when I remembered the file of Elizabeth’s letters, which lay inside, wrapped in my pyjamas. If Sarah saw it, there would be more questions. I pretended to feel a need for a cigarette and stopped to take out my case and light one.

  Sarah watched me, dabbing two small tears of laughter from her eyes with the corner of her handkerchief. ‘Where’s the rest of your baggage?’ she wanted to know.

  ‘Oh—’ I became very vague, ‘that’ll be coming along later, I guess.’ And I thought how I would have to sneak out and buy some more clothes, as soon as Sarah had had time to forget about it.

  ‘And now you’ll be wanting to wash up. You’d like to eat early, I expect? I’ll have supper ready in half an hour.’

  ‘I’ll be right down to help you.’

  ‘Fiddlesticks! We don’t allow the men to work, around here. Besides, there’s really nothing to do. Gerda fixed most of it, before she went out—’ Sarah checked herself, putting her hand over her mouth with an archly theatrical gesture: ‘Mercy, what an old chatterbox I am! And I’d meant it for a surprise! Well, the mischief’s done now, so I may as well tell you. She’s here already! She arrived the day before yesterday.’

  ‘Oh—good.’

  I must have looked slightly blank, for Sarah exclaimed reproachfully: ‘Why, Stephen—don’t tell me you’ve forgotten? Gerda—Gerda Mannheim. You know—the girl I wrote you all about.’

  ‘Yes—oh sure, of course.’ I hadn’t the faintest idea whom Sarah meant; but that was hardly surprising, because I seldom read her letters beyond the first couple of paragraphs. They were so terribly long and incoherent, and she wrote them (being constantly anxious not to waste anything) in a microscopic hand on various odd scraps of paper, such as grocery bills and the covers of Quaker pamphlets about peace. ‘Gerda Mannheim,’ I repeated, trying to fix the name in my mind.

  ‘The formalities were settled even sooner than I’d hoped. I went to see the District Attorney myself; and, I must admit, he was very co-operative.’

  ‘That’s swell.’ I decided that this Mannheim girl must be one of Sarah’s criminals—quite possibly a murderess—who was being released from the State Penitentiary on parole. Sarah had a passion for criminals. She had made herself responsible for several such cases, already. And they had found admirable jobs and married and settled down—all except one, who had strangled her nearly to death and set fire to the house and was now in an insane asylum.

  ‘Gerda’s a very lovely person. So thoroughly straight. You two are going to be the greatest friends, I’m sure.’

  ‘She must have had a pretty rough deal,’ I said, angling for further information.

  ‘Oh, Stephen—when you hear the rest of her story! Such heartbreak! Such dreadful insecurity and fear! And now she comes to us, asking for a new life, something to believe in and hope for. We must try hard to give it to her, mustn’t we?’

  ‘Yes, we must.’

  ‘She’s gone into Philadelphia, now, to visit friends—some of her own people. So I’m afraid you won’t see her until tomorrow morning.’

  ‘That’s too bad.’ I felt greatly relieved. I was beginning to be deathly tired; in no mood to face any stranger—least of all a reformed murderess with a lovely disposition and a demand for faith and hope. Sarah must have sensed this, for she said briskly: ‘Come, Saul, we’ll leave Uncle Stephen in peace.’

  When the door had closed behind them, I walked across to the window and stood there, looking out. The faded crimson barn showed all its cracks and weatherstains in the clear r
ainy light. Below me, was the orchard, and the spring-house standing among dogwood trees that would very soon be in flower. And away beyond them, down at the bottom of the shallow valley, you could see the roofs of Dolgelly village against a background of low wooded hills. Those woods seemed wilder and more tangled than the woods of England, and they reminded you that this country was only so recently snug and suburban; that this used to be an outpost of a world, a front-line of fanatically humourless, drably heroic men and women, entrenched behind their Bibles and prejudices, their dark stuffy clothes and their stone farmhouse walls, grimly confronting the pagan wilderness.

  Turning from the window, I inspected the room. A brass bedstead. Two hand-coloured Audubon etchings; an American Flamingo and a Snowy Heron. A marble-topped bureau. A washstand with bowl and pitcher; for decoration only, since there was also a modern built-in washbowl with running water. Striped blue wallpaper with golden flowers. All unfamiliar. Nothing whatsoever to prompt me to the sensations you are supposed to have on returning to the first room you ever saw in your life.

  Yes, I had been born here; probably in this very bed. It didn’t signify anything. Jane had never slept with me here; Elizabeth had never looked out of this window, never seen those woods. This was really a fresh start; or, at worst, a dead end. After thirty-two years, I had come back to the room I was born in, bringing nobody with me, nothing except a suitcase. Now at last, I told myself with apprehension and excitement, I’ve actually done it. I’ve cut all the life-lines, kicked away all the props. From here on in, whatever happens, I’ll be entirely on my own.

  3

  SARAH WAS EXPLAINING that Tawelfan means in Welsh ‘The Quiet Place’, that Dolgelly, also, is a Welsh name, and that the village, like several others in this neighbourhood, had been founded by Welsh settlers during the eighteenth century. From force of habit, she had assumed the consciously informal attitude in which she would have addressed a Friends’ Meeting for business; leaning forward a little in her chair with her hands resting on the table, loosely clasped. She spoke slowly, loudly and very distinctly, so that Gerda Mannheim should understand.