3
Mrs Powers lay in her bed aware of her long body beneath strange sheets, hearing the hushed night sounds of a hotel — muffled footfalls along mute carpeted corridors, discreet opening and shutting of doors, somewhere a murmurous pulse of machinery — all with that strange propensity which sounds, anywhere else soothing, have, when heard in a hotel, for keeping you awake. Her mind and body warming to the old familiarity of sleep became empty, then as she settled her body to the bed, shaping it for slumber, it filled with a remembered troubling sadness.
She thought of her husband youngly dead in France in a recurrence of fretful exasperation with having been tricked by a wanton Fate: a joke amusing to no one. Just when she had calmly decided that they had taken advantage of a universal hysteria for the purpose of getting of each other a brief ecstasy, just when she had decided calmly that they were better quit of each other with nothing to mar the memory of their three days together and had written him so, wishing him luck, she must be notified casually and impersonally that he had been killed in action. So casually, so impersonally; as if Richard Powers, with whom she had spent three days, were one man and Richard Powers commanding a platoon in the —— Division were another.
And she being young must again know all the terror of parting, of that passionate desire to cling to something concrete in a dark world, in spite of war departments. He had not even got her letter! This in some way seemed the infidelity: having him die still believing in her, bored though they both probably were.
She turned feeling sheets like water, warming by her bodily heat, upon her legs.
Oh, damn, damn. What a rotten trick you played on me. She recalled those nights during which they had tried to eradicate tomorrows from the world. Two rotten tricks, she thought. Anyway, I know what I’ll do with the insurance, she added, wondering what Dick thought about it — if he did know or care.
Her shoulder rounded upward, into her vision, the indication of her covered turning body swelled and died away towards the foot of the bed: she lay staring down the tunnel of her room, watching the impalpable angles of furniture, feeling through plastered smug walls a rumour of spring outside. The airshaft was filled with a prophecy of April come again into the world. Like a heedless idiot into a world that had forgotten spring. The white connecting door took the vague indication of a transom and held it in a mute and luminous plane, and obeying an impulse she rose and slipped on a dressing-gown.
The door opened quietly under her hand. The room, like hers, was a suggestion of furniture, identically vague. She could hear Mahon’s breathing and she found a light switch with her fingers. Under his scarred brow he slept, the light full and sudden on his closed eyes did not disturb him. And she knew in an instinctive flash what was wrong with him, why his motions were hesitating, ineffectual.
He’s going blind, she said, bending over him. He slept and after a while there were sounds without the door. She straightened up swiftly and the noises ceased. Then the door opened to a blundering key and Gilligan entered supporting Cadet Lowe, glassy-eyed and quite drunk.
Gilligan, standing his lax companion upright, said:
‘Good afternoon, ma’am.’
Lowe muttered wetly and Gilligan continued:
‘Look at this lonely mariner I got here. Sail on, O proud and lonely,’ he told his attached and aimless burden. Cadet Lowe muttered again, not intelligible. His eyes were like two oysters.
‘Huh?’ asked Gilligan. ‘Come on, be a man: speak to the nice lady.’
Cadet Lowe repeated himself liquidly and she whispered: ‘Shhh: be quiet.’
‘Oh,’ said Gilligan with surprise, ‘Loot’s asleep, huh? What’s he want to sleep for, this time of day?’
Lowe with quenchless optimism essayed speech again and Gilligan, comprehending, said:
‘That’s what you want, is it? Why couldn’t you come out like a man and say it? Wants to go to bed, for some reason,’ he explained to Mrs Powers.
‘That’s where he belongs,’ she said; and Gilligan with alcoholic care led his companion to the other bed and with the exaggerated caution of the inebriate laid him upon it. Lowe drawing his knees up sighed and turn his back to them, but Gilligan dragging at his legs removed his puttees and shoes, taking each shoe in both hands and placing it on a table. She leaned against the foot of Mahon’s bed, fitting her long thigh to the hard rail, until he had finished.
At last Lowe, freed of his shoes, turned sighing to the wall and she said:
‘How drunk are you, Joe?’
‘Not very, ma’am. What’s wrong? Loot need something?’
Mahon slept and Cadet Lowe immediately slept.
‘I want to talk to you, Joe. About him,’ she added quickly, feeling Gilligan’s stare. ‘Can you listen or had you rather go to bed and talk it over in the morning?’
Gilligan, focusing his eyes, answered:
‘Why, now suits me. Always oblige a lady.’
Making her decision suddenly she said:
‘Come in my room then.’
‘Sure: lemme get my bottle and I’m your man.’
She returned to her room while he sought his bottle and when he joined her she was sitting on her bed, clasping her knees, wrapped in a blanket Gilligan drew up a chair.
‘Joe, do you know he’s going blind?’ she said abruptly.
After a time her face became a human face and holding it in his vision he said:
‘I know more than that. He’s going to die.’
‘Die?’
‘Yes, ma’am. If I ever seen death in a man’s face, it’s in his. Goddam this world,’ he burst out suddenly.
‘Shhh!’ she whispered.
‘That’s right, I forgot,’ he said swiftly.
She clasped her knees, huddled beneath the blanket, changing the position of her body as it became cramped, feeling the wooden head board of the bed, wondering why there were not iron beds, wondering why everything was as it was — iron beds, why you deliberately took certain people to break your intimacy, why these people died, why you yet took others. . . . Will my death be like this: fretting and exasperating? Am I cold by nature, or have I spent all my emotional coppers, that I don’t seem to feel things like others? Dick, Dick. Ugly and dead.
Gilligan sat brittlely in his chair, focusing his eyes with an effort, having those instruments of vision evade him, slimy as broken eggs. Lights completing a circle, an orbit; she with two faces sitting on two beds, clasping four arms around her knees. . . . Why can’t a man be very happy or very unhappy? It’s only a sort of pale mixture of the two. Like beer when you want a shot — or a drink of water. Neither one nor the other.
She moved and drew the blanket closer about her. Spring in an airshaft, the rumour of spring; but in the room steam heat suggested winter, dying away.
‘Let’s have a drink, Joe.’
He rose careful and brittle, and walking with meticulous deliberation he fetched a carafe and glasses. She drew a small table near them and Gilligan prepared two drinks. She drank and set the glass down. He lit a cigarette for her.
‘It’s a rotten old world, Joe.’
‘You damn right. And dying ain’t the hair of it.’
‘Dying?’
‘In this case, I mean. Trouble is, he probably won’t die soon enough.’
‘Not die soon enough?’
Gilligan drained his glass. ‘I got the low down on him, see. He’s got a girl at home: folks got ’em engaged when they was young, before he went off to war. And do you know what she’s going to do when she sees his face?’ he asked, staring at her. At last her two faces became one face and her hair was black. Her mouth was like a scar.
‘Oh, no, Joe. She wouldn’t do that.’ She sat up. The blanket slipped from her shoulders and she replaced it, watching him intently.
Gilligan breaking the orbit of visible things by an effort of will said:
‘Don’t you kid yourself. I’ve seen her picture. And the last letter he had from her.’
&nb
sp; ‘He didn’t show them to you!’ she said quickly.
‘That’s all right about that. I seen ’em.’
‘Joe. You didn’t go through his things?’
‘Hell, ma’am, ain’t I and you trying to help him? Suppose I did do something that ain’t exactly according to holy Hoyle: you know damn well that I can help him — if I don’t let a whole lot of don’ts stop me. And if I know I’m right there ain’t any don’ts or anything else going to stop me.’
She looked at him and he hurried on:
‘I mean, you and I know what to do for him, but if you are always letting a gentleman don’t do this and a gentleman don’t do that interfere, you can’t help him. Do you see?’
‘But what makes you so sure she will turn him down?’
‘Why, I tell you I seen that letter: all the old bunk about knights of the air and the romance of battle, that even the fat crying ones outgrow soon as the excitement is over and uniforms and being wounded ain’t only not stylish no more, but it is troublesome.’
‘But aren’t you taking a lot for granted, not to have seen her, even?’
‘I’ve seen that photograph: one of them flighty-looking pretty ones with lots of hair. Just the sort would have got herself engaged to him.’
‘How do you know it is still on? Perhaps she has forgotten him. And he probably doesn’t remember her, you know.’
‘That ain’t it. If he don’t remember her he’s all right. But if he will know his folks he will want to believe that something in his world ain’t turned upside down.’
They were silent a while, then Gilligan said: ‘I wish I could have knowed him before. He’s the kind of a son I would have liked to have.’ He finished his drink.
‘Joe, how old are you?’
‘Thirty-two, ma’am.’
‘How did you ever learn so much about us?’ she asked with interest, watching him.
He grinned briefly. ‘It ain’t knowing, it’s just saying things. I think I done it through practice. By talking so much,’ he replied with sardonic humour. ‘I talk so much I got to say the right thing sooner or later. You don’t talk much, yourself.’
‘Not much,’ she agreed. She moved carelessly and the blanket slipped entirely, exposing her thin nightdress; raising her arms and twisting her body to replace it her long shank was revealed and her turning ankle and her bare foot.
Gilligan without moving said: ‘Ma’am, let’s get married.’
She huddled quickly in the blanket again, already knowing a faint disgust with herself.
‘Bless your heart, Joe. Don’t you know my name is Mrs?’
‘Sure. And I know, too, you ain’t got any husband. I dunno where he is or what you done with him, but you ain’t got a husband now.’
‘Goodness, I’m beginning to be afraid of you: you know too much. You are right: my husband was killed last year.’
Gilligan looking at her said: ‘Rotten luck.’ And she, tasting again a faint, warm sorrow, bowed her head to her arched clasped knees.
‘Rotten luck. That’s exactly what it was, what everything is. Even sorrow is a fake, now.’ She raised her face, her pallid face beneath her black hair, scarred with her mouth. ‘Joe, that was the only sincere word of condolence I ever had. Come here.’
Gilligan went to her and she took his hand, holding it against her cheek. Then she removed it, shaking back her hair.
‘You are a good fellow, Joe. If I felt like marrying anybody now, I’d take you. I’m sorry I played that trick, Joe.’
‘Trick?’ repeated Gilligan, gazing upon her black hair. Then he said Oh, non-committally.
‘But we haven’t decided what to do with that poor boy in there,’ she said with brisk energy, clasping her blanket. ‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Are you sleepy?’
‘Not me,’ he answered. ‘I don’t think I ever want to sleep again.’
‘Neither do I.’ She moved across the bed, propping her back against the head board. ‘Lie down here and let’s decide on something.’
‘Sure,’ agreed Gilligan. ‘I better take off my shoes, first. Ruin the hotel’s bed.’
‘To hell with the hotel’s bed,’ she told him. ‘Put your feet on it.’
Gilligan lay down, shielding his eyes with his hand. After a time she said:
‘Well, what’s to be done?’
‘We got to get him home first,’ Gilligan said. ‘I’ll wire his folks tomorrow — his old man is a preacher, see. But it’s that damn girl bothers me. He sure ought to be let die in peace. But what else to do I don’t know. I know about some things,’ he explained, ‘but after all women can guess and be nearer right than whatever I could decide on.’
‘I don’t think anyone could do much more than you. I’d put my money on you every time.’
He moved, shading his eyes again. ‘I dunno: I am good so far, but then you got to have more’n just sense. Say, why don’t you come with the general and me?’
‘I intend to, Joe.’ Her voice came from beyond his shielding hand. ‘I think I intended to all the time.’
(She is in love with him.) But he only said:
‘Good for you. But I knowed you’d do the right thing. All right with your people is it?’
‘Yes. But what about money?’
‘Money?’
‘Well . . . for what he might need. You know. He might get sick anywhere.’
‘Lord, I cleaned up in a poker game and I ain’t had time to spend it. Money’s all right. That ain’t any question,’ he said roughly.
‘Yes, money’s all right. You know I have my husband’s insurance.’
He lay silent, shielding his eyes. His khaki legs marring the bed ended in clumsy shoes. She nursed her knees, huddling in her blanket. After a space she said:
‘Sleep, Joe?’
‘It’s a funny world, ain’t it?’ he asked irrelevantly, not moving.
‘Funny?’
‘Sure. Soldier dies and leaves you money, and you spend the money helping another soldier die comfortable. Ain’t that funny?’
‘I suppose so. . . . Everything is funny. Horribly funny.’
‘Anyway, it’s nice to have it all fixed,’ he said after a while. ‘He’ll be glad you are coming along.’
(Dear dead Dick.) (Mahon under his scar, sleeping.) (Dick, my dearest one.)
She felt the head board against her head, through her hair, felt the bones of her long shanks against her arms clasping them, nursing them, saw the smug, impersonal room like an appointed tomb (in which how many, many discontents, desires, passions, had died?) high above a world of joy and sorrow and lust for living, high above impervious trees occupied solely with maternity and spring. (Dick, Dick. Dead, ugly Dick. Once you were alive and young and passionate and ugly, after a time you were dead, dear Dick: that flesh, that body, which I loved and did not love; your beautiful, young, ugly body, dear Dick, become now a seething of worms, like new milk. Dear Dick.)
Gilligan, Joseph, late a private, a democrat by enlistment and numbered like a convict, slept beside her, his boots (given him gratis by democrats of a higher rating among democrats) innocent and awkward upon a white spread of rented cloth, immaculate and impersonal.
She invaded her blanket and reaching her arm swept the room with darkness. She slipped beneath the covers, settling her cheek on her palm. Gilligan undisturbed snored, filling the room with a homely, comforting sound.
(Dick, dear, ugly dead. . . .)
4
In the next room Cadet Lowe waked from a chaotic dream, opening his eyes and staring with detachment, impersonal as God, at lights burning about him. After a time, he recalled his body, remembering where he was, and by an effort he turned his head. In the other bed the man slept beneath his terrible face. (I am Julian Lowe, I eat, I digest, evacuate: I have flown. This man . . . this man here, sleeping beneath his scar. . . . Where do we touch? Oh, God, oh, God: knowing his own body, his stomach.)
Raising his hand he felt his own undamaged brow. No s
car there. Near him upon a chair was his hat severed by a white band, upon the table the other man’s cap with its cloth crown sloping backward from a bronze initialed crest.
He tasted his sour mouth, knowing his troubled stomach. To have been him! he moaned. Just to be him. Let him take this sound body of mine! Let him take it. To have got wings on my breast, to have wings; and to have got his scar, too, I would take death tomorrow. Upon a chair Mahon’s tunic evinced above the left breast pocket wings breaking from an initialled circle beneath a crown, tipping downward in an arrested embroidered sweep; a symbolized desire.
To be him, to have gotten wings, but to have got his scar too! Cadet Lowe turned to the wall with passionate disappointment like a gnawing fox at his vitals. Slobbering and moaning Cadet Lowe, too, dreamed again, sleeping.
5
ACHILLES: What preparation would you make for a cross-country flight, Cadet?
MERCURY: Empty your bladder and fill your petrol tank, Sir.
ACHILLES: Carry on, Cadet.
Old Play (about 19 —— ?)
Cadet Lowe, waking, remarked morning, and Gilligan entering the room, dressed. Gilligan looking at him said:
‘How you coming, ace?’
Mahon yet slept beneath his scar, upon a chair his tunic. Above the left pocket, wings swept silkenly, breaking downward above a ribbon. White, purple, white.
‘Oh, God,’ Lowe groaned.
Gilligan with the assurance of physical well-being stood in brisk arrested motion.
‘As you were, fellow. I’m going out and have some breakfast sent up. You stay here until Loot wakes, huh?’
Cadet Lowe tasting his sour mouth groaned again. Gilligan regarded him. ‘Oh, you’ll stay all right, won’t you? I’ll be back soon.’
The door closed after him and Lowe, thinking of water, rose and took his wavering way across the room to a water pitcher. Carafe. Like giraffe or like café? he wondered. The water was good, but lowering the vessel he felt immediately sick. After a while he recaptured the bed.
He dozed, forgetting his stomach, and remembering it he dreamed and waked. He could feel his head like a dull inflation, then he could distinguish the foot of his bed and thinking again of water he turned on a pillow and saw another identical bed and the suave indication of a dressing-gown motionless beside it. Leaning over Mahon’s scarred supineness, she said: ‘Don’t get up.’
Complete Works of William Faulkner Page 4
