Barbary Shore (35 page)

Her door was unlatched and yielded before my knock to swing slowly open. I entered, and in crossing the threshold a curtain might have dropped, for I was returned to the night I had quit with such pain, and all of it was back upon me. Giggling from what I saw, shock tickled the sound from my throat. I was frozen where I stood. Someone had run amok.

For the room was dark. No sunlight entered, and the feeble
electric bulb one may foresee at perpetual night shone like a wan moon in the silence. The air was foul. Turpentine and pigment crossed odors with the stench of spilled liquor. Black paint was spattered everywhere, upon the carpet, the walls, even a puddle upon the floor.

Lannie had killed her mouse.

The windows were painted black. Up and down, cross and back, the brush strokes furious, effort discharged in spasm and her breath sobbing, she must have thrown it on like blood, relishing the drip and gore, grinding the handle upon the glass. In blots and swashes, thick wet coat upon thick wet coat, the windows reared their socketless eyes back to mine, and stood still wet, still wounded, their paint dripping the woodwork.

I saw Lannie then, sprawled morosely on the sofa, her face to the wall. She sat unmoving, not aware of myself nor of the door which had resounded to such knocking. I slammed it shut behind me with enough of a clatter to have started her from an opium sleep, but her senses were numbed; she turned to me with mild surprise as though I had muttered a soft word.

“Oh, hello, Mikey,” she said, lethargy weighting her words. She elevated her chin languidly, exposing her head to the electric bulb.

She was hardly an attractive sight. “What happened to you?” I exclaimed.

“Did something happen?” she asked vaguely.

Her features were puffed and an ugly bruise purpled her cheek. She exhibited a lopsided smile, mouth swollen at the corner. “What happened?” I asked again.

Lannie stared past me vacantly, and I realized that she was fuddled. An empty bottle lay at her feet. With her toe she nudged it gently from side to side. “Is it morning yet?” she asked.

Drunk, she gave this once the impression of being sober. Exhaustion hung upon her and slowed her speech, made visible
the slow rise and ebb of her breath. With what fury she had worked. Paint spattered her face and hair, and upon her chin was wiped a black smudge. “You know I feel as if in an hour or so I’ll be able to sleep,” she murmured.

“How did you get hurt?” I insisted.

She shrugged. “Hours ago, was it early this morning? I remember when he left I could not bear the sunlight coming. Before that it must be, he came down and brought this bottle. It was so kind of him, for he had taken the case he gave me once, and then up in his room, oh, he could not bear to be alone last night, so frightened in triumph and
vive
the worm, and he had to talk until every last suspicion I had ever known was more than true. He’s so unworthy, and it’s only a big man should commit a crime. So we drank and we talked and I told him all this and why he loves her, moxie I said to take your Jimmygirl for proxy, and he raised his hand and he did this to me. I suppose he felt that I would like it. And when he left I remembered the paint I had bought, I was crying in the store and the man said flat black miss? Then I went to work. The windows hated me.” She stared up at the black glass. “It’s still there, isn’t it, oh that’s silly, of course it’s there, but somehow I had expected—her eyes faced mine—“that it would go like everything else. Oh, I shouldn’t have painted it.”

“He did it then.”

“What difference does it make? Don’t stand there so stupidly. Sit down. I’m tired. I don’t want to look at you standing.”

“He ought to pay for this,” I said angrily.

She shook her head slowly. “You’re very silly, Mikey. I don’t mind that he struck me, for I owed him a debt. It was not you who came with the bottle, and I was so alone here.” She watched the wall before her. I said nothing, and in a moment or two she continued, perhaps not knowing she had even paused. “How I adored her”—fingers caressing the bruise upon her cheek. “When I would see her coloring, the red hair and her
pink flesh, baby bubbles in the fat, and for the first time in how long since the sugar itch was dead it was dead no more and it was myself a round honey in the heat, myself you hear, so that it became bubbles, baby, bubble that fat.” Her mouth twisted. “But he wouldn’t leave me her, oh no, he must betray me. It isn’t that I was not ready, he could betray his mother and I would cheer him on, but he has betrayed himself.” She nodded wearily. “I knew that there were others behind him and above him, but I thought that really he was free and had the same contempt any honorable man would hold for his superior. When he beat me this time … oh, I could have borne it, and with pleasure if he had struck me out of contempt or because the whim had seized him, but he revealed his face and that was disgusting. To defeat me and he so afraid. I will not suffer blows which are given me out of fear, and yet he was stronger than I and very unpleasant.” Breath charged with resentment was expelled from her lips. “Afterward he was greasy and paid me compliments and tried to make me think that all of it, the liquor and the smack-smack had been a present, and he had taken the time to please my taste.

McLeod was at the doorway. His thin mouth bearing a grimace, he examined her room, stared at the paint on the windows.

Lannie bolted upright. “What do you want? Why are you here?”

“I wanted to talk to you,” he said in a gentle voice. The long thin nose sniffed delicately at the air. He gave no more than a covert glance at Lannie, afraid perhaps of arousing an outburst. “You’ve not been feeling too well, have you?” he suggested quietly.

Her head stiffened. She was prepared to accept this as a taunt, but his voice had been too soft. Warily, she told him, “I’m fine, thank you.” As though he were a threat to her so long as he believed her ill, she moved away from the sofa and stood
erect with a smile upon her pale lips. “I’m fine,” she repeated, “I’ve had an enormous meal, and my pockets are bulging with money. A man passed and clapped a fifty-dollar bill into my palm, like that! and fled down the street.” Obliged to prove what she had claimed so many times, the stained fingers fumbled at her breast pocket and came forth with a crumpled banknote.

“He beat you and you took his money,” I exclaimed.

“A stranger,” she said.

“Leave off,” McLeod muttered suddenly.

“I …”

“Leave off,” McLeod repeated, one of his bony hands at my shirt, his face, twisted into a startling rage. “Leave off, and a little mercy, insufferable, unfeeling, and ignorant …” He could not find the word to cap it. “By what right do you claim authority?” He was trembling, and as abruptly as he had grabbed me, his fingers flew loose. He stood with his back to me, thin shoulders pressed upon one another. A minute passed, and when he turned around his face was composed in its harsh lines.

“I took it,” Lannie said, half to herself, “because money is nothing, and it gave him pleasure to befriend me. And then he ran down the street so ashamed of his kindness.”

McLeod nodded. “Go to sleep,” he said almost tenderly, “and when you wake everything will be better.”

A mist from childhood came near to whisking her away. An echo lingered from the past. Lightly she touched the bruise upon her face. But the finger of pain which met her own poked it all away, and cobweb silver came down to dust. With a little sob she pressed upon the heart of the swelling as though she would search out the flesh beneath the ache and vanquish the wound. She pressed and it was too tender. Her hand quivered back to her side.

If this were a token, the symbol had cheated her. “Don’t be kind to me,” she shrieked at McLeod. “I can’t bear kindness now.”

“You need it,” he muttered back.

“It is I who must give it to others,” she cried. Weakly she tottered on her feet. At that instant she could have fumbled toward McLeod and accepted the support of his arms. As easily she could have attacked him. Instead, swaying miserably, hand at her forehead, she whispered, “Why did you come here?”

McLeod studied the ash on his cigarette. He was about to say something, but he changed his mind. Lips clamped together tightly, compressed until they were white, he shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Why me?”

“Because,” he said slowly, and he was trying to phrase it for himself, “it was you and not him who wore me down.”

To my surprise she nodded her head at his words, and in a reply which was more direct than I could ever have anticipated, she said, “It’s true, isn’t it? You haven’t been with
them
for a long time.” Waiting for the answer, she stared at the floor.

“It’s true,” McLeod said.

“Oh, I knew, I knew,” Lannie cried out. “I knew and yet …” She trailed off. “What have I done?” she asked. But too much crowded upon her too rapidly. “You gave it to him, though,” she stated, “you gave it up to him. Why come to me now?”

“I haven’t given it yet,” McLeod answered, his speech so soft that we were bound together. “It takes time I told him, and so I have until tonight or maybe the morning.”

“And you don’t know what to do?” she asked.

“I can’t let him have it,” McLeod said hoarsely, “and yet I suppose I will.”

“No, you mustn’t,” she declared, “you mustn’t at all.”

He was on her, his hands clenching her hands. “But why resist? For what?” He released her arm, refusing resolutely to look at me. “Still, I come to you,” he told Lannie, “I look for some way. What do I want you to do? Encourage me? I tell you
I don’t know myself why I’m here.” And rubbing his neck against a circulation which persisted in leaving him cold, he muttered, “If only I could have made you understand earlier. I swear that …”

“Don’t swear for me,” she said in a muffled voice. “I don’t know. I don’t know.” Lannie began to weep. She cried with the dignity of a child, her back straight, her head high, arms at her side. There could be no attempt at concealment, for that was the disgrace. She talked rapidly, her poor bruised face wrenched with anguish. “Oh, so many years gone by, and they labored over me, all the people in white, and if you’re to be destroyed you must love your destroyer, for who else is there to love when that’s the world and all space filled? You were prepared for me, they allowed me you to hate and that’s so necessary, and yet even the first time I saw you, now I know I knew then that you were not the man they represented as you and if guilty before innocent now, but how can I admit that, when you see they gave the other to me with his blond hair, and he was to carry me away and save me for even the cruellest father puts you in his house. And so you must forgive me.” Weeping, she dropped to her knees, and in a fit of torment fell forward without protecting herself. In dead weight her head struck the floor.

We brought Lannie to her feet and led her to the bed, but as we lay her down she flung us away, and sat up rigidly. “You ask me what to do? Don’t give it to him.” But her face twisted. “I tell you that, and yet, let someone help me for I cannot, I must tell you that even now all confession made, I cannot … I cannot find it in myself to do otherwise than hate you.” The effort exhausting her, she lay back upon the bed. “Go away,” she cried at McLeod, “go away.”

He started to obey her. “Tell me,” she called out in a strangled voice, “do you think that I, too, am beyond the pale?” A touch of conviction appeared in her eyes. “You see, once, I was so respected in the movement, culture they said and the
heart of a fighter. I can regain it all. I need only rest and … gather myself. For if it is really coming, if everything is not dead, and you seemed so certain yesterday that it was not, then they will need me, will they not? Or will they say, they are so cruel, you cannot be with us?” As though she had heard the sound of her voice, and was now reduced to the whisper it had been, she shivered. “Get out of here, oh get out, get out,” she pleaded.

And with a wise sad smile upon his face, he kissed her hand. “I’ll see you later, Lovett,” he said, “later, I hope,” and I could hear him close the door.

Lannie rose from the bed and traced a few steps. “Is he gone?” she asked, fingers trembling at her chin. “You must leave me, too,” she said. “Everybody.” She lurched about, and in the sudden motion her body blundered against the floor lamp and set it swaying. Her arm shot out, perhaps to catch it, but she succeeded only in knocking it over. “Oh,” she said out of some remote frustration, and in reaching to pick it up, fell herself and struck her forehead one more blow against the floor. As she struggled to rise, I extended my arms to assist her, and she raked her nails across my hand. “Leave me alone.”

So, arms folded, I watched her move, body all at odds and co-ordination a paper she chased in the wind. Effort sweating her forehead, she crossed the room to the bed and without a word lay down upon it, staring at the ceiling while I, following helplessly after, could only perch at her feet.

Hours passed like this, Lannie on the bed and I watching, my body receiving her distress. If her forehead burned, mine ached; if her limbs quivered, mine itched; and when from the sleep in which she tossed a cry was uttered half from the dream and half from pain, her dread was communicated to me and I sat beside her with a leaden throat. Outside, the afternoon passed, the sun beating against a blind window until the air in our dim room became unendurable. Once, with great difficulty,
I succeeded in raising the sash from its binding of paint, but the sudden shaft of light clapped Lannie upright in bed with a dazzled cry, and I could only shut it again. Thus the sun went down, and the gamut spread in the sky from illumination to darkness could induce only its most subtle reflection behind the raven pocket of the glass. Obscurity banked upon itself and the walls turned darker and darker, until with what sense I hardly knew, I was certain night had come.

Lannie’s eyes were open again. Head turned to the side, she looked into the feeble globe of the electric light.

“Oh, I’m tired, tired, tired,” she breathed.

“Rest more,” I told her, even as she was struggling to a sitting position.

“No, there’s no rest, not anywhere.” Her hand journeyed over her face. “There’s too sad a story to tell of the princess who searched out evil for only that was left.” Her eyes stared out at me, luminous and swollen in the bruised curve of her face. Even as I was certain she did not know I was before her, she would address a remark to me, and then before I could answer, her eyes were staring at the shadowed walls with all the certainty of one who sees before him a continent or a heaven.