The Aunt's Story (24 page)

‘
Pourquoi tu te caches? Viens, mon cœur
,' Mrs Rapallo called.

As the shadow fell, she braced her arm, reinforced by her will, to catch. There formed, first, fur and eyes, then a slightly shabby monkey.

‘
Embrasse Maman
,' Mrs Rapallo coaxed. ‘
Tu as froid. Je te chaufferai. Fais-moi la bibize, fais la bibize a ta mé-mère
.'

Whether it was cold or not, she warmed the shabby fur, trying to revive in it her own ghost of passion.

‘Elle s'appelle Mignon,' she said. ‘
C'est un être doux, qui mourra, quand même
.'

Theodora did not deny that this was a possibility, breathing
the stale air, that smelt of dust, and eau-de-Cologne, and animal excrement. She retreated from the monkey's paper hands.

‘That is not kind,' said Mrs Rapallo.

‘One is not always kind. Once I almost did a murder.' Theodora said.

‘That is different,' said Mrs Rapallo. ‘That is also different.'

She stroked the monkey's hood with her gloves. It was a matter of solemnity.

‘
Mignon, dis, c'est autre chose
,' she said, not altogether asking. ‘Either courage or inspiration is required for murder. But for kindness … Although
he
was kind. He was as kind as silence, and as unkind. Silence is slow, soft, kind, sometimes also terrifying. For instance, eating a boiled egg.'

Theodora saw that this was true. She saw the back of his neck. She saw the dark hairs above the dressing gown, the hairs of his neck, still and dark. She saw the neck bend, as the face approached the mouthful of egg. The face she did not see. She had never seen the face.

When Mr Rapallo came into the room, motion reached the point where it becomes a still. Theodora was invariably caught with one absurd hand stretched above her head, or she was raised on her toes in pursuit of some goal that she no longer dared pursue. Mr Rapallo made the humbler gestures ridiculous. He wore a dressing gown of black brocade, on which silver parrots were dimly embroidered. There was also a hole that had been burnt once by a cigar. Watching his cigar poised, you waited for the next ash to drop, from the hand that almost did not tremble. He had a persistent habit of contracting the gristle on the back of his dark neck, but the movement never reached convulsion. In Mr Rapallo the tension remained tension, and unexplained.

‘Soon he will go,' whispered Elsie Rapallo. ‘This is just a formality. It's always brief.'

Elsie Rapallo was at her creamiest in morning gowns, deep, white, heavy as magnolias, beneath the thick black heavy hair from which Theodora had brushed the confidences. Raising her arm at the window in the face of silence, to part the curtains, to invoke a morning caller, sighs fell steamily from her lace, back from the elbows and the moss-green knots. There was a richness,
an overpowering richness about the morning gestures, and in the afternoon, horses would paw at the gravel, bringing the Duchess or Nana Trumpett to tea. The visible details of Elsie Rapallo's life were scattered like the visiting cards of important persons, on a silver salver, to be noticed. But there were also the private regrets, by which she was devoured. Silence ate at the magnolia flesh. Elsie Rapallo was half spent.

‘He has gone,' said Theodora Goodman.

‘He has gone,' said Elsie Rapallo. ‘Then we can rattle. We can fill our lives. We shall forget our debts and our failures.'

She held out her hands to receive something immaterial and childish.

‘But, above all, our debts. He says that the pearl collar will meet the bill. It was always hateful, anyway. That pearl collar cut. Look, Theodora, look, and you will see the scar.'

But Theodora did not look long. She knew from experience those occasions when banality is balm.

So she said instead, ‘You shall tell me the cute, sweet things that Gloria says and does.'

‘Gloria,' said Elsie Rapallo, ‘has gone to the Champs-Élysées with her
bonne
.'

But in her absence the light was full, soft, yellow, filling the lap. The cheek was rounder. The chair was softer to the body.

‘Yes, my cute, sweet Gloria,' Elsie Rapallo settled, sighed. ‘My little Gloria says: Give me your diamonds,
Maman chérie
, I shall put them on and pretend that the President has asked me to breakfast; I shall go as a shower of diamonds,
chère petite Maman
. Gloria says, she says: I am my second-best in diamonds, and a third in sapphires, but emeralds is unlucky so I can't say that they suit at all. So I say to Gloria, I say: Why, Gloria, now why, if diamonds is only second, whatever is first? She says. Now wait, Theodora, this will kill you. You must admit that Gloria is cute. She says: Why,
Maman chérie
, if Gloria wants to look her best she'll go in her own white skin. There, Theodora! There! Can you beat Gloria?'

‘No,' Theodora said.

‘But wait, Theodora, wait. Gloria's learning about religion. It's time, I thought, and you've got to somehow bring in God. Jesus loves Gloria? she says. Of course, I say, of course, gentle
Jesus loves us all. And
Maman
loves Gloria? Well, I kind of guess she does. Oh, says my Gloria. Why, I say, isn't that enough? Oh, she says, it all helps, but if no one does, it don't matter, Gloria can love herself. Can you believe it, Theodora? All as serious as pie.'

But now, in the shabby night, in her encrusted room, Mrs Rapallo hugged her monkey.

‘Mignon is cute and sweet,' she said, ruffling the fur hood with her glove. ‘But we are disenchanted, Miss Goodman. Our daughter, the Principessa, tells us we stink. I have always encouraged honesty.'

In the shabby night the photographs of royalty protested. Up to her waist in objects of virtu, Theodora longed to escape, but she was not sure it was possible. She had become involved. Old teeth in an empty jam-jar grinned at her helplessness. She heard the snigger of the tremulous fern.

‘You should relax, dear. You are tired,' said Mrs Rapallo. ‘Or read a book. A book where things happen.'

Though you knew she did not believe that they do, outside the
Almanach de Gotha
.

Her dead, underwater eyes looked distantly at the nautilus, which Theodora now noticed in the room for the first time. Static and not, beside the
compotier
with the wax fruit, the nautilus flowered. You could almost touch it. But you did not touch. Because you cannot touch a music, a flowering of water, the white smile on the sleeper's mouth. The nautilus flowered and flowed, as pervasive but evasive as experience. The walls of the Hôtel du Midi almost opened out.

‘It is strange, and why are we here?' said the voice of Theodora Goodman, parting the water.

‘I guess we have to be somewhere,' replied Mrs Rapallo.

I
N
the Hôtel du Midi the night slowly solidified. From the brown lounge Theodora listened to the doors closing, which was a quite definite closing, on other lives. As usually happens, and not less impressively each time, she was left to her own devices, like a mouse in a piano picking at the bones of a gavotte. Under the once-pink shade the light still burned, that somebody had forgotten, and the beads were still there to tell. On such occasions the soul will have faded a good deal. It jumps beneath its attempted composure. This was apparent to Theodora. She heard the exhausted springs of the arm-chairs. She saw the ash trays, which had brimmed almost over, with ash, and the exasperated gnawings of pale nails.

If Theodora continued to sit, it was for no great reason. She did not wait, or expect. She sat in a state of suspended will. She sat and heard in time the voice of Mademoiselle Berthe.

‘
Ma sœur a perdu sa brosse à dents
,' she heard.

And the voice of Mademoiselle Berthe was disarranged.

‘She will hardly have left it on the piano,' suggested Theodora.

‘
Je sais. Je sais. Je suis tellement nerveuse
. First the amiable little stylo, and now the
brosse à dents
. I am walking for my own distraction,' Mademoiselle Berthe explained.

She was disarranged. The hair of Mademoiselle Berthe had been prepared for the secret act of sleeping. Her hair was less wound. It hung in long white cotton ropes, down and down, the long white ropes of sleep. But she was not
yet narcotisée
. The black silk that she held wrapped to her bust palpitated still.

‘My sister is upstairs sipping a
tisane
,' said Mademoiselle Berthe.

To explain the absence of herself. For she was really only half there.

Theodora remembered, or had been told, that sometimes the conscience will rumble after camomile tea.

Mademoiselle Berthe continued to fret, groping over surfaces and rummaging in pockets. She looked out of the window.

‘There have been bombs,' she said, ‘in Spain.'

As if she expected to see them flower, sudden and scarlet, in the still world of the
jardin exotique
. As if it were already the season of events. But the garden continued to wear the colourless expression of glass. There was a moon up. Its light ate at, but failed to consume, the ridge of flat metallic hills. These were a corroded acid-green. The garden was intact.

‘You see, there are no ruins,' Theodora said.

She was comfortable with momentary wisdom. Soon she knew she would yawn.

‘No, but there are other indications. Do you realize, Miss Goodman, that walls are no longer walls? Walls are at most curtains. The least wind and they will blow and blow. Now I must go to my sister. We count the remainder of our possessions before we sleep.'

Theodora listened to the departure of Mademoiselle Berthe. She went on felt feet. The long cotton ropes unravelled into passages and silence.

‘Then I am also smug,' said Theodora. ‘It is time I walked. For my own distraction.'

She walked through the hotel, choosing to lose herself, or not choosing, in the Hôtel du Midi there was no alternative. And especially at night. At night there was the space of darkness, a direction of corridors, stairs which neither raised nor lowered the traveller on to a different plane. In this rather circular state, Theodora walked with her hands outstretched, to ward off flesh or furniture if the occasion should arise.

‘
Vous désirez quelque chose
,
Mademoiselle?
'

She saw in time that this was Monsieur Durand. He still spoke professionally, but his voice, his face, were drained. Monsieur Durand, Theodora saw, could not have produced even a glass of water, if she had asked for it. Because Monsieur Durand himself was asking. He was drained by asking for what he would not be given.

‘No,' said Theodora. ‘Thank you. I think I have, more or less, everything I want.'

‘Ah,' breathed Monsieur Durand, as if not quite convinced.

‘And you, Monsieur Durand? What is the matter?' Theodora asked.

‘
Rien
,' said Monsieur Durand.

Though quite obviously he meant
tout
.

Braces gave him an exposed look. Theodora knew that he must have varicose veins, and perhaps a collection of colonial stamps. More certain than his circulation, flowed, under the stubble, some great subterranean despair, of which he would have told now, if his voice had not grown stiff describing
confort moderne
to arriving guests. So Monsieur Durand remained a face on braces in the dark.

‘
Eh bien. Mademoiselle
,
je vous souhaite une bonne nuit
,' he said.

‘Thank you,' Theodora replied.

Her gratitude was formal, but it was what Monsieur Durand, in spite of his braces, would expect.

Then he was a detached cough, as Theodora continued to circulate. Sometimes a blade of light, between a carpet and a door, slit the darkness. She saw the boots in duplicate, of the Demoiselles Bloch of course, their long dark tongues perplexed and lolling on the mat. But these fragments of identity and the regular appearance of a china knob, designed apparently for turning, did not convince her of the importance either of feet or hands. The act of darkness demolished personality.

Guided by a corner of darkness, a kink in endlessness, just after she had touched with surprise and hope the bones of her own face, Theodora passed an open doorway that blinded by its audacity, or rather an unconscious insolence of solid light. The audacious doorway had the same contemptuousness as certain flesh, which does not interpret dreams, nor see beyond its own reflection.

Looking through the lit doorway, Theodora saw that
le petit
stood in the mirror. He stroked his vanity through the glass, and his vanity was golden, more convincing than darkness, the sullen, golden face of flesh.
Le petit
loved his reflection endlessly, his back turned on any irrelevance, whether it was the cough of Monsieur Durand, Theodora was not sure, or the sigh of Henriette. Because
le petit
did not acknowledge desires, except his own. He was his own solid, golden flesh. He blew the smoke
from his straight nose and watched for his glass face to clear.

Theodora trod quietly so as not to disturb any exposed dream. She would have asked which way, if it had been decent to inquire, but it was not. When the darkness settled down again, she began to feel that she was lost. She touched the darkness for a sign. She touched a face that was soft and tough as chamois leather.

‘
Ah, c'est vous
,' sighed the voice of Henriette. ‘
Personne ne dort plus
.'

‘I think I am lost,' said Theodora. ‘
Je cherche ma chambre
.'

In the darkness the disapproval of Henriette was implied. It was dry and unexpressed. Her feet chafed. Theodora followed the direction that was taking shape. She was again a child. It was soft as sighs yielding to the superior wisdom of Henriette.

‘
Elle dort. Quand même
,' said her loud voice.

‘Who?' Theodora asked.

Before she saw. She saw the propped head of Mrs Rapallo lolling in sleep.

‘
Elle dort. Elle rêve
,' said Henriette, with a touch of dry bitterness. ‘
Elle prend ses rêves d'un petit paquet sur la commode en marbre à côté de son lit
.'

Taking it for granted as part of Henriette's superior knowledge, because these were details that the light did not explain, Theodora glanced through the doorway at Mrs Rapallo's sleep. Now, disguised by nature, the lips were pale. The eyes were inward-looking things of china. Overhead, on the great branching brass of the bed, hung Mrs Rapallo's hair, against which a shabby Mignon dozed, and huddled for warmth. It was a cold tree.

Henriette laughed. ‘
Vous voyez?
'

She had a gold tooth that gashed. It is quite hateful, decided Theodora, the gold tooth of Henriette. And the eyes, cavernous from long looking, at a distance, through doorways at night.

‘
Ce vieux cadavre vit encore. Quand même
,' laughed Henriette. ‘Elle rêve.'

‘Thank you. I have seen enough,' said Theodora.

And it was not so much Mrs Rapallo as the cavernousness of Henriette.

‘
On y va, on y va
,' said Henriette, also a servant who sensed very quickly the whims of guests.

They had, in fact, arrived. Henriette threw open again Theodora's
chambre modeste
.

It was perhaps
plus modeste
, but recognizable, from the objects she had put there in the morning as a safeguard, the darning egg, the dictionary, and the superfluous leather writing case. Hearing the fainter slippers of Henriette, listening to her own silence form in the small room, Theodora loved her sponge. There are moments, she admitted, when it is necessary to return to the boxes for which we were made. And now the small room was a box with paper roses pasted on the sides. Theodora walked across the carpet, frayed by similar feet in modest circumstances, with arches that have a tendency to fall, in shoes that soon must be mended. She took off a garnet ring which had been her mother's, but which had changed its expression, like most inherited things. She put it on the dressing table, inside the handkerchief sachet, which was the garnet's place. I am preparing for bed, she saw. But in performing this act for the first time, she knew she did not really control her bones, and that the curtain of her flesh must blow, like walls which are no longer walls. She took off one shoe, with its steel buckle and its rather long vamp. Standing with it in her hand, her identity became uncertain. She looked with sadness at the little hitherto safe microcosm of the darning egg and waited for the rose wall to fall.

It began to palpitate, the paper mouths of roses wetting their lips, either voice or wall putting on flesh. She was almost indecently close to what was happening, but sometimes one is. Sometimes the paper rose has arms and thighs.

Theodora realized she must accept the tactile voices of the voluble wall.

‘When I look into your eye I can see myself,' said the voice.

‘That is why you are so necessary to my existence.'

It was the voice of Wetherby, Theodora heard, the breath so close it touched the bones of her cheek.

‘But small,' said Lieselotte. ‘The eye reduces as well as intensifies. That is why you hate. Because it shows an amoeba, or anyway, some small, squirming thing.'

Hot hands twisted paper roses. Sweat had begun to penetrate
the paper wall. It spread, larger than Africa, lapping the dry surface with thick, swollen, African lips.

‘If I put my hands like this,' Wetherby said.

‘You would not dare,' said Lieselotte. ‘You would remove the source of all your despair and satisfaction. If I were to die of just this extra pressure, which your hands have not the courage to give my death would mean your suicide. You must continue to suffer, slowly, by any and every dreary means, to feel the numbness and desperation of what you choose to call love.'

The hands were making a cage, Theodora felt, the hand in hand, from which temporarily the bird had flown.

‘And yet you have loved me. You have told me so,' Wetherby said.

‘I have given you what I have been given,' Lieselotte sighed. ‘Surely by this time you must understand we have entered the age of
Ersatz
.'

‘But I have felt something stronger in your arms.'

‘That,' said Lieselotte, ‘is pity.'

‘But it is also love.'

‘Have it your own way. It is also contempt. It is also power.'

‘But you love your power. I can feel it in your mouth, in your moments of greatest revulsion.'

‘Of course I love power. Who doesn't? And best of all I love the power that pity gives. Once the object of pity accepts, he is lost. The rot has set in. You should know, shouldn't you? You! You! You!'

‘I know because I love you.'

‘Because you love pity. You crave for it. There! Take it. There!'

Whether blows or kisses it was not clear.

‘And you crave to give.'

‘Well?'

‘You have confessed your weakness. You are dependent on me.'

‘Oh, God, yes, I am dependent on you all right. If you put it that way. To the end. To the end.'

So that it is no longer possible, sighed Theodora Goodman, to distinguish which is which.

Love is undoubtedly an acrostic, and that is why I have failed,
she decided as she listened to the teeth on teeth grinding out words, and silences give clues. She saw a great stillness replace the frenzy of the paper curtain. She sat with a Testament in her lap, and read the Acts, to prepare herself for sleep, relaxing as Mrs Rapallo had recommended, with a book in which people come and go. But in this book the people came and went with a directness and simplicity that amazed. People no longer come and go, said Theodora, people are brought and sent.

‘Ah,' cried Lieselotte, her sigh turning on the pillow. ‘Where were we, my
love?
'

‘Why, we were where we left off,' Wetherby replied.

‘I supposed so. Do you know that once I was a little girl with plaits no thicker than cats' tails? I walked beside the Baltic in a blue dress and looked for the midnight sun.'

‘Do you know, Lieselotte, you have never stopped being a little girl, except that you have learnt to look at objects through a glass eye and then to describe their antics?'

‘The antics of objects are indescribable,' Lieselotte sighed. ‘I never expect to make more than an attempt.'

‘That is our hope,' said Wetherby.

‘Hope?'

It was a bubble on her lips in some smooth sea in which she already swam.