Waltz Into Darkness (50 page)

Then
through his blinding tears, he saw at last that there were one pair
of shoes too many. Four instead of two. His own, under the chair, and
hers, off to the side, unnoticed until now. She must have opened the
door so deftly that he had not heard it.

She
was arched over above him, from the side. One hand holding her skirts
clear, to keep them from betraying her presence until the last
possible moment. The other hand, to the back of the chair, had been
keeping that from him, unnoticeably, each time he'd thought he'd
reached it.

The
jest must have been good. Her laughter came out, full-bodied,
irrepressible, above him. Then she tried to check it, bite it back,
for decency's sake, if nothing else.

"What
did you want, your clothes? Why didn't you ask me?" she said
mockingly. "You can have no possible use for them, my dear.
You're not well enough."

And
taking the chair in hand more fully this time, before his
broken-hearted eyes swept it all the way back against the wall, a
whole yard or two at once this time, hopeless of attainment ever.

But
the trousers bedded on the seat fell off somehow, and in falling were
kinder to him than she was, they fell upon his extended hand and let
themselves be gripped, caught fast by it.

Now
she bent to take them from him, and a brief, unequal contest of
strength locked the two of them for a moment.

"They
are no good to you, my dear," she said with the amusement one
shows to a wilful child. "Come, let them be. What can you do
with them?"

She
drew them away from him little by little, plucked them from his
bitterly clinging fingers by main strength at last.

Then
when she had him back in bed again, she gave him a smile that burned,
that seared, though it was only a sweet, harmless, solicitous thing,
and the door closed after her.

Within
its luminous halo the chair stood, ebony wood and apricot plush. All
the way across the room, leagues away.

63

She
came in later in the day and sat by him, cool and crisp of attire,
pretty as a picture, a veritable Florence Nightingale, soothing,
comforting him, ministering to his wants in every way. In every way
but one.

"Poor
Lou. Do you suffer much?"

He
resolutely refused to admit it. "I'll be all right," he
panted. "I've never been ill a day in my life. This will pass."

She
dropped her eyes demurely. She sighed in comfortable agreement. "Yes,
this will soon pass," she conceded with equanimity.

The
image of a contented kitten that has just had a saucer of milk
crossed his mind for a moment, for some strange reason; disappeared
again into the oblivion from which it had come.

She
fanned him with a palm-leaf fan. She brought a basin, and with a
moist cloth gently laved and cooled his agonized brow and his heaving
chest, each silken stroke lighter than a butterfly's wing.

"Would
you like a cup of tea?"

He
turned his head sharply aside, revolted.

"Would
you like me to read to you? It may take your mind off your distress."

She
went below and brought up a book they had there, of poems, and in
dulcet, lulling cadences read to him from Keats.

"O
what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,

So
haggard and so woe-begone?"

And
stopped to innocently inquire: "What does that mean, 'La Belle
Dame Sans Merci'? The sound is beautiful but the words have no sense.
Are all poems like that ?"

He
put hands over ears and turned his head away, excruciated.

"No
more," he pleaded. "I can stand no more. I beg you."

She
closed the book. She looked surprised. "I was only trying to
entertain you."

When
water alone would no longer quench his ravening, everincreasing
thirst, she went out and with great difficulty obtained a pail of
cracked ice at a fishmonger's, and bringing it back, gave it to him
piece by piece to chew and crunch between his teeth.

In
every way she ministered to him. In every way but one.

"Get
a doctor," he besought her at last. "I cannot fight this
out alone. I must have help."

She
kept her seat. "Shall we not wait another day? Is this my
stouthearted Lou? Tomorrow, perhaps, you will be so much better
that--"

He
clawed at her garments in mute appeal, until she drew back a little,
to keep them from being disarranged. His face formed in weazened
lines of weeping. "Tomorrow I shall be dead. Oh, Bonny, I cannot
face the night. This fire in my vitals-- If you love me, if you love
me--a doctor."

She
went at last. She was gone from the room a half-hour. She came back
to it again, her shawl and bonnet on, and took them off. She was
alone.

"You
didn't--?" He died a little.

"He
cannot come before tomorrow. He is coming then. I described to him
what your symptoms were. He said there is no cause for alarm. It is a
torm of--of colic, and it must run its course. He prescribed what we
are to do until he sees you-- Come, now, be calm--"

His
eyes were on her, bright with fever and despair.

He
whispered at last: "I did not hear the front door close after
you.

She
gave him a quick look, but her answer flowed unimpeded.

"I
left it ajar behind me, to save time when I returned. After all, I'd
left you alone in the house. Surely--" Then she said, "You
saw my bonnet on me just now, did you not?"

He
didn't answer further. All his ravaged mind could keep repeating was:

I
didn't hear the door close after her.

And
then at last, slowly but at last, he knew.

Dawn,
another dawn, a second one since this had begun, came creeping
through the window, and with it a measure of tensile strength.
Strength carefully hoarded a few grains at a time for this supreme
effort that faced him now. Strength that was not as strength had used
to be, of the body; strength that was of the spirit alone. The
spirit, the will to live, to be saved; self-combustive,
selfconsuming, breathing purest oxygen of its own essence. And when
that was gone, no more to replace it, ever.

Though
nothing had moved yet but the lids of his eyes, this was the
beginning of a journey. A long journey.

For
a while he let his body lie inert, as it was. To begin it too soon
would be to court interruption and discovery.

There;
her step had sounded in the hall, she was coming out of her room. His
lids dropped over his eyes, concealing them.

The
door opened and he knew she was looking at him. His face wanted to
cringe, but he held it steady.

What
a long look. Would she never stop looking? What was she thinking?
"You are such a long time dying ?" Or, "My own love,
are you not any better today ?" Which was the true thought;
which was the true she, and which his false dream of her?

She
had entered the room. She was coming toward him.

She
was bending over him now, in watchful attention. He could feel the
warmth of her breath. He could smell the odor of the violet water she
had sprinkled on herself only moments ago and which had scarcely yet
dried. Above all, he could feel her eyes almost burning through his
skin like a pair of sunray glasses held steady above shavings, to
make them scorch and smoke and at last burst into flame. There was
that concentration in their steady regard.

He
must not stir, he must not flicker.

A
sudden weight fell on his heart and nearly stopped it. It was her
hand, coming to rest there, trying to see if it was still going. It
fluttered like a bird caught under her outspread palm, and if she
noted that, she must have thought it erratic and falteringly
overexerted. Suddenly her hand left him and he felt her fingers go
instead to his eye, to try the reflex of that, perhaps. They gave him
warning of their direction, for they brushed the skin there, just
below it, a moment too soon. He rolled his pupils upward in their
sockets, and a moment later when she had raised one lid and peered,
only the sightless white eyeball was revealed.

She
took up his hand next and held it perpendicular, from elbow onward,
her thumb pressed to its wrist. She was feeling his pulse.

She
placed his hand back where she had drawn it from. And though she did
not drop it, nor cast it down, yet to him there was somehow only too
clearly expressed in the way she did it a fling of disappointment, a
shortening of the gesture, as if in annoyance at finding him still
alive, no matter by what test she applied.

Her
garments whispered in withdrawal, fanned him softly in farewell. A
moment later the door closed and she had gone from the room. The
wooden stairs sounded off her descending tread, as if knuckles were
lightly rapping on them step by step.

Now
the flight back to life began.

Fortified
by hoarded intensity, the earlier stages of it went well. He threw
back the coverings, he forced his body slantingly sideward atop the
bed, until it had dropped over the side.

He
was now strewn prone on the floor at bedside; he had but to raise
himself erect.

He
rested a moment. Violent flickering pains, like low-burning log
flames licking at the lining of his stomach, assailed him, went up
his breathing passage as up a flue, and then died out again into the
dull, aching torpor that was with him always and that was at least
bearable.

He
was on his feet now, and working his way alongside the bed down
toward its foot. From there to the chair was an open space, with no
support. He let go of the bed's footrail with a defiant backward
fling, cast off into the unsupported area. Two untrammeled steps, a
lurch. Two steps more, a third, he was hastening into a fall now. But
if he could reach the chair first-- He raced the distance to the
chair against it, and the chair won. He reached it, gripped it,
rocked it; but he stayed up.

He
donned his coat, buttoning it over without any shirt below. That was
comparatively easy. Trousers too; he managed them by sitting on the
chair and drawing them from the floor up. But the shoes were an
almost insuperable difficulty. To bend down to them in the ordinary
way was an impossibility; the whole length of his body would have
been excruciatingly curved.

He
guided them, empty, first, by means of his feet, so that they stood
perfectly straight, side by side. Then aimed each foot, one at a
time, into the opening of its destined shoe, and wormed it in. But
they gaped open, and it was impossible to proceed with them thus
without imminent danger of being thrown from one step to the next.

He
lay down on the floor, on his side. He scissored his legs, brought
one up until he had caught his foot with both hands. There were five
buttons on each shoe, but he chose only the topmost one, the most
accessible, and forced it through its matching eyelet. Then changing
legs, did it with the other.

Now
he was erect again, accoutred to go, and there only remained
lengthwise progress, over distance, to be accomplished. Only; he said
the word over to himself with wistful irony.

Like
a sleepwalker, taut at every joint; or like a mariner reeling across
a storm-slanted deck, he crossed from chair to room door, and leaned
inert there for a moment against its frame. Then softly took the knob
in his grasp, and turned it, and held it after it was turned, so that
it wouldn't click in recoil.

The
door was open. He stepped through.

An
oval window was let into the center of the hallway's frontal
crosswall, to light the stairs and to give an outlook. A curtain of
net was fastened taut across its pane.

He
reached there, elbowing the wall for support, and put an eye to it,
peering hungrily out into life. The curtain, brought so close to the
eye's retina, acted like a filter screen; it dismembered the scene
outside into small detached squares, separated by thick corded
frames, which were the threads of the curtain, magnified at that
short distance.

One
square contained a segment of the front walk below, nothing else; all
evenly slate-colored it was. The one above, again the walk, but at a
greater outward distance now, a triangle of the turf bordering it
beginning to cut in at the top, in green. The one still above that,
turf and walk in equal proportions, with the whitepainted base of one
of the gate posts beginning to impinge off in the upper corner. And
so on, in tantalizing fragments; but never the world whole, intact.