‘Now — a little trickle. It comes down on the floor. It’s like something was hurt and bleeding up in the outer world. There’s some thunder! Or was it a truck going by?’
She spoke a little more rapidly now, but held her body very relaxed against the window with the rain streaking the glass, breathing out and in the next words she wanted to say:
‘It seeps down. Then, in all the other hollows come other seepages. Little twines and snakes. Tobacco-stained water. It makes puddles. Then it — moves. It joins others. It makes snakes and then one big constrictor which rolls along on the flat-papered floor, with a majestic movement. From everywhere, from the north and south, from other streets, other streams come and they join and make one hissing and shining of coils.
‘The cistern’s full, from wall to wall, and it turns towards the ocean and the gravity pull of the ocean! There are little tidal swirls. And ten thousand drains drop down all kinds of undigested water, paper and muck. And the water gets into those two little dry niches I told you about. It rises slowly around those two dry people lying like Japanese water-flowers there, dead.’
She clasped her hands, slowly, working finger into finger, interlacing.
‘The water soaks into them. First, it lifts the woman’s hand. In a little move. Her hand’s the only live part of her. Then her arm lifts and one foot. And her hair — ‘ She touched her own hair as it hung about her shoulders. ‘ — unloosens and opens out like a flower in the water. Her shut eyelids are blue. . .’
The room got darker, Juliet sewed on, and Anna talked and told all she saw in her mind. She told how the water rose and took the woman with it, unfolding her out and loosening her and standing her full upright in the cistern, the dead woman not caring. ‘The water is interested in the woman, and she lets it have its way. All morals come from outside to her. After a long time of lying still, and being stiff, she’s ready to live again, any life the water wants her to have.’
Somewhere else, the man stood up in the water also. And Anna told of that, and how the water carried him slowly, drifting, and her, drifting, until they met each other.
‘The water opens their eyes. Now they can see but not see each other. They circle, not touching yet.’ Anna made a little slow circle of her head, eyes closed. ‘They watch each other and the only muscles they’ve got are made by the water. They glow with some kind of phosphorus. They smile.
‘They — touch hands.’
Anna hesitated, took in a long breath, lingered over the thought, putting the tips of her right hand against the fingers of her left.
‘The tide — makes them touch. They bump. They go away. They bump again. It’s gentle. First, hands. Then, feet. Then — bodies.’
At last, Juliet, stiffening, put down her sewing and stared at her sister, across the grey, rain-silent room.
‘They circle,’ whispered Anna, softly, slowly, her fingers trailing in the air. ‘They bump, gently. They turn. Twist. Their heads bump and their lips bump softly. A lot of times, and their long white bodies bump and bump gently.’
‘Anna!’
‘They float over and they float under each other. The tide comes and puts them together. Then, away again. Back and forth.’ She showed how with her hands. ‘It’s a perfect kind of love, with no ego to it, only two bodies, moved by the water, which makes it clean and all right. It’s not wicked, this way.’
‘It’s bad your saying it!’ cried her sister.
‘No, it’s all right,’ insisted Anna, turning for an instant. ‘They’re not ‘thinking,’ are they? They’re just so deep down and quiet and not caring. Like children in a bath.’
She took her right hand and held it over her left hand very slowly and gently, quavering and interweaving them for one another. The rainy window, with the dull autumn light penetrating, put a movement of light and running water on her fingers, made them seem submerged, fathoms deep in grey water, running one about the other as she finished her little dream:
‘Him, tall and quiet, his hands open,’ she showed with a gesture how tall and how easy he was in the water.
‘Her, small and quiet and relaxed.’ She drifted the hands in a slow pressure one upon the other. ‘Both of them so wonderful about it, not hurrying, knowing that they’ve all the time in the world.’ The two hands hung in mid-air, her face fascinated over them. She looked at her sister, leaving her hands just that way. ‘Love’s always better when it’s long and careful and not rushed. They can be long and careful here, because no one sees them, there’s no one to yell at them or criticize. Nobody can walk in on them. Except little bits of paper floating, or a magazine. And — why, even if somebody did happen in on them — they’re dead!’
She seemed very pleased to have rediscovered this aspect of the situation. She looked at her white hands. ‘They’re dead, with no place to go, and no one to tell them. They just wouldn’t pay attention if people looked at them and said ‘Look! A man and a woman, no clothing on, in the water, isn’t that awful!” She laughed softly.
‘They’d just go on being in the water, circling each other carelessly, no matter how people talked or stared, no matter which people, mothers or fathers, even, or sisters.’ She jerked her head at her sister. ‘Remember that child rhyme? how’d it go? ‘Scoldings don’t hurt, Lickings don’t last, And kill me you dassn’t!’ Only with this man and this woman it’s ‘Resurrect us you dassn’t!’ They’d have to be resurrected, have to be made alive before any one could tell them they were wicked and wrong. And nobody could do that, it’s too late. That’s the beauty of it!
‘So there they are, with nothing applying to them and no worries, very secret and hidden under the earth in the cistern waters, going around and about. They touch their hands and lips and when they come into a cross-street outlet of the cistern the tide rushes them together and they burn cold in the water!’ She clapped her hands together. ‘They’re crushed against a wall. They stay that way, one against the other, for maybe an hour, with the tide moving them in little fine moves and everything beautiful.
Then, later. . .’ She disengaged her hands, ‘. . . maybe they travel together, hand in hand, hobbling and floating, carefree and relaxed, down all the streets, doing little crazy upright dances when they’re caught in sudden swirls, her like white fire, him the same.’ She whirled her hands about; a drenching of rain spattered the window. ‘And they go down to the sea, all across the town, past cross-drain and cross-drain, street and street.
Genesee Avenue, Crenshaw, Edmond Place, Washington, Motor City, Ocean Side and then the ocean and the travelling. They can go anywhere they want, all over the earth, on a deep siphon, and come back later, to the cistern inlet and swim back up under the town, under a dozen tobacco shops and four dozen liquor stores, and six dozen groceries and ten theatres, a rail junction, Highway 101, under the walking feet of thirty thousand people who don’t even know or think of the cistern.’
Anna’s voice drifted and dreamed and grew quiet again.
‘And then — the day passes and the thunder goes away upon the street. The rain stops. The rainy season’s over. The tunnels drip and stop. The tide goes down.’ She seemed disappointed, sad it was over. ‘The river runs out to the ocean. The man and woman feel the water leave them slowly to the floor. They settle.’ She lowered her hands in little bobblings towards her lap, watching them fixedly, longingly.
‘Their feet touch and their feet lose the life the water has given them from outside. Their knees touch, and their hips and now the water lays them down, side by side, and drains away and the tunnels are drying. There are just little puddles and wet papers. And there they lie. With little, contented smiles. They don’t move and they’re not ashamed. Like two children they lie there with the water all gone and their skin drying. They barely touch. Up above, in the world, the sun comes out. There they lie, in the darkness, sleeping, until the next time. Until the next rain.’
Her hands were now upon her lap, palms up and open. ‘Nice man, nice woman,’ she murmured. She bowed her head over them and shut her eyes tight.
Suddenly, Anna sat up and glared at her sister. ‘Do you know who the man is?’ she shouted, bitterly.
Juliet did not reply, she had watched, stricken, for the past five minutes while this thing went on. Her mouth was twisted and pale. Anna almost screamed:
‘The man is Frank, that’s who he is! And I’m the woman!’
‘Anna!’
‘Yes, it’s Frank, down there!’
‘But Frank’s been gone for years, and certainly not down there, Anna!’
Now, Anna was talking to nobody, and to everybody, to Juliet, to the window, the wall, the street. ‘Poor Frank,’ she cried. ‘I know that’s where he went. He couldn’t stay anywhere in the world. His mother spoiled him for all the world! So he saw the cistern and saw how secret and fine it was, and how it went down to the ocean and
