“I tried that,” she said. “No.”
“I’ll talk to him,” I said. “I’ll tell him. He must. He’ll have to; there’s no other—”
“No,” she said. “Not Manfred.” Then I watched her hands, not fast, open the bag and take out the pack of cigarettes and the single kitchen match and extract the cigarette and put the pack back into the bag and close it and (no, I didn’t move) strike the match on the turned sole of her shoe and light the cigarette and put the match into the tray and put her hands again on the bag. “Not Manfred. You dont know Manfred. And so maybe I dont either.
Maybe I dont know about men either. Maybe I was completely wrong that morning when I said how women are only interested in facts because maybe men are just interested in facts too and the only difference is, women dont care whether they are facts or not just so they fit, and men dont care whether they fit or not just so they are facts. If you are a man, you can lie unconscious in the gutter bleeding and with most of your teeth knocked out and somebody can take your pocketbook and you can wake up and wash the blood off and it’s all right; you can always get some more teeth and even another pocketbook sooner or later.
But you cant just stand meekly with your head bowed and no blood and all your teeth too while somebody takes your pocketbook because even though you might face the friends who love you afterward you never can face the strangers that never heard of you before. Not Manfred. If I dont go with him, he’ll have to fight. He may go down fighting and wreck everything and everybody else, but he’ll have to fight. Because he’s a man. I mean, he’s a man first. I mean, he’s got to be a man first. He can swap Flem Snopes his bank for Flem Snopes’s wife, but he cant just stand there and let Flem Snopes take the bank away from him.”
“So Linda’s sunk,” I said. “Finished. Done. Sunk.” I said, cried: “But you anyway will save something! To get away yourself at least, out of here, never again to.… never again Flem Snopes, never again, never—”
“Oh, that,” she said. “You mean that. That doesn’t matter. That’s never been any trouble. He … cant. He’s — what’s the word? impotent. He’s always been. Maybe that’s why, one of the reasons. You see? You’ve got to be careful or you’ll have to pity him. You’ll have to. He couldn’t bear that, and it’s no use to hurt people if you dont get anything for it. Because he couldn’t bear being pitied. It’s like V.K.’s Vladimir. Ratliff can live with Ratliff’s Vladimir, and you can live with Ratliff’s Vladimir. But you mustn’t ever have the chance to, the right to, the choice to. Like he can live with his impotence, but you mustn’t have the chance to help him with pity. You promised about the Vladimir, but I want you to promise again about this.”
“I promise,” I said. Then I said: “Yes. You’re going tonight. That’s why the beauty parlor this afternoon: not for me but for Manfred. No: not even for Manfred after eighteen years: just to elope with, get on the train with. To show your best back to Jefferson. That’s right, isn’t it? You’re leaving tonight.”
“Marry her, Gavin,” she said. I had known her by sight for eighteen years, with time out of course for the war; I had dreamed about her at night for eighteen years including the war. We had talked to one another twice: here in the office one night fourteen years ago, and in her living room one morning two years back. But not once had she ever called me even Mister Stevens. Now she said Gavin. “Marry her, Gavin.”
“Change her name by marriage, then she wont miss the one she will lose when you abandon her.”
“Marry her, Gavin,” she said.
“Put it that I’m not too old so much as simply discrepant; that having been her husband once, I would never relinquish even her widowhood to another. Put it that way then.”
“Marry her, Gavin,” she said. And now I stopped, she sitting beyond the desk, the cigarette burning on the tray, balancing its muted narrow windless feather where she had not touched it once since she lit it and put it down, the hands still quiet on the bag and the face now turned to look at me out of the half-shadow above the rim of light from the lamp — the big broad simple still unpainted beautiful mouth, the eyes not the hard and dusty blue of fall but the blue of spring blooms all one inextricable mixture of wistaria cornflowers larkspur bluebells weeds and all, all the lost girls’ weather and boys’ luck and too late the grief, too late.
“Then this way. After you’re gone, if or when I become convinced that conditions are going to become such that something will have to be done, and nothing else but marrying me can help her, and she will have me. But have me, take me. Not just give up, surrender.”
“Swear it then,” she said.
“I promise. I have promised. I promise again.”
“No,” she said. “Swear.”
“I swear,” I said.
“And even if she wont have you. Even after that. Even if she w — you cant marry her.”
“How can she need me then?” I said. “Flem — unless your father really does get shut of the whole damned boiling of you, runs Flem out of Jefferson too — will have his bank and wont need to swap, sell, trade her anymore; maybe he will even prefer to have her in a New England school or even further than that if he can manage it.”
“Swear,” she said.
“All right,” I said. “At any time. Anywhere. No matter what happens.”
“Swear,” she said.
“I swear,” I said.
“I’m going now,” she said and rose and picked up the burning cigarette and crushed it carefully out into the tray and I rose too.
“Of course,” I said. “You have some packing to do even for an elopement, dont you. I’ll drive you home.”
“You dont need to,” she said.
“A lady, walking home alone at — it’s after midnight. What will Otis Harker say? You see, I’ve got to be a man too; I cant face Otis Harker otherwise since you wont stop being a lady to him until after tomorrow’s south-bound train; I believe you did say Texas, didn’t you?” Though Otis was not in sight this time though with pencil paper and a watch I could have calculated about where he would be now.
Though the figures could have been wrong and only Otis was not in sight, not we, crossing the shadow-bitten Square behind the flat rapid sabre-sweep of the headlights across the plate glass storefronts, then into the true spring darkness where the sparse street lights were less than stars.
And we could have talked if there had been more to talk about or maybe there had been more to talk about if we had talked. Then the small gate before the short walk to the small dark house not rented now of course and of course not vacant yet with a little space yet for decent decorum, and I wondered, thought Will Manfred sell him his house along with his bank or just abandon both to him — provided of course old Will Varner leaves him time to collect either one and stopped.
“Dont get out,” she said and got out and shut the door and said, stooping a little to look at me beneath the top: “Swear again.”
“I swear,” I said.
“Thank you,” she said. “Good night,” and turned and I watched her, through the gate and up the walk, losing dimension now, onto or rather into the shadow of the little gallery and losing even substance now. And then I heard the door and it was as if she had not been. No, not that; not not been, but rather no more is, since was remains always and forever, inexplicable and immune, which is its grief. That’s what I mean: a dimension less, then a substance less, then the sound of a door and then, not never been but simply no more is since always and forever that was remains, as if what is going to happen to one tomorrow already gleams faintly visible now if the watcher were only wise enough to discern it or maybe just brave enough.
The spring night, cooler now, as if for a little while, until tomorrow’s dusk and the new beginning, somewhere had suspired into sleep at last the amazed hushed burning of hope and dream two-and-two engendered. It would even be quite cold by dawn, daybreak. But even then not cold enough to chill, make hush for sleep the damned mocking bird for three nights now keeping his constant racket in Maggie’s pink dogwood just under my bedroom window.
So the trick of course would be to divide, not him but his racket, the having to listen to him: one Gavin Stevens to cross his dark gallery too and into the house and up the stairs to cover his head in the bedclothes, losing in his turn a dimension of Gavin Stevens, an ectoplasm of Gavin Stevens impervious to cold and hearing too to bear its
