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 half of both, bear its half or all of any other burdens anyone wanted to shed and shuck, having only this moment assumed that one of a young abandoned girl’s responsibility.
Because who would miss a dimension? who indeed but would be better off for having lost it, who had nothing in the first place to offer but just devotion, eighteen years of devotion, the ectoplasm of devotion too thin to be crowned by scorn, warned by hatred, annealed by grief. That’s it: unpin, shed, cast off the last clumsy and anguished dimension, and so be free. Unpin: that’s the trick, remembering Vladimir Kyrilytch’s “He aint unpinned it yet” — the twenty-dollar gold piece pinned to the undershirt of the country boy on his first trip to Memphis, who even if he has never been there before, has as much right as any to hope he can be, may be, will be tricked or trapped into a whorehouse before he has to go back home again. He has unpinned it now I thought.
TWENTY ONE
Charles Mallison
YOU KNOW HOW it is, you wake in the morning and you know at once that it has already happened and you are already too late. You didn’t know what it was going to be, which was why you had to watch so hard for it, trying to watch in all directions at once. Then you let go for a second, closed your eyes for just one second, and bang! it happened and it was too late, not even time to wake up and still hold off a minute, just to stretch and think What is it that makes today such a good one? then to let it come in, flow in: Oh yes, there’s not any school today. More: Thursday and in April and still there’s not any school today.
But not this morning. And halfway down the stairs I heard the swish of the pantry door shutting and I could almost hear Mother telling Guster: “Here he comes. Quick. Get out,” and I went into the dining room and Father had already had breakfast, I mean even when Guster has moved the plate and cup and saucer you can always tell where Father has eaten something; and by the look of his place Uncle Gavin hadn’t been to the table at all and Mother was sitting at her place just drinking coffee, with her hat already on and her coat over Uncle Gavin’s chair and her bag and gloves by her plate and the dark glasses she wore in the car whenever she went beyond the city limits as if light didn’t have any glare in it except one mile from town.
And I reckon she wished for a minute that I was about three or four because then she could have put one arm around me against her knee and held the back of my head with the other hand. But now she just held my hand and this time she had to look up at me. “Mrs Snopes killed herself last night,” she said. “I’m going over to Oxford with Uncle Gavin to bring Linda home.”
“Killed herself?” I said. “How?”
“What?” Mother said. Because I was only twelve then, not yet thirteen.
“What did she do it with?” I said. But then Mother remembered that too by that time. She was already getting up.
“With a pistol,” she said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think to ask whose.” She almost had the coat on too. Then she came and got the gloves and bag and the glasses. “We may be back by dinner, but I dont know. Will you try to stay at home, at least stay away from the Square, find something to do with Aleck Sander in the back yard? Guster’s not going to let him leave the place today, so why dont you stay with him?”
“Yessum,” I said. Because I was just twelve; to me that great big crepe knot dangling from the front door of Mr de Spain’s bank signified only waste: another holiday when school was suspended for an indefinite time; another holiday piled on top of one we already had, when the best, the hardest holiday user in the world couldn’t possibly use two of them at once, when it could have been saved and added on to the end of the one we already had when the little Riddell boy either died or got well or anyway they started school again. Or better still: just to save it for one of those hopeless days when Christmas is so long past you have forgotten it ever was, and it looks like summer itself has died somewhere and will never come again.
Because I was just twelve; I would have to be reminded that the longest school holiday in the world could mean nothing to the people which that wreath on the bank door freed for one day from work. And I would have to be a lot older than twelve before I realised that that wreath was not the myrtle of grief, it was the laurel of victory; that in that dangling chunk of black tulle and artificial flowers and purple ribbons was the eternal and deathless public triumph of virtue itself proved once more supreme and invincible.
I couldn’t even know now what I was looking at. Oh yes, I went to town, not quite as soon as Mother and Uncle Gavin were out of sight, but close enough. So did Aleck Sander. We could hear Guster calling us both a good while after we had turned the corner, both of us going to look at the wreath on the closed bank door and seeing a lot of other people too, grown people, come to look at it for what I know now was no braver reason than the one Aleck Sander and I had.
And when Mr de Spain came to town as he always did just before nine oclock and got his mail from the postoffice like he always did and let himself into the back door of the bank with his key like he always did because the back door always stayed locked, we — I couldn’t know that the reason he looked exactly like nothing had happened was because that was exactly the way he had to come to town that morning to have to look.
That he had to get up this morning and shave and dress and maybe practise in front of the mirror a while in order to come to the Square at the time he always did so everybody in Jefferson could see him doing exactly as he always did, like if there was grief and trouble anywhere in Jefferson that morning, it was not his grief and trouble, being an orphan and unmarried; even to going on into the closed bank by the back door as if he still had the right to.
Because I know now that we — Jefferson — all knew that he had lost the bank.
