A boom of silence answered him; here, there, a marginal sound: rain like wings in the chimney, mice feet on fallen glass, maidenly steps of her who always walks the stair, and wind, opening doors, closing them, wind conversing sadly on the ceiling, blowing its damp sour breath in his face, breathing out its lungs through the rooms: he let himself be carried in its course: his head was light as a balloon, and as hollow-feeling; ice as eyes, thorns as teeth, flannel as tongue; he’d seen sunrise that morning, but, each step directing him nearing a precipice permanent in shadowed intent (or so it seemed), it was not likely he would see another: sleep was like smoke, he inhaled it deeply, but it went back on the air in rings of color, spots, sparks, whose fire restrained him from falling in a bundle on the floor: warnings, they were, these starry flies, stay awake, Joel, in eskimoland sleep is death, is all, remember?
She was cold, his mother, she passed to sleep with dew of snowflakes scenting her hair; if he could have but thawed open her eyes here now she would be to hold him and say, as he’d said to Randolph, «Everything is going to be all right»; no, she’d splintered like frozen crystal, and Ellen, gathering the pieces, had put them in a box surrounded by gladiolas fifty cents the dozen.
Somewhere he owned a room, he had a bed: their promise quivered before him like heat waves. Oh Idabel, why have you done this terrible thing!
There were footsteps on the porch; he could hear the squish-squish of soggy shoes; abruptly a flashlight beam poked through a parlor window, and for an instant settled on a flecked decaying mantel-mirror; shining there, the mirror was like a slab of jelly, and the figure from outside fumed indistinctly on its surface: no one could’ve said who it was, but Joel, seeing the light slide away, hearing the steps enter the hall, knew for certain it was Randolph. And there came over him the humiliating probability that not once since he’d left the Landing had he made a movement unobserved: how amusing his goodbye must’ve seemed to Mr. Sansom!
He crouched behind a door; through the hinged slit he could see into the hall where the light crawled like a burning centipede. It did not matter now if Randolph found him, he would welcome it. Still something kept him from calling out. The squshing steps moved toward the parlor threshold, and he heard, «Little boy, little boy,» a whimper of despair.
Miss Wisteria stood so near he could smell the rancid wetness of her shriveled silk; her curls had uncoiled, the little crown had slipped awry, her yellow sash was fading its color on the floor. «Little boy,» she said, swerving her flashlight over the bent, broken walls where her midget image mingled with the shadows of things in flight. «Little boy,» she said, the resignation of her voice intensifying its pathos.
But he dared not show himself, for what she wanted he could not give: his love was in the earth, shattered and still, dried flowers where eyes should be, and moss upon the lips, his love was faraway feeding on the rain, lilies frothing from its ruin. Withdrawing, she went up the stairs, and Joel, who listened to her footfalls overhead as she in her need of him searched the jungle of rooms, felt for himself ferocious contempt: what was his terror compared with Miss Wisteria’s? He owned a room, he had a bed, any minute now he would run from here, go to them. But for Miss Wisteria, weeping because little boys must grow tall, there would always be this journey through dying rooms until some lonely day she found her hidden one, the smiler with the knife.
Part Three
12
He sentenced himself: he was guilty: his own hands set about to expedite the verdict: magnetized, they found a bullet, the one thefted from Sam Radclif (Mr Radclif, forgive me, please, I never meant to steal) and, inserting it in Major Knox’s old Indian pistol (Child, how many times have I told you not to touch that nasty thing? — Mama, don’t scold me now, mama, my bones hurt, I’m on fire — The good die cold, the wicked in flames: the winds of hell are blue with the sweet ether of fever-flowers, horned snake-tongued children dance on lawns that are the surface of the sun, all loot from thievery tied to their tails like cat-cans, tokens of a life in crime) and put the bullet through his head: oh dear, there was nothing but a tickling, oh dear, now what?
When lo! he was where he’d never imagined to find himself again: the secret hideaway room in which, on hot New Orleans afternoons, he’d sat watching snow sift through scorched August trees: the run of reindeer hooves came crisply tinkling down the street, and Mr Mystery, elegantly villainous in his black cape, appeared in their wake riding a most beautiful boatlike sleigh: it was made of scented wood, a carved red swan graced the front, and silver bells were strung like beads to make a sail: swinging, billowing-out, what shivering melodies it sang as the sleigh, with Joel aboard and warm in the folds of Mr Mystery’s cape, cut over snowdeep fields and down unlikely hills.
But all at once his powers to direct adventures in the secret room failed: an ice-wall rose before them, the sleigh raced on to certain doom, that night radios would sadden the nation: Mr Mystery, esteemed magician, and Joel Harrison Knox, beloved by one and all, were killed today in an accident which also claimed the lives of six reindeer who. . . r-r-rip, the ice tore like cellophane, the sleigh slid through into the Landing’s parlor.
A strange sort of party seemed in progress there. These were among those present: Mr Sansom, Ellen Kendall, Miss Wisteria, Randolph, Idabel, Florabel, Zoo, Little Sunshine, Amy, R. V. Lacey, Sam Radclif, Jesus Fever, a man naked except for boxing-gloves (Pepe Alvarez), Sydney Katz (proprietor of the Morning Star Café in Paradise Chapel), a thick-lipped convict who wore a long razor on a chain around his neck like some sinister crucifix (Keg Brown), Romeo, Sammy Silverstein and three other members of the St. Deval Street Secret Nine.
Most were dressed in black, rather formal attire; the pianola was playing Nearer My God to Thee. Not noticing the sleigh, they moved in a leaning black procession around a gladiola-garlanded cedar chest into which each dropped an offering: Idabel her dark glasses, Randolph his almanac, R. V. Lacey the snipped hair from her wart, Jesus Fever his fiddle, Florabel her Kress tweezers, Mr Sansom his tennis balls, Little Sunshine a magic charm, and so on: inside the chest lay Joel himself, all dressed in white, his face powdered and rouged, his goldbrown hair arranged in damp ringlets: Like an angel, they said, more beautiful than Alcibiades, more beautiful, said Randolph, and Idabel wailed: Believe me, I tried to save him, but he wouldn’t move, and snakes are so very quick.
Miss Wisteria, fitting her little crown upon his head, leaned so far over she nearly fell into the chest: Listen, she whispered, I’m no fool, I know you’re alive: unless you give me the answer, I shan’t save you, I shan’t say a word: are the dead as lonesome as the living? Whereupon the room commenced to vibrate slightly, then more so, chairs overturned, the curio cabinet spilled its contents, a mirror cracked, the pianola, composing its own doomed jazz, held a haywire jamboree: down went the house, down into the earth, down down, past Indian tombs, past the deepest root, the coldest stream, down, down, into the furry arms of horned children whose bumblebee eyes withstand forests of flame.
He knew too well the rhythm of a rocking-chair; aramp-arump, hour on hour he’d heard one for how long? traveling through space, and the cedar chest became at last confused with its sway: if you fall you fall forever, back and forth together, the ceaseless chair, the cedar chest: he squeezed pillows, gripped the posters of the bed, for on seas of lamplight it rode the rolling rocker’s waves whose rocking was the tolling of a bell-buoy; and who was the pirate inching toward him in the seat? His eyes stung as he tasked them to identify: lace masks confounded, frost glass intervened, now the chair’s passenger was Amy, now Randolph, then Zoo.
But Zoo could not be here; she was walking for Washington, her accordion announcing every step of the way. An unrecognized voice quarreled with him, teased, taunted, revealed secrets he’d scarcely made known to himself: shut up, he cried, and wept, trying to silence it, but, of course, the voice belonged to him: «I saw you under the ferris-wheel,» it accused the pirate in the chair; «No,» said the pirate, «I never left here, sweet child, sweet Joel, all night I waited for you sitting on the stairs.»
Always he was gnawing bitter spoons, or
