A Jest of God (18 page)

“After it happened – I mean, at the Tabernacle that night when you were there,” Calla says, “I didn’t go again for weeks.”

“Didn’t you? Why not?”

“Because of how you felt. It was contagious. No, don’t say anything. I know you didn’t mean it to be. But I felt the same. As though it must be awful, in some way, the place and everything there. It was then that I re-read St. Paul.”

“Really?” I cannot take her earnestness seriously. What is she talking about?

“Yes. I suppose you knew all along. That was what I kept thinking about. You’d known all along.”

“Known
what?”

“Just exactly how much he’d warned against speaking in tongues. I’d only known bits of his sayings, here and there, the parts our preacher put into the mimeographed information sheets he passed around on the subject. Then I went and read it all. You knew all the time, eh?”

“No. I didn’t, Calla. Honestly.” But she doesn’t believe me. She has been worrying about this, utterly unknown to me. It has never crossed my mind. God’s irony – that we should for so long believe it is only the few who speak in tongues. “What did he say?”

Calla takes a mouthful of iced tea and leans back, deciding to masquerade nonchalance, but doing it so clumsily that all at once I know she’ll painfully and unnecessarily review it later when it’s too late to change how it has been spoken.

“
There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in the world, and none of them is without signification. Therefore if I know not the meaning of the voice, I shall be unto him that speaketh a barbarian, and he that speaketh shall be a barbarian unto me.”

“Maybe he didn’t mean –”

What am I doing, for heaven’s sake? Apologizing for the apostle’s appallingly accurate sight? I don’t ever remember having heard the words before, much as I was supposed to
have been reared on the black leather book. What he says isn’t what should be. It’s merely what is.

Calla smiles, and offers me a cigarette, her thonged feet outsplayed on the floor, her bulk now leaning forward, her spiky grey hair wavering stiffly as though her head were paradoxically covered with sprigs of dried lavender.

“Yeh, he meant it, all right, Rachel. But you have to see it in context.”

“Oh yes, I’m sure.”

The falseness of this does not escape her, and she smiles again, as though she now were protected against everything, including me, by a thousand mysteries.

“He says, as well, among a lot of other yakkity-yak,
If any man among you thinketh himself to be wise, let him become a fool, that he may be wise.
I mean, there you are. I thought to myself – Calla, you old cow, there you are.”

“Where?”

“Home-free,” she says, having apparently settled it, but still, I think, waiting for my reaction. “So I went back to the Tabernacle, see, bold as brass and twice as loud. My old usual self, you might say. I thought, well, there’s your clue, kiddo, and if the word that comes to mind is
Hallelujah
, then it’s
Hallelujah
, so what can you do about it? You didn’t destroy me, Rachel. Not that you meant to. But, I mean, you didn’t. It’s only right you should know.”

“I’m –” I don’t know what on earth to say. “I’m glad.”

“You’re not glad,” Calla says curtly. “How could you be? You don’t know what I’m talking about. Well, pardon me all to blazes, and for heaven’s sake don’t put your elbow any farther back or you’ll touch the wet paint. I
spoke
, by the way – that’s what I set out to tell you.”

“You mean –?”

“Yeh. Amazing, eh? It was given to me. To
me
, already. Not in the Tabernacle, I must say. Maybe just as well. I mean, who would have been able to interpret? St. Paul says there should be somebody there to interpret.”

She has left me behind. I’m not following her. And yet I’m not so much frightened, not any more. It won’t happen to me. I won’t become eccentric, moving in some private pattern only, speaking oddities which seem quite usual to me and other wise to others – hilarious to the cruel, terrifying to the slightly more observant. Not now. Not any more. She could be mad as any April fool and it wouldn’t infect me.

Perhaps he will phone me tonight. Nick?
Listen –

“Where did it happen, then?”

“Here,” she says. “When I was alone.”

“Oh?”

“Yeh. It just began, and – I don’t guess I could describe it, Rachel. It was peace. Like some very gentle falling of rain. Sounds funny, eh?”

“No – no, not at all.” It sounds insane.

“Well, enough of that,” Calla says, briskly clearing the glasses with the slices of lemon tea – logged and limp at the bottom. “Listen, you never saw Jacob, eh?”

“Who?”

“My canary. He doesn’t like all this painting deal, so I’ve put him in the bedroom for the time being.”

She leads me into the room which contains a single bed, cherry chenille-covered, and a dresser in whitewood which she has stained silver-grey, unlike any wood known to man. The cage is on the dresser, a large gilt cage, free-swinging on its stand so that the bird can rock and roll as it pleases. Inside it, there is a small porcelain bath, a tray of seed and a miniature step-ladder.

“Hello, Jacob,” Calla says. Then, to me, in a quiet aside, as though the bird might hear and take offence, “So-named because he climbs the ladder all the time. He won’t sing. No ear for music. All he does is march up and down that blasted ladder.”

“I wonder why?” I have to say something.

“Search me,” she shrugs. “Maybe the angel at the top can’t be seen by me.”

She whistles and beckons the bird. It remains sitting on the lowest rung, full of disdain or simply not noticing her.

“Dead loss,” Calla says. “I’d have done better with a budgie, like I had before.”

“Why keep it, then?”

“Well, it can’t help moving about from time to time, phlegmatic though it is, and then I can hear it. I’ve got kind of used to it, stupidly enough.”

I want to get away. I don’t want to stay here any longer. Calla listening in the early morning or in the darkness for some sound.

“Calla – Mother’s expecting me home – I must go.”

“Sure,” she says. “Okay, then. Drop in again, eh? When you’ve got the time.”

“Yes. Yes, I will.”

She smiles at me, lightly, politely, as though trying not to notice that I’ve no intention of coming again until some stereotyped conscience forces me to it.

Our tub is a very elderly one, exceptionally deep and long, mounted on claw feet taloned and grasping like a griffin’s, and pebbled on the outside with years of Mother’s enamelling. Despite its size, it is only just long enough for me to stretch out full length.

Once we discussed new plumbing. Mother kept saying
she was sick to death of painting this dilapidated old tub and trying to make it look halfway decent, and as for the toilet, it was a disgrace because who had a wooden seat any more? We got as far as deciding on colour – she favoured apricot – and then she decided it wouldn’t be practical because the new tubs in the range we could afford were all short and would have been fine for her but wouldn’t have done for me. I said I didn’t mind paying more for a longer one, but she said no, she was certain even those wouldn’t do, and we might have to have one custom-built. That’s what she said. She was annoyed at me that evening over something else, I suppose. When I said she was exaggerating, she said, “I don’t see any cause to be rude to me, just because I was trying to be practical, dear.” All such words cling to the mind like burrs to hair, and I can never seem to brush them away, as I know I should do.

Yet I remember, too, the words I’ve picked and flung like nettles – “How can we go to the movies this week? You know what Doctor Raven advised. You don’t want to have another attack, do you?” And she looked at me with eyes as wide and shadowed with troublement as though she’d been a child told to fetch something from an unlighted cellar. Only last night I said that, when she whined a little with boredom. It wouldn’t have hurt her to go out, or even if it had, better than waiting within the walls, probably. I wouldn’t go out because I thought he might phone.

Listen, Nick –

I talk to him, when he is not here, and tell him everything I can think of, everything that has ever happened, and how I feel and for a while it seems to me that I am completely known to him, and then I remember I’ve only talked to him like that when I’m alone. He hasn’t heard and doesn’t know.

– The house is not large, but that is all right. They do not need a large house, both of them working and she not able to spend much time in housework. The house is not in a city – very far from that sharpness and coldness. Galloping Mountain, perhaps, with the spruce trees fantastically high and closely set but when you look at night you can see through the black branches a sky warmly black and a white profusion of stars. He loves this place. He half apologizes for loving it – “Crazy, but I’ve always wanted – and maybe it’s a better investment, here, if the one inevitable hysterical moron yields to the seduction of knobs and dials or whatever in hell they are, and the cities are scorched to perdition. Maybe a few kids in scattered places like this will be the only ones who have ever heard of
The Tempest
or
Moby Dick.”

Oh Rachel. He’d never say that in a million years. What is he going to say to you, then, after that touching outburst? “Thank God you are here, darling – together we can face this wildness and walk hand-in-hand into the etcetera.” I’m ashamed. But I don’t stop. I’m addicted.

“You’re an awfully long time in there, Rachel.” Mother’s anxious quaver. “Are you all right?”

I won’t answer. I haven’t heard. Shut up, for God’s sake, can’t she? No, I’m not all right. I’ve just drowned.

“Are you all right, Rachel?”

“Yes, I’m quite all right. Be out in a minute.”

The water is clouded with soap, and through the murkiness my flesh does have a drowned look, too pale, lethargic, drifting, as though I could nevermore rise and act. I look thin as a thighbone. Naked, I am so bone-thin and long, my legs placed maidenly together and my arms out-dangling. Underwater, this cross of bones looks weird, devalued into freakishness. My pelvic bones are too narrow, too narrow for anything.

The phone.

I rise, listening, slithering on the porcelain, drenched, listening, cursing myself for not having got out before, listening.

It is. And Mother’s voice is breathless, as though she can’t wait to hang up the receiver.

“No, I’m sorry, she’s having a bath right now.”

“Hang on – I’m coming!”

He’ll have heard that, oh my God, that cry, as though I were a Saint Bernard galloping to the rescue of some stranded Alpine party.

“Hello.”

“Hello – Rachel?”

“Yes. How are you?”

“Sorry, darling, I didn’t recognize your voice at first. Oh, I’m more or less fine. Are you free?”

“Tonight?”

“Yes, tonight.”

“Yes. I’m free.”

When I hang up, Mother is standing in the kitchen doorway, watching me, distaste in her face, and then I realize I haven’t even got a towel around me.

“Really, Rachel, that doesn’t look very nice.”

“Don’t worry –” I don’t know what I’m saying. “The telephones aren’t equipped with
TV
yet.”

Then, while her disapproval turns to concern over the worrying gaiety of my madness, I begin in relief to laugh, to laugh and laugh, and it goes on.

“I’m sorry – I’ll stop in a moment –”

I close the door of the bathroom, and lock myself inside, and laugh shudderingly, light-years away from laughter.

Nick’s shirt is dark brown, the sleeves rolled up and showing his forearms, brown with summer and lightly covered with fine black hair, and where his shirt is open at the neck I can see the dipping curve of his collarbone. The male smell of him, clean sweat and skin, compels me to touch him. He smiles, but abstractly, as though not really noticing, and starts the car.

“They’re home tonight.” He sounds annoyed. “Shall we just drive out somewhere?”

“All right.”

“I tried to induce them, in my tactful way, to go to the movies, but no dice. The old man and I haven’t been on very good terms recently, so whatever I suggested, he was bound to do the opposite. If I’d had any sense, I would have begged him to stay home and he would’ve been out like a shot.”

“What’s the trouble, Nick?”

“Nothing’s the trouble,” he says. “He’s got such an awful temper, that’s all, and I’ve got a pretty evil one myself.”

“You? I don’t believe that.”

“You don’t know me very well.”

“Enough to know about your temper.”

“No, darling,” he says. “You don’t.”

“You shouldn’t run yourself down.”

“You’ve got it wrong,” he says. “I’m not. You’re the one who does that.”

Then I’m silenced. Is that what he thinks? Is that how I strike him? What must it be like, to be with someone who plays that drab tune repeatedly?

“I don’t! Anyway, not now. I haven’t recently.”

“Oh darling,” he says, and I cannot interpret his voice, something regretful in it, as though he were thinking a thing he couldn’t hope to explain. “Well, that’s good, I guess.”

“Your father – has he been keeping on at you about staying?”

He has talked so much before, but now he doesn’t seem to want to talk about it.

“Mostly other things,” he says reluctantly. “Complexities all around. Goddamn spider webs. Am I the spider or the fly? Philosophical question. Never mind. Look – wild raspberries. Shall we get some?”

The road is banked with bushes on either side, green stinging walls, and when we get out of the car, the smell of oil and engine fades in a moment, leaving the dusty smell of the gravel and the green dusty smell of the leaves.

“The best ones are always hidden. You have to look for them.” He scratches himself on the raspberry thorns. “Bloody hell. My right hand seems to have forgotten its cunning.”

“Nick – he’ll never ask you in so many words to stay, but –”

“How could I?” His voice is aggressive, and I see I’ve picked the wrong time, but I have to go on.

“Well, you might teach here, I suppose.”