A Million Windows (8 page)

After she had looked for a few moments in the direction of the book resting under his arm, she unfastened her case and took out an exercise-book. She looked into the book as though wanting to check what was her homework for that evening, and then she closed the book and placed it with its front cover upwards on top of her case, which was now closed again. He had been tense and uneasy while he was displaying his own name for her inspection, and when he had understood that she was showing him her name he became even more so. His eyesight was sound, and the railway compartment was so well lit by afternoon sunlight that he could have read the fine print of a newspaper if she had rested such a thing in front of her, but he struggled to make out her name, even though her handwriting was of average neatness. His first impulse was to look away, as he would certainly have looked away if he had been walking behind her one afternoon down the ramp from the railway platform and if a gust of wind had lifted her skirt from her thighs. He might have looked eagerly at the name on the exercise-book if he had been spying on her, but he was not ready to have her make it so freely available to him. He became somewhat calmer after he had made out her surname, which was not an uncommon name, but he became agitated again when he could not decide what was her given name. The word was of
medium length with its letters boldly formed in blue ink, but he could not recognise the word. For all his confusion, he had no wish to cause her the least anxiety, and after what he considered an appropriate interval he looked away as though he had easily interpreted the only written message she would ever send him, whereupon she returned the book to her leather case.

It might have been better for him if her given name had appeared as a blur, but he had read it as
D-a-t-h-a-r
, which he felt sure was a misreading. He did not need to consult any books of girls' names to know that no girl-child in the English-speaking parts of the world had ever been named
Dathar
, although he sometimes thought her mother might have belonged to some or another dark-haired Slavic minority group in whose language
dathar
meant
fair of face
or
blessed by fortune
. Mostly, he felt as though he had failed an elementary test that anyone in his situation should have passed with ease: as though he was henceforth disqualified from thinking of himself as having a girlfriend, given that he could not even read her name after she had exposed it to him.

He had felt, on several occasions during the third decade of his life, that he was about to experience what was mostly called in those years a nervous breakdown. On all but one of these occasions, he had sought no help and had either avoided the breakdown by some or another means or had experienced the breakdown and had survived it, although he could never afterwards have said which of those two was the correct version of events. On one of those occasions, he had consulted a psychiatrist
who had advised him, among other things, to meet weekly in his, the psychiatrist's rooms, with six or seven others of his patients, all males, in the expectation that their discussions would serve as what was called in those years
group therapy
and would result in each person's either avoiding the nervous breakdown that he was threatened with or recovering soon from that which he had recently suffered. He, the likely chief character of any further version of these already fictional events, joined the group for five or six weeks but then wrote to the psychiatrist explaining why he would no longer attend, his chief reason being that the men in the group mostly gossiped when they should have been confessing their problems and asking for advice. Of all that was talked about in the group he recalled long afterwards only an account by a certain man who was married and a father of his becoming interested, when he had been a young man and hardly more than a boy, in a female person of about his own age who was one of a small group who waited every morning at the same suburban bus stop. He who was hardly more than a boy had glanced often at her who was hardly more than a girl, and she had glanced almost as often at him. After the two had glanced thus for several months, the young man, hardly more than a boy, resolved to speak to the young woman, hardly more than a girl, although he dreaded doing so. On morning after morning, he walked from his home to the bus stop rehearsing in his mind a certain few words that he intended that morning to say to the young woman, which words were about the weather or the likelihood of the bus's arriving on time. On morning after morning, he could
not bring himself to utter the words in the hearing of the young woman. Then, on a certain morning, he forced himself to stand beside the young woman and to deliver his rehearsed words in her direction. He could never recall afterwards whether or not he had delivered the words; he could recall only his waking on the grass beside the bus stop and being told by the concerned persons around him that he had fainted shortly beforehand.

Several members of the group in the psychiatrist's rooms had been amused by the man's account while several others had seemed to suppose that the man had been exaggerating and had not actually fainted at the bus stop, but the likely chief character, as I called him above, not only believed every detail of the man's account but asked him whether or not the young woman, hardly more than a girl, had been one of the concerned persons surrounding him while he recovered from his fainting fit and whether or not he and she had spoken to one another on subsequent mornings at the bus stop and had become friends. The man replied that he had been too ashamed to look into the faces of any of the concerned persons and that he had returned home at once and had never afterwards taken a bus to work but had walked each morning far out of his way to a railway station. The chief character, as I call him, would have liked to tell the man who had fainted the story of his, the chief character's, dealing silently for two years with the young woman, hardly more than a girl, whose name he had once misread as
Dathar
, but he did not trust the other men in the group to comment honestly on what he might have told them.

If he had not mistrusted most of the men who met in the psychiatrist's rooms, the chief character of the paragraphs hereabouts might have told them not that he had fainted away on the afternoon when he had spoken, or had tried to speak, for the first time to the young woman, hardly more than a girl, that he had looked at for two years but that he had never been able afterwards to recall anything of the occasion. He could readily recall during the remainder of his life the events leading up to the occasion. A small child had misbehaved in the compartment where he and the young woman travelled, and he had resolved to walk beside the young woman after they had left the train and to remark on the child's antics. (One possible reason for his having waited for so long before speaking was his being unable to compose what would have been his opening remarks. He could never have merely greeted her or commented on the weather. He felt obliged to impress her from the very first with wit or humour.) He could recall afterwards, with some difficulty, his walking beside the young woman for a short distance before they took their separate ways homewards. And given that the young woman smiled at him when he entered the railway compartment on the following afternoon and that later he sat beside her when a seat had become available and that they talked together during the remainder of their journey, he could not doubt that he had communicated with her in some way or another during the few minutes that he could never afterwards recall. But whether he had said something witty or humorous or something banal or whether he had forced from his constricted throat only some or
another friendly sound he would never know. He had certainly not fainted away as had the young man at the bus stop, but part of him had seemingly been numbed or had ceased to function.

As I reported in the previous paragraph, the young woman smiled at the young man as soon as he had stepped into her compartment on the afternoon following his attempt to speak to her, and he and she afterwards talked together. Had she not smiled, the young man would have assumed that no words from him had reached her on the previous afternoon and would merely have exchanged glances with her as before. He and she talked together at last, but the reader should not have in mind an image of two young persons chatting amicably and being at ease with one another. Perhaps the young woman was at ease and was amicably disposed towards the young man, but he was so ill at ease that he was afterwards unable to recall any more than two sentences spoken by the young woman from all that she had said to him during five or ten minutes of conversation on ten or, perhaps, fifteen weekday afternoons before the afternoon when they said goodbye to one another as usual while they walked down the ramp from the railway platform and then went their separate ways, even while he, the young man, had decided that he wanted no more to do with the young woman.

He, whether the reader perceives him as a character in a work of fiction being written by a personage in an upper room of a house of two or, perhaps, three storeys or as a fictional personage in a fictional setting not yet written about or merely as a character in this present work of fiction – he, however he may be perceived,
was afterwards able to recall only two items from all that the young woman must surely have talked about during the two or three weeks when he and she had talked together at last. The first of the two items was her given name, which was Darlene. He surely told her during their first conversation that he had been unable to make out her given name on the afternoon when she had placed her exercise-book in his view, but he surely did not tell her that he had thought of her during the previous year as bearing the absurd name of
Dathar
. The second of the two items was a question that she asked him on the last afternoon when he and she spoke together, which question will be reported later in this work of fiction. Whatever else he had learned about the young woman he afterwards forgot, if he had even absorbed it during their time together, so that she seems to him today not a person that he once dealt with in the world where I sit writing these sentences but an inscrutable image-person whose appearance was derived from a certain dark-haired young woman, hardly more than a girl, that he saw often in a certain railway compartment: an image-person who might have been the chief character of a complicated daydream-world that the girl in the railway compartment could never have guessed at and who later became one of the chief characters in a certain published work of fiction in which she has a different name from the name of the young woman mentioned in the paragraphs and is reported as behaving somewhat differently.

At some time during every day, I like to walk in the grounds that I see often from my upstairs window but have hardly begun to explore. The reader should not suppose from my having used the word
grounds
just now what I supposed during the first years when I frequented this singular building. I used then to suppose that the extensive formal parks and lawns and lakes and flower-beds, together with the labyrinths of paths and walkways connecting them, would have ended abruptly in every direction, and at some considerable distance from the building, in a high fence or a wall or hedge, on the further side of which would have been the nearest paddocks of the mostly level grassy countryside that seems to surround building and grounds on all sides and seems to be crossed at long intervals by roads where sunlight flashes occasionally in the late afternoon from the windscreen of some or another car or truck too far away to be seen or heard, and seems to extend far beyond the low hills or the lines of trees on the horizon. In fact, I have never come across any such fence or wall or hedge. I mostly stroll without purpose in the grounds around this mansion, so to call it, but I have sometimes walked directly away from the building, wanting to learn how far I might travel while still feeling myself in sight of a few at least of the sumless windows behind me. Not only did I never come up against any seeming boundary, but I was never able to decide, at the furthest point of my excursion, whether the mostly level grass and the scattered trees around me were still part of the estate that included the tall house where I belonged for the time being or whether I had strayed across some unmarked border
into the countryside that had always seemed, when I looked towards it from my upper window, beyond the reach of a person writing for hour after hour at a desk.

I mostly stroll without purpose, as I wrote above, and yet I seem to be drawn often to one particular sort of place. In several level areas within sight of one or another wing of the house, so to call it, I find myself seemingly ensnared for the time being among a number of pebbled paths forming a series of concentric circles separated each from the other by a box hedge reaching no higher than my thighs. From an upper window of the nearest wing, the paths and the hedges between might appear as one of those carefully planned and tended mazes where persons become truly lost among dense green barriers higher than themselves and where they cry out to be led back to the outside world, so to call it. Never, on any path among the dwarf-hedges, have I ceased to know where I stood in relation to this towering building in the one direction and the mostly level and far-reaching countryside in the other. And yet, I have been sometimes able to experience, while I supposed myself trapped for the time being in a whorl of topiary even though in sight of safety – I have been sometimes able to experience what I suppose to be the pleasurable confusion of a certain sort of reader of a certain sort of fiction.