Katherine Anne Porter (45 page)

“I’m simply not going to be there,” said Chuck, absorbed in his review. No, Adam will be there, thought Miranda. She slipped down in the chair and leaned her head against the dusty plush, closed her eyes and faced for one instant that was a lifetime the certain, the overwhelming and awful knowledge that there was nothing at all ahead for Adam and for her. Nothing. She opened her eyes and held her hands together palms up, gazing at them and trying to understand oblivion.

“Now look at this,” said Chuck, for the lights had come on and the audience was rustling and talking again. “I’ve got it all done, even before the headliner comes on. It’s old Stella Mayhew, and she’s always good, she’s been good for forty years, and she’s going to sing ‘O the blues ain’t nothin’ but the easygoing heart disease.’ That’s all you need to know about her. Now just glance over this. Would you be willing to sign it?”

Miranda took the pages and stared at them conscientiously, turning them over, she hoped, at the right moment, and gave them back. “Yes, Chuck, yes, I’d sign that. But I won’t. We must tell Bill you wrote it, because it’s your start, maybe.”

“You don’t half appreciate it,” said Chuck. “You read it too fast. Here, listen to this—” and he began to mutter excitedly. While he was reading she watched his face. It was a pleasant face with some kind of spark of life in it, and a good severity in
the modeling of the brow above the nose. For the first time since she had known him she wondered what Chuck was thinking about. He looked preoccupied and unhappy, he wasn’t so frivolous as he sounded. The people were crowding into the aisle, bringing out their cigarette cases ready to strike a match the instant they reached the lobby; women with waved hair clutched at their wraps, men stretched their chins to ease them of their stiff collars, and Chuck said, “We might as well go now.” Miranda, buttoning her jacket, stepped into the moving crowd, thinking, What did I ever know about them? There must be a great many of them here who think as I do, and we dare not say a word to each other of our desperation, we are speechless animals letting ourselves be destroyed, and why? Does anybody here believe the things we say to each other?

Stretched in unease on the ridge of the wicker couch in the cloakroom, Miranda waited for time to pass and leave Adam with her. Time seemed to proceed with more than usual eccentricity, leaving twilight gaps in her mind for thirty minutes which seemed like a second, and then hard flashes of light that shone clearly on her watch proving that three minutes is an intolerable stretch of waiting, as if she were hanging by her thumbs. At last it was reasonable to imagine Adam stepping out of the house in the early darkness into the blue mist that might soon be rain, he would be on the way, and there was nothing to think about him, after all. There was only the wish to see him and the fear, the present threat, of not seeing him again; for every step they took towards each other seemed perilous, drawing them apart instead of together, as a swimmer in spite of his most determined strokes is yet drawn slowly backward by the tide. “I don’t want to love,” she would think in spite of herself, “not Adam, there is no time and we are not ready for it and yet this is all we have—”

And there he was on the sidewalk, with his foot on the first step, and Miranda almost ran down to meet him. Adam, holding her hands, asked, “Do you feel well now? Are you hungry? Are you tired? Will you feel like dancing after the show?”

“Yes to everything,” said Miranda, “yes, yes. . . .” Her head was like a feather, and she steadied herself on his arm. The mist was still mist that might be rain later, and though the air was
sharp and clean in her mouth, it did not, she decided, make breathing any easier. “I hope the show is good, or at least funny,” she told him, “but I promise nothing.”

It was a long, dreary play, but Adam and Miranda sat very quietly together waiting patiently for it to be over. Adam carefully and seriously pulled off her glove and held her hand as if he were accustomed to holding her hand in theaters. Once they turned and their eyes met, but only once, and the two pairs of eyes were equally steady and noncommittal. A deep tremor set up in Miranda, and she set about resisting herself methodically as if she were closing windows and doors and fastening down curtains against a rising storm. Adam sat watching the monotonous play with a strange shining excitement, his face quite fixed and still.

When the curtain rose for the third act, the third act did not take place at once. There was instead disclosed a backdrop almost covered with an American flag improperly and disrespectfully exposed, nailed at each upper corner, gathered in the middle and nailed again, sagging dustily. Before it posed a local dollar-a-year man, now doing his bit as a Liberty Bond salesman. He was an ordinary man past middle life, with a neat little melon buttoned into his trousers and waistcoat, an opinionated tight mouth, a face and figure in which nothing could be read save the inept sensual record of fifty years. But for once in his life he was an important fellow in an impressive situation, and he reveled, rolling his words in an actorish tone.

“Looks like a penguin,” said Adam. They moved, smiled at each other, Miranda reclaimed her hand, Adam folded his together and they prepared to wear their way again through the same old moldy speech with the same old dusty backdrop. Miranda tried not to listen, but she heard. These vile Huns—glorious Belleau Wood—our keyword is Sacrifice—Martyred Belgium—give till it hurts—our noble boys Over There—Big Berthas—the death of civilization—the Boche—

“My head aches,” whispered Miranda. “Oh, why won’t he hush?”

“He won’t,” whispered Adam. “I’ll get you some aspirin.”

“In Flanders Field the poppies grow, Between the crosses row on row”—“He’s getting into the home stretch,” whispered Adam—atrocities, innocent babes hoisted on Boche bayonets
—your child and my child—if our children are spared these things, then let us say with all reverence that these dead have not died in vain—the war, the
war
, the
WAR
to end
WAR
, war for Democracy, for humanity, a safe world forever and ever—and to prove our faith in Democracy to each other, and to the world, let everybody get together and buy Liberty Bonds and do without sugar and wool socks—was that it? Miranda asked herself, Say that over, I didn’t catch the last line. Did you mention Adam? If you didn’t I’m not interested. What about Adam, you little pig? And what are we going to sing this time, “Tipperary” or “There’s a Long, Long Trail”? Oh, please do let the show go on and get over with. I must write a piece about it before I can go dancing with Adam and we have no time. Coal, oil, iron, gold, international finance, why don’t you tell us about them, you little liar?

The audience rose and sang, “There’s a Long, Long Trail A-winding,” their opened mouths black and faces pallid in the reflected footlights; some of the faces grimaced and wept and had shining streaks like snail’s tracks on them. Adam and Miranda joined in at the tops of their voices, grinning shamefacedly at each other once or twice.

In the street, they lit their cigarettes and walked slowly as always. “Just another nasty old man who would like to see the young ones killed,” said Miranda in a low voice; “the tom-cats try to eat the little tom-kittens, you know. They don’t fool you really, do they, Adam?”

The young people were talking like that about the business by then. They felt they were seeing pretty clearly through that game. She went on, “I hate these potbellied baldheads, too fat, too old, too cowardly, to go to war themselves, they know they’re safe; it’s you they are sending instead—”

Adam turned eyes of genuine surprise upon her. “Oh,
that
one,” he said. “Now what could the poor sap do if they did take him? It’s not his fault,” he explained “he can’t do anything but talk.” His pride in his youth, his forbearance and tolerance and contempt for that unlucky being breathed out of his very pores as he strolled, straight and relaxed in his strength. “What
could
you expect of him, Miranda?”

She spoke his name often, and he spoke hers rarely. The little shock of pleasure the sound of her name in his mouth
gave her stopped her answer. For a moment she hesitated, and began at another point of attack. “Adam,” she said, “the worst of war is the fear and suspicion and the awful expression in all the eyes you meet. . . as if they had pulled down the shutters over their minds and their hearts and were peering out at you, ready to leap if you make one gesture or say one word they do not understand instantly. It frightens me; I live in fear too, and no one should have to live in fear. It’s the skulking about, and the lying. It’s what war does to the mind and the heart, Adam, and you can’t separate these two—what it does to them is worse than what it can do to the body.”

Adam said soberly, after a moment, “Oh, yes, but suppose one comes back whole? The mind and the heart sometimes get another chance, but if anything happens to the poor old human frame, why, it’s just out of luck, that’s all.”

“Oh, yes,” mimicked Miranda. “It’s just out of luck, that’s all.”

“If I didn’t go,” said Adam, in a matter-of-fact voice, “I couldn’t look myself in the face.”

So that’s all settled. With her fingers flattened on his arm, Miranda was silent, thinking about Adam. No, there was no resentment or revolt in him. Pure, she thought, all the way through, flawless, complete, as the sacrificial lamb must be. The sacrificial lamb strode along casually, accommodating his long pace to hers, keeping her on the inside of the walk in the good American style, helping her across street corners as if she were a cripple—“I hope we don’t come to a mud puddle, he’ll carry me over it”—giving off whiffs of tobacco smoke, a manly smell of scentless soap, freshly cleaned leather and freshly washed skin, breathing through his nose and carrying his chest easily. He threw back his head and smiled into the sky which still misted, promising rain. “Oh, boy,” he said, “what a night. Can’t you hurry that review of yours so we can get started?”

He waited for her before a cup of coffee in the restaurant next to the pressroom, nicknamed The Greasy Spoon. When she came down at last, freshly washed and combed and powdered, she saw Adam first, sitting near the dingy big window, face turned to the street, but looking down. It was an extraordinary face, smooth and fine and golden in the shabby light, but now set in a blind melancholy, a look of pained suspense
and disillusion. For just one split second she got a glimpse of Adam when he would have been older, the face of the man he would not live to be. He saw her then, rose, and the bright glow was there.

Adam pulled their chairs together at their table; they drank hot tea and listened to the orchestra jazzing “Pack Up Your Troubles.”

“In an old kit bag, and smoil, smoil, smoil,” shouted half a dozen boys under the draft age, gathered around a table near the orchestra. They yelled incoherently, laughed in great hysterical bursts of something that appeared to be merriment, and passed around under the tablecloth flat bottles containing a clear liquid—for in this western city founded and built by roaring drunken miners, no one was allowed to take his alcohol openly—splashed it into their tumblers of ginger ale, and went on singing, “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary.” When the tune changed to “Madelon,” Adam said, “Let’s dance.” It was a tawdry little place, crowded and hot and full of smoke, but there was nothing better. The music was gay; and life is completely crazy anyway, thought Miranda, so what does it matter? This is what we have, Adam and I, this is all we’re going to get, this is the way it is with us. She wanted to say, “Adam, come out of your dream and listen to me. I have pains in my chest and my head and my heart and they’re real. I am in pain all over, and you are in such danger as I can’t bear to think about, and why can we not save each other?” When her hand tightened on his shoulder his arm tightened about her waist instantly, and stayed there, holding firmly. They said nothing but smiled continually at each other, odd changing smiles as though they had found a new language. Miranda, her face near Adam’s shoulder, noticed a dark young pair sitting at a corner table, each with an arm around the waist of the other, their heads together, their eyes staring at the same thing, whatever it was, that hovered in space before them. Her right hand lay on the table, his hand over it, and her face was a blur with weeping. Now and then he raised her hand and kissed it, and set it down and held it, and her eyes would fill again. They were not shameless, they had merely forgotten where they were, or they had no other place to go, perhaps. They said not a word, and
the small pantomime repeated itself, like a melancholy short film running monotonously over and over again. Miranda envied them. She envied that girl. At least she can weep if that helps, and he does not even have to ask, What is the matter? Tell me. They had cups of coffee before them, and after a long while—Miranda and Adam had danced and sat down again twice—when the coffee was quite cold, they drank it suddenly, then embraced as before, without a word and scarcely a glance at each other. Something was done and settled between them, at least; it was enviable, enviable, that they could sit quietly together and have the same expression on their faces while they looked into the hell they shared, no matter what kind of hell, it was theirs, they were together.

At the table nearest Adam and Miranda a young woman was leaning on her elbow, telling her young man a story. “And I don’t like him because he’s too fresh. He kept on asking me to take a drink and I kept telling him, I don’t drink and he said, Now look here, I want a drink the worst way and I think it’s mean of you not to drink with me, I can’t sit up here and drink by myself, he said. I told him, You’re not by yourself in the first place; I like that, I said, and if you want a drink go ahead and have it, I told him, why drag
me
in? So he called the waiter and ordered ginger ale and two glasses and I drank straight ginger ale like I always do but he poured a shot of hooch in his. He was awfully proud of that hooch, said he made it himself out of potatoes. Nice homemade likker, warm from the pipe, he told me, three drops of this and your ginger ale will taste like Mumm’s Extry. But I said, No, and I mean no, can’t you get that through your bean? He took another drink and said, Ah, come on, honey, don’t be so stubborn, this’ll make your shimmy shake. So I just got tired of the argument, and I said, I don’t need to drink, to shake my shimmy, I can strut my stuff on tea, I said. Well, why don’t you then, he wanted to know, and I just told him—”