Ladders to Fire (3 page)

Outwardly
Djuna
was
the essence of femininity…a curled frilled flower which might have been a
starched undulating petticoat or a ruffled ballet skirt
moulded
into a sea shell. But inwardly the nature was clarified, ordered, understood,
dominated. As a child
Djuna
had looked upon the
storms of her own nature—jealousy, anger, resentment—always with the knowledge
that they could be dominated, that she refused to be devastated by them, or to
destroy others with them. As a child, alone, of her own free will, she had
taken on an oriental attitude of dominating her nature by wisdom and
understanding. Finally, with the use of every known instrument—art, aesthetic
forms, philosophy, psychology—it had been tamed.

But each time she saw it in Lillian, flaring,
uncontrolled, wild, blind, destroying itself and others, her compassion and
love were aroused. “That will be my gift to her,” she thought with warmth, with
pity. “I will guide her.”

Meanwhile Lillian was exploring this aesthetic,
this form, this mystery that was
Djuna
. She was
taking up
Djuna’s
clothes one by one, amazed at their
complication, their sheer femininity. “Do you wear this?” she asked, looking at
the black lace nightgown. “I thought only prostitutes wore this!”

She investigated the perfumes, the cosmetics,
the refined coquetries, the veils, the muffs, the scarves. She was almost like
a sincere and simple person before a world of artifice. She was afraid of being
deceived by all this artfulness. She could not see it as aesthetic, but as the
puritans see it: as deception, as immorality, as belonging with seduction and
eroticism.

She insisted on seeing
Djuna
without make-up, and was then satisfied that make-up was purely an enhancement
of the features, not treachery.

Lillian’s house was beautiful, lacquered, grown
among the trees, and bore the mark of her handiwork all through, yet it did not
seem to belong to her. She had painted, decorated, carved, arranged, selected,
and most of it was made by her own hands, or refashioned, always touched or
handled or improved by her, out of her very own activity and craftsmanship. Yet
it did not become her house, and it did not have her face, her atmosphere. She
always looked like a stranger in it. With all her handiwork and taste, she had
not been able to give it her own character.

It was a home; it suited her husband, Larry,
and her children. It was built for peace. The rooms were spacious, clear,
brightly windowed. It was warm, glowing, clean, harmonious. It was like other
houses.

As soon as
Djuna
entered it, she felt this. The strength, the fervor, the care Lillian spent in
the house, on her husband and children came from some part of her being that
was not the deepest Lillian. It was as if every element but her own nature had
contributed to create this life. Who had made the marriage? Who had desired the
children? She could not remember the first impetus, the first choice, the first
desire for these, nor how they came to be. It was as if it had happened in her
sleep. Lillian, guided by her background, her mother, her sisters, her habits,
her home as a child, her blindness in regard to her own desires, had made all
this and then lived in it, but it had not been made out of the deeper elements
of her nature, and she was a stranger in it.

Once made—this life, these occupations, the
care, the devotion, the family—it never occurred to her that she could rebel
against them. There was no provocation for rebellion. Her husband was kind, her
children were lovable, her house was harmonious; and Nanny, the old nurse who
took care of them all with inexhaustible maternal warmth, was their guardian
angel, the guardian angel of the home.

Nanny’s devotion to the home was so strong, so
predominant, and so constantly manifested that the home and family seemed to
belong to her more than to Lillian. The home had a reality for Nanny. Her whole
existence was centered on it. She defended its interests, she hovered, reigned,
watched, guarded tirelessly. She passed judgments on the visitors. Those who
were dangerous to the peace of the home, she served with unappetizing meals,
and from one end of the meal to the other, showed her disapproval. The welcome
ones were those
her
instinct told her were good for
the family, the home, for their unity. Then she surpassed herself in cooking
and service. The unity of the family was her passionate concern: that the
children should understand each other and love each other; that the children
should love the father, the mother; that the mother and father should be close.
For this she was willing to be the receiver of confidences, to be the
peacemaker, to reestablish order.

She was willing to show an interest in any of
Lillian’s activities as long as these ultimately flowed back to the house. She
could be interested in concerts if she brought the overflow of the music home
to enhance
it.She
could be interested in painting
while the results showed visibly in the house.

When the conversation lagged at the table she
supplied diversion. If the children quarreled she upheld the rights of each one
in soothing, wise explanations.

She refused one proposal of marriage.

When Lillian came into the house, and felt lost
in it, unable to really enter into, to feel it, to participate, to care, as if
it were all not present and warm but actually a family album, as if her son
Paul did not come in and really take off his snow-covered boots, but it was a
snapshot of Paul taking off his boots, as if her husband’s face were a
photograph too, and Adele was actually the painting of her above the piano…then
Lillian rushed to the kitchen, unconsciously seeking Nanny’s worries, Nanny’s
anxieties (Paul is too thin, and Adele lost her best friend in school) to
convince herself of the poignant reality of this house and its occupants (her
husband had forgotten his rubbers).

If the children had not been growing up (again
according to Nanny’s tabulations and calculations) Lillian would have thought
herself back ten years! Her husband did not change.

Nanny was the only one who had felt the shock
the day that Lillian decided to have her own room. And Lillian might not have
changed the rooms over if it had not been for a cricket.

Lillian’s husband had gone away on a trip. It
was summer. Lillian felt deeply alone, and filled with anxiety. She could not
understand the anxiety. Her first thought always was: Larry is happy. He is
well. He looked very happy when he left. The children are well. Then what can
be the matter with me? How can anything be the matter with me if they are well?

There were guests at the house. Among them was
one who vaguely resembled Gerard, and the young man in her dreams, and the
young man who appeared to her under
anaesthetic
.
Always of the same family. But he was bold as a lover. He courted her swiftly,
impetuously.

A cricket had lodged itself in one of the beams
of her room. Perfectly silent until the young man came to visit her, until he
caressed her. Then it burst into frenzied cricket song.

They laughed.

He came again the next night, and at the same
moment the cricket sang again.

Always at the moment a cricket should sing.

The young man went away. Larry returned. Larry
was happy to be with his wife.

But the cricket did not sing. Lillian wept.
Lillian moved into a room of her own. Nanny was depressed and cross for a week.

When they sat together, alone, in the evenings,
Larry did not appear to see her. When he talked about her he always talked
about the Lillian of ten years ago; how she looked then, how she was, what she
said. He delighted in reviving scenes out of the past, her behavior, her
igh
temper and the troubles she got herself into. He often
repeated these stories. And Lillian felt that she had known only one Larry, a
Larry who had courted her and then remained as she had first known him. When
she heard about the Lillian of ten years ago she felt no connection with her.
But Larry was living with her, delighting in her presence. He reconstructed her
out of his memory and sat her there every evening they had together.

One night they heard a commotion in the
otherwise peaceful village. The police car passed and then the ambulance. Then
the family doctor stopped his car before the gate. He asked for a drink. “My
job is over,” he said, “and I need a drink badly.” Lillian gave him one, but at
first he would not talk.

Later he explained: The man who rented the
house next door was a young doctor, not a practicing one. His behavior and way
of living had perplexed the neighbors. He received no one, allowed no one into
the house. He was somber in mood, and attitude, and he was left alone. But
people complained persistently of an unbearable odor. There were
investigations. Finally it was discovered that his wife had died six months
earlier, in California. He had brought her body back and he was living with it
stretched on his bed. The doctor had seen her.

Lillian left the room. The odor of death, the
image of death…everywhere.

No investigation would be made in her house. No
change. Nanny was there.

But Lillian felt trapped without knowing what
had trapped her.

Then she found
Djuna
.
With
Djuna
she was alive. With
Djuna
her entire being burst into living, flowering cells. She could feel her own
existence, the Lillian of today.

She spent much time with
Djuna
.

Paul felt his mother removed in some way. He
noticed that she and his father had little to say to each other. He was
anxious. Adele had nightmares that her mother was dying. Larry was concerned.
Perhaps Lillian was not well. She ate little. He sent for the doctor. She
objected to him violently. Nanny hovered, guarded, as if she scented danger.
But nothing changed. Lillian waited. She always went first to the kitchen when
she came home, as if it were the hearth itself, to warm himself. And then to
each child’s room, and then to Larry.

She could do nothing.
Djuna’s
words illuminated her chaos, but changed nothing. What was it
Djuna
said: that life tended to crystallize into patterns
which became traps and webs. That people tended to see each other in their
first “state” or “form” and to adopt a rhythm in consequence. That they had
greatest difficulty in seeing the transformations of the loved one, in seeing
the becoming. If they did finally perceive the new self, they had the greatest difficulty
nevertheless in changing the rhythm. The strong one was condemned to perpetual
strength, the weak to perpetual weakness. The one who loved you best condemned
you to a static role because he had adapted his being to the past self. If you
attempted to change, warned
Djuna
, you would find a
subtle, perverse opposition, and perhaps sabotage! Inwardly and outwardly, a
pattern was a form which became a prison. And then we had to smash it. Mutation
was difficult. Attempts at evasion were frequent, blind evasions, evasions from
dead
relips
, false relationships, false roles, and
sometimes from the deeper self too, because of the great obstacle one
encountered in affirming it. All our emotional history was that of the spider
and the fly, with the added tragedy that the fly here collaborated in the
weaving of the web. Crimes were frequent. People in desperation turned about
and destroyed each other. No one could detect the cause or catch the criminal.
There was no visible victim. It always had the appearance of suicide.

Lillian sensed the walls and locks. She did not
even know she wanted to escape. She did not even know she was in rebellion. She
did it with her body. Her body became ill from the friction, lacerations and
daily duels with her beloved jailers. Her body became ill from the poisons of
internal rebellion, the monotony of her prison, the greyness of its days, the
poverty of the nourishment. She was in a fixed relationship and could not move
forward.

Anxiety settled upon the house. Paul clung to
his mother longer when they separated for short periods. Adele was less gay.

Larry was more silent.

Nanny began to weep noiselessly. Then she had a
visitor. The same one she had sent away ten years earlier. The man was growing
old. He wanted a home. He wanted Nanny. Nanny was growing old. He talked to her
all evening, in the kitchen. Then one day Nanny cried without control. Lillian
questioned her. She wanted to get married. But she hated to leave the family.
The family! The sacred, united, complete family. In this big house, with so
much work. And no one else to be had. And she wanted Lillian to protest, to
cling to her—as the children did before, as Larry had done a few years back,
each time the suitor had come again for his answer. But Lillian said quietly, “Nanny,
it is time that you thought of yourself. You have lived for others all your
life. Get married. I believe you should get married. He loves you. He waited
for you such a long time. You deserve a home and life and protection and a
rest. Get married.”

And then Lillian walked into the dining room
where the family was eating and she said: “Nanny is going to get married and
leave us.”