Lilith (32 page)

She turned toward me, smiling. “On quests, Vincent? Are there dragons in the woods, or evil sorcerers?”

“I think there may be,” I said.

“Really? Oh, I want to see them!” She slipped down from the rails and stood with the fence between us, laying her hand on mine. “Come and show me.”

“No, I think we’d better stay up here.”

“I’ll go alone, then.”

Before I could make a move to seize her she had fled down the slope of the hill, her hair splashing about her shoulders and her skirt flying. As it was evident that I could easily overtake her and that the woods were far too sparse for her to hide in, her flight was obviously more a demonstration of caprice, or perhaps a test of wills between us, than a serious attempt at escape; and I was for this reason very leisurely in my pursuit of her. I vaulted the fence and walked down the hill behind her—it seemed to display much more authority than running—being careful nevertheless to keep the distance between us a reasonably limited one. She had entered the thin patch of woodland in a moment and ran through its gray shadow like a dryad, looking back at me over her shoulder and laughing merrily. The slope of the hill dropped steeply here, and I had only just increased the pace of my pursuit to a mild trot, to prevent her from disappearing from my sight below the fall of land, when I saw her stop, lifting her hands to clasp her throat lightly and staring down at the ground. As I approached I saw that she stood amongst a litter of huge bleached bones, scattered for yards among the stones and dead leaves of the forest floor, the work of vultures, rain and frost. They had lost all design, except for half of the broken rib cage, which lay with its pale curved staves standing upright, like a ruined harp. Beside it, half buried in a mound of rotting leaves, lay the shattered skull, its splintered bone washed clean and dry as chalk. It gave me an inconsolable feeling to look at them, being my only monument upon the earth. A little yellow butterfly was fluttering among them.

“Oh, look!” Lilith said with soft amazement. “Is it a dragon?”

“No, it’s a horse. It was killed with a rock—you see how the skull is crushed? With that rock there.”

“How do you know?” Lilith said.

“Because I killed it.”

She raised her eyes to me slowly, still clutching her throat in an attitude of startled languor.

“She got hurt,” I said. “She was suffering terribly. And I didn’t have any gun. I had to do it.”

She lowered her eyes to the strewn bones, extending her hand in a timid, covetous gesture toward them.

“May I have one?”

It was an odd, unpleasant question, which made it sound as if I held over these bleached remains some disturbing proprietorship—one which I was eager to disclaim.

“They’re not mine. What do you mean? Why do you want one?”

“As a gift from you. My earthly birthday is next week. Don’t you want to give me something?”

She stooped down quickly, startling away the yellow butterfly, and lifted the broken skull from the moist black leaf-mold in which it was sunken, holding it gently before her and peering into the dark splintered hollow where the rock had crushed it. I felt a wave of disgust.

“Put it down,” I said. “It’s a dirty thing. I can’t see why you want a thing like that.”

“I do. I want to keep it. Let me, Vincent.”

“Well, keep it, then, if you want. But it’s no gift from me.” I felt intolerably oppressed by the silence of the forest and by the place. “Let’s go out of here. Let’s go down there in the sun.”

“Yes.”

She followed me through the trees to the edge of the forest, cradling the skull in the bend of her arm, gazing down at it with a strange look of sentiment and touching it solicitously with her fingers, like a young mother with a child. We walked out of the shadow of the trees to a cluster of boulders that stood in the open pastureland above the creek. I leaned against one of the larger of them and Lilith sank down onto the grass at my feet, watching my hand with soft absorption while I stroked the surface of the rock. In a moment she reached up and touched the back of it gently and hesitantly with her finger tips.

“You killed an animal with them,” she said. “I mean an intelligent animal.”

“Oh, I’ve killed much more intelligent animals than that,” I said, withdrawing it quickly.

‘What do you mean, Vincent?”

“I’ve killed men with them, too.”

“You’ve killed men?” she whispered. “
Why
?”

‘Well, that’s the business of soldiers. It seems to be the only thing I’ve ever done in my life with any consistent success.” I became distressed by the unyielding length of her gaze and asked rather roughly, “What did you do with the canteen? Did you leave it?”

“Yes, I’m sorry. Shall I get it for you?”

“No, it doesn’t matter.”

I sat down in the grass a little apart from her with my back against the boulder and watched the sweeping flight of a meadowlark along the creek below us. It flung out a volley of bright, bronzelike notes across the field, to which Lilith turned her head attentively. When the sound had ceased she said, “You must love them very much.”

“Who?”

“Your people, and your God. To kill for them, and then to go on loving them after you have killed. They must have been very good to you to deserve such love.”

“I thought all gods and all nations demanded sacrifices,” I said.

“Oh, no.” She dropped her head so that her hair flooded her lap. “I would never ask that of a lover. I would only ask his joy.” The sudden gravity of atmosphere which her words created gave me a faint, breathless feeling of alarm, and I found myself saying, with a callow and somewhat desperate attempt at virtuosity, “But you aren’t a goddess, or a nation.”

She allowed me, in a pause of perfectly calculated length, to consider my own words, murmuring in a moment, with reproving modesty, “No, I’m only a wild girl with dirty hair whom you keep locked in your attic.”

“I try to get you out of it as often as I can,” I said. “You’re the one who seems to prefer it. I want you to run free.”

“Do you, Vincent?” She raised her head to look at the hills across the valley, raking the hair from her eyes and smiling into the distance. “Where shall I go? To Samarkand? Or Knossos, or Trebizond? No; I know a city where I can wait for you. Shall I, Vincent? You will find me by the fountain in the city square, in the shadow of a white tower with an iron bell in it, all streaked with linnet lime, that creaks faintly in the wind from Persia.”

“How will I know you?” I asked in a low, hesitant voice, unable to resist the fanciful pleasure of this game.

“I will carry a bowl of limes, and wear a silver veil; and my feet will be the slimmest in the city.”

I dropped my eyes to where they rested in the grass, acknowledging this mutely.

“Yes; I will recognize you by them,” I said.

She turned her head toward me.

“When may I go?”

“Soon. When you’re well.”

‘When I am well that city will disappear.”

“Then you’ll find another one. A better one, that won’t disappear.”

She shook her head gently, looking into my eyes. “But I will disappear, too. You must remember that.”

‘What do you mean?” I asked harshly.

“I don’t think either of us would recognize the other, then. That would be a poor reward for your patience, Vincent.”

I sat staring at the ground for some time, and said at last, “Well, I’m used to unrewarded patience.”

“But you weren’t made for it. You had to learn it, back there in that town—of which you have never been a citizen.”

I plucked a grass blade and crumpled it in my fingers, unable to deny what she had said, but filled with a stubborn and indignant sense of loyalty by her words.

“Nevertheless it’s my town, and they’re my people,” I said. “No matter how imperfect they may be, or how imperfectly I may love them. They’re the only ones I have.”

“What have you to do with them?” Lilith said. “You don’t belong to those people. Your mother was a wanton and your father a rogue. They’re not your people, Vincent. I know who you are. I knew you even before you told me.”

I clenched my hands suddenly, bowing my head in anger and humiliation.

“You have no right to say that . . . about my parents,” I said in a bitter whisper.

“I didn’t say it because I despise them, Vincent. I think if I had known them I would have loved them best of all, as you did.” When I did not reply she added softly, “Or do you really love them? Perhaps you are ashamed of them, too.”

I raised my eyes to her slowly, feeling afflicted by a sudden ugly spasm of self-distrust, a sudden nausea of spirit, from her question; then, almost immediately afterward, I was nearly exalted by a profound and perfectly recognizable hatred for her. It gave me a clarity of mind and a vitality that for once, in my relationship with her, made me feel entirely independent and articulate.

“It’s possible to be ashamed of someone and still to love them,” I said fiercely. “I’m ashamed of the people in that town because of the way they treated my mother and me; but I love them, too, because they suffer, just like me. That’s why I understand them and belong to them. I’m ashamed of my grandfather because of something he did once, something mean, something far beneath him. He tried to bribe me to join the army; he offered me a college education if I would enlist. He didn’t want me to be drafted. I had to be one of the first people in our town to enlist, because that was the only way it would help to restore the family honor. I guess it would have been more effective if I’d gotten my head blown off. But I love him very much, because I know he’s ashamed of it, too, and because he suffers for having done it. He couldn’t help doing it. His pride was hurt once—very greatly—by my father, and he can’t help trying to mend it, even when it means wounding people that he loves. So then I had to hurt him, too, in return—to show how much he had hurt me. I said something cruel and vindictive to him, and he knows that I suffer because of that, too. And even though we know we can’t ever repair it, that we can’t ever start again, we still go on loving each other—even more than before, I think. Because I think that’s what human love is—everything but children’s love, anyway—loving the wounds we give each other, and that we can’t help giving each other; you can’t stay alive if you don’t hurt people. But what do you know about that? You don’t know anything about it, and don’t care anything about it. You’ve forgotten how hard it is to love them.”

I stared at her hotly, expecting—and, for once, almost welcoming—her anger and irony; but again she was not to be predicted. I saw that there were tears in her eyes, and she bent down quickly, pressing her lips with a sudden startling tenderness against my forearm and murmuring, “Do you have to wound me, too, to love me, Vincent?”

It may hardly be believable that never until that moment had I understood fully and consciously the meaning of my feelings toward Lilith. If I had been subconsciously aware of it—as I must have been—I had, in my desperation, so totally and effectively forbidden myself to acknowledge it that I experienced now a virginal feeling of bewilderment, and somehow of bereavement, at the sudden realization of how hopelessly and entirely I was in love with her. Perhaps I had had, in fact, some insight into the true significance of my growing confusion and anxiety, and had deliberately obscured it to myself with all sorts of complex and apparently conscientious interpretations, for even the most conspicuously intimate or romantic of our exchanges I had been able to accept as a kind of game, a graceful, somewhat frivolous, but useful, concession to her nature and condition, by which it had been more possible to approach and understand her and to gain her confidence. This may seem like the grossest kind of self-deception and utterly incongruous to anyone who reads this manuscript, but it must be remembered that I have written this account of our meetings and dialogues (all but the extracts from my journal) in the light of later understanding, which makes it almost impossible to reproduce the innocence, or ignorance, with which I played my part in them.

But however subtle and determined the method I had used to preserve my self-respect, to disguise from myself the nature of such untenable emotions, I could not sustain it any longer. I felt the lover’s glorious and overwhelming impulse to declare himself; I wanted to take her in my arms and whisper, “I love you, Lilith,” in hushed, endless, exquisite confessions. It was only by an excruciating effort of will—surely the grandest of my life—that I was able to compromise this impulse by saying merely, with a tremulously imperfect effort to control my voice, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be unjust to you, Lilith. I know you’ve suffered, too. Much more than most of us, I think.”

She must have sensed the passion in my voice and contented herself with this as an evidence of triumph; for she did not pursue the question I had ignored, but sat with her head bowed and her face hidden while I stared at the cool bright curve of her head with ravaged eyes.

In a moment she stretched her hands out to the skull which lay beside her in the grass and began to caress it while she spoke to me: “I know why you suffer, Vincent. You have the cruelest of all talents, a gift which always estranges. How terrible it is that there are so few opportunities to exercise it in your world, and so many to exercise a talent for destroying.” She plunged her fingers into the broken sockets of the skull, clutching it so tightly that her knuckles whitened and there was a sudden scarlet seam of blood across the bone from her pierced skin. “Do you think I don’t know how you suffer? Oh, I do. I know how terrible it is to love and not be able to confess your love. It is enough to drive one mad.” She turned toward me, her face transformed by a look of unearthly compassion, her voice falling to a tormenting whisper as she said, “Oh, tell me now. Please. I can’t bear it any longer.”

And again she made me feel unworthy in my loyalty; again she made me despise my own courage; for I said the words in my heart—oh, many times!—“I love you, Lilith”; but still I would not speak them.

“You’ve hurt yourself,” I murmured.

She lifted her bleeding hand and slung it in my face, scattering drops of blood across my cheek and lips. I raised my hand involuntarily to wipe them, but suspended the gesture humbly, bowing my head before her anger. She stood up quickly and stared down at me, her eyes dark with fury.