Reflections in a Golden Eye (5 page)

'I'll take the tray up,' said the Major, for he saw that, although there was nothing to
eat involved, it was the sort of thing that would please his wife and he might get the
credit for it.

Alison sat propped in her bed with a book. In her reading glasses her face seemed all
nose and eyes, and there were sickly blue shadows about the corners of her mouth. She wore
a white linen nightgown and a bed jacket of warm rose velvet. The room was very still and
a fire burned on the hearth. There was little furniture, and the room, with its soft gray
mg and cerise curtains, had a bare and very simple look. While Alison drank the broth, the
Major, bored, sat in a chair by the bed and tried to think up something to say. Anacleto
meddled lightly about the bed. He was Whistling a melody that was sprightly, sad and clear.

'Look, Madame Alison!' he said suddenly. 'Do you feel well enough to discuss a certain
matter with me?'

She put down her cup and took off her glasses. 'Why, what is it?'

'This!' Anacleto brought a footstool to the side of the bed and eagerly drew from his
pocket some little scraps of cloth. 'These samples I ordered for us to look over. And now
think back to the time two years ago when we passed by the window of Peck and Peck in New
York City and I pointed out a certain little suit to you.' He selected one of the samples
and handed it to her. 'This material made exactly in that way.'

'But I don't need a suit, Anacleto,' she said.

'Oh, but you do! You have not bought a garment in more than a year. And the green frock
is bien usee at the elbows and ready for the Salvation Army.'

When Anacleto brought out his French phrase he gave the Major a glance of the merriest
malice. It always made the Major feel rather eerie to listen to them talking together in
the quiet room. Their voices and enunciation were so precisely alike that they seemed to
be softly echoing each other. The only difference was that Anacleto spoke in a chattering,
breathless manner, while Alison's voice was measured and composed.

'How much is it?' she asked.

'It is costly. But one could not expect to get such a quality for anything less. And
think of the years of service.'

Alison turned back to her book again. 'We'll see about it.'

'For God's sake, go ahead and buy the dress,' the Major said. It bothered him to hear
Alison haggle.

'And while we're about it we might order an extra yard so that I can have a jacket,'
Anacleto said.

'All right If I decide to get it.'

Anacleto poured Alison's medicine and made a face for her as she drank it. Then he put an
electric pad behind her back and brushed her hair. But as he started out of the room, he
could not quite get past the full length mirror on the closet door. He stopped and looked
at himself, pointed his toe and cocked his head.

Then he turned back to Alison and began to whistle again. 'What is that? You and
Lieutenant Weincheck were playing it last Thursday afternoon.'

'The opening bar of the Franck A Major Sonata.'

'Look!' said Anacleto excitedly. 'It has just this minute made me compose a ballet. Black
velvet curtains and a glow like winter twilight. Very slowly, with the whole cast Then a
spotlight for the solo like a flame very dashing, and with the waltz Mr. Sergei
Rachmaninoff played. Then the finish goes back to the Franck, only this time ' He looked
at Alison with his strange, bright eyes. 'Drunk!'

And with that he began to dance. He had been taken to the Russian ballet a year before
and he had never got over it. Not a trick, not a gesture had escaped him. On the gray rug
he moved about in a languid pantomime that slowed down until he stood quite still with his
feet in their sandals crossed and his fingertips touched together in a meditative
attitude. Then without warning he whirled lightly and began a furious little solo. It was
apparent from his bright face that in his own mind he was out on an immense stage, the
cynosure in a dazzling spectacle. Alison, also, was plainly enjoying herself. The Major
looked from one to the other in disgusted disbelief. The last of the dance was a drunken
satire of the first. Anacleto finished with an odd little pose, his elbow held in one hand
and his fist to his with an expression of wry puzzlement

Alison burst out laughing. 'Bravo! Bravo! Anacleto!'

They laughed together and the little Filipino leaned against the door, happy and a bit
dazed. At last he caught his breath and exclaimed in a marveling voice, 'Have you ever
noticed how well “Bravo” and “Anacleto” go together?'

Alison stopped laughing and nodded thoughtfully. 'Indeed, Anacleto, I have noticed it
many times.'

The little Filipino hesitated in the doorway. He glanced around the room to make sure
that nothing was wanting. Then he looked into her face and his eyes were suddenly shrewd
and very sad. 'Call me if you need me,' he said shortly.

They heard him start down the stairs slowly, then quicken to a skip. On the last steps he
must have tried something altogether too ambitious, for there was a sudden thud. When the
Major reached the head of the stairs, Anacleto was picking himself up with brave dignity.

'Did he hurt himself?' Alison asked tensely.

Anacleto looked up at the Major with angry tears in his eyes. 'I'm all right, Madame
Alison,' he called.

The Major leaned forward and said slowly and soundlessly, working his mouth so that
Anacleto could read the words, 'I wish you had bro ken your neck.'

Anacleto smiled, shrugged his shoulders, and limped into the dining room. When the Major
went back to his wife, he found her reading. She did not look up at him, so he crossed the
hall to his own room and slammed the door. His room was small, rather untidy, and the only
ornaments in it were the cups he had won at horse shows. On the Major's bedside table
there was an open book a very recondite and literary book. The place was marked with a
matchstick. The Major turned over forty pages or so, a reasonable evening's reading, and
marked the new place with the match again. Then from under a pile of shirts in his bureau
drawer he took a pulp magazine called Scientification. He settled himself comfortably in
the bed and began reading of a wild, interplanetary superwar.

Across the hall from him, his wife had put down her book and was lying in a half sitting
position. Her face was stiff with pain and her dark, glittering eyes looked restlessly
around the walls of the room. She was trying to make plans. She would divorce Morris,
certainly. But how would she go about it? And above all how could she and Anacleto manage
to make a living? She always had been contemptuous of women without children who accepted
alimony, and her last shred of pride depended on the fact that she would not, could not,
live on his money after she had left him. But what would they do she and Anacleto? She
had taught Latin in a girls' school the year before she married, but with her health as it
was that would now be out of the question. A bookshop somewhere? It would have to be
something that Anacleto could keep going when she was ill. Could the two of them possibly
manage a prawn boat? Once she had talked to some shrimp fishermen on the coast. It had
been a blue and gold seaside day and they had told her many things. She and Anacleto would
stay out at sea all day with their nets lowered and there would be only the cold salt air,
the ocean and the sun Alison turned her head restlessly on the pillow. But what frippery!

It had been a shock, eight months ago, when she had learned about her husband. She and
Lieutenant Weincheck and Anacleto had made a trip to the city with the intention of
staying two days and nights for a concert and a play. But on the second day she was
feverish and they decided to go back home. Late in the afternoon Anacleto had let her out
at the front door and driven the car back to the garage. She had stopped on the front walk
to look at some bulbs. It was almost dark and there was a light in her husband's room. The
front door was locked and as she was standing there she saw Leonora's coat on the chest in
the hall. And she had thought to herself how strange it was that if the Pendertons were
there the front door should be locked. Then it occurred to her that they were mixing
drinks in the kitchen while Morris had his bath. And she went around to the back. But then
before she entered the house Anacleto rushed down the steps with such a horrified little
face! He had whispered that they must go into town ten miles away as they had forgotten
something. And when, rather dazed, she started up the steps he had caught her by the arm
and said in a flat, frightened voice: 'You must not go in there now, Madame Alison.'

With what a shock it had come to her. She and Anacleto had got back into the car and
driven off again. The insult of it happening in her own house that was what she could
not swallow. And then, of all times in the world, when they slowed down at the outpost
there was a new soldier on duty who did not know them, and he had stopped the car. He
looked into the little coupe as though they might be concealing a machine gun and then
stood staring at Anacleto who, dressed in his jaunty burnt orange jacket, was ready to
burst into tears. He asked for the name in a tone of voice which suggested that he did not
believe they could possibly screw up one between them.

Never would she forget that soldier's face. At the moment she did not have it in her to
speak her husband's name. The young soldier waited, stared, and said not a word. Later she
had seen this same soldier at the stables when she went to fetch Morris in the car. He had
the strange, rapt face of a Gauguin primitive. They looked at each other for perhaps a
minute and at last an officer came up.

She and Anacleto had driven for three hours in the cold without speaking. And after that
the plans she had made at night when she was sick and restless, schemes that as soon as
the sun came up would seem so foolish. And the evening she had run home from the
Pendertons' and done that ghastly thing. She had seen the garden shears on the wall and,
beside herself with anger and despair, she had tried to stab and kill herself. But the
shears were too blunt. And then for a few moments she must have been quite out of her
head, for she herself did not know just how it had happened. Alison shuddered and hid her
face in her hands. She heard her husband open his door and put his boots out in the hall.
Quickly she turned off her light.

The Major had finished his magazine and hidden it again in the drawer. He took a last
drink and then lay comfortably in the bed, looking up into the dark. What was it that
meeting Leonora for the first time reminded him of? It had happened the year after the
baby died, when for twelve solid months Alison had either been in the hospital or prowling
around the house like a ghost Then he had met Leonora down at the stables the first week
he had come to this post, and she had offered to show him around. They left the bridle
path and had a dandy gallop. When they had tied the horses for a rest, Leonora had seen
some blackberry bushes near by and said she might as well pick enough to make a cobbler
for dinner. And Lord! when they were scrambling around those bushes together filling his
hat with berries, it had first happened. At nine in the morning and two hours after they
met! Even now he could hardly believe it. But what had it seemed like to him at the time?
Oh, yes it was like being out on maneuvers, shivering all through a cold rainy night in
a tent that leaked. And then to get up at dawn and see that the rain was over and the sun
was out again. And to watch the fine looking soldiers making coffee over camp fires and
see the sparks rise up into a clear white sky. A wonderful feeling the best in the
world!

The Major giggled guiltily, hid his head underneath the sheet, and began to snore
immediately.

At twelve thirty Captain Penderton fretted alone in his study. He was working on a
monograph and had made little progress that night. He had drunk a good deal of wine and
tea and had smoked dozens of cigarettes. At last he had given up work altogether and now
he was walking restlessly up and down the room. There are times when a man's greatest need
is to have someone to love, some focal point for his diffused emotions. Also there are
times when the irritations, disappointments, and fears of life, restless as spermatozoids,
must be released in hate. The unhappy Captain had no one to hate and for the past months
he had been miserable.

Alison Langdon, that big nosed female Job, together with her loathsome Filipino those
two he abhorred. But he could not hate Alison, as she did not give him the opportunity. It
chafed him no end to be under obligation to her. She was the only person in the world who
knew of a certain woeful shortcoming in his nature; Captain Penderton was inclined to be a
thief. He was continually resisting an urge to take things he saw in other people's
houses. However, only twice had this weakness got the best of him. When he was a child of
seven he had become so infatuated with the school yard bully who had once beaten him that
he stole from his aunt's dressing table an old fashioned hair receiver as a love offering.
And here on the post, twenty seven years later, the Captain had once again succumbed.

At a dinner party given by a young bride he had been so fascinated by a certain piece of
silver that he had carried it home in his pocket. It was an unusual and beautiful little
dessert spoon, delicately chased and very old. The Captain had been miserably enchanted
with it (the rest of the silver at his place was quite ordinary) and in the end he could
not resist. When after some skillful manipulation he had his booty safe in his pocket, he
realized that Alison, who was next to him, had seen the theft. She looked him full in the
face with the most amazed expression. Even now he could not think of it without a shudder.
And after a horribly long stare Alison had burst out laughing yes, laughing. She laughed
so hard that she choked herself and someone had to beat her on the back. Finally she
excused herself from the table. And all through that tormenting evening whenever he looked
at her she gave him such a mocking smile. Since then she was careful to keep a sharp watch
on him when he was a guest at her table. The spoon was now hidden in his closet, wrapped
carefully in a silk handkerchief and concealed in the box that his truss had come in.