The Aunt's Story (27 page)

But the
compotier
was hope, the wax oranges and nectarines, from which a mouth had already taken bites. Theodora seized with love this child's game of fruit. She took the small, pocked orange, with its sallow bite. She rubbed it on her sleeve.

‘Look, Mignon, my love. You will go and fetch the orange, or stay, whichever you wish.'

She heard the orange bump, thump, dangerously into darkness. She heard the monkey's feet scratching, spattering the faces of old letters. Somewhere in darkness Mignon transferred her melancholy to a wax orange. At least she did not return.

Theodora took the nautilus. Spikes pricked her breast. Her hands were water.

‘Ahhhh,' sighed the mouth of Mrs Rapallo, its slack skin opening far too close to the surface of sleep.

Then Theodora made the darkness move. It was released. Her skirt flowed. Ferns shook. The dull and usually unresponsive tails of pampas grass flumped against her fixed eyes. She was walking down the passage with the nautilus.

Somebody, who was it, flew downstairs, Theodora remembered. She was not surprised.

‘It is not surprising at all, Alyosha Sergei,' she said.

‘On the contrary, it is fantastic,' said Sokolnikov.

Impatience had made him swell. He filled the door. She could not see his detail, but there was no mistaking his bulk.

‘My lovely shell,' he said, out of a long distance and a congested throat.

‘That is all very well,' said Theodora. ‘
Your
lovely shell. But who will put it back?'

His face drained the nautilus.

‘You have the irritating vice of practical and virtuous women, Ludmilla. You think too far ahead. Anything may happen,' he said.

It might, of course, it might. And now she knew that it must. It had as good as happened. She heard her own cry through her still closed mouth. Her heart turned in her side, because, she knew, the nautilus is made to break.

‘Will you not look, Ludmilla?'

Soloknikov was holding it in his hands. His faced oozed long opalescent tears.

‘Do you remember, when we were children, the moon was transparent? You could watch it pulse like the skin on an unhatched egg. Then it began to solidify. It became as opaque as a
dragée
at a christening.'

Alyosha Sergei, you foolish child, Theodora could not say, this is a crisis in which even I cannot protect you, and as for your moon, it is lost.

‘Somebody is a thief,' Mrs Rapallo said.

She stood in the passage without her hair. Her words were blunted by her gums.

‘Sokolnikov we knew. But you, Theodora Goodman! And intoxicated too.'

Her hands explored without design the tatters of an old lace gown. Out of magenta she was pale.

‘Of course I am all that you say, Mrs Rapallo,' Theodora replied.

She could not explain. She could explain nothing, least of all her several lives. She could not explain that where there is more than one it is inevitable always to betray.

‘Do not let her deny you, Ludmilla,' the General fumed. ‘It is not possible to steal what is not her own.'

‘But it is,' Theodora said.

‘It is mine,' said Sokolnikov.

‘I know,' Theodora cried.

Silence fell solider than wax.

‘You are drunk, Ludmilla,' said the General.

‘I have never seen more clearly,' said Theodora slowly. ‘But what I see remains involved.'

Mrs Rapallo had begun to move.

‘I have my shell,' she said. ‘General Sokolnikov, it is all I have got.'

And the nautilus became a desperate thing of hands. Theodora heard the crack of bones. Hands were knotting the air. Then, hands were hands.

‘Then it has happened,' Theodora said.

She looked at the shivered shell. Mrs Rapallo had turned.

‘I guessed that it would,' she said.

‘A murder has been committed,' the General cried.

‘Go, hang out your soul to dry. You Russians were always damp,' replied Mrs Rapallo.

Theodora did not know if the General slammed his door then or later, or where the retreat of Mrs Rapallo began, grating on the darkness her slow and solemn rags. Now the night was denser. Emotions had trodden into the carpet the slight white rime which was what remained of the nautilus. Theodora herself felt considerably reduced.

T
HEODORA
Goodman began in time to knit a garment in grey wool.

‘What is your great work, Miss Goodman?' asked Mademoiselle Marthe. ‘We should be interested to know.'

‘Perhaps it will be a jumper,' said Theodora Goodman. ‘But I have not yet made up my mind.'

‘How right you are,' Mademoiselle Berthe sighed.

Because the Demoiselles Bloch were quite determined in their projects, which often failed.

Doilies, for example, doilies, they said, sometimes have intentions of their own.

The Demoiselles Bloch stirred their hair with crochet hooks. They were perplexed.

But Theodora Goodman continued to knit her grey wool, in the angle of a kind of little wintergarden, on one side of which pressed the
jardin exotique
, and on the other the sea. The corner of the little wintergarden in which she sat was transparent, but it was not dangerous. Flies died frequently, but on the whole it was
sympathique
.

‘
Oui
,
il est tout à fait sympathique
,
votre petit coin
,' said Monsieur Durand to the
Anglaise
who stayed.

Because this was one of the gifts of Monsieur Durand, to fit the landscape to the guest.

Theodora Goodman did not protest. Just as she had not chosen, particularly, that particular
petit coin
. But it suited. And she watched her hands knit. She listened to the stiff palms. The forms of the
jardin exotique
pushed upward endlessly. And on the sea side, the waves folded and unfolded, also endlessly, their receiving and rejecting hands.

Theodora Goodman drew out a long grey stream of wool, out of an undistinguished bag.

It is easy and contenting, she confessed, to be a chair.

But she was not altogether deceived. She counted the bodies of the dead flies. She waited to be pushed around.

She began to hear the approach of Katina Pavlou into the little conservatory. The approach of Katina Pavlou cut through the long grey strands of sleep that knit together the Hôtel du Midi after
déjeuner
. For after
déjeuner
the Hôtel du Midi was only held together by sleep. Into the grey woollen fuzz and buzz of afternoon sleep fell the first white phrase of Katina Pavlou's approach.

Now Katina Pavlou walked without direction. Her eyes were dark. She had written, Theodora knew, in the blue
cahier
that she had bought from the
papeterie
beside the post office, she had most certainly written:

Almost certainly Katina Pavlou had written in purple ink. Her hands were stained. Her eyes were cloudy with the words, and with the emotions that still welled up.

Theodora Goodman sat and knitted the long grey soothing strands of wool that did not altogether soothe. Theodora loved Katina Pavlou. She waited to be pushed around. She could feel Katina laying the hot palms of her hands on the window pane, as she looked not particularly at the sea, waiting for what. It was a grey day. Mist hung about the sea, tatters of mist on the hills and the sharp spikes of the
jardin exotique
. Theodora felt Katina lay her hot cheek against the mist. Her skin drank the moisture which did not satisfy. She waited. Outside in the garden the aloe had not yet shrivelled into its legend of death.

Oh, the afternoons, the afternoons, Katina Pavlou would have sighed.

In the useful pocket of her dress Theodora Goodman had the letter from Lou. Lou was writing in purple ink. Lou's letter was heavy with other afternoons.

 

… algebra, Aunt Theo, is my chiefest torture. I cannot think in
x
and
y
. It is doubtful whether I shall ever learn. But whatever Father says, the nuns are nice. He says that Mother is wrong to send a girl to
a convent with a lot of micks. But I cannot see, from experience, that there is anything wrong with nuns. In fact, I love Sister Mary Perpetua. She has the loveliest, saddest face. On my birthday she gave me a bag of aniseed balls and a little wooden cross. Sometimes in the afternoon we sit together, and watch the boats, and then I feel that I shall
never ever
have such a friendship ever again.

When I leave here and go to Audley, it is different. I think parents are difficult. Last holidays the MacKenzies came to stay. Mr MacKenzie is now quite red, and once fell down. Mrs MacKenzie told Mother I would be better if I lost my sallowness, and filled out, though thin and ugly women wear their clothes more easily. Sometimes the holidays at Audley are rather long. It is not the mornings, but the afternoons. Then I can only hope I shall be free …

 

Theodora felt the letter from Lou crumpled hot and electric in her pocket. She remembered the violet sparks from trams in the late, grey, heavy afternoons.

Now she heard Katina Pavlou, round another corner in the wintergarden, and several palms, she heard her turning magazines. She heard the leaves of magazines hesitate and stick in the thick and steamy afternoon. She heard also the other presence begin to swell.

‘Ah, there you are, my dabchick,' Theodora heard.

‘Here I am and nowhere else,' Katina Pavlou sighed.

‘A little pale, but not less interesting.'

‘I am nothing,' Katina Pavlou said quite firmly. ‘I know exactly what I am, General Sokolnikov. I know myself. I know.'

She turned the pages of the magazine. Theodora knew that the General was about to bounce. There were all the first indications of elasticity.

‘I doubt,' he said, ‘whether my moorhen knows the shape of her own ear.'

‘My ear? Now you are being ridiculous, Alyosha Sergei,' Katina Pavlou said.

She laughed. It fell light and white into the afternoon.

‘It is most earnest. See? Now you are touching it, you are touching your ignorance, but you cannot touch it away.'

‘My ear is an ear,' Katina Pavlou said.

‘Your ear is a fascinating organ. It is far more interesting than that stupid American magazine.'

‘How funny you are, Alyosha Sergei,' Katina Pavlou said. ‘This magazine is full of people doing things, in factories, aeroplanes, and diving suits.'

‘Alas, you are still impressed by the age of motion. You are a child, Katina Pavlou. And I am old.'

‘I am sixteen,' Katina Pavlou said.

But it fell with no less melancholy, its small bell. Theodora Goodman counted the bodies of dead flies.

‘You are sixteen,' the General murmured.

Theodora realized that his sigh was scented. Without seeing, she knew that the smile of Sokolnikov had been embalmed.

‘If I were to give you my life, child?'

‘Your—your
life
!'

‘You laugh?'

‘But dear Alyosha Sergei, you say such funny things.'

Theodora Goodman, under the dry spasmodic palms, knew that her own laughter, which she held inside her, hurt.

‘This is disastrous,' said Sokolnikov, all steam, because he wanted still to show himself something that perhaps he could not show.

‘It is the unseasonable weather,' he said. ‘This morning in the bathroom my own voice cannoned off the wall. The glass from which I was about to gargle shattered in my hand.'

‘It is lovely weather, but sad,' said Katina Pavlou.

Theodora knew that she had laid her face against the window and was speaking into glass.

‘I like the garden best when it is still and cool.'

‘The garden is always detestable,' the General said.

‘Look, Alyosha Sergei, what is this plant with the big damp leaves that are full of holes?'

‘That is
Monstera deliciosa
. Its fruit is eaten when black, and one would say, almost putrid.'

‘How peculiar.'

‘You will find, my popinjay, that much that happens comes as a surprise, and much that doesn't happen is still possible.'

A chair creaked. The General's chair, perhaps, had aching thighs.

‘Come here, my sweetheart, my Varvara. I have a present for you. A prize for prettiness.'

‘A present! Let us open it, Alyosha Sergei, and see.'

‘Oh, it is nothing. Let me assure you in advance. It is a small box of marshmallows that seems to have become a little crushed in transit.'

‘But, Alyosha Sergei, how kind.'

‘Knowing the sweet tooth of all young ladies …'

‘One Easter they gave me a box of marshmallows. When I was thirteen. And I ate them all. I ate till I was sick. It was quite lovely, I remember, but I was thirteen.'

‘Now you are sixteen,' the General said. ‘And I shall help you eat these. You shall pop one carefully in my mouth.'

Theodora was glad that she did not see the great rubber lips reach forward, tremble, and close. But at least she heard the smack.

‘There,' said Katina Pavlou. ‘Now your face is powdered.'

She laughed.

‘Alyosha Sergei,' she laughed, ‘now your face is the face of a clown.'

‘Let us at least eat the sweetmeats,' the General said. ‘Until we are sick.'

‘I have not hurt you, have I, Alyosha Sergei?'

‘I have not been hurt since I was shot in my left buttock running away in the dark.'

‘How ridiculous you are!'

‘Then you do not love me? A little?'

Theodora heard the rubber silence lean over steamily to touch.

‘Of course, I adore you. If I did not, I would not kiss you. There!'

‘It is usual also, I believe, to call one's lover by endearing names.'

But Katina Pavlou laughed. It bared Sokolnikov, it bared him to the soul.

‘I shall call you,' she laughed, ‘I shall call you …'

‘Yes?'

‘I shall call you my
Monstera deliciosa
. But you are not yet putrid enough.'

Theodora heard Sokolnikov contract.

‘Oh, dear!' Katina Pavlou laughed. ‘How ridiculous we are.
I must dry my eyes. But now we shall be solemn. We shall sit, and you shall tell me, General Sokolnikov, about some campaign.'

‘I do not think, after all, I am in any mood for conversation,' said Sokolnikov.

‘You are sad, Alyosha Sergei? I was sad before you made me laugh.'

‘Are you in love, Katina Pavlou?'

‘No,' she said. ‘I am not in love. I have not yet been in love.'

And Theodora Goodman knew that Katina Pavlou had stood against the window, beyond which, in the still greyness of the afternoon, the waves folded and unfolded, endlessly, their receiving and rejecting hands.

Theodora put the indeterminate garment she was knitting into its appropriate bag. She coughed the cough that never does deceive. In the little transparent wintergarden she felt that they were all three considerably exposed.

‘Oh, it is you,' the General said.

He was cold. Since the evening of the nautilus both Mrs Rapallo and Sokolnikov had avoided her, as if mirrors tell.

‘Yes,' said Theodora, ‘it is I.'

Sometimes even grammar is unavoidably exposed. She looked outside, the garden side, at the big damp leaves of the
Monstera deliciosa
which were full of holes.

‘This room is quite horribly naked,' Sokolnikov complained.

Katina Pavlou held her face against the window. She was closed now, opaque. She sang her own song, in her own language, whether of love or death, it had its own to and fro.

‘I would like one day to make a picnic beside the sea,' Katina Pavlou said. ‘Let us make a picnic, Miss Goodman. And you shall come, Alyosha Sergei. And we shall ask …'

‘Child, I am too old for rocks.'

And cold, Sokolnikov was cold.

‘So I have been informed,' he said. ‘Now I shall go and clean my spurs. It is Thursday afternoon.'

‘But you shall come,' Katina Pavlou called. ‘We shall talk.'

‘Oh, yes, we shall talk,' the General said. ‘It is a small hotel. You shall have many opportunities to tell me things.'

But his feet marked some slow rubber repugnance on the stairs.

‘There. He has gone, poor thing. And I have hurt him,' Katina Pavlou said.

‘He will rebound,' said Theodora. ‘He will even sit on rocks.'

‘Then we shall make this picnic, Miss Goodman?'

‘I dare say it will be made,' Theodora Goodman said wryly, remembering another stiff group beside the church.

‘I am so glad,' Katina Pavlou sighed.

She turned her face against the glass, and then, unaccountably, began to cry. For Katina Pavlou had become the amazed and frightened instrument recording some climatic disturbance, still too sudden to accept or understand.

‘Dearest Katina,' Theodora said, ‘it would be easier if you would tell.'

‘It is nothing,' cried Katina Pavlou.

The windows of the little wintergarden, blurred by the action of the salt air, did not disclose. There was no guide. There was only a general and continuous, consuming sea sound.

‘Dear Miss Goodman, I wish that I could tell. I wish that I knew,' Katina Pavlou cried. ‘But it is nothing. Nothing. Nothing at all.'

So it is to take place then, Theodora knew. The picnic will disclose. There will be stuffed eggs, and conversation, and silences, and swords. But the picnic will be made. Already the little wintergarden could not contain the event. It pressed, it brimmed, rustling with the barely suppressed wind of excitement the brown bodies of dead flies.

‘A picnic?' Mrs Rapallo said. ‘How queer. And how uncomfortable.'

She propelled her words outward like deliberate amethysts, which she then observed, with some pleasure and some distaste, from beneath bluish skin.

‘I was never one for the alfresco,' said Mrs Rapallo. ‘Life was intended to be lived indoors. At its most intense it smells of gardenias.'