They Came Like Swallows (2 page)

“It’s raining,” he said, and helped himself to bacon.

“I see it is.” His mother took the plate from him and put it back on the hearth to keep warm for Robert. “It’s been raining since five o’clock.”

Bunny looked out of the window hopefully.

“Hard?”

Sometimes when it rained heavily for a considerable time he was not expected to go outside even though it cleared up afterward. The ground was too wet, they said. He might catch his death.

“Hard, Mother?”

“Like this.”

Bunny tried to persuade himself that it was a heavy rain, but there was too much wind and not enough water. All the whirling and crisscrossing, the beating against the window and sliding in sudden rivulets down the glass—there was very little to it. The wind rose higher and the rain turned itself about and about. Inside, the room became intensely still. There was no sound but the logs crackling and singing in the fireplace. And because the lights were on in the daytime, the walls seemed more substantial, the way they
did at night with curtains drawn across the windows

and the room closed in upon itself.

“Do you think——”

Bunny hesitated, fearing at the last moment to expose himself.

“Rain before seven——” His mother got up from the table, having read his thought and answered it severely:

Rain before seven

Clear by eleven.

The words she had left unspoken remained cruelly before his eyes even when he looked down at his plate. With great concentration he began to eat his cereal. It would have taken a very little thing at that moment to spill his sorrow. Let the clock catch its breath, let one log fall with a sudden shower of sparks up the chimney, and he would have wept.

His mother sat down in the window seat and hunted through her sewing-kit impatiently. Bunny could hear her saying to herself that he was a grown man, or nearly so. Eight last August and not yet able to depend on his own strength, but coming to her again and again to be reassured.

Another time, he promised; another time he would try and not give in to weakness. If only she would not be severe with him now. He could not bear to have her that way. Not this morning…. Feeling altogether sorry for himself, he began to imagine what it would be like if she were not there. If his mother were not there to protect him from whatever was unpleasant—from the weather and from Robert and from
his father—what would he do? Whatever would become of him in a world where there was neither warmth nor comfort nor love?

Rain washed against the window.

When his mother found the needle she had been looking for, she threaded it. Then she took up a square of white cloth. Her hand flew this way and that, over her sewing. Quite suddenly she spoke to him: “Bunny, come here.”

He got down from his chair at once. But while he stood waiting before her and while she considered him with eyes that were perplexed and brown, the weight grew. The weight grew and became like a stone. He had to lift it each time that he took a breath.

“Whose angel child are you?”

By these words and by the wholly unexpected kiss that accompanied them he was made sound and strong. His eyes met hers safely. With wings beating above him and a great masculine noise of trumpets and drums he returned to his breakfast.

“What are you making? tea towels?”

Bunny noticed that his mother had a very curious way of shaking her head. Rather as if she were shaking away an idea that buzzed.

“They
do
look like tea towels.”

The interest he took in her affairs was practically contemporary. If she were invited to a card party he wanted to know afterward who won the prize, and what they had to eat, and what the place cards were like. When she went to Peoria to shop he liked to be taken along so that he could pass judgment on her clothes, though it meant waiting for long periods of time outside the fitting-room. Nor did they always agree. About the paper in the dining-room, for instance. Bunny thought it quite nice the way it was. Especially the border, which was a hill with the same castle on it every three feet. And the same three knights riding up to each of the castles. Nevertheless, his mother had it done over in plain paper that gave him nothing to think about, and might far better, in his opinion, have been used for the kitchen, where it wouldn’t so much matter.

“If they aren’t tea towels, what are they?”

He waited impatiently while she bit off the thread and measured a new length from her spool.

“Diapers.”

The word started a faint spinning of excitement within him. He went thoughtfully and sat down beside his mother in the window seat. From there he could see the side yard and the fence, the Koenigs’ yard, and the side of the Koenigs’ white house. The Koenigs were German but they couldn’t help that, and they had a little girl whose name was Anna. In January Anna would be a year old. Mr. Koenig got up very early to help with the washing before he went to work. The washing-machine galumpty-lumped,
galumpty-lumped, at five o’clock in the morning. By breakfast time there would be a string of white flags blowing in the autumn wind. They weren’t flags, of course; they were diapers. And that was just it. People never made diapers unless somebody was going to have a baby.

Bunny listened. For a moment he was outside in the rain. He was wet and shining. His mind bent from the wind. He detached a wet leaf. But one did not speak of these things.

Always when he and his mother were alone, the library seemed intimate and familiar. They did not speak or even raise their eyes, except occasionally. Yet around and through what they were doing each of them was aware of the other’s presence. If his mother was not there, if she was upstairs in her room or out in the kitchen explaining to Sophie about lunch, nothing was real to Bunny—or alive. The vermilion leaves and yellow leaves folding and unfolding upon the curtains depended utterly upon his mother. Without her they had no movement and no color.

Now, sitting in the window seat beside her, Bunny was equally dependent. All the lines and surfaces of the room bent toward his mother, so that when he looked at the pattern of the rug he saw it necessarily in relation to the toe of her shoe. And in a way he was more dependent upon her presence than the leaves or flowers. For it was the nature of his possessions that they could be what they actually were and also at certain times they could turn into knights and crusaders, or airplanes, or elephants in a procession.
If his mother went downtown to cut bandages for the Red Cross (so that when he came home from school he was obliged to play by himself) he could never be sure that the transformation would take place. He might push his marbles around the devious and abrupt pattern of an oriental rug for hours, and they would never be anything but marbles. He put his hand into the bag now and drew out a yellow agate which became King Albert of Belgium.

A familiar
thump
brought him somewhat painfully again into the world of the library.
Thump thump thump
—all the way across the ceiling. Robert was getting up.

“I’ve been thinking—”

Bunny looked down in time to see his mother’s hand spread over his and enclose it.

“—about the back room. I told Robert he could have a bed in there, and some chairs, and fix it up the way he likes. He’s getting old enough now so that he likes to be by himself.”

Bunny nodded. Sometimes when he and his mother were alone they discussed Robert in this way, and what should be done about him.

“If we do that, of course, there won’t be anybody to stay with you.”

He liked to have her bend down and brush the top of his head lightly with her cheek. But he would have preferred another time. Now it confused him. He turned his eyes toward the window and the damp trees, toward the rain-drenched ground. As soon as the window was clear enough for him to see through,
a fresh gust drove against it from the other side and everything blurred. It was that way when his mother kissed him. This talk about moving Robert into the back room, where his Belgian city was, where he kept his magic lantern. What had that to do with diapers?

“You see—” His mother spread the white cloth over her knees, folded it, laid it with the others in a pile. “What we need is another person in the family. At least one other person.”

“I think we’re getting along quite well the way things are.”

“Perhaps. But the room you’re in. It’s ever so much too——”

Her hand opened and lay still.

Some one to fill up his room. Like the Mr. Crumb that stayed at Miss Brew’s, three houses down on the same side of the street.

“We’re not going to take in roomers, are we?”

“No, not roomers, exactly. I wouldn’t like that.”

“I wouldn’t either.”

Mr. Crumb had such a large nose. It would be upsetting to wake and find him in Robert’s bed early in the morning.

“What I had in mind was a small brother or a small sister—it wouldn’t matter which, would it? So you wouldn’t rattle around in there the way you do when you are all alone.”

“No, I suppose not. But does that mean—”

His mother was not satisfied with just him. She wanted a little girl.

When she got up and went out to the kitchen, he did not follow her. Instead he sat absolutely still, watching the yellow leaves contract; watching the spider swing itself out upon the ceiling.

Although the library had been familiar at breakfast time, Bunny knew that it was now subject to change, to uncertainty. His father had come home again and would be home, said the big clock in the hall, for the day…. The little brass clock with clear glass sides emerged out of a general silence, asserting that it was not so; that Mr. Morison would go out again after dinner…. They argued then. The grandfather’s clock made slow involved statements which the other replied to briefly. “Quarter of ten,” said the grandfather’s clock, untroubled by the irrelevance. “Ten till,” said the little brass clock on the mantel. So long as that went on, Bunny could not be sure of anything.

His father had settled himself in his chair, with the Sunday paper. From time to time he solemnly turned the pages. When he read aloud he expected everybody to listen.

“What is Spanish influenza? … Is it something new? … Does it come from Spain? … The disease now occurring in this country and called ‘Spanish influenza’ resembles a very contagious kind of ‘cold’
accompanied by fever, pains in the head, eyes, back, or other parts of the body, and a feeling of severe sickness. In most of the cases the symptoms disappear after three or four days, the patient rapidly recovering. Some of the patients, however, develop pneumonia, or inflammation of the ear, or meningitis, and many of these complicated cases die. Whether this so-called ‘Spanish influenza’ is identical with the epidemic of earlier years is not known….”

The word epidemic was new to Bunny. In his mind he saw it, unpleasantly shaped and rather like a bed pan.

“… Although the present epidemic is called ‘Spanish influenza,’ there is no reason to believe that it originated in Spain. Some writers who have studied the question believe that the epidemic came from the Orient and they call attention to the fact that the Germans mention the disease as occurring along the eastern front in the summer and fall of 1917.”

By the calm way that his father crossed one knee over the other it was clear that he was concerned with the epidemic for the same reason he was interested in floods in China, what happened in Congress, and family history—because he chose to be concerned with such things.

When Bunny was very small he used to wake in the night sometimes with a parched throat and call for a drink of water. Then he would hear stumbling and lurching, and the sound of water running in the bathroom. The side of a glass struck his teeth. He drank thirstily and fell back into sleep…. Until one
night across the intervening darkness, from the room directly across the hall, a voice said,
Oh, get it yourself!
For the first time in his life Bunny was made aware of the fact that he had a father. And thoroughly shocked, he did as he was told.

Ever since that time he had been trying to make a place for his father within his own arranged existence—and always unsuccessfully. His father was not the kind of man who could be fit into anybody’s arrangement except his own. He was too big, for one thing. His voice was too loud. He was too broad in the shoulder, and he smelled of cigars. In the family orchestra his father played the piano, Robert the snare drum, Bunny the bass drum and cymbals. His father started the music going with his arms, with his head. And in no time at all the sound was tremendous—filling the open center of the room, occupying the space in corners and behind chairs.

“… In contrast to the outbursts of ordinary coughs and colds, which usually occur in the cold months, epidemics of influenza may occur at any season of the year, thus the present epidemic raged most intensely in Europe in May, June, and July. Moreover, in the case of ordinary colds, the general symptoms (fever, pain, depression) are by no means so severe …”

Bunny saw that his mother was threatened with a sneeze. She closed her eyes resignedly and waited.

“… or as sudden in their outset as they are in influenza. Finally, ordinary colds do not spread through
the community so rapidly or so extensively as does influenza….”

Bunny turned to his father. How was it that his father did not know? that he could go on reading?

“Ordinarily the fever lasts from three to four days and the patient recovers…. As in other catching diseases, a person who has only a mild attack of the disease may give a very severe attack to others….”

The sneeze came. His mother’s composure was destroyed by it. She fumbled for her handkerchief.

“… When death occurs it is usually the result of a complication.”

“James——”

“Yes?”

“Do you mind reading about something else?”

“If it will make you any happier.”

The largest and the smallest of Bunny’s agates raced along a red strip in the pattern of the library rug. Maybe his mother would come around to his way of thinking—that it was neither wise nor necessary to take on a baby at this time. Later perhaps…. Remembering the wallpaper in the dining-room he felt sure that she would go ahead with her plans. From what he had observed (he went to call on the Koenigs occasionally when there was nothing better to do) it would mean a great deal of confusion.