Part 10

“No,” said the girl, serious. “I was playing the violin.”

“Your fingers were singing, then.”

“They were too small,” said Tessie.

“Too small to sing?”

“Too small to sing ... too small to sing,” the girl whispered rapt. “So I work--my body, see? It works for my fingers that were too small to play.”

“What was I doing?” Susan leaned forward.

“Your hands are frightful. One of them clasping, clutching ... one of them thrusting away.” Fanny’s hands were before her in a frantic dumb-play.

Susan laughed. “How right you are!”

“I am a fool,” cried Fanny.--Am I mad? I do not seem to mind. They seem to understand--_something_. Am I a fool?

“She is wonderful,” said Tessie.

“Clara told us--“

“What?”

Susan got up. She held Fanny’s face gently in her hands. She kissed her brow. “--that we would love you.”

Lucy came in with tea.

“Clara saved my life.”

“She’s a good thing,” said Tessie....

They drank their tea in silence. No hand trembled.

Susan and Tessie got up.

“You must not get up!”

They came close to Fanny. Her eyes were almost parallel with Tessie’s red mouth which had spoken. She looked up at the straight lips of Susan. On Susan’s neck she saw a birthmark, black like a footprint. Against it, all she was white.

“We’re going to come again--“

“When you’re better--“

“I _am_ better,” Fanny smiled.

Tessie said: “You are a woman.”

* * * * *

Clara was there, and she still vibrant from it all.

“You had visitors,” Fanny said. “Miss Sennister and Miss Liebovitz.”

Clara studied the face of her friend.--What have they left upon her? within her? She saw the face of Fanny glow: it was aquiver and alive, her face, as not for a long time.

“I gave them tea. That was right, was it not? The little girl’s a dear.”

“Yes.”

“When she left, she threw her arms around me and kissed me.”

“You had a good time together?”

“Yes. And you, Dear? Your sister?”

“She is worse. But she won’t die. Not that sort of thing. Just pine away and eat up her husband’s money and nag her children.”

“There’s nothing to do, I suppose?”

“Of course not. You liked Tessie? Not Susan.”

“I did not understand her?”

“Do you think you understood Tessie?” Clara was eager. She did not challenge. She wished to be assured.

“I think so.... All except those hands--“

“Hands!”

“That is: that is what I understood the best: they’re the key, so little and so terrible. You see, I know that. Only, I haven’t used the key.”

She smiled in the amazed eyes of Clara.

“Fanny, you sometimes frighten me.” Clara took her hand and held it long and looked at it. Then she squeezed it and smiled also.

“You don’t mean to say: this very first time she told you her _story_!”

“No. Why did you think so, Clara?”

“What you said about her hands.”

“Who couldn’t see that? They are so small and tortured--plump perverse hands. She had no gloves. Her hands, Clara--her hands have--“

Fanny stopped. She could not go on.

“Yes?”

“Well,” she whispered half to herself, “ ...something ruins all of us, I suppose.”

She was blanched as if she had walked leisuredly upon a strange outlandish road, forgetful it was so: and sudden there was a precipice below her feet. Mind held back her almost plunging body with the plunge’s horror. She recoiled.

“I know what you were going to say,” Clara’s voice was hard, “her hands it was, that _ruined_ her....”

“Clara!”

“We are ruined, for you. I know it. You are right. We are bad women ... ruined....”

“Clara!”

Fanny jumped up. She faced her friend. She sought her eyes, sad and rebellious, and held them.

“Clara, you have saved me, you are sound. It is I who am broken. When one is broken, Clara, one does not always quickly understand. One lacks words. One falls back, Clara, on words that for today are lies.”

She clasped the wrists of her friend. They stood tense, against each other: so. In a taut silence.

“We are all ruined,” came Clara’s voice. “But you still love.”

“Then none of us are ruined.”

Clara’s head tossed in anger. “No sentiment!”

“There are no ruins I tell you,” Fanny met her.

* * * * *

Fanny lay quiet in bed. She was relaxed at last. The vibrance of these many hours had run out into a Space beyond her, where the sharp thrusts through her nerves lay lost in a pool of glow.

She lay in this glow in bed: Clara beside her, responsive to her friend’s new peace but unaware of its synthesis of warring parts meeting beyond her.

“Should I read?” she asked.

“Tell me about your friends.”

“They are friends of mine.” Clara raised her head as if her words were a challenge. Fanny lay still, with her eyes shut, waiting.

“There’s Tess. Poor Dear,” at last.... “Her story’s not hard to tell. That’s why I was wondering how you knew. Didn’t she hint? Well, I don’t wonder after all, Dear. _You_ are so wonderful O I am glad to have you here. I want to keep you forever. If only I could.... Well: Tessie was born in some mudhole South--Carolina, I think. Her Pa kept a general store ... does still I suppose. He’s a Jew, you know. Tess says he never was no good as a business man. But a dear! He’d sit in his room back of the store, holding some old Bible in his hand ... or a prayer-book ... and sing it out, half-aloud, with his head and his shoulders swayin’, keepin’ time. Tessie says that is what Music meant to her.... When the poor old man learned she was musical, Tess says, he fell on his knees. I can just see him, his thin old knees half worn through the black pants, creaking and cracking on the dirty floor. And he thanked the Lord who, if he _had_ taken away his wife, had given him a daughter who loved music. There were other children, but they simply didn’t count. He didn’t have more than enough to keep ’em all in food, but Tess got a violin. And soon the Dame that taught violin, piano, French and artistic sewing in the Town told the old man Tessie knew more than she did about music. She was a wonder, she said. She ought to study in a big City and go in for concerts.

“Well ... the old man got down on his shakey knees again: and this time he didn’t pray: he swore he’d get the cash to send Tess to Richmond or New York, if he had to starve for it ... even if he had to sell--O I forgot. The old man had one proud possession. He was a poor old ignorant man, but one of his ancestors had been Wise and a Rabbi. He kept a mouldy store and kept it badly: but this Thing he still had from the wise old Rabbi ... and it shone in their home like the sun. Tessie gives it a name I can’t remember ... but I can see it. A sort of breast-plate it was ... a breast-plate of some holy Priest of their religion: square and in gold. And set in it, in four rows of three each, were oblong gems. Each was different--camelian and ruby and lapis and topaz and jasper and amethyst and agate: I don’t remember them all. On each was carved a holy word in ancient Hebrew. Well, there was the mouldy store and this thing of glory shinin’ in it. But there was the daughter who could make Music. So she could make it right, the old man sold his treasure. He was religious. Keeping that Relic was part of his religion ... but giving it up was also part of his religion. Tessie got a first class violin ... they cost like fury, you know. And then everything went well. I don’t know the particulars. Some big guy from New York who was down in Charleston gave her a hearing and next year Tess bought a new dress and a bag and took the train to New York. Her Dad had even mortgaged the store. But there was Tess gettin’ ready to earn thousands in New York ... while the rest of the Liebovitz clan in mudhole, South Carolina, lived on water and hope.”

Fanny lay still, with her eyes shut. In the pause:

“Then it happened,” she murmured.

“Yes,”

--As always. Lord, why is it always? Why do you break the soil In which you plant the seed?

“--the old master, Tessie says she loved him, waved his hands and pulled his beard. ‘You have talent, Fraulein. O you have genius. You are music! But those hands. What are we going to do about that hand?’ They were too small, Fan. You saw ’em. They were too small. You got to do all sorts of stunts on a fiddle before you go in for concerts. And her fingers simply were too short. Not too short for playin’ in an orchestra or somethin’ ... but for a concert, where you stand up all by yourself.... Well, Tessie hadn’t come to New York and put the Liebovitz clan on bread and water and made the old man sell part of his religion for another part, just to play fiddle in a restaurant. She went to a doctor or something of the sort who told her he could stretch her fingers. He stretched ’em alright--“

Fanny raised herself on her arms from the pillow, her eyes still shut.

“--till something tore.”

“Till something broke.”

“It was all over.”

“I know the rest,” said Fanny. She sank back in her pillow. Both of them were quiet....

Each was conscious of the other’s breathing. The room was heavy.

Clara stirred. “Shall I open a window?” she asked.

“What about the other?” Fanny held her.

“O I can’t say much about Sennister. I have known her for a long time ... nearly four years I think. She just is: she has no tale of woe.”

“You are good friends?”

“Yes. I have learned a lot from Susan. She is wise. She has a brain, I’ll tell you. She thinks a lot ... and reads.”

“What does she read?”

“O books you’ve never heard of. But I don’t think she gets her ideas from them. They’re _hers_, you bet.”

“Tessie, I guess, has learned a lot from her also.”

“She’s our Sunday school teacher,” Clara smiled.

“I see.”

“She has a religion. She believes--shall I tell you what she says?”

“Why not?”

“She says: ‘I believe in the power of Hate, I believe in the truth of Sin. I believe in the failure of Truth.’”

Fanny was silent.

“One day she made us learn all that by heart. Don’t take it too serious, Fan dear. She’d had a drop too much. She was jolly. So were we all.... It’s a joke, of course....”

“Clara, you know it’s no joke. You know it’s a religion.”

“I suppose so. It don’t fit in very well, though, does it? with the religion of the Bible.”

“There are so many religions of the Bible. Perhaps it fits in right well.”

Clara’s nervous laugh: “You and Susan’ll get on well together. You are both philosophers. But you’re both _good_--though you’re better, Dear, and deeper. I know that. Susan talks awful bad. But you know, Dear, what she says _has_ something to do with Christianity. Sort of twisted like. But it _has_. You wait and see. When you know her. Susan ... she’s like a saint....”

--Christ, you must loose your buried feet and your arms without hands! Christ, you must not be twisted like that tree! Christ, you must not be rooted like a tree! Walk the earth, brother.

Fanny’s eyes shut once more. She saw the white neck of Susan Sennister: on its side the little birthmark like the print of a black foot ... clear because her neck was white. She heard her voice: the resonant low voice of one who speaks often with herself. She saw the black eyes of Tessie upon her: the full lips, redder than rouge, the crowded high-pressed brow, the child-hands....

Clara sat still.--She will go to sleep now.

* * * * *

Fire in Clara’s eyes. The desperate embrace together of her life and of her love for Fanny rose lucent in them. She said:

“Well, if you want to meet my friends, you shall meet them. I’ll give a party to celebrate your being here, and your getting well--and the hope that you’ll stay on.”

“That’ll be fun!”

“Then there’ll be more than just me to do the hoping.”

“You’re a dear.”

Fanny saw a party of eighteen years ago. She met Harry there. They walked the verandah ... walked back and forth three dances.

The espagnols are open. The music flutters through into the purple night like cherry-colored ribbons.

“Let’s go on the lawn,” he said. “Let’s dance on the lawn.”

“We can dance here.”

“No. Let’s dance on the lawn.”

“Then we won’t dance.”

But at last she yielded. He clasped her waist. He sprang with her through the elastic night. The grass was moving crystal sea under their silent feet.

Her breath bounded against his. “You see?” he panted. “You must always do as I say....” And even then, even then she sensed in his words what she willed, not he.--_Was it so later?_ His going down, the agony ... what _she_ willed?

“O I’m so anxious to know whom all I’m going to meet.”

Clara shook her head. “Such folk as you have never met.”

“I hope so! I want to meet new sorts. I want to find a new world. I am sure it will be better. It’s yours, Dear.”

“They’re all I have.”

“Don’t you dare apologize! Don’t you dare spoil it. I feel as if I could be happy again. Whomever it’s with--I’ll be happy with them.”

“They’re a strange lot,” Clara laughed.

“Who?”

“Well, there’s a Judge: there’s a Gambler: there’s an Officer of Police: there’s a queer guy who ought to be a poet----“

“O how exciting! Do the Policeman and the Gambler get on?”

“They’re side-kicks----“

“Side-kicks?”

“Partners.”

“My! what a lot I’m going to learn,” she murmured.

“That’s what brought Tessie and Susan together. Her man’s a police Leftenant. Tessie’s is Abraham Mangel----“

“And Clara, yours----“

“That’s a secret, Dear. You call him Mr. Mark.... O I can tell you. Tellin’ you a secret’s like burying it. Don’t you let on. He’s really a Judge, Dear. Right in New York! Think of that. He’s so good.... Shall I tell you his right name? Sure never to let on? Judge Mark Pfennig.”

“Judge ... Mark ... Pfennig,” she repeated slowly.

“He’s a Jew,” Clara said groping. She won courage from the soft distance in Fanny’s eyes, inquiring, pondering. “Like most of ’em. They’re the best, Fan. Really.”

“Why are they the best?”

“They’re the wisest ... and the gentlest. They’re hardest and softest. Wait till you see Abe Mangel with Tess. He treats her like a father. Like a sentimental father. Those old puffy eyes of his with little ridges of flesh beneath ’em--just like her Dad in Carolina, I bet. Only _wise_.”

“You say he’s a _gambler_?”

“Well, not really. Never plays. Not he! He owns a big joint, that’s all.”

“And ... Susan’s----“

“Silly! Gambling’s against the Law. You know that, don’t you? Well, what does that mean? Any respectable Gambler who wants to make a ‘go’ must have a side partner on the Force.”

“O--I see.”

“You’ll see, all right. But you don’t now. You’re shocked. When one’s shocked one don’t see. I found that out. Bein’ shocked is the same as bein’ blind.... Fanny: do you really want to meet them?”

Fanny pondered: her head low, her eyes fallen upon her lacing and unlacing fingers. Tessie and Susan and Clara....--She has saved me ... for what?... were in her pondering eyes. She saw Clara always.--What do I see of Clara? what know? And what of Tessie, Susan? She saw them often, they came often now. They sat there, quiet, proper, eyes veiled.... Hurt eyes. Fanny thought of Stride the Kentucky colt whom she had gentled when she was a girl. They were good friends. Stride knew her, knew that she would not hurt her, knew that she cared for her wisely. Stride knew, standing there aquiver while she came toward her bringing a handful of oats, that oats were good. Yet beneath the knowing in Stride’s eyes at times a deeper world looked out on Fanny: a world of strangeness, of the expectancy of harm. So now....--They love me. That first time showed. Even Susan in her secret way. Yet they are so still! so far! I do not touch them.

Never had she touched Stride. Never. Now?

Sudden the thought came:--There is a part of them, a whole dimension I can not see! She wanted to see it....--Their men?

--Sisters! why do I call you so? I want to touch you. That I may know perhaps why we are sisters?

Fanny’s hands went up, and her head. Brightly: “Yes! Give the party. Do! Ask everyone....”

There was something Clara, standing there, wondering for her answer, understood. She took Fanny’s hands and clasped them close in her own. She kissed them.

_SIX_

PAVEMENT BROKEN

At last the bell rang the door opened, Clara’s man came in. Clara got up and they shook hands. Fanny was aware in the long strain of waiting that her power to feel was gone.--I shall understand nothing.

“This is my friend, Mark. Fanny, Mr. Mark.”

He was long and moist and breathless. He laid on the sofa carefully a bundle of bottles of wine. His broad black frock coat was worn to a gloss. His skin seemed also, though his hands were white, dark and glossed like his coat. His coat was a uniform and so was his skin. He was behind them.

--I shall understand nothing!

Mr. Mark sat down, his legs were short and his knees pointed beneath the mound of his belly. They chatted ... all three ... she too.

“Well, dear,” his breath was short and thick, “expecting the crowd?”

“O no. Just Tessie and Susan, and Abe Mangel and Jim of course. My friend wants to meet my friends.”

Fanny began to see him under the cloud of himself: ... the grey sharp face, larded in fat, the shiny eyes set deep, the lips rounded and red and soft-thrust forward from a chin too long and grey-blue with its undertone of beard. His nose twitched, conspicuous, large-pored, under a brow that was smooth and white like a card.

“It’s good of you, Madame. We’re not such a bad lot.”

“O ... I could know that,” Fanny laughed, “from just knowing Clara.”

“That good we’re not ... not as good as Clara. But we do our best.”

Clara laughed. He sighed, and his little eyes, hard like the shoe-button eyes of a rag doll, rolled up.

In this opening of mood, Fanny looked at the room ... hard gas-jets, brash lambrequins, plush.... Room she had lived in ... the floor was blood-red beneath a shrill blue carpet. Details ... details. It meant nothing. It formed no word.

The door opened again, again. Susan Sennister stood there bleak and tense like a caustic refrain to the long heavy man at her side: he was spiritually galvanized, he moved for all his power as if he were lined with metal ... Lieutenant Statt. Tessie ensconced in a big chair with her feet trilling, mocked him. A man, soft, short, slow, with unctious hands and voice, watched her effrontery with eyes afraid in his heavy mournful face.--That is Abe Mangel.

--But I have learned something in all these years? She stopped the rush of her amazement.--Be still. Just wait.

They were not bothered by her. Their knowing each other wove a glutinous web through the room, and she held in it: her stirring could not have torn it, she was tight. It was a gross warm knowing: no subtle brain-fabric ... bowel-strong and sure. Fanny felt her shoulders pressed together, her head high and sheer, in this viscous tissue of their being together.

Mr. Mark cleared a lamp and a pile of magazines from the table. Lucy came in, brought glasses which she placed. Mr. Mark with ceremonial noise uncorked three bottles of red wine and stood them beside the glasses. The talk was slow and thick: the wine diluting it, freeing it, making it run faster....

“You don’t drink?” Mr. Mark stood over Fanny. She smiled up, full of the incongruous sense of smiling not at a man but at some official structure....

“I’m afraid--my Doctor----“

“Mrs. Luve is not quite well yet, you know, Mark,” said Clara.

All eyes turned upon Fanny: Mr. Mark’s wilfully considerate, Tessie’s hurt and afraid blazing a partnership she had no mind of, Susan’s in a twinging message that was somehow sweet, Mangel’s soft because they were always soft.

Fanny felt the hard stare of Statt ... empty like a stone.

“O well--do give me a glass.”

She sipped.

“It’s good stuff,” said Tessie.

Susan, warmed, looked at Jim Statt and her warmth turned on him.

“Of course, that stiff’s too good to touch liquor! And he’s as healthy as a brickbat. All his virtue allows is pullin’ joints!”

Statt shrugged his shoulders. Then he smiled broadly, as if suddenly aware that Susan had flattered him. Mangel, holding his glass aloft, smacked his lips.... The eyes were gone from Fanny. They did not come back.

She drank her wine. She was relieved and brightened. She thought of a field: it expands as the cloud barring the sun sails by.... The eyes were gone.

She thought of her own place with these strange thick people. Who were they?--a Judge, a Police Lieutenant, a Gambling-house proprietor, three prostitutes, herself! She did not know who they were.

Mr. Mark argued with pointing forefinger:

“Of course we do good! Would the people feel secure if we didn’t have courts and judges?”

“You do no good. None of us knows how to do good, I tell you,” said Abe Mangel. “We are all in the Dark. I can argue as good as you. Couldn’t I say: I am a public benefactor? What do I live on? The luxury and the vice of the weak and the damn-fools. That’s what I trim. That’s what I get rid of. Ain’t it better to live on that than on the hard workers and the good folk? now I ask you! O bosh! I don’t make no such delusions for myself. We don’t know--none of us--how to do good.”

Statt sat stiffly in his chair. He listened, but as one might listen to the wind.... The philosophic argument wore down. Mangel and Mark were unable to support it. They drank wine and turned to their women....

Tessie sat on Abe Mangel’s lap: sideways and still with her feet tossing. He caressed her neck with a soft and meaty hand.

“Well, dearie--well, dearie, are you happier?” he crooned.

Susan and Jim Statt were close together on the sofa, looking before them, saying no word to each other. And the large Mr. Mark, his manners like his sumptuous prim coat, chatted with Clara, and Fanny, listening, added an easy word.

At a late hour they got up said good-by, and were gone.

* * * * *

Fanny saw them again and again. She had little talks with each of them, alone. She found she was fond of them all.

“It’s good to come here, Clara,” Statt stalked in. “I told Susan to come, too.... Here, Broaddus, up here.” The door stayed open. A young big patrolman in uniform (Statt wore plain clothes always) mounted the stair, puffing. He deposited a case in the hall.

“Champagne ... and good,” said Statt.

The patrolman, red faced, soft with blue eyes somewhat dimmed, went down.

“Brought them for you,” Statt turned to Fanny ... “set you up.... From Diggens.”

“Diggens!” Clara exclaimed. “You’ve pulled Diggens!”

“Yes....”

“What did she do?” asked Fanny.

“Slow on payment. See? And always tryin’ to bargain for a lower price. Yesterday I get mad. Sort of lost my temper. Perhaps I was wrong. Old Dig was a right sort of bitch. Well--too late now. She’s pinched. Here’s good wine, at least.”

He kicked the case with heavy boots. He was big and sure. Fanny and Clara stood beneath his imperturbable mass.

--How can I thank him? He’s a brute. He’s a monster! Fanny spoke to him:

“Don’t kick that case, Lieutenant Jim.”

“Why? Afraid I’ll break the bottles?”

“No.... Afraid they’ll break you.”

“Break _me_!”

“Hm ... hm, Lieutenant Jim. You’re so brittle.--O ever so much brittler than bottles.”

He looked at her in a pause that ended with a chuckle.

“O you don’t say!” The skin of his face was rough: his features were too big. He seemed carved--crudely--by a dull-souled sculptor.

“You’re a brittle child,” said Fanny.--Why do I speak so?

“And you?”

“I’m a child too. You and I are the children here. Yes we are! We two must look out!”

“Not Mark?... not Clara?... not Mangel?”

“O Mangel is old! and so is Tessie! and so is Clara. You are a stupid, stubborn child, I tell you. Look out. Me too. We mustn’t hurt each other.... And you’d better stop breaking the Law.”

“My dear sister child, you don’t seem to understand. I don’t _break_ the Law.”

Fanny wavered.--Why do I speak so?