Part 5

Each night as she lay down to sleep, the question stood before her: Why? A question like a single point of steel piercing so many lives, piercing so many loves, all bleeding-spitted upon it. But she slept quick. She slept heavy. In her sleep, if it was parted at all, merely the Question again, rising up, up, out of sight like an infinite steel point: she was impaled on it: but bloodless already. She lay there quiet, impaled. She had no responsibility since she was bloodless already. And in the morning, when she awoke there was work.

She entered the Office a breath of wistful quiet, a cloud of gentle moisture moving upon a sultry day. All who were there unthinking were glad, when she entered the Office.

Clara found herself glad when she was with her. In the cooling dusk of summer they walked homeward: at times they dined together: quiet words went from each to each, no depths articulate and yet there was a peace.

Fanny looked at her friend as they ate in silence.

--Know everything! There is naught in me I do not wish you to know. But know it silent. She would have been happy to be of help to Clara.

Summer was a full time in the Sales Office of _Delight Drinks Inc._ Even so there came pause. Slack hours lounged in the hot rooms. Rooms, writhed in the dry green blare of the electric lights, burning like sores against the summer’s sultry and drab dampness, came to a halt, jolted against their usual flow, stood glazed and ominous upon the dark grain of Time.

As in a crowded car suddenly broken from its speed the passengers congest, fall huddled upon each other, so Fanny’s girls piled heavy moist against the soul of Fanny. She sat at her desk with her hands laid before her. The girls at long tables opened the envelopes of orders, marked blanks and sheets, sorted by geographical location, placed in trays. The girls yawned together ... sudden the girls were One, with moist throat running down in dusty waist, with bare arm brushing sweat from brow, with body crowded lush in a narrow skirt, under narrow table, into narrow shoes. They were a body breathing and sweating in a smoulder of will to lie out naked near a lapping sea under cool winds ... cool lips. She loved the girls.

--O if I could show you how I understand!

--Why do I understand?

Here with these girls, her life could come and she face it. Question no longer. Her life was a way, here, tender and passionate and simple, leading into the hearts of a dozen girls.

--I am all open. You do not come in. I am all open. I come into you.

“It’s a hot afternoon, girls.”

“Gee ... yes!”

“What do you say to a round of lemonade?”

Surface of scared wills against a whirling world. But here all was quiet and sweet, and all was in herself. She could look at each girl, see a face already bitten and shrunk by the acids of life. But she looked in herself, and each hurt, each struggle was a throb within her ... they were healed.

“Good! You, Daisie, you know that Italian’s on the corner? Let’s collect five cents each--only those who want it though! You go out, dear, and bring up a pitcher ... two pitchers.” As Daisie bustled by, she slipped a quarter holding the little calloused hand just long enough to give two messages: “Buy some cookies or something with that” and her heart’s fullness.

--What do I understand? now she asked herself as the room waited, spinning in expectancy, released in laughter and jest and stretching of arms from Time.

--There is something beautiful ... in the understanding? in what? O life how you hurt! O life, how when one holds you warm and athrob in one’s heart, you are good, hurting!

The lemonade came: giggles and smacking lips softened the blare of the lights. “One can live,” Fanny murmured sipping her sweet drink, ... “without questions.” The room went its way up Time’s black tunnel. The girls’ congestion broke. They were one and one and one. They were many girls, now, some sweet, some bitter, some bright, some dull, some brave, some ugly and broken. They were many girls at work: they opened envelopes, marked blanks and sheets, sorted and marked ... they droned in many minds about little shut circles of thought, each shut from the other circles: circles spun about their many heads, colliding, rebounding, spinning away alone....

--One can live without asking questions. Not you. One can live spinning and droning. Not you. One can weave a steel sheet between one’s heart and one’s mind. Not you. Lord, I shall think. I promise, Lord.... I shall remember that I have suffered and died, that I am here, to think.... Lord, just a little longer.

* * * * *

Fanny walked home alone, avoiding Clara. In the dim afternoon the City was solid. Houses were made of stone and brick and were held up in their vast weights by pavements.

Pavements solid strong, hold me up also. You hold these crowds, you hold these walls. Solid City, do not let me fall.

Fanny walked tense through the slack afternoon, helping to hold herself. Her trip from the South was there. She runs swift, relaxed, through the world. She falls through the world in a train, falls upward. She falls upward upon God. _Hold me, City._

In her room, the Church. Her fists clenched.

“I am going to move,” she muttered, her breath was angry. She hated ... she hated. “Damn that Church! it blots out most of the sun.”

Down she went, deliberate, to the kitchen. Old Mrs. Deemis bent rhythmically over a padded board ironing towels.

“Hot, eh? Mrs. Luve.”

“Yes.”

“Anything I kin do for you, dearie?” the woman filled the pause. Her gray hair fell in wet patches over her wide bland forehead. “Never you hesitate if there’s anything I kin do for ye, now.”

Fanny, quailing before her sudden resolve to give notice, sat in a chair.

“You couldn’t remove that Church for me, could you, Mrs. Deemis?”

Mrs. Deemis stamped the steaming iron with elbows right-angled to the board.

“Now, will you believes me, Mrs. Luve, I wisht I could!”

Fanny tried to laugh.--Haven’t I been joking?

“You mean Saint--acrost the way there, don’t you? They own this house, and they’re the meanest landlords ... the downright stingiest, meanest landlords, now, you ever seen. I been here twenty years. On the first of the month, it’s the rent quick, you bet. But if it’s the roof that leaks, or the plumbin’ that stinks--O any year’ll do for fixin’ that.”

“This is Church property,” murmured Fanny.

“Yes ... _this_....” Mrs. Deemis flourished the dismal kitchen with its seeping walls, its crumbling plaster ceiling, its ooze rotted floor, into the eyes of Fanny.

“How can I live on Church property,” Fanny thought aloud.

“Why!... Mrs. Luve!” Mrs. Deemis doubted her ears. “What’d ye say? Beg pardon?”

“They’re rotten landlords?”

“Well now ... of course.... I dont say they’re no _worse_....”

“The Church takes the sun from my window, Mrs. Deemis. I love the sun.”

“Why you aint never there? You work. What do ye need the sun for?... Dont blame the Church for that, my dear. You must be fair. If ’twasnt the Church wouldn’t it be one of these here ... now ... factories or office-buildings?”

“---- taking the sun,” murmured Fanny and saw the once more ploughing arms of the old lady.

“You aint thinkin’ of leaving, Mrs. Luve? Cause ... that’s a fine room ... kin rent----“

“Why no.” Fanny got up. “No, I shant move. I love my room. But if you could be so obliging as to remove that Church....” She laughed with her eyes gleaming differently from laughter.

Upstairs she lowered the shades. She undressed. Naked, she saw in the glass that she still wore her hat. Her brow ached. She let fall her hair, letting her cold hands run through its electric dusk. Ungowned in her sheet she lay through the thick night with hands clasping her arms beneath her breasts. She lay dreamless, moving very fast. When she awoke it was late and she knew she had gone far. There were red furrows deep in the flesh of her arms.

The night following ... sudden she emerged from the hot fog that held her. She is in the Church. Naked she stands before a stately mirror whose gold-tooled pediment crowned the blaze of her black hair and eyes. She struck her breasts with a firm fist. “You are cast out, you are vomited by Love.” She stands there burning in cold shame. Her mouth is open, and from it, like a white water, runs a moan. “What does it mean? Christ, what does it mean? Why was I hurt so? Why was I so given a high thought, high dream? I have been hurt. O Christ how it hurts so to be hurt without a meaning. Why?”

--_This is a Church!_ She knew that Christ was coming. He was a man whom she knew. She could not see him, standing there beyond her: but each nerve of her lay in the impact of his presence.--He sees me! It was right that he should look upon her naked and shamed.--It is good, it is good. He looks on me and that is good. He looks on me because my hurt is an unmeaning hurt....

Her half-opened eyes, her half-shut hands, her outstretched knees and her thighs touched the warm smoothness of her bedclothes.--I am so tired! It was good in bed. She slept.

She walked downtown in the young summer morning. The air had a coolness like lilacs after rain. A man passed. Coming closer, sheer, the sight of the man tugged on the cheek and on the neck of Fanny. A man old and bent. Grey beard tangled from a face long furrowed: the eyes were blue and gentle and the brow was untouched.... His beard was a grey prayer. His face was his life. Above his life was his brow like a dawn above storm. “He was a Jew,” she whispered to herself. Then she remembered her dreaming and her moan.

* * * * *

... Something within her said: “There is no hurry.” Much within her said: “You have no life, you are broken. Why alive? You are broken and flayed by life. Life without what you have lost is a mere agony dying down, a slow starving, a slow suffocation.” But something within her said: “There is no hurry.”

Something within her stirred to say: “Even your hurt has a soul. Even the insult lying in your heart has a soul.” Then her hands worked faster. She had eyes then for her girls toiling in their mute slavery, that brought out love, like a cool mist rising from a morning sun, into the dismal workroom.

At times, eating her meat and enjoying it, laughing alone at a show, she found in herself assurance ... mad and blind howsoever ... like a babe’s lying within a womb.

She asked herself doubtingly: “You have been unhappier having, than now when you are empty. Perhaps I am dead!”

Each thought and pain, pushing forth from her, could not leave the mist of her strange slumber. So that she could not be unhappy. For unhappiness is the departure of ourselves from ourselves, the adventure beyond us of our hearts and eyes. Fanny was caught in her pregnant slumber. Her consciousness was like a maze of creatures crawling about a Sphere who cannot leave its surface: who cannot conceive of aught within or without its surface: creatures of two dimensions spanning a Globe about and about ... and yet unable to know it.

* * * * *

It had been hot, this day: now late, sultry clouds pressed like steel on the pulsant City. Dust rose in a great wind. The Office seemed to plunge through a sea of dust and steel cloud.

The others were gone: in the suddenly dark room, Fanny worked alone with Mr. Johns. He examined her books, leaning over her, just above her shoulder, breathing palpably there in the dark room.

A gust of wind from the gray window scattered a pile of papers, Johns’ hand came flat on the table.

“It’s going to rain,” he said.

“Yes.”

He strode to the window and shut it.

“That wont be too hot? All these papers will blow, I’m afraid.”

“It’s cooler, already.”

It was not cooler. The shut window made the dark room plunge and stifle. Fanny felt ill. Her hands ran over the sharp cool sheets of paper. The nerves of the palms of her hands were shrill.

“Is that all, Mr. Johns?”

“There’s the whole South yet! We’d better see how they’re drinking down in the South.”

“O yes....”

“You wouldn’t forget the South?”

A picture bright like a knife ... this her house, the garden, Edith in her blue bassinette ... cut her and filled the room.

--Get away! get away!

“Now--first, Virginia--“

“Yes.”--Get away! O my baby! O Harry! How could you? Couldn’t you understand? Yet? Where are you Edith?... “This was at Flora’s table.”--Get away!

She talked. Her words were dim, she could not see her words. She went on talking ... strong hands gripped her arms near her shoulders, turned her. A long heavy face--red and kind--thrust bewilderment upon her eyes that could not see her words.

“Mrs. Luve!”

--Your face is different: heavier, solider ... could it hurt so?

“Mrs. Luve!”

--Your hair is not silky. Silk cuts. Silk cuts.

“Mrs. Luve! what is the matter?”

He placed her in a chair. The window flew open. Steel cool night flooded in. The room righted.

“Excuse me, Mr. Johns.... I--I reckon I--I was faint a bit. Let’s go on.”

“There’s no hurry.”

--He’s looking at me. And I can’t see my words. I am talking. I must talk. Do my words stand between me and him? O they must.... Silk only cuts.... She stopped.

Her heart was weary.--If you must see, you big good man, then see. I can fend no more. I let go. She covered her face one moment with her hands. No tears. Her head lifted, eyes blazing.

“Well,” she said, “have you seen enough? Have you had enough! Coward!”

A heavy hand lay gently upon hers. Gentle hand outstretched from a long arm.... O how long! and there, vastly beyond as in a dream, this man: solid red good.

“Quiet,” his hand spoke to her. The other hand. “Quiet.” Fanny jumped up.

She saw him there, and that he was frightened.

--He is frightened by me, he is frightened about me! He cares because he sees me in pain. He is worried about me. Impossible, impossible. Right this!

Fanny’s scream knifed through the grayness. Then she was clear. She stood there, seeing him in the dark room, clear.

He saw her clarity: his brow clouded.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “I thought you were sick: you seemed hysterical, Mrs. Luve. I meant only to quiet you.”

“Your hand you mean? It was good. Thank you for your hand, sir. It took one scream from me. Thank you.”

She breathed very fast. She was headclear now, as if in a storm which had passed all fibre, all flesh had been stripped from her taut nerves. She was a framework of nerves.

“Thank you,” she said again. “One less scream. Do you know what that means? One less scream!”

He came to her and clasped her arm.

“Scream again.”

She looked at him full. “Wait,” she panted. He held her. She leaned back feeling his hands strained by her weight to eat into her arms.

“Wait!” There was a liquid fullness in her voice. “Perhaps I can laugh instead. Laugh--“

“No. Don’t laugh, I tell you. Don’t lie, for God’s sake. Scream.”

There was a silence. The silence was all fresh and new like a dawn.

Gently she pressed from him. She sat by the table at the room’s far side. She buried her face in her hands on the cluttered table. She wept....

She wept long. She stayed still motionless there, with her face buried among papers after she had wept. The world came back:--The dusk of the spent day. The long cool wake of the spent heat-storm. The little office, pitching no longer ... spent ... atop the cluttered City. And this man, stranger she had worked for now many months, who was solid and could help ... this man so good that he had made her scream.

With a felt slowness she lifted her head, turned her face.

--He is there! He has not moved. He stands there silent, held by the sight of me ... while I wept.

She smiled at him.

“Do you feel better now?”

She nodded.

“Sure?”

She nodded. He brought her coat and hat. An orange feather tufted from the straw. His long vein-straggled hand ran over the feather. She looked at it. The feather was not ruffled.

“Thank you,” she said very soft.

His face was rounder with a smile. She saw his jagged teeth and his soft twining lips. She saw the dimple in his chin and his long neck.--Ostrich! She was alert, serious as he helped her. She felt him ... good ... with her back ... all about her ... as he helped her.

--He is sure! While I wept, he was there, not moving!

The hand she held out to his seemed small to her, pretty....

* * * * *

There was a knock on Fanny’s door.

“It’s me, Mrs. Luve.”

“O Mrs. Deemis. Come in....”

She was almost dressed. The old lady gave a glance that was like a draught of drink at the whole room ... her room, changed so often into new mystery of him or her who hired it. She lived familiarly in mystery. It warmed her. She had no man, her children were gone: she had a family of mystery. She did not know but on these she subsisted.

“There was a phone call for you ... early ... your office. A Mr. Johns--he didn’t give no other name--he said as how if you wasn’t feeling well this morning you should knock off. It’d be alright. Are you sick, dearie?”

“No.” Restless before her mirror.--What should I do here, workless? “Yesterday afternoon a little.... The New York heat, I reckon.”

“I guess so. Well,” the old lady opened the door, “Take the chance when it’s offered. Eh?” She was a silent woman for she was full of her mysteries. She left. Fanny went on dressing.

* * * * *

But there came a morning in the clear coolness of autumn. Fanny’s eyes opened from sleep. Her body stretched on its back ... the warm thin bed ... her body less plump already measuring the bed ... the bed measuring the wall, soft cream ... the room ... windows behind their white mesh curtains thresholding, flaring, shouting out into the world, all new and terrible again in its old Pain ... came to her. Different! She lay. She could lie, eyes open, and the windows flared and led out, and there was the Pain of the congested world: yet she lay warm, stretched in her bed, and could bear it.

--It’s Sunday. O how good! It was long, back in the age that was separate by the Abyss, since she had lain awake in a sweet bed.--Why?

--There’s been a hairy monster sitting on my face! The hair in my eyes, the fat and the stink and the bag Glued on my mouth!...

Here was a clear gold morning, full of sun ... a morning mad to drink....--_He squats there yet!_ Gold mornings made to drink, clear cool drinkable days. I’ll drink you yet, I’ll drink you yet. Sun-veined air, wine of the sun, I’ll have you!

--Find out the monster’s name: pull him, tweak him. Find out his name and he’ll squeal away like a pig. --O he is there. But I have sipped a morning.

She got out of bed ... dimness before her eyes and brow like a curtain before fire. The curtain became mist. She knew so yet it must be ... the mist quenched and quenched. _Not all the fire! Never all the fire!_ In this way she got out of bed.

* * * * *

In her nightgown she stood by the open window, letting the cold air race through her. She looked at the Church, she did not feel the cold air save that there was sun in it. The Church did not race. It stayed there immovable. It was fixed somewhere under the spinning of her world ... where the Pain was also. Half naked by the open window and the Church, she took her Bible and opened it. She felt the Church a dull base on which the Bible was written: from which it leaped, it leaped in syllables of sun.

“When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God Shouted for joy....”

She turned the pages. She saw:

“For I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife saving for the cause Of fornication causeth her To commit adultery.”

She shut the book. She looked at the Church. She looked at the Church, the morning stars sang through her flimsy nightgown. But she was not cold. She wondered.

She went back into bed, holding the Bible. Two fingers marked the two places she had read. Her eyes narrowed.--I am beginning to think! Once more she jumped up. She turned the curtains back so that the windows were bare. She went again to her bed. She could see the Church now from her pillow. She pressed the little black book against her breasts. “Where,” she said aloud, “in which of the two places does it touch me?” She pressed the Bible against her left breast and against her right breast. She liked the feel of the hard book against her.... “What sucks me?” she whispered.” ... that which has cast me out, or the other that draws, that welcomes?” She lifted her two hands high above her face. “Yes” she cried, “the other that calls me good!” Her hands fell in her bosom.--_I am beginning to think._ Do words in sunlight leap from a page and leave it? She turned her head, gazed at the wall of the Church so heavy and fixed against the sun-dazzled window. The organ rose. A hymn, many-voiced, twined with the organ, pealed slanting upwards toward her through the window.--It leaves the Church. Comes to me. I hear it as no one ... don’t I know?... as none of them sticking in their varnished pews. _I_ hear alone. Out of a Church. She took the Bible again and read the words of Jesus.

She read them calmly. She looked away seeing the terrible words. Pain, agony of shame and of deprival, rending of doubt parted once more the golden haze she had lived in for a moment.--I am sinking back! She was afraid.--I am sinking. There it was all ... Harry, her search to hold, to find him: the lancing anguish of her revelation: Leon, Edith, the ecstacy of Good ... and the cool-lipped stranger so close pointing a finger, thrusting her out with a finger.

Fanny rocked in her bed, rocked motionless, dizzy with rocking thoughts.--Go away, go away, she moaned.--Why, why must I ask Why? I cannot bear it.

There was a knock on her door. She was very still. Knock, knock.

“What is it?”

“May I come in?... It’s Clara Lonergan....”

“O you.... Yes. Come in.”

The girl smiled: “It’s such a bully morning.”

“I am glad you came.”

“I had no idea you’d be so lazy. I thought you might come for a walk.”

“The day came into the room. I have both day and bed.”

Clara brought a chair to the bed and sat down. She saw the Bible.

“And Church too, I see.” Her lips curled but her eyes were really smiling.

“Don’t you approve of Church?”

“No,” said Clara, “I hate it. _My_ Church at any rate. Pa said it was the Priests that made Mother willing to die.”

“Well ... what have Church and Bible to do with each other?”

Clara laughed. “O come on! Let’s walk. It’s cold in here.” She drew her boa across her throat. “Shall I close the window?”

“Don’t you dare!” cried Fanny. She jumped out of bed. She was exhilerated. Her nightgown fell to the floor.

Clara was up. “You’ll catch your death of cold....”

“No, no,” said Fanny. She stood there naked. Her arms were lifted above her. “I’m not cold. There are stars and sun in this room ... they are racing through me.”

“You’re mad, dear,” said Clara. She was close. She placed her hands on the naked woman’s shoulders. Their eyes met. Clara’s eyes and face went down. Very lightly she touched her lips upon the throat of Fanny.

“Dress.... Hurry.” Clara went back to her chair; half-turned away she fingered the fallen Bible. There was a new warm glow between them in the room.

Fanny dressed silent, fast.

“Why do you want to move about?” She seated herself in her wrapper before Clara on the bed. “I don’t feel like walking. I’ll close the windows. I’ll make the bed in a jiffy. You stay.”

“Go and make yourself some coffee. I’ll fix the couch.”

“I’ll make coffee for two.”

“Alright.”

They sat at last, quiet in the clear sunlit room, and smiled at each other. Sleep and the night were gone, with the bed turned couch.

“Now it’s my sitting room,” laughed Fanny.

“You’ve been used to more than that.”

“Please don’t!” Then Fanny was sorry. “No I don’t mean that. I don’t mean to hide myself from you, Clara. Only, it hurts.”