Cartesian Sonata: And Other Novellas (6 page)

The coffee first darkened then swallowed the sugar as she poured. Her neighbor wasn’t listening, pottering about over there, wasting her gifts. Madame Betz had her own worries and Muffertrees was up to something. When there isn’t anyone to listen, Ella said, I’m in despair. Her fingernail followed the weave in a chair, a flower’s stem. They should have allowed me to bring him home. Oh, I admit it wasn’t a nice manifestation. It was one of his meanest. He was most unpleasant. But they should have allowed me to bring him home in a shoebox most likely, or a jar, at least for a while. I’m lonely with no one to talk to, not that Muffin was ever much company. It’s no good just to be able to see, to receive. The sorrows of the radio. I’d rather be blind—god—what a relief—if the world had an ear—if it wasn’t all eye really—all eye. What good does it do, just to see? Her own face stared up at her out of her cup. The coffee was black but thickly sweet. She needed her neighbor. True—her neighbor was developing. Soon she’d be quite clairvoyant, poor thing. But today she had her shades drawn and Ella couldn’t get in. Look at these eyes at the tips of my fingers. I can see in pockets or under suds in the sink. My nipples could peer in the mouth of a lover and check his teeth. And my tongue, too, will light. Light lightly, like a fly. Oh, never mind. What’s the use? They
just bring me sorrow. Ella sniffed and sighed. Well, not quite. She could smell the sugar in the steam. Sweet was still sweet.

She’d gone first to a man who called himself Professor Logos, and seemed cheap. He didn’t use a globe, he used a dictionary. What do you say to this, he said, as soon as she’d settled herself.
Vagary
’s just barely ahead of
vagina
in here—he was tapping the cover—and
womb
is the word after
woman
. This, he said, lifting
Webster’s New Collegiate
, is the book of the world, the one true honest holy book; it’s all in here, the order of everything. Do you know what the world is, Mrs. Hess? It’s
word
with an
l
in it! Now I know that doesn’t sound possible, does it? Yet
low
follows loving. What do you think? And what lies so snugly between
truism
and
truly? Trull!
That’s right—truth is a strumpet. What do you think? Yes, Mrs. Hess,
word
with an
l
in it. The universe, the cosmos, is simply stuck with laws all over like a billing post, and none of them makes any sense.
W
or
D
—that’s the key. Why, tell me, why, when you’ve put two counters together on a square, are you safe in pachisi? That’s just the way Parcheesi’s played, right? But
peek
and
peel
, Mrs. Hess.
Evidential, evil, evil eye, evince
. So I take them hit or miss as they come, naked in their connections.
Womb
and
tomb
. What do you think? I begin with a word. I go up or down. And I construe.
Celiac, celibacy, celibate, cell
. There’s a wonder in
Webster
for every wonder in the world … and then some.
Web
is in
Webster
, by the way.
Web
and
west
. See?
Sedulous, sedum, see
, and
seed
. Stick with me. Mrs. Hess, now, what follows you?
Hessian
: a coarse sacking of hemp or jute. Next: a two-winged fly or midge.
Hest
: a command or precept. So. A pledge.
Hester
—adultress. But goddess of the hearth—
Hestia
. What do these words tell me? What am I learning?
Hesychast
: one of a sect of mystics. Ah.
Hetaera
. Usually slaves. I lay them out as some do cards. And before
card
comes cancer—
carcinoma
. What do you think?
Ash bash cash dash gash hash lash mash nash
(OK, but the man, the car)
rash
sash wash
. Convinced. Listen to what happens to the sound of
wash
. Now we’re at
bosh cosh gosh nosh posh …
Stop. Mark this, mark this, Professor Logos said with his typical enthusiasm, notice this conjunction:
wive, wivern
, and
wizard
. Of course, there’s
wive swive
too. Listen, Mrs. Hess, don’t kid me, are you one of the competition? Then
wizened
, he went on, fastening her with a sharp smile. Your real name is Gelvin, Ella said. I know you. I was Ella Bend. You sell shoes and use grease on your head and like to feel feet. I know you. You’re my Phil and you made a fist at my father.

Madame Betz was more proficient, there was no doubt about it. She used a crystal, but her weakness was conjuring, and as soon as Ella had stepped in the trailer, Madame Betz began the conjuration of Thursday. It went on and on: Cados, Cados, Cados, Eschereie, Eschereie, Eschereie, Hatim, Ya—name after name—Cantine, Jaym, Janic, Auie, Calbot, Sabbad, Berisay, Alnaym—until angels, stars, and planets had been invoked and Adonay Himself was called upon—Na Nim Nim Na—to bring Schiel, a great angel who was the chief ruler of Thursday, bound in a coil of greenish smoke, forcefully into her globe. The spell proved to be powerful, but Ella didn’t think she could remember it all, and when she told Madame Betz that what she really wanted was to be rid of her gifts, Madame Betz was frightened and sent her away. Ella persisted, nevertheless. She came back again and again. Isn’t there someone you could find who would like them—someone I could give them to, Ella begged. A Clara? My neighbor’s name. No, no—no one—of course not, Madame Betz had said, your gifts aren’t organs you can get dead and donate. I give them to no one—go away fast as blink.

Often Madame Betz would try to hide. Why do that, Ella told her, I always know where you are, and besides it’s undignified. Then Ella suggested a charm against clairvoyancy, some spell that might work at least for a while, and be renewed when it
weakened, like a treatment for cancer, but Madame Betz refused this kind of help entirely. Ninny, she said, there’s no outside cure for what’s inside. And this was the last wisdom which Ella could extract from her, for as Ella grew worse it became apparent, since she was so much Madame Betz’s superior in every psychic thing, that if Ella were unable to assist herself, certainly poor Madame Betz, with her short refracted sight and scratched bowl and smallish magics, could do nothing for her. So she was paying Madame Betz a polite last friendly visit when Ella’s husband caught up with them. He was shouting, naturally, as he always did, and there isn’t much room in a trailer. Ella then slipped through the crystal. Madame Betz screamed. And Edgar began breaking her furniture.

The dark steam was beautiful, the silver spoon too, and the warm palm of the porcelain. Why don’t you just pour your coffee in the sugar bowl, her husband used to ask her. Oh, a drink that sweet, she’d say, will relieve me of my teeth. Watching her dissolve still more sugar in her cup, he would groan and hide his distraught hands before his face. Madame Betz loved sweetening too. We’ve got to have something, haven’t we lovey, she would say, stirring her cocoa pensively.

Home soon. To Ella Bend.
Bend
is
end
with a blossom on it. She slid the cards from beneath the cushion. A sip or two. After they were married and driving away, her husband said: Now you’re Ella Hess, nee Bend—roaring with pleasure and rubbing the curb. You pronounce
nee
nay, she should have said, and she was still sorry. A sip or two. Do I carry the cup to the table or not? Not. It’s to be broken another time. In their hotel room he’d slapped her bottom—nee Bend, he said. Nay, which means no, she should have said. She was still sorry. A vulgar whistling went through, and she thought: I’ve simply got to persuade him to move. Move? She shuffled expertly. I should shoo back Mrs. Maggies, she’s got no business here—not yet—and with
evening coming in, the damp, the chill, the wind. He’s being held up by lights and traffic. A fine mood he’ll be in—accelerator angry. Ella stuffed a hankie in her sleeve and sat down to the kitchen table, flicking the cards. There was no point in laying them out, of course; she knew what they’d say. At the seventh card, if she played slowly, he’d barge in. There was the king of money to start with—a very fair or very gray-haired man—yes—a protector, but easily vexed. Sorry old soul. Someday there’d be an end and he’d be dead and she’d be dead and past this kind of feeling. Perhaps they could be friends then. And the queen of swords—a very dark woman—oh that fits nicely—a false and intriguing woman—well let it be, let be—or the queen might mean a widow. What is
sword
but
word
with
s
on its head. The next should be the three of money—there it is, as advertised—and that’s domestic trouble, quarrels, litigation. The table was glaring. Ella blinked. The cards clicked. Again a sword, the five, for bad temper. The cards are garrulous; that didn’t need saying. Then still another sword—so many—worrisome, such a concentration—the three—I hadn’t remembered—it’s for a journey—a journey?—or for tears. It is that September fuss-up, I’m just certain. I don’t weep in that one anywhere, though I get a beating. Curious. It’s true my eyes are welling, things are bleary. Not a bit like me. There’s no time left for this. Ella blotted with her hankie. Not now. Not now. Edgar’s in the drive and I’ve another card to turn.

Mr. Hess said, his hat turning slowly between his knees. His wife lay sick in a chair, quite silent. Mr. Hess was leaning forward, his weight on his forearms, hat hanging from the pads of his fingers, carpet across his eyes. Um, he thought. Aah. His
wife tipped back in the lounger, rigid as always, her risen feet in a V. Mr. Hess, however, sagged in contrast, his whole weight pressing against his thighs above his knees, brown hat dangling between his trousers. His missus stretched out staring at the ceiling in order not to see, and he couldn’t endure that either. The canary, or whatever the hell it was, rattled its beak and then shrieked … shrieked and rattled its beak. Hess moved his shoes to stand inside the florals. The venetian blinds were scratched, though you couldn’t see the scratches in the shade they threw. Their shadows simply said how crookedly the slats hung. What to do? although the question required no answer, hurrying after itself with furthermore of itself like a second hand. He had sucked the center from that old cliché:
and time lay heavy on his hands
. Dusk sank through the light to snow his shoes—the air so thick, the fall so fast—while whatever it was—canary bird, cuckoo—rapped its beak along the bars till Hess remembered boyhood pleasures too … with a pang like the smart of a stick. What? what? what to do? Thin tan lines flew parallels inside his suit no matter how he moved, but his wife could barely stretch herself about her bones. Mr. Hess was afraid she had cancer—something, at any rate, lingering and serious. Her skin was a poor color and she was wasted as an ad for famines. Maybe her mind had been affected by the illness, too; that would explain the peculiarities of her behavior. Change of life, he’d heard, often did them funny. He felt that he should get her to a doctor. A doctor—he pendulumed his hat—a doctor, yes, that was his duty. The doctor would report upon her. Smiling gently, rimless-eyed, he’d write her up as dying. Then he’d instruct Mr. Hess in the society of symptoms which his wife’s disease had founded. They always turn queer in a case like this, the doctor would say; oh they go strange, sometimes very early. We suspect, the doctor would say—my science does, you understand—that there’s a kind of signal to the future in it.
Poor things, he’d say, they’re done for from the first: an abnormal placenta, don’t you see, pressure from a pelvis that’s too small, or some slight chemical disturbance, sudden stress, internal turbulence or organ tumble, a quiet slow infection, and it’s all over: sizz-z-z-z until the air’s out; so don’t heavy your head any further with it, Mr. Hess, don’t dent your hair, not even by a hat’s weight, none of it’s your doing, she was born at half eleven in her life … chew this bit of candy here to sweeten up your teeth, possess yourself in patience … death should follow shortly now, though her soul can only seep away, not fly, it has so little stamina. You’ve no young children, I suppose, Hess, have you? and I trust you’re well insured. Ha ha, Mr. Hess thought. Ha ha. And he solemnly prayed for his wife’s demise. Too weary for hate or even malice, he certainly didn’t feel ashamed; foreign, rather, to remorse or any sorrow. She was sick enough to be lots better dead. That was a fact, god’s truth. Hess wished her speedy passage o’er the great divide as he wished, weekends, for green golfing weather. It was reflexive, a wish as mild and futile as it was heartfelt and desperate, because he’d given up golf, as he’d given up bowling. Having gotten her laid to rest, he’d want the shoveling ceremony, please, run through just once again. The disappearance of her bier beneath the earth was a constant longing like the thirsty for another dram. His hat dropped softly to the carpet, quashing an edge. He slid his right arm forward to recover it. Only a doctor, only a definite “soon she must die,” could give him hope, for his own heaviness was overcoming him. Every day he hung a little lower on himself. It grew more difficult to rise in the morning, lift himself from chairs or slide from the seats of cars, even stir at all, accomplish stairs or carry any trifling action to completion, and the blood which fell out of his heart was siphoned back painfully. But she would never submit herself to any sort of physical examination. It was inconceivable. She knew she had a body of extraordinary
kind, and that strange gray oblong organs would be discovered swimming like sea animals in the plate of the X ray. No … he had to be satisfied, since it was always possible that the doctor might frighten her off from the brink of her death with a knife or a needle, whereas her present ill health, so hopefully plain, though he only conjectured it, advanced with a steadiness no one as deeply concerned as he could fail to appreciate. He would accept the uncertainty. Mr. Hess knew no more of the spirit than his hat did—that is, not directly; and if his flesh seemed to be sliding slowly from him like thick batter or heavy syrup, it did not make his bones more saintly. Nevertheless it was that realm, mysterious in its work as magnets, and moving always out of sight and underground like rivers of electricity, which was the source of his dismay and the cause of his anguish. He did feel that with ingenious instruments it probably could be seen, in some way metered or its passage mapped, for this invisible world in which his wife lived made her weary; the stream she swam in was perhaps impalpable, but it left her damp; indeed, there were times when Mr. Hess sensed, somehow, the current flowing, and knew that sallow as her skin looked, lifeless as she seemed flung down on a couch or discarded in a chair like emptied clothing, she was lit up inside and burning brightly like a lamp. Even so, the only lamp he knew which fit his image of her was the sort which smoked above a poker table; surely she had no sky inside herself to fall from, no ceiling fixture, ceiling chain, or wire burning like a worm. She had her distances, all right, but within was their one direction, and Mr. Hess could not help but wonder once again exactly why he was sitting where he was; how it had happened to him, so bodily a being, even if he were a bit baggy and had all those habits she disapproved of in her subtle aerial way, never saying a word, just exuding an odor like ripe cheese when he appeared, causing the temperature and light to alter, holding up time so
that it seemed he’d been picking his nose forever, or simply sending a sigh through the house like a breeze; how had it happened he should be so fastened to this—this twig, he sometimes thought in those moments when the past seemed as though it had held a promise and he’d once been a blossom, then a fruit, full of juice and flavor; how had it happened to him? prisoners must say that, over and over, he thought, handcuffed, chained; shit, Christ even thought it, as he was hanging there, nailed; but Mr. Hess had no head for searches, he could scarcely find his slippers, answers were out of the question, as his wife said sometimes, no, only these same wonderments circled through him, wooden in their wheeling as a roundabout. I’ve got to slow down, Mr. Hess thought. He ran along paths in the carpet, in the tan, around the turns of leaves and flowers. She hasn’t enough blood in the narrow channels of her flesh to pink a tear, while mine is like sand in a sand clock, almost wholly in my head—thick, moist, flushed, hot—or in my feet—heavy, old, cold, quiet—awaiting the tipsy-turvy to trickle out, thus I alternate a lot, don’t I? she’s not the only one whose spirit’s like electric current, but alas I’ve none of the instant capacity of wires. Hang in there somehow, Hess. Hang in. But she was having her weirds now, the stiffish kind, and he wished she wouldn’t. He could hit her again, of course. He could always do that. Instead he groaned and tried to spin his hat upon his finger. She was ill. She was dying. So he hoped. But she didn’t have to tell fortunes. She didn’t have to sit in the kitchen with the cards spread out, absorbed by the tale they were telling, bad news for Edgar when he came home. She didn’t have to leave the house to squat on the front step, in the drive, where he would find her making noises like a key-wound engine. Nor did she have to disgrace his needs, throwing up her skirt quite suddenly to leave him thunderstruck. I’ll be needing lawyers if I’m not careful. Not so heavy with the fall of the fists, Hess, hey? he
cautioned himself. Not so quick with the kick. When the jury learns what you’ve been through, Mr. Hess, don’t worry, they will give you sympathy; they’ll put her beaten body behind bars; they’ll hiss when she is carried through the court. You’ve heard of the victimless crime, Hess, haven’t you? Well, there are crimeless victims, too. You’re one of them—one of those. What’s a paltry kick compared to the piteous smiles she’s inflicted on you, the looks thrown heavenward with such aboriginal skill, and cunning with curves, they stone down later in your living room the whole naked length of a sofa-soft Sunday afternoon, passing through the shield of the Sunday paper, bruising your eyes; or the little whimpering moues which cower in the corner of her mouth, how about those? the glances which scuttle away like bugs to the baseboard to wait the night, all the tiny gnawing things she keeps about her: frightened knees and elbows, two flabs of breast with timorous nips, disjointed nose, latched eyes? There are laws against that, Mr. Hess, unwritten laws, the laws of common decency, laws of the spirit and the soul, what she knew best, Hess, didn’t she? sure, her silences, for instance, are against the law, silence is against the law, silences are blows, and you can plead self-defense, you can plead extenuation, you can argue quite agreeably that you were driven to extremes, out of reason as out of town, by all those occasions when she struck you with inwardness—oh—withholding is wicked, refusing to respond, that’s malice, Hess, you have every excuse, don’t worry your warts, and when the jury hears how you have borne yourself these long weary dreadful, ladensomely heavy years, they’ll set you free to cheers and to the sound of bells, though it’ll help your case if you don’t have young children, Mr. Hess, you haven’t have you? that’s best. Ha ha, Mr. Hess thought. Ha ha. Please to observe, Mr. Hess, now, that she isn’t dead. She’s having one of her little nervous spells, a little dab of the dizzies, so
she’s resting, that’s all, she’s merely unmoving, stiff and staring, eyes wide as a picture window, watching god knows what going on on the screen of the ceiling, some soap opera of the soul, a few new developments in the Grand Design, I shouldn’t wonder—ha, Mr. Hess, hey? ha—no, it’s just another quietly ordinary sagamuffin Sunday in the Hess household, and you’re no stranger to it, sweat it out the same as always, lean on your knees till your thighs dent, you know how it goes, you know the routine—oh my goodness, what’s to be done, Hess, what’s to be done? His urine fell out of him as out of a nozzleless hose, while she was forever listening … listening … in constantly alert and continuously expectant receivership, so to speak, like a line of ears for early warning. Pamphila. Faugh. What’s done is done; then done, it’s done, and then it’s done. So why wait any longer? when every act is over and we’re filing out. Anyway … my wife, to picture paths and patterns in resting rocks, deep tides of feeling, vast programs of action … well, she became positively seismographic, and registered dirt in huge mud-bound hunks roundly wibble-slob-wobbling like a dancer’s tum. Wait? Thin ass on a fat chance. Run? She said she heard his grass and claimed it was up to no good and had ungracious plans. What could he do but close his hands? She’d pick up stray transmissions even in the splash of his pee, the hum of motors, the surreptitious click of switches. Everything which entered the house, whether from above or below ground, entered her … entered without knocking: the wind, of course, and the rustle of leaves, sunfall as noisy as Niagara, day-mist and light spatter, they were welcome as holy water because she sensed the presence of the Sacred Word in bird whistle, rain plop—noises natural and noises not—squirrel chatter, pipe rattle, buzz, bloom, shadow; she parsed them all as easily as he read Dick and Jane—St. Francis couldn’t hold a sparrow to her—and she had
for each of this world’s blurts a warm greeting, not for him, though, just for the holing of moles and earth-eating worms, just for the paths, traps, and caches of beetles and spiders, for ants, wasps, cicadas—veterans as jovial in their cozy halls of relaxation as members of the American Legion. She’d have an immediate sympathy for the growth of roots, too, Hess was prepared to bet, their efforts, the energy, life’s task, how it was … like fingers struggling into gloves. Like the robin, she could hear the grub grub and the earthworm worm. It was a contradiction he couldn’t countenance or fathom, because for all her foreknowledge, he still had to yoo-hoo when he came round a corner, and without that cheerful next-door warning, or the boop-boop-boop of a rubber horn he’d filched from the handlebars of a neighbor tike’s bike—ha, oh lord, ha ha, ha ha—she’d startle like a sparkler, burn with indignation briefly, and darken on the wire. Otherwise she was stoical. She was patient. Rapt, she waited for erosion, rust, chip, flake, craze, settle, since slowness didn’t faze her, accumulations of the gradual, the thick that gets there bit by bit the way fog sags in a hollow, little reiterations, all the overtold anecdotes of the actual, same upon same, she said, were satisfying, though her face did not betray her pleasure, if, in fact, she felt some, giving away only what a dial would, so he sometimes knew where his wife was tuned without any sense of the source or substance of the signal, and because she was a stranger to class and its consequent snobbery, she listened equally to gravel scatter or the incontinent wetting of basement walls. The further within she went, the more numerous the noises, an orchestra hot for its A couldn’t compete for cacophony, and they delivered her news as diverse as the dailies. To tap drip, naturally, she bowed like a rod; to knuckle pop and cloth scrape, she was a wand … how do you stand it, Hess often said, with so much going on, if it’s as you say, and there are
vibrations in ethers as yet unimagined, sounds exceeding sound even in the customary shoe squeak and silk slither, or from drapes, morose and heavy, hanging in a skin of dust, there comes the prolonged metal shudder of a gong? Of course, it’s only me who has the wonder, and who am I?—so dull, so down; but I think it’s remarkable that you should be responsive to the low moan of cushions; if you ask me, it’s even suspicious how warmly you are washed by every slow hydraulic sigh released by grease racks, barber chairs, and doorstops; strange that you are passionately moved—imagine—by the yearn of warping boards, the tireless cries of wood rot, thin as thread and exquisitely tangled, but perhaps it’s that sadistic element in you which appreciates broken slats and tacks like teeth, screws, nails, staples with their twin penetration like the drilled wounds of eyes, the elongating pains of picture wire, the screams of burning bulbs, and although in your overburdened state it may be kind of you to regret the steady dampening of salt on humid days, still, one need not be a queen and have a palace to enjoy the sweet granular silence of sugar in its crock. Voices: they were everywhere around her like gnats. In snowfall, frost. He had his hat. To rise? to doff one final time? good day, Madame—goodby—surprise— … to leave? He could do that. Run under it out of the rain. How many of his dreams had flight and freedom in them? Ham and eggs. Pie and cheese. Muff and sniff. She’d hear the Southern slurs of melting custard and be … entranced. He had his hat. He could do that. But noises he made deliberately to set her off, stomps around the room or weights he placed on the floor to make it groan, soda he shook and swallowed, screws he gave an extra turn to, fists he left printed in the air, the pounding he gave the coverlet, or conversely the squeaks he silenced with sewing machine oil, the har har hars he swaddled in socks, the lids he glued or the many things