Читать книгу The Accursed - Joyce Carol Oates - Страница 12

NARCISSUS

Excuse me—hello?”

On a sun-warmed morning in early spring she saw him, at a little distance: a man of indeterminate age, his face turned from her, who seemed at first to be one of her grandfather’s gardener’s assistants, as he was gripping in his gloved hand a small hand-sickle, cruelly hooked and gleaming in the sun; and, at his feet, stricken flowers, presumably past their prime, and a heaping of last-year’s grasses, that had been cut down.

Annabel had never seen this man before, she was sure. Though often there came to Crosswicks Manse, to visit with Grandfather Slade, individuals not known to her, of significance.

She supposed that the stranger, not in gardening attire but in formal, just slightly old-fashioned clothes, like clothes Winslow Slade had worn decades ago, was one of her grandfather’s visitors: possibly a Presbyterian minister, or seminarian, who’d wandered out of Dr. Slade’s shadowed library to breathe in the freshness of the April morning; and, out of restlessness perhaps, had decided to try his hand here, with the sharp little sickle.

“Hello! Are you a friend of Grandfather’s?”

There was laughter in Annabel’s voice, as there was so often a light sort of laughter, or joyousness, in her face.

The reader must not think that nineteen-year-old Annabel Slade was accustomed to addressing strange men, even in her grandfather’s garden; she was not a bold girl, still less a brash girl; but some sort of childish elation had come over her, on this perfect April morning, with her diamond engagement ring—(square-cut, fourteen carats, surrounded by miniature rubies, an heirloom of the Bayard family)—sparkling on the third finger of her slender left hand, in the sun. When Woodrow Wilson had spoken critically of “headstrong” young women born in the North, lacking the natural graciousness of his daughter Margaret, as of his wife, Ellen, both Southern-born, he would certainly not have included Annabel Slade in this category!

Strange it seemed to Annabel, yet not alarming, that the mysterious visitor didn’t seem to hear her, or to acknowledge her—“Hel-lo?”—as with childlike persistence she called out to him again, though shyly too, smiling as her mother might smile, or her grandmother Slade, in the feminine role of welcoming a guest to the house.

On this April morning several weeks after Woodrow Wilson’s visit to Crosswicks Manse, Winslow Slade’s beloved granddaughter Annabel was picking flowers for the dining room of Crosswicks Manse. In her hands was a small gathering of jonquils, Grecian windflowers, daffodils and narcissi—how fragrant, narcissi!—almost, Annabel felt light-headed. It seemed probable to her, this stranger would be dining with them at lunch, which gave to her task an added urgency.

She recalled now, she’d heard it mentioned at breakfast, that an emissary from the highest echelon of the Presbyterian Church was coming to visit with Winslow Slade that day, and to enlist his support in the awkward matter of a “heresy trial” within the ranks of the Church.

(Poor Grandfather! Annabel knew that he wanted very badly to be totally retired from his former life, yet fervently his “former life” pursued him!)

Annabel knew little of such matters but understood that, through his many years of service in the Church, Reverend Winslow Slade had participated from time to time in such closed trials; for heresy was a terrible thing, and must be combated at the source, though such disagreeable matters upset him deeply. Josiah had told her that in such actions, their grandfather was not to be distinguished from any responsible Protestant clergyman of his day, charged with the mission that the “special character” of Anglo-Saxon Christianity be protected from “anarchist” assaults arising both within, and without, the Church.

“Of course,” Annabel had said to her brother, in an undertone, so that no adult could hear, “these are not real trials—no one is imprisoned, or sentenced to death, I hope!”

“Not in our time,” Josiah said. “Fortunately.”

Annabel knew that, fierce as Protestants might be in their zealous protection of their Church, they were not nearly so fierce, or so bloodthirsty, as their Roman Catholic predecessors had been in the time, for instance, of the Inquisition; or the Thirty Years’ War, or the Crusades.

So, judging the attractive stranger by his outward attire, and a certain air of good breeding in his manner, the innocently naïve Annabel Slade was led to believe that Axson Mayte was a gentleman of her own social station: a friend of her grandfather’s, in short.

A profound misreading, as the historical record will show.

VERY ODD, HOWEVER, Annabel was beginning to feel, how the stranger continued to hold the hand-sickle, at his side; now he’d turned to her, seeing her, yet without an air of surprise, as if he’d known she was there, observing him; he smiled, in a rapt sort of silence, as no gentleman would ever do, in fact; as if he and Annabel Slade had met by chance in a public place, or in some dimension in which the sexes might “meet” impersonally, like animals, with no names, no families—no identities. In that instant, Annabel felt both chilled and flushed with warmth; and somewhat faint; and had to resist the impulse to hide her (burning) face in the little bouquet of flowers she had picked, that the bold stranger would not stare so directly upon her with his penetrating gaze.

A tawny-golden gaze it was, like a certain kind of beveled glass.

Disturbing it was to her, that they had not been introduced, he had not said a word to her, yet the stranger smiled more insidiously at her, with thin, yet strangely sensual lips!

I will ignore him. I will walk away, as if I were alone. We will be introduced at lunch, maybe—and if not, that can’t be helped.

Yet Annabel failed to leave the garden, as she might have done, but only moved to another corner, where she reasoned she wouldn’t be so clearly observed by the strange bold visitor. Here was a lavish bed of wind-rippled daffodils that made her smile; for words of a favorite, memorized poem ran through her thoughts: “ ‘And then my heart with pleasure fills, and dances with the daffodils.’ ”

In times of unease, excitement or dread, what comfort in rhyme!

As poets of old well knew, and poets of our vulgar and atonal contemporary life seem to have forgotten.

Unfortunately for Annabel, her brother Josiah wasn’t at home this morning, nor did anyone from the Manse appear to be taking notice.

Annabel could not resist glancing back at the stranger with the hand-sickle. What a shock, he was still observing her.

He is rude. I don’t like him. Dabney would not like him!

If he is one of Grandfather’s associates, he must be older than he looks. His clothing is—old. Or, it may be—he is one of Father’s younger business associates—“brokers.”

For his part, the stranger was drifting in Annabel’s direction, yet not very deliberately. As if, in some way, he were being drawn to her, by some (unconscious) motion or motive of Annabel herself.

Why else, that smile? A smile of—was it recognition?

Not wanting to betray her unease, and resisting the impulse to flee, Annabel continued picking flowers, though not liking it, how the narcissi broke between her fingers, and wetted them with a syrupy sort of liquid, she had to refrain from wiping on her skirt. And when she straightened, feeling just slightly light-headed, as if she were very hungry, she saw to her surprise that the stranger had somehow advanced close to her; he could not have been more than twelve feet away where, a moment before, Annabel would have sworn he was on the farther side of the garden.

Why, he has moved in silence, seemingly without effort.

Now, Annabel dared look at the visitor more openly: as she had surmised, he was in his early thirties perhaps; he was of more than medium height, as tall as her brother; slender in the shoulders, with a noble, well-shaped head, and very dark, silken, tight-curled hair. His skin may have been just slightly coarse, of a curious darkish-olive hue, that yet contained a sort of pallor, as if, beneath his robust masculine exterior, he was not entirely healthy. His eyes were large, and both slumberous and piercing; possessed of a fiery topaz glow that was not obscured, but the more enhanced, by the deep-shadowed sockets that enclosed them. The forehead was prominent, the eyebrows thick, of that hue of blackness of the raven’s wing; the teeth small, and pearly, and almost overly white, of a uniform regularity—except for one incisor, which jutted a half-inch below its fellows, to give an impression somewhat carnivorous.

Though the stranger’s attire was in very good taste—a silk-and-woolen dark-blue suit, in a light texture; with wide-padded shoulders and a tight-waisted coat; white dress shirt, with silver cuff links, striped necktie, polished shoes—yet Annabel had begun to think the mysterious stranger was somehow foreign, exotic. A Persian prince perhaps, exiled in America; or, one of the Hebrew race—for is there not something most noble and melancholy about him? And his eyes—why, those are basilisk-eyes! *

Descriptions of female beauty are tedious, and often unconvincing. Is a young woman really so beautiful as her admirers claim? Would Annabel Slade with her conventionally pretty, pleasing features—her shyly downcast eyes of blue, or deep violet; her perfectly shaped lips, untouched by cosmetics; her nose, the Roman nose of the Slades, but snubbed—have been so celebrated a Princeton beauty, were she the daughter and granddaughter of more ordinary Princetonians? What is the distinction, in fact, between beauty and prettiness—the one rare and austere, the other commonplace? It is frankly beyond my writerly powers to suggest the delicate and unstudied charm of Annabel Slade, unless by summoning the image of the narcissus—the most exquisite of spring flowers with its fragile, fluted petals and its miniature center, all but invisible at a glance, and its just-slightly-astringent perfume, in which resides the quicksilver essence of spring: fresh, unsullied, virgin.

For if beauty is not virgin, it is despoiled. In the Princeton of 1905, such a sentiment was hallowed as a love and fear of the Protestant Almighty.

The previous year, Annabel had “come out” at a number of balls and parties in Manhattan, Philadelphia, and Princeton; it was said of her, as perhaps it is said of many debutantes, that she was the most “beautiful” of the crop, along with being, to speak bluntly, one of the wealthiest. (The Slade wealth was in railroads, real estate, manufacturing, and banking; for some decades in the late 1700s and early 1800s, until high-minded Slades insisted upon divestiture, there was considerable revenue generated by the slave trade. Even divided among a number of heirs, it remained one of the great fortunes of the nineteenth century, having virtually doubled its worth in the era known as the Gilded Age. But Annabel, like her brother Josiah, gave little thought to the Slade fortune, not even to their probable inheritances which they took for granted as they took for granted the very air they breathed, which was not the coarse and smoke-sullied air of Trenton, New Brunswick, or Newark.)

So famously sweet-tempered was Annabel, she could not bear to hear ill of anyone, and often became downcast when an unkind or a thoughtless word was uttered in her presence; profanities, still more obscenities, of the sort undergraduate carousers scrawled on walls in white chalk, for all to see in the bright daylight, truly shocked her, as if she were personally attacked. (Though, fortunately, Annabel had but the vaguest notion of what these crude words and expressions actually meant.)

As the naïve young woman had but a vague notion of what it might mean to exchange such glances, and be the recipient of such smiles, with a man she had not glimpsed before this hour.

In addition, Annabel was devoutly religious. She could not have clearly stated what set her Presbyterian faith apart from other Protestant faiths, or, except in the most obvious terms, how it was to be distinguished from Roman Catholicism, an old and much-feared enemy; though she had long outgrown the childish notion that Winslow Slade was God, she cherished in her heart the fervent belief that her grandfather was one of the chosen few in his generation; certainly, Grandfather had been the instrument by which countless individuals, many of them grave sinners, had been brought to Jesus Christ and to salvation. Unlike the more strident “outspoken” female—including Annabel’s friend Wilhelmina Burr—Annabel would never have wished to discuss with the “free thinkers” among her Princeton circle such fashionable issues as whether the Bible is literally, or figuratively, true; or whether it is revelation, or history. Those yet more disturbing new theories springing from Darwinists, Marxists, Bolsheviks, Anarchists, and other atheist-ideologies, were utterly perplexing to Annabel, who could not imagine why anyone wished to argue for such beliefs, that so lacked kindness and comfort. In her family it was considered unseemly for women to concern themselves with such matters—a very harsh judgment: “unladylike.” In the words of the poet—

Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever!

—embroidered on one of Annabel’s hand-stitched pillows; a sentiment that has not lessened, in my opinion, with the passage of years.

Annabel had been an excellent scholar at the Princeton Academy for Girls, as at the two-year collegiate Kingston Academy for Women, in nearby Kingston, New Jersey; her strongest subjects were poetry, art, and calligraphy; in her fantasies of an independent career, she had liked to imagine herself as an artiste of some sort, designing children’s book covers for instance, or creating original art for children; or, more ambitiously, illustrating her own verse in small, exquisitely designed books like those by Elizabeth Oakes Smith, Mary Anne Sadlier, and the wonderfully mysterious and cryptic Emily Dickinson, who had died in 1886, the year of Annabel’s birth—(Annabel’s favorite of these poets, though she understood that Dickinson’s verse was considered “rough” and lacking “feminine sentiment” by the literary establishment). She had not liked math, science, history—“So hobbled by facts! And facts are the least revealing, of any aspect of our lives.”

Yet, Annabel had received reasonably high grades in these disliked subjects, for, lacking in aptitude as she was, she was yet more capable than the majority of her girl-classmates.

On this weekday morning in April, Annabel was not showily dressed; though she wore beneath her clothes, on her already slender body, a straight-front corset tightened to make her small waist appear smaller still, so that she could scarcely breathe; this cruel restraining undergarment being mandated for her, since the age of fourteen when it was perceived by her uneasy elders that she was becoming womanly in the bosom and hips.

Though it was not a rainy day, Annabel was wearing a “habit-back,” or “rainy-day” skirt of pale blue flannel-and-cotton; a skirt fashionable at the time, that dropped to shoe-top length, ideal for rainy days but proper enough for casual wear at home. Her silken white blouse sported stylish puff sleeves, with tight cuffs, and as many as twenty-five mother-of-pearl buttons at the front; her little bolero jacket was pale yellow quilted cotton; her straw hat, prudently worn in the sun, was trimmed with a green satin ribbon tied beneath the chin. Since Annabel would be seeing her fiancé Dabney Bayard later in the day, with the assistance of one of the younger Negro maids she had fashioned her silken hair into a sleek pompadour and numerous small curls. Annabel’s hair was a fair brown, that might appear blond, or even silvery, in certain lights; it was held in place by ornamental amber combs that had once belonged to her grandmother Oriana, a woman departed this life long before Annabel had been born.

As her fair complexion was too delicate to brave even the rays of an April sun, Annabel kept the rim of her straw hat strategically lowered over her eyes; yet it must be presumed that Axson Mayte, staring so frankly at her, as at an exotic animal-specimen on display, could see how arrestingly pretty she was, and how fragile, like the very narcissi she held in her hands.

Suddenly there issued out of the wind-rippled flowers at Annabel’s feet a faint hissing whisper—Annabel, Annabel! In her confusion, Annabel thought It is Grandmother Oriana. She is worried about her amber combs, she regrets leaving them for me.

(This was a curious thought, since Annabel had not known her grandmother, who’d died many years before her birth; nor had she known her grandfather’s second wife, Tabitha.)

Yet, a moment later Annabel had forgotten the whisper. So distracted was she by the stranger in her grandfather’s garden, she couldn’t seem to concentrate. That she had not turned away from the man with the hand-sickle, and walked quickly up to the house, as she had every opportunity to do, seemed to encourage him for, smiling still, the tip of his pink tongue darting at his lips, he stepped forward again in a single gliding stride, now less than five feet from her.

Now, surely, he would speak to her?—but he did not.

Annabel lifted her bouquet of flowers and in a kind of child-miming gesture indicated that the visitor should note her task, and its urgency, and not detain her any longer; aloud she murmured, for the visitor to hear, or not—“I have tarried too long, already.” For overhead the sunny sky was becoming riddled with rain clouds; a giant thumb and finger pinched shut the sun. Yet for some reason, as if she were paralyzed, Annabel didn’t turn away; and again the hissing Annabel, Annabel! seemed to rise from the wind-buffeted petals of the flowers at her feet.

Then—in the literal blink of an eye!—there stood the gentleman before her, now just twelve inches from her; for now he did seem like one of Winslow Slade’s emissary-gentlemen, on a churchly mission that would be kept secret from the rest of the family, who were but lay-Presbyterians in the faith. Out of giddy nervousness Annabel may have murmured “H-Hello” or “G-Good morning”—which had the immediate effect of unlocking the gentleman’s silence at last. For now he bowed a second time, with an eager sort of stiffness, and announced that his name was “Axson Mayte, of Charleston, South Carolina”—“an associate of Winslow Slade’s”—“overcome with rapture, chère mademoiselle, at the prospect of making your acquaintance.”

At this, Annabel stammered her name, for she could not think of a polite way of avoiding it: “I am—Dr. Slade’s granddaughter—Annabel Slade . . .”

The visitor seized Annabel’s small hand, and bent as if to bestow a kiss upon it, in the German manner—hardly more than a sociable gesture, with no actual touching of the lips to the back of the hand, yet Annabel felt the imprint of a considerable, impassioned kiss; she was certain, she’d felt the imprint of the snaggle-tooth incisor against her sensitive skin. And she’d smelled the stranger’s breath—harsh and dry as ashes.

In that instant, the very marrow of her bones seemed to shiver, and the satin tie beneath her chin felt dangerously tight, like the long straight-front corset, too tightly laced that morning by Harriet, the frowning Negro girl who seemed both fond of her young white-skinned charge, and resentful of her. Half-fainting Annabel yet clearly thought—Must I pay now for my vanity! O God have mercy.

If Axson Mayte of Charleston, South Carolina, had taken note of Annabel’s shudder of distress, he gave no sign; for he was a smooth-mannered gentleman, with his sharp deep-set eyes and sidelong glances, that might have been as ironic as they were yearning. He proceeded to cut for Annabel, with his borrowed hand-sickle—(the blade of which was wickedly sharp, Annabel saw with a shiver)—a dozen or more fresh flowers: daffodils, miniature iris, star-of-Bethlehems, narcissi—which he then made a gallant ceremony of presenting to her, with another grave bow.

“Oh! Thank you, sir.”

Annabel felt that she had no choice but to accept these flowers, though juices from their cut stems dripped, and darkened her rainy-day skirt in tiny splotches; she had no choice but to thank Mr. Mayte, for he was very kind; and as gallant, she was sure, as any Princeton gentleman.

More gallant than her fiancé, certainly! For Dabney could be curt and ill-tempered, when he and Annabel were alone, with no elders to observe him; Dabney could confound Annabel with paradoxes she wasn’t sure were serious, or mocking: “Do you think? Your face is so like a doll’s—a painted ceramic doll.”

Annabel saw with relief that Axson Mayte had set aside the wickedly sharp hand-sickle, letting it fall carelessly on the path.

The gardener would discover it there, or—possibly—Annabel’s mother, Henrietta, who “gardened” in pleasant weather, in beds kept weeded and lushly fertilized by the grounds staff.

In a confused sort of happiness Annabel was smiling. Or—perhaps it was sheer nerves, unease. So many spring flowers, some were falling from her hands. Impulsively she selected a long-stemmed narcissus to offer Axson Mayte, for his buttonhole.

“Compliments of Crosswicks Manse!”

Mayte seemed genuinely surprised by this gesture; warmly and effusively he thanked her. “From the depths of my soul, chère mademoiselle, I thank you—you are too kind—you cannot know, in fact, how kind you are—a rare quality in ‘ladies’ of your station, in my experience.”

Though Mayte’s words were flattering, or were meant to be, the man next behaved in an odd, crude manner: he shortened the narcissus stem by clamping his strong teeth upon it near the flower and biting down hard, that it might fit with ease in his buttonhole—where in fact it looked very striking.

“Will you, mademoiselle—?”

Looming over Annabel, from his height of at least six feet, Axson Mayte extended his arm for Annabel to take, hesitantly, that he might escort her back up to the Manse where now, on the rear terrace, Winslow Slade himself was waving and calling urgently to them.