Читать книгу Mitz - Sigrid Nunez - Страница 11

TWO

The Woolfs lived at 52 Tavistock Square. The house, which had been their home for ten years, had four floors. Leonard and Virginia lived on the second and third floors; the ground and first floors were let to the firm of Dollmann & Pritchard, solicitors. In the basement was an old billiard room that Virginia had taken over for her studio. There, amid a disorder that never ceased to amaze her husband, she could be found of a morning, sunk in a big old tattered armchair with a plywood board across her knees, dipping her pen into the inkpot that she had glued to the board, writing.

In the basement was also where the Woolfs had their press. The Hogarth Press, which the Woolfs had begun in 1917 (having agreed that nothing could be more fun for a writer than to publish his or her own books), had grown with the years into an important business. The Woolfs published some of the best writers of their day, and they published their friends (sometimes but not always the same people).

The Woolfs had a routine that seldom varied. Every morning at about nine-thirty, right after breakfast (which Leonard always served Virginia in bed), they went to their separate rooms to write. They wrote from nine-thirty until one. The Woolfs had spent so many mornings of their lives in this way that by 1934 they had written more than a score of books between them. At one, they joined each other for lunch. Sometimes there would be a guest. It might be Virginia’s sister, Vanessa Bell, or one of Vanessa’s children; or it might be one of the Woolfs’ many friends: Maynard Keynes, or E. M. Forster, who was called Morgan, or Tom Eliot, or Vita Sackville-West. Often these days (too often, Virginia complained) it was garrulous Ethel Smyth, whose visits always left Virginia worn out and hoarse, partly from shouting into Ethel’s ear trumpet.

After lunch the Woolfs would read their mail and the newspapers. Afternoons were usually devoted to typing out and revising that morning’s work or taking care of business related to the Press. When the weather was fine (and often even when it was not), Virginia liked to include a long walk in her afternoon schedule. Walking was one of her deepest passions. She had inherited this passion, along with her passion for literature, from her father, Leslie Stephen, a famous walker in his day. Virginia could remember him setting out early in the morning with a packet of sandwiches and not returning until dusk. Virginia herself liked to walk for at least one or two hours. For her, a walk, even through the most familiar streets, was an adventure. She loved seeing people, looking into their faces, and imagining their lives and making up stories about them. Sometimes when she walked she would go into a kind of trance—as she often did when she was writing—and she would begin to talk aloud to herself, startling passersby and getting herself laughed at. Sometimes when she was walking she was writing—revising sentences she had written that morning, working out scenes in her head.

Leonard, who also liked a good walk, sometimes accompanied Virginia, and several times a day he took their cocker spaniel, Pinka, for a run in Tavistock Square. Being there so often, Leonard had made the acquaintance of the square keeper, a kind of Bloomsbury village gossip from whom Leonard learned much about his neighbors.

Tea was at four-thirty and dinner was at eight, and again the Woolfs often had guests join them for these meals.

The Woolfs had a large circle of friends and received many invitations to go out. They both liked seeing people, and they also liked going out to a concert or a film now and then, but quiet evenings at home were what they cherished most. After dinner Leonard might roll a few cigarettes, and they would sit smoking, reading, or listening to music on the wireless or on the gramophone. Leonard and Virginia were very fond of music. They loved Beethoven. They loved opera.

The Woolfs had a servant named Mabel Haskins. Mabel came every day and shopped and cooked and tidied for them, and of course they could not have lived as they did without her, for if they had had to do their own shopping and cooking and tidying, how much time would have been left for reading and writing and publishing?

The Woolfs had another house, in the village of Rodmell, Sussex, about two hours’ drive from Tavistock Square. This was Monk’s House, a seventeenth-century cottage neighboring the village churchyard. The rooms of Monk’s House were very small, with low timbered ceilings and stone floors. There was a garden hut on the property where Virginia preferred to work in warmer weather (“my outhouse,” she called it). The Woolfs had been coming to Rodmell since 1919, and the years had brought many changes. To Monk’s House had come in time plumbing, electricity, and refrigeration. Needless to say, these modern conveniences made daily life much more comfortable, and the Woolfs were grateful for them. But the years had brought other changes that were not so welcome. Every year this part of the English countryside was a little more built up, and recently a cement plant had been erected right in the middle of what had been a fine view. Already many trees had been killed off by the fumes, and the noise and the smell were often intolerable. Also at times intolerable—at least to Virginia—were Rodmell’s clamorous children, church bells, and dogs.

The Woolfs went to Rodmell throughout the year, on weekends and holidays and for short vacations, and they spent most of every summer there. At Monk’s House they got up at the same hour and followed much the same routine as in London. Here there was a garden, to which Leonard was devoted, and a lush green lawn for playing bowls. There were plum trees and pear trees and apple trees. There were acres and acres of downs and water meadows for rambling. Such walks excited Virginia in a different way from her city walks. Instead of looking at people and making up stories about them, she could go for miles without seeing anyone, save a shepherd. A hare would start at her feet. She would lie in a cornfield and watch cormorants. She would spy a stoat or a badger or a fox, or a kingfisher taking flight over the River Ouse. (Once, walking over the downs, she and Leonard saw a “great yellow green ape” that belonged to a circus and had escaped from its keeper.)

In the country the Woolfs were helped by another charwoman, Louie Everest, and a gardener, Percy Bartholomew. There were fewer social obligations and fewer guests (in fact there was room for only one guest at Monk’s House), and Pinka ran free.

About a week after Leonard and Virginia had visited Merton Hall, Leonard received a letter from Victor. The Rothschilds were about to start their trip; they would be abroad for several weeks, and they did not know what to do with Mitz. Remembering how well Mitz and Leonard had got along, Victor wondered whether Leonard would be willing to take her until they returned.

“But what about Pinka?” Virginia said.

At the sound of her name, Pinka, lying on the floor, tipped her eyes upward without lifting her head, and wagged her short tail.

A spaniel was a hunting dog, after all. What if Pinka thought Mitz was game, like the hares she could not be stopped from chasing (and, alas, sometimes catching) in Rodmell? A fine thing it would be to have to tell Victor when he got back that Mitz had been killed. (In all honesty Leonard thought such news would not be received with tears.)

But Leonard was quite sure, as he told Virginia, that if the two animals were introduced to each other properly, indoors, Pinka would be able to make the distinction between house pet and prey, and she would not be the first dog to have done so. As a young man Leonard had worked for the civil service, in Ceylon, where he had often seen dogs living amicably among goats, rabbits, and chickens.

“The most important thing is to give them time, let them become acquainted at their own pace and not push them at each other.”

And off he went to King’s Cross Station, where it had been arranged he was to collect Mitz.

When he returned to Tavistock Square, before entering the flat, Leonard took Mitz out of the box in which he had carried her and tucked her into his waistcoat. Virginia was not home; the Woolfs were making their summer move to Rodmell the next day, and she had a number of errands to do before they left. Leonard went into the sitting room and straight to his usual chair. He sat down, picked up The Times, and began to read.

It was the hottest hour of a very hot day, and Pinka lay stretched on the floor, panting and dozing. Mitz stayed where she was, her head peering out from the top of Leonard’s waistcoat. She was shivering. Leonard could feel the tiny vibration against his breastbone, and it occurred to him that, hot though it might be, for Mitz, who belonged in the tropics, England would always be chilly.

Half an hour passed. Mitz was unaware of Pinka. Pinka was unaware of Mitz. Then Pinka decided it was time for a walk. She stood up, yawned, shook herself, and padded over to Leonard’s chair.

Leonard folded his newspaper and laid it aside. For the first time the animals saw each other.

What? Pinka barked, taking two steps back. She cocked her head from side to side—and the same train of thought that had run through Virginia’s mind a week ago in the garden of Merton Hall now ran through Pinka’s: Was it a squirrel? Was it a rat?

At such a moment, for a dog, only one thing will do, and that is a good long sniff. Pinka stood up on her hind legs and placed her paws on Leonard’s knees. Leonard could feel Mitz cringe against his ribs as the great hairy face drew near. But he kept perfectly still, all nonchalance: Didn’t every man have a marmoset’s head growing out of his bosom?

Mitz kept still too, never taking her eyes off the round black wet snuffling thing that was coming at her. And when the round black wet snuffling thing arrived, she attacked.

Pinka reared back. It was not a hard bite. It was a very small bite made by very small teeth and had not really hurt Pinka. Nevertheless it was a bite and must be protested. Pinka threw back her head and howled. And, cool as you please, setting his paper aside, Leonard said, “Go for a walk? Yes, of course. Let’s all go together.”

Once outside, distracted by the smells of Tavistock Square, Pinka forgot all about Mitz. While Pinka was dashing about the flower beds, Leonard introduced Mitz to the square keeper, and by that evening all Bloomsbury knew about its tiny new resident.

And that evening Virginia discovered what a disconcerting thing it is to dine across from a husband with a monkey’s head growing out of his bosom. She was perhaps even more disconcerted by the expression on Mitz’s face.

“What a mournful little thing! She looks as if she’d just lost her best friend. She looks as if she’s got the weight of the world on her shoulders.”

Only after dinner did Leonard take the chance of putting Mitz down on the sitting-room floor. At first she sat still, curled in a ball, and allowed Pinka to sniff her. But when Pinka opened her jaws and tried to take the ball into her mouth, she got another bite—on the tongue, this time—and this one did hurt.

Pinka’s protests shook the house and sent Mitz scurrying under a chair. Leonard called Pinka to him and comforted her with a good scratching around the ears. Meanwhile, he asked Virginia to go down to the basement and fetch a large old wicker birdcage that had been there when they moved in and that they had never got round to throwing out. Virginia brought the cage upstairs and set it on a small table next to Leonard’s chair. She got out Mabel’s sewing basket and took from it several large scraps of silk. She spread these scraps on the bottom of the cage.

By now Leonard had coaxed Mitz out from under the chair and was trying to feed her, as he had tried unsuccessfully to do several times earlier that day. To his relief, she finally accepted some biscuit and orange rind. When she had eaten her fill, he placed her in the cage, and, after a fastidious inspection of the premises and rearrangement of silk scraps, she curled into a tight ball and went to sleep.

This was how it would be. During the day Mitz and Leonard were inseparable. She stayed either tucked in his waistcoat or perched on his shoulder, her long tail hanging like a braid down his back or wound about his neck. But every evening at sundown she went to her cage, where she stayed until the next morning. The door of the cage was always kept open, and it was easy for Mitz to get to it, jumping from floor to chair to table. In this way she could get away from Pinka whenever she wished. But within days Mitz had grown quite used to Pinka and would never find it necessary to nip her again.

As for Pinka, she knew Mitz’s smell now, and she knew Mitz’s tiny teeth, and what more was there to know? Pinka understood, just as Leonard had said she would, that Mitz was not a squirrel or a rabbit to be chased. But neither was she someone to run and tumble with, like the dogs Pinka met every day in the square. Indeed, Mitz, hardly bigger than one of Pinka’s feathered paws, was too small to play with. This being the case, Pinka quickly lost interest.

“But do you think Pinka likes Mitz?” Virginia asked Leonard.

“Yes, I do.”

“And how can you tell?”

“Well, watch: whenever Pinka hasn’t seen Mitz for a while and then sees her again, she wags her tail.”

And Virginia watched, and it was so.