Читать книгу A voyage to Pagany - William Carlos Williams - Страница 7

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Back in his hotel, Evans felt half sick. If the truth were told, he had fled from Jack. Now he flung himself across the bed, noting as he did so the soft coal smell in the air from the open window and hearing the toy-like toot-toot of the taxis faintly beyond the court on the boulevard Raspail, just before he fell into a sleep.—And a dream disturbed him, a dream in which he was dimly aware of the poet Walt Whitman eating at——

With a start he woke to find his beloved sister Bess a few feet off looking at him while the female floor supervisor was standing outside holding the door.

Dev! cried Bess and the woman discreetly closed the door behind her. You darling! And before he could answer or arrange his sleep-ruffled clothes, Dev found himself embraced and shaken and kissed upon his cheeks, his eyes, his nose and finally, swiftly full upon his lips as if it were some fruit it were that Bess was pulling from its twigs by the lips alone.

They fell more than sat upon the edge of the bed. Laughing and a little out of breath, Bess was about to begin it again when Dev caught her arms and held her.

For God’s sake, Sis, quit it, he said laughing. But he pressed her hands eagerly and looked long and fondly into her clear gray eyes.

It’s a year and a half, Dev, a whole year and a half since I’ve seen you. And with that she went on to upbraid him with not letting her know the details of his arrival, holding tight to his hands meanwhile and looking long and delightedly into his eyes, brown eyes, in her turn.

Can it be that we are children of the same parents? Dev said to her.

From America expect anything! Bess replied, even a race immune to——

Stand up, Dev commanded her. As she did so, he pushed her away from him to examine her. As she had stood in the doorway, when he had been so rudely awakened, he thought for a moment that this was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life—though he knew his sister, chin, elbows, and ankles from the cradle up.

What is it? he said. Why Bess, what is it? You are transformed, you are beautiful.

It is these clothes, Dev. The clothes fit me for the first time in my life.

No, but your face. Little girl, little girl, he chided her. Something has happened to my little sister.

Bess shook her head. Not yet.—Bess Evans was fairly tall for a woman, straight, almost too straight, with a longish, even countenance and rather pale skin. Dev had never found her especially beautiful before. The high, rather narrow forehead, and the deep-set, clear eyes seemed now somehow to give her an air of unusual distinction. She was her father’s daughter while he was of the southern side of his family which was so mixed that no one ever had been quite certain what they were, except that there was a strong Basque strain there associated with the somewhat mythical name of Hurrard.

Nevertheless, differing as the brother and sister did, they had grown up intimately together, almost as one child. They had shared everything with each other, first by little Bess telling her brother all she knew and later by the brother reciprocating when he had grown more and more confirmed in the state of old bachelordom—writing, and living by his profession as a physician. The war had separated them. Bess had come to Paris to stay with her “aunt.” And now here they were once more looking into each other’s eyes.

The thing which had always kept them together was the total lack of constraint they felt in each other’s company—a confidence which had never, so far, been equally shared by them with anyone else. Bess began thumbing through some papers her brother had lying on the table. What in the world is this? The Ground Bean and its Uses—“Among the additional specimens recently installed in the display of Indian foods is that of the ground bean”—and have you still your vest pockets full of Indian arrowheads, silly?

No, I have saved only one perfect one. Come, Sis, continued the brother, let’s go and have lunch, then you can tell me what it is all about.

So they went up the boulevard Raspail to the Restaurant l’avenue close to the Gare Montparnasse exchanging all the family news as they walked. There they sat outside for a moment watching the weather—as it seemed as if it were going to rain—while they sipped their Dubonnets under the awning. But, finding it would clear, they went inside and out again into that delightful triangular courtyard so well known at that time to Americans of that quarter, and took a table in the open.

Think of this, in January. Aren’t we lucky? And Bess pressed heavily her brother’s foot under the table. Her elbows rested on the table top, she bit her lip and looked even now after an hour’s reacquaintance thirstily into his eyes.

She had left the meal to him. As he ordered it, consulting her over every item which she ended by selecting with a quiet word, she talked.

Here was indeed a strong contrast in temperaments. If the truth were told, the cause for Bess’ excessive pleasure and excitement at her brother’s arrival in Paris was not a natural gushiness of temper but quite the reverse. Bess was not an easy person to know. She attracted men but not those who could expect to profit by a nature such as her own. She was cautious and firm. She attracted two kinds of males. Those she impressed by her slight body, clear eyes and fine forehead and who wanted to win that, and those who sought her intensity. Her pleasure in Dev was that of a totally opposite nature to its opposite. She admired his flexibility, his easy access to all kinds of feeling while her own feelings were so stable, so well known to her that she could have told years ahead, almost, what she would do or think on a certain day. But, most of all, her pleasure in Dev was that here, and here alone, she knew a complete breakdown of her reserve. Dev knew her, had known every wish in her heart from the time she first shook with terror and fascination over the fatalism of fairy stories, to the later phases when her wild anger at the political injustices of her country upset her while he smiled and continued his poems.

We shall begin with the hors d’œuvre and a bottle of Chablis.

Yes, Bess assented.

Then, we will have a broiled lobster between us.

No, said Bess, let’s skip that and have a Chateaubriand and the vegetables.

With a good Bordeaux.

No, thank you, I want a clear head to-day.

A half bottle then?

Have it for yourself, Bess answered.

And then?

A little salad and coffee, that’s all I want.

Cognac?

I think so, yes.

So they talked.

The trouble with our philosophy, Dev, and the way we differ from the ancients is that we, you and I, are not important people as those masters were, while we still think we are so.

No one is to-day. There is no need. It all goes on mechanically like an advance of trained troops. One drops out and another pops in. There is no sense in it. It’s a distinction to be nobody and to do as you please.

Oh no, his sister replied. Some day, I am going into politics. Wait and see.

Dev laughed, rather thoughtfully, however, knowing she’d be a damned sight more efficient at it than ever he would be if she once made up her mind to it.

She continued: You think you are attempting something for America and for the world, you and your literary friends—your artistic friends. You rather look down on the politician and us other poor tongue-tied mortals. But, Dev, you’re just kidding yourself, you’re just out for your own amusement, that is all.

This was a familiar tune to Dev but it worried him for all that. Well, then, so were Homer and Dante.

No, No. One was a subtle historian and the other a great moralist. You’re wrong there.

You think we have no moral purpose?

Do you have the nerve to look at me and say that, Dev? Have you a moral purpose?

Oh, I don’t know. It seems something of the sort sometimes.

Bess smiled quietly. Evans remembered with misgivings that she was an M.A.—or whatever it is—from one of the American female colleges.

We have no Christian purpose surely, he answered her.

An international non-Christian purpose, she taunted him.

Yes, and also non-political, he said.

And it is, she concluded, to amuse yourselves. Is that not why you are here in France? You say you are going to Vienna to study. Dev, do you want me to believe that?

Dev, sweetheart, she added, seeing she had hit home, I am not finding fault with you, but sometimes, my dear, you do amuse me, especially when you think you are doing something wonderful.

Sis, if I had your cold outlook over the world, I think I should jump off the Eiffel Tower. How you can go on with life, thinking as you do, makes me shiver. Bless your heart, Sis, what are you made of, anyway? I guess women are the tougher.

I am just the same kind of a fool you are, Dev, in a different way, that’s all. And that’s why we love each other. Don’t we?

Yes, we do.

Only I’m not a poet. Not a writer. I’m jealous of you, Dev, that’s all. I wish I could write. It must be a wonderful alleviation.

Lucky for the world you can’t. It’s lucky it rains water and not chunks of rock. You’d batter the world into a pulp with your devastating hardness. You’d freeze its marrow, little sister.

No, I’d be no realist. I’d just write nice, silly little stories about true love. And now, what are you really doing in Paris?

A voyage to Pagany, Dev replied. I’m not staying long.

No?

No.

Dev, why don’t you stay over here permanently?

Finding nothing to say, he passed it off, this time, looking down without a reply. She did not press the point.

I’m going on to Vienna, he continued.

To Vienna? Why there’s nothing there now.

Via the Riviera, and perhaps Rome.

And is that all?

Yes, are you coming with me?

Bess looked at him sharply, then smiled. Dev, that isn’t fair.

No, it isn’t, he answered. I’ll tell you the rest if you’ll tell me what made you so glad to see me here to-day.

I’m always glad to see you. Oh Dev, why are there not more men like you? You seem to bring the breath of life into me whenever I see you.

You mean, I let it out of you, he corrected. Bess, have you deviated from your clamlike ways at last? What is it? A man?

No, Dev.

Bess, you’ve changed.

No, Dev, I’m desperate.

You’re not old enough.

Dev, I’ve got to do something, and you’ve got to help me. I’ve got to break myself in. I have never realized how much I have loved you, dear. Do you understand me? I’ve been a child, a baby. There have seldom been a brother and sister so close as we have been. That’s not it exactly. It’s inside myself. I’m an American, you know what I mean, a fool, all tied up, letting the wrong things out. I’ve let you represent things to me, I’ve written you letters, silly little confessions, newsy letters—you know what I mean, just to keep the thread whole. It hasn’t been you, yet you’ve been the only one there, but something is ready inside me.

Who is it?

It’s nobody. Yes, it is. It’s somebody. It’s a man. I’ve got to have him. You understand me. Maybe I’ll marry him. I don’t know.

Dev’s heart sank. For a minute he looked at his sister as if she had slapped him.

Don’t do that, Dev. Don’t do that. You’re jealous, that’s all. Madly and furiously jealous and I’m as elated over it as if I were sixteen and you were my best beau.

Yes, you’re right, I guess.

Bless you, dear old Dev.

Don’t call me old.

Nobody could do that, dear, except me, she said reaching over and stroking his brown hair. I’ve loved you so long.

Dev was pleased in spite of himself.

Tell me what I should do and I’ll do it.

Dev laughed.—No, Sis, you wouldn’t but you’d do it without me. Come on. Don’t let’s talk any more about it now. Let’s finish this gallows meal and get out.

What do you mean?

So he paid the check and they went out. Hailing a taxi, they hopped in and as they passed the Dome, Evans thought he recognized a girl he had seen on the boat. Bess looked also and blinked but said nothing.

Is he there?

Yes.

An American.

No.

Young?

Where are you taking me?

To the Louvre.

All right.

The brother and sister sat silent in the taxi, both felt a little flushed and drowsy from the meal and were glad to be silent. Each looked out of the window on his own side. But they clasped the fingers of their adjoining hands as they rode.

Love, eh?

But Dev was not prepared for the reply.

Coolly, his sister turned around and in a positive quiet voice that had always frightened her brother she said, I shall never love anyone as I love you.

On the Seine, swollen with the early spring tide, men were still fishing as he had seen them in the morning. The view of the Louvre; they alighted and, it being Monday, found it closed.

Well, there goes antiquity—with about as much reason as usual, Evans remarked.

Are you leaving Paris so soon?

He did not reply. They had started to walk.

Crossing the graveled court to the north of the palace they wandered up the river bank under the bare plane trees where the book stalls were closed, to the Pont Neuf and from there to Notre Dame which Dev had not entered in ten years.

They looked at the famous cathedral: It is the lack of solution hardened into this form, twin towered, all the paraphernalia of the aisles. We should not be down-hearted if we can’t solve it pronto, he said to himself. Of what else are all the great liturgies built?—the Egyptian, the tribal, the Greek—to hide the difficulty; the Christian to-day, to hide the difficulty; equal, colored glass before the blinding face of—this the me to you, impossible to communicate, impossible to put over anything important—the truth, as they call it familiarly, the heterosexual truth—just children trying to do it all at once. Blood in this street. The Church heads it all, the dead stops of life, everything made static—stopped that is—made into a form beautiful.—It gave him a chill, that word.

Inside, along the east aisle a funeral was progressing, the beadle with his staff marching in front. The body left a bad odor in the place. The brother and sister walked clear around the nave glancing indifferently at the chapels and standing to stare at the great colored windows.

Evans was bored by the lack of light. Yet, it frightened him, too. Such a mass of inexplicable gloom. To what end? It always got him the same way, primitive, savage, cruel. It was like his sister, he thought. A kind of northern gloom. But she was cynical while he was inclined to be impressed. She was a cold Huguenot. The light in her eyes as she passed the tinsel altars was not a holy one by any means. She grinned once or twice in a way that made Evans shiver.

And yet indeed, this dark interior was like his sister. The tall columns, the floor marked with effigies. The windows. Everything still, sure, inexplicable. Dev was always cast into a spirit of awe by cathedrals.

The pagan strength is in them. When the Christian spirit conquered the world, the pagan gods were turned into these stone images. Oak leaves, acorns, the faces of the people of the streets in the forms of devils and angels. Such was it all. It was the power of those racial stocks that built them, gone to sleep there—to go on, to go on, undefeated. He thrilled always at that thought.

It is like a tomb. Here the sun never comes. When they want to do anything that will last they come here. Or they used to. They come here to the early gods masquerading in these stones, for power. Napoleon came here to crown himself. Here the Kings are afraid. The naked spirit has taken this inexplicable shape right from among fauns and shepherds. The——

What are you thinking? said Bess.

That you are a curious phase of the American commonwealth.

I hate America, answered Bess with so much fire, such a cold certainty, that once again he did not answer her.

Are not the windows wonderful? she continued. I could look at them forever.

Come on, let’s get out of this damp place.

They went out into the streets.

Let’s go up on the tower.—So they began to climb the hundred steps. Dev was surprised that his sister should be frightened when on the winding dizzy steps, as black as if they had both been blind, she called to him frightened not three feet away and made him come behind and rest his hand upon her back before she would go further.

Out of breath at the top they came forth into the sunlight at last. There they saw three smiling Japanese tourists who were climbing around looking with manifest amusement at the devils in stone all about them.

Brother and sister looked at the great bell, Louis the 14th, which it takes eight men to ring. And saw in the distance the Sacré Coeur, the modern sanctuary, which Dev thought looked like the Taj Mahal in the mist. The Japs had left. Then sitting down on one of the stones of the cathedral roof, they had their hearts out.

Bess wanted Dev to free her by pretending to take her south with him. Meanwhile, she would go to stay with some friends at Montreux.

Dev’s heart sank anew.

Oh Dev, you’ve got to do it.

All right, Sis, only I could commit murder, God damn it.

Yes, yes, I know. But I can’t marry you and I don’t want to go home and do the decent thing. I can’t and I won’t. I’m no fool, dear. Trust me. If I need you, I’ll call—I promise that.

Evans looked at his sister and there were tears in his eyes. But she was blazing with heat. Never had she looked so magnificent. Diana, he thought, Diana of the chase, a flat simile, and a wrong one.

But you, Bess, you, of all people.—He felt as though he had lost something of his very life.

Yes, I—of all people. Exactly. Everyone but me is excused. I am not excused. Well, now I don’t care whether I am or not.

Sin?

Yes, it is a sin and I will commit it. It is the result of your teaching.

I never told you to sin.

Oh Dev, you blessing! You are my liberator. I love you, I wonder if I have ever loved anyone but you, or if I ever shall. Why are there not other men like you, you precious baby?

Lucky for them. You are much the better of us, Bess. Look at my chin and look at yours. You upright Puritan!

Evans was always delighted with his sister’s accent. For, though they were but first generation Americans from their small suburb of New York, Bess had gone to school for three years at Sweetbriar in Virginia and the slight Southern drawl she had acquired there had never left her. It amused and tickled her brother.

Virginians, that describes us, Bess. Virginians. A Virginian, that’s what I am by selection—not descent, thank God.

He began to tease her: All I am is a ticket to you. You don’t care for me at all. It’s just that I mean freedom for you from your own miserable conscience—by hanging the blame for what you are going to do on my weak shoulders.

Dev, I want to go the limit. I want to get drunk completely, thoroughly, to forget this sinful world and all its devices.

Do you call it that, Sis?

Yes, sin I insist.—The old fight did not flare up; instead, both laughed.

Would you care, Dev, if I went off? Answer me.—He loved her and was turbulently resentful. He couldn’t help thinking of her as little Bunny.

Without answering her directly, Tell me, he said.

Bess watched his face a moment then: Oh you do love me, you do still love me, and she said nothing more. But the brother and sister laughed again together. She threw herself on her knees before him where he sat and embraced him eagerly, kissing him on the eyes, the neck—he held her and was troubled.

And so they went down from the cathedral roof and took a taxi to a small place on the rue du Medicis for dinner, and later to see Aunt K. who had been expecting them for several hours.