Читать книгу A voyage to Pagany - William Carlos Williams - Страница 9

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Dev was wakened from a heavy sleep next morning by a phone call from Bess wishing him good-by. She was leaving Paris as they had planned and would write to him from wherever she would be—later. That was all.

Immediately after, he was desperately sick and didn’t give a damn where she was going or in fact for anything about her. He felt horrible. After a while he flung himself on the bed and managed to go to sleep once more. At about noon he roused himself for the second time. Things began to come back a little. This was the day. He must get up, get washed, catch the train for Toulouse—or wherever it was he was going. He dimly remembered something about Bess. Bess had called. Bess had gone. Hell, he must get up.

By five, he was at the Quai d’Orsay, feeling rather gaunt, but there was Lou, as planned, standing in the midst of her luggage—hat boxes, tennis racquets and all. She had not seen him. He lit a cigarette before going up to her. She is beautiful, a blond beauty. Legs a trifle heavy though.

Lou was trying to keep from meeting the eyes of a chap standing by one of the pillars a short distance off. She was very glad to salute Evans with a kiss as he came up.

The thing had been so carefully planned that for the moment neither felt at all the novelty of the situation. Both were dead tired.

I’m so tired, Dev, she said, after they had arranged their bags in the compartment. And so, without further dallying, he went out for a smoke.

Standing in the corridor smoking as, leaving Paris, the train began to assume its rapid country pace southward the thoughts and events of the day before began slowly to come back to Evans’ mind and it dawned on him that at last blessed Lou was here with him on the train and that he was going south and away. At last he was going away. He was on the train with Lou, going away.

Jack would like that.

Neither he nor Lou had cared for supper, so that when Evans thought she had finished her preparations for the night he went in and sat on the edge of her berth a while, quietly talking. Finally, kissing the tips of her fingers in a sort of daze, early as it was, he, too, turned in, in the berth above and both slept.

It was in the fulfillment of his wish that Evans and Lou were going to Carcassonne. Now they were sleeping near each other on the train, neither knowing what the outcome of this adventure would be.

In the night he woke and looked out at the stars. It was sparkling moonlight. The stars were big. But on the fields lay a coating of frost. It was getting damned cold in the compartment. There was no hurry. Cold and starlight; fields and still villages. Thank God, Paris was behind.

Carcassonne, the medieval city. And blessed Lou: cool, caring. So he dropped away again half remembering low hills off to the west covered with frost.

And Lou. It was for Lou that the whole trip to Europe had been arranged—with the greatest care. Lou Martin was taking a chance with Dev. She didn’t know whether she was engaged to another man or not. Dev, at least, wanted her and had gone to the greatest trouble in the world for her pleasure. Dev would take trouble to please.

Carcassonne, Carcassonne, Carcassonne, said the train.

Still the lovers slept like tired man and woman out of whom all passion has been drained.

Carcassonne, Carcassonne. The moon shining outside, Evans dreamed bitterly of his life. He saw them taking what he loved away from him and he could not open his mouth. They were degrading him and he knew they were right. He looked and looked and seemed to be living in his eyes alone. He smiled to himself, in his sleep.

The Statue of Liberty seemed ten miles high to him. He felt small but fascinated by his own fate. It was not so bad as long as he could see. All he wanted was to see Carcassonne.

Suddenly he had the feeling that the train was going in the wrong direction. He was wide awake now. He half sat up feeling the train rushing north, back to Paris with great speed. Great snow mountains, which he knew could not be there, he saw in the region of Chartres. He felt himself rushing through space feet first, instead of head first as they had started from the Quai d’Orsay. Then he realized what had happened, the train had been turned end for end on a siding in the night.

He looked at his watch, holding it up close to his eyes to make out the hands: 4:15. He had a notion to get down and crawl in with Lou. What in the world did it all mean?

He had come to Europe to be going away. He was going away now as hard as he could, but he knew, somewhere in his mind, that he would be coming back. Too often, he, Evans, had been secretly wanting to turn back—this was what he had been hiding from everybody. Yet they saw it plainly anyhow.

Bess saw it. Bess knew him. Others felt things about him, but Bess knew. Wonder what’s happening to her now, poor kid? She’ll come through though. Leave it to Bess. She’ll come through, all right.

Why not want to turn back? What sense is there in going on? There was nothing idle in wanting, not wanting but knowing he would be getting out of this, somehow. But he hadn’t gone into it that way. He’d gone in, fair and square, not knowing the end, just for Lou. But it was cheating to be pretending to be going on and to be certain, inside, that he would be returning and not have gone really at all. And yet that was not all. That is not all: there’s more to it than that.

Where was Jack going, anyway? Damned if he knew. He, too, would go, would be freed from his enslavement, if he knew any place to go to or how to begin. He was trying to, now. But he wasn’t going to kid himself; there was nothing in it.

Not yet at any rate. He hadn’t seen anyone just go who had kept his, Evans’, admiration for long. Just go. Why? He couldn’t let himself do that. Why not just kill yourself. It’s more sensible. And yet, he dreamed to go, madly, as he remembered at twelve he had sometimes done, madly, with no end in view; that day the kids couldn’t catch him at hare and hounds, that phenomenally successful day when he had kept them baffled all the afternoon in a certain neighborhood, running, hiding, showing himself, doubling on his tracks, escaping, running again, showing himself and so on, hour after hour, running on. So, desperately scattered, he had remained still; whereas they, Jack and the rest, being always collected, could go loose. But if he should go loose, he would die, of this he was convinced, since to go loose to him was to go totally ungoverned, drunken, syphilitic, starved, jailed, murderous: Finis. The rest were pikers really—careful schemers, really. This had been his excuse. Not an excuse. It was the wall over which he could not climb, short of annihilation. This kept him enslaved. He could see himself running, hitting against the bushes madly; bruised charging against Moresco the giant back; going against insuperable odds.—Yet that is the only thing worth going against. He was willing but he couldn’t—that was all. If they wanted to be damned fools, all right. Yet, that was what he wanted to be—really; abandoned.

Dearest Lou, how I love you.—But he decided still not to bother her but to let her sleep. The train was going at a rapid charge, charging down on the south. Vineyards, that’s what they are. Vineyards. It was growing colder and colder, excessively cold. Looking out of the window just at dawn when he next wakened, Dev this time actually saw the mountains, great icy peaks not so very far off to the southwest. It was the Pyrenees! And beyond them Spain! There they were, covered with pure snow. Dev was amazed, he had not expected these simple wonders. They took him quite out of his doubting mood.

He dressed quietly not to awaken Lou but she turned over and smiled. He lay beside her for a moment, dressed as he was, kissing her tenderly upon her face and breasts. She petted his hair.

Have you seen the mountains? he said.

No, and she was awake in a moment.

Entranced, they looked out of the window while in the foreground the dim vineyards flew past them. The sun was just catching the tops of the Pyrenees. They were speechless with the beauty of it all.

Dev, she cried, Was ever anything so beautiful in this world?

Slowly the rosy tint of the mountains grew brighter. They sparkled, flashed.

What a country, what a country!

Lou had arisen from her bed to stand beside her lover to look out at the mountains. It was very cold. As Dev turned to look at her she shivered. Here, he said, throwing something about her. And he walked quickly out, smiling back and kissing his hand to her at her grateful smile.

See you later.

You bet, she said, laughingly.

Carcassonne, Carcassonne, Carcassonne. Dev was eager to arrive now that the strange character of the place had made itself known to him so powerfully. Lou was with him body and soul, as excited as he. They were like children awaiting a fulfillment of delight.

It was still early in the morning and cold, the sun having just risen, when the train deposited them, almost the only ones to descend from it, at the station of the new city of Carcassonne with its small irregular square, the park, the plane trees and, fortunately, a fiacre behind the station—out of the wind.

This they mounted and were soon jogging on their way a mile or so across the new bridge around the grassy outer defenses of the old fortress high above them, past the towers and crenelated walls, ascending by the old road to the barbican beside the Porte Narbonne. The drawbridge was down and the portcullis raised, rusted into place.

At the top of the steep ascent the fiacre had made a sharp turn and in a tiny graveled quadrangle before the principal gate, stopped—the inner city remaining inviolate to modern wheels.

A wind was whipping down from the tall battlements like arrows. It was February. There were no tourists.

In the barbican wall to the right, Dev saw the name “Blanche” cut in stone. “Blanche.” Who was she? Blanche. He saw women—Blanche, all of them—moving in the streets, women violently contrasted with the stones.

The lovers had not yet breakfasted and they were cold—as it should be with beginning passion—in the narrow windswept channels of the old city streets, so that, gaining the rooms of the ancient castle, seat of the legendary counts, with their heraldry emblazoned all round the walls, they were glad for something to eat and to drink.

Carcassonne. They stood for a while looking out through the modern leaded windows over the new town across the river.—How can we imagine that old life, how rough, how inconvenient it must have been for them! In these stone chambers where they lived how the whiteness of women must have flamed against that coldness. With what a feeling of relief they must have welcomed Christianity, its softness—priceless by contrast. So different it is now to us—us whom it has wasted—so that we look back on their crudeness with pleasure even—and admiration wishing for those virtues and that—flavor.

From the warm castle rooms sallying after a rest, by the tiny garden across the paved courtyard to the fortress church of St. Nazaire, the lovers felt very happy. No one else was there as they stood in the old church on its pagan stones contrasting the architectural styles—early and late, mixed, right and left before them.

Carcassonne, a rock ruined by tears. It had to be rock-rimmed to give it credence, rock-chapeled. It tapped the rock and sweet water flew out—a hidden gentleness which had no certain name, in them without excuse—but like rain on armor. A brief advantage for which they panted. Water! Christ. Water all within themselves. Themselves. Their defenses broken, out it comes. Tears. Which have now melted the rock which conserved it and caused it to run and disappear in the sand.

The chapel was cold. On the uneven floor they walked about whispering. Very old it seemed but full of a strange assurance, because, possibly, they were young and felt no part in it.

The garden was better, though best was to stand in the southwest wind that tore at their garments as they went to the western ramparts and looked out toward the snow mountains across the valley to the southwest, mounting the archers’ galleries, peering through the slits of the meurtrières.

Do you remember anything of the history?

Not a word, never heard of it—

They looked long and silently, muffled from the past, at the far Pyrenees, hiding themselves as best they could from the invincible wind.

Boso and Irmingard, brothers of Richard le Justicier.

The Arabs. Pippin the Short.

It cannot have been an important place or I should have come across it in my medieval history.

Hand in hand the two ran in the lice between the outer and inner fortifications and found tiny daisies pressed close to the ground, as earliest flowers always are, for warmth.

They saw much of the place but their minds became stiffened and their faces, too, with the force of the wind and the cold. They hid in sunny nooks of the walls, but sunless corners were desolate and they fled at last, up through a postern, out again oppressed by the stones and the death of the place—the cold—hating the obstinacy of the defenses—too strong—senseless.

God, I’ve seen enough of that to last me a lifetime.—They were weary too, with the early rising, the long climbing and the wind, so they decided that they would walk, walk back to the station—over the old bridge. At once they went fleeing away from the icy, towering walls and, if they had had to retrace their steps which an hour before they had taken with zeal, with excitement, they would have shuddered and violently pulled back.

Going down to the river, the Aude, they looked back once more with strange regret at the great northern face of the inviolate walls, picked out with round slate-roofed towers—unpeopled, wholly lost—and a feeling of depression made them turn about again for the last time and run down the hill—by a tiny hovel where a woman was hanging out clothes. They seemed a thousand miles from the world, from Paris, from France—they were drawn together like children running together for shelter from the cold and from a nameless ague.

Behind them, the walls remained unseen, not to be looked at again until they were on the train bound for Marseilles when, covered by its warmth, they could spend their glances once more—in passing and in comfort—upon that forbidding masonry and its secrets—the image of a past they could not imagine: Blanche—Mother of Saint Louis.

But now at the old bridge they stopped, their faces tingling from the run and, looking over the breastworks, below them they saw women washing in the stream.

The water must be icy cold, Lou said. Look at their hands.—They felt that they had intruded upon some long-forgotten age.

At their feet the women had stoves to keep them warm as, kneeling in wooden stalls made of a box with one end knocked out, they pounded the twisted sheets on the flat rock each had before her with a wooden paddle.

The streets of the new town were desolate. The stores were dark, dead. The lovers looked down one narrow alleyway. It seemed an emanation from some impossible world.

People live here! Good God. And they are happy and they sent soldiers to the great war.

They went along the streets encountering scarcely a soul to observe them or for them to observe. The wind! A great tree leaned bending down over a wall. Two dogs they saw violently at their rut.

Spring, said Dev.

Lou was amused.

The driving wind which lifted the dust of the tiny deserted boulevard in a great cloud carried them also before it, until it drove them to the Café du Commerce by the station, behind whose plate-glass windows they sank at last tired to rest.

What lives they lived, what lives they must have lived, those old terrors of men up there—we are no more than their shadows. How must they have defended themselves, from the weather even?

Let us have an aperitif and eat later on the train—at noon.

There were but two or three old fellows motionlessly reading papers among the silent tables. It was not so warm in the café as one might believe on first entering. Cold currents from some corner assailed the feet. The street door kept opening slightly with every stronger wind blast.

God provide furs and brazier fires for the young countess in the castle to-day!

She will be thinking of her lover, and that will keep her warm. In the church it will be cold. The archbishop will have chillblains. War is a necessity when one is freezing and no help but an open fire.

What of the women washing in the stream?

Most likely they did not feel it, then as now.

Shall we stay over and visit the Cité again more at leisure to-morrow? It may be warmer.

Lou looked incredulously at him.

You said it, he replied. There is a train in forty minutes.

We’ll take it. BRRR!—The twelve o’clock train to Marseilles.

Marseilles! I hope it’s warm there.