Read Online In the Absence of Angels by Hortense Calisher - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Hortense Calisher
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an infallible, an educative thread — to a monster’s door.
Everybody, she thought, shivering. The woman in the store was “everybody.” Multiplied endlessly, she and her counterparts, varied slightly by the secondary markings of sex, education, money, flowed in and out of the stores, in and out of all the proper stations in life, not touched by the miseries of difference but indomitably chewing the caramel cud of their own self-satisfaction. Escape into the long dream of books, behind the ramparts of your special talent or into some warm coterie of your own ilk, and they could still find you out with a judgment in proportion to the degree of your difference. The Misses Baxter they would pillory at once, with the nerveless teamwork of the dull; the Misses Abel might escape their gray encroaching smutch of averageness for a while, behind some maquillage of compromise, only to find one day perhaps that the maquillage had become the spirit — that they had conquered after all.
They were even there, latent, in the rumpled letter, simple with love, still lying on her table. In the end they could push everything before them with the nod of their terrible consanguinity.
She moved deeper in the chair. Soon the boy, Max, would come, and in the desperate wrenches, the muffled clingings of love-making they would try again to build up some dark mutual core of inalienable wholeness. For there was no closeness, she thought, no camaraderie so intense, so tempting as that of the rejected for the rejected. But in the end those others would still be there to be faced; in the end they were to be faced alone. Meanwhile she sat on, shivering a little, over the steaming tea, and making a circle of her body around the hardening nugget of herself, she clasped her chill, blanched feet in her slowly warming hands.
Heartburn
T HE LIGHT, GRITTY wind of a spring morning blew in on the doctor’s shining, cleared desk, and on the tall buttonhook of a man who leaned agitatedly toward him.
“I have some kind of small animal lodged in my chest,” said the man. He coughed, a slight, hollow apologia to his ailment, and sank back in his chair.
“Animal?” said the doctor, after a pause which had the unfortunate quality of comment. His voice, however, was practiced, deft, colored only with the careful suspension of judgment.
“Probably a form of newt or toad,” answered the man, speaking with clipped distaste, as if he would disassociate himself from the idea as far as possible. His face quirked with sad foreknowledge. “Of course, you don’t believe me.”
The doctor looked at him noncommittally. Paraphrased, an old refrain of the poker table leapt erratically in his mind. “Nits” — no — “newts and gnats and one-eyed jacks,” he thought. But already the anecdote was shaping itself, trim and perfect, for display at the clinic luncheon table. “Go on,” he said.
“Why won’t any of you come right out and say what you think!” the man said angrily. Then he flushed, not hectically, the doctor noted, but with the well-bred embarrassment of the normally reserved. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude.”
“You’ve already had an examination?” The doctor was a neurologist, and most of his patients were referrals.
“My family doctor. I live up in Boston.”
“Did you tell him — er ...?” The doctor sought gingerly for a phrase.
One corner of the man’s mouth lifted, as if he had watched others in the same dilemma. “I went through the routine first. Fluoroscope, metabolism, cardiograph. Even gastroscopy.” He spoke, the doctor noted, with the regrettable glibness of the patient who has shopped around.
“And — the findings?” said the doctor, already sure of the answer.
The man leaned forward, holding the doctor’s glance with his own. A faint smile riffled his mouth. “Positive.”
“Positive!”
“Well,” said the man, “machines have to be interpreted after all, don’t they?” He attempted a shrug,
Everybody, she thought, shivering. The woman in the store was “everybody.” Multiplied endlessly, she and her counterparts, varied slightly by the secondary markings of sex, education, money, flowed in and out of the stores, in and out of all the proper stations in life, not touched by the miseries of difference but indomitably chewing the caramel cud of their own self-satisfaction. Escape into the long dream of books, behind the ramparts of your special talent or into some warm coterie of your own ilk, and they could still find you out with a judgment in proportion to the degree of your difference. The Misses Baxter they would pillory at once, with the nerveless teamwork of the dull; the Misses Abel might escape their gray encroaching smutch of averageness for a while, behind some maquillage of compromise, only to find one day perhaps that the maquillage had become the spirit — that they had conquered after all.
They were even there, latent, in the rumpled letter, simple with love, still lying on her table. In the end they could push everything before them with the nod of their terrible consanguinity.
She moved deeper in the chair. Soon the boy, Max, would come, and in the desperate wrenches, the muffled clingings of love-making they would try again to build up some dark mutual core of inalienable wholeness. For there was no closeness, she thought, no camaraderie so intense, so tempting as that of the rejected for the rejected. But in the end those others would still be there to be faced; in the end they were to be faced alone. Meanwhile she sat on, shivering a little, over the steaming tea, and making a circle of her body around the hardening nugget of herself, she clasped her chill, blanched feet in her slowly warming hands.
Heartburn
T HE LIGHT, GRITTY wind of a spring morning blew in on the doctor’s shining, cleared desk, and on the tall buttonhook of a man who leaned agitatedly toward him.
“I have some kind of small animal lodged in my chest,” said the man. He coughed, a slight, hollow apologia to his ailment, and sank back in his chair.
“Animal?” said the doctor, after a pause which had the unfortunate quality of comment. His voice, however, was practiced, deft, colored only with the careful suspension of judgment.
“Probably a form of newt or toad,” answered the man, speaking with clipped distaste, as if he would disassociate himself from the idea as far as possible. His face quirked with sad foreknowledge. “Of course, you don’t believe me.”
The doctor looked at him noncommittally. Paraphrased, an old refrain of the poker table leapt erratically in his mind. “Nits” — no — “newts and gnats and one-eyed jacks,” he thought. But already the anecdote was shaping itself, trim and perfect, for display at the clinic luncheon table. “Go on,” he said.
“Why won’t any of you come right out and say what you think!” the man said angrily. Then he flushed, not hectically, the doctor noted, but with the well-bred embarrassment of the normally reserved. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude.”
“You’ve already had an examination?” The doctor was a neurologist, and most of his patients were referrals.
“My family doctor. I live up in Boston.”
“Did you tell him — er ...?” The doctor sought gingerly for a phrase.
One corner of the man’s mouth lifted, as if he had watched others in the same dilemma. “I went through the routine first. Fluoroscope, metabolism, cardiograph. Even gastroscopy.” He spoke, the doctor noted, with the regrettable glibness of the patient who has shopped around.
“And — the findings?” said the doctor, already sure of the answer.
The man leaned forward, holding the doctor’s glance with his own. A faint smile riffled his mouth. “Positive.”
“Positive!”
“Well,” said the man, “machines have to be interpreted after all, don’t they?” He attempted a shrug,
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