Read Online Journal From Ellipsia: A Novel by Hortense Calisher - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Hortense Calisher
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the garage where he waited for his storaged car to be brought down to him, he was assailed by a sudden vision of the real, the right and the primeval—some copper beeches he’d once seen, kneeling with them in their own root mast, their tops several golden heavens away, in the profound air of Sussex. The grass there, so green. He forced himself quickly to think of sequoias, trees on this side of the water, and only as far as next summer’s adventure. He promised himself; as an experienced traveler, he knew what he was dealing with. The movable fantasy—already on the move. In the melancholic of other returns, he applied honesty. To all the vanitie of space, he now replied. That no country really waits for one personally, on any side of the water, that the home one is the most topical of all. That all-travel—no matter how palmy, or how upflung the finny sail—is only an outer bruise on an innerness that speeds with light. He wasn’t thinking of, preaching to, anyone in particular, elsewhere.
Looking round the garage, he reconvinced himself of the ultimate fantasticality of right-where-one-is. Carefully, for himself, he rehearsed the small fantasies of the route home: first the guilty twilight of Harlem—a dream of which had sometimes stopped him in his tracks in Paddington, then the all-purpose plaid handkerchief of suburbia, and finally the dark, polite verdure—nowhere near so savage as Scotland, of his adopted hills. When the attendant came with the car, he tipped him. Sinking but resigned, he refitted himself into the car. The man leaned on the window to give him a friendly warning. Be sure to avoid midtown traffic; the latest astronaut was being welcomed home there, with confetti.
She was in the back room. When he entered her house, several nights later, letter in hand, he was almost convinced of it. To be haunted it is necessary only to feel oneself the ghost. He had come in from that doorstep at last. Inside the little downstairs with its steps going straight up, the two sitting rooms, bowing at each other from opposing mirrors, were as neat as a “restoration” from some Williamsburg of memory. The curtains were impossibly clean—he heard her word for them, “priscilla,” rustle again in her mouth, and saw how she looked at them with a touch of the farmgirl’s satisfaction in having what one is supposed to have. Once (the day he’d suggested a drive to Pennsylvania) she’d told him about the severe house-habits of the “Dutch”—what kind of housewifery had been going on here, in this sealed house? And once, going on into the back room, he’d at first thought himself alone with all that welter of stuff, then caught sight of her, asleep he thought, on that long New Guinea couch, but when he bent over her there’d been a sudden gleam in the lashes and she’d murmured a bit of Dutch talk at him. “Wann dich ime busch ferlore hoscht, guk ame bam nuf.” He’d made her write it down for him afterwards, meaning to have it engraved on a Christmas bangle. “When lost in the woods, look up a tree.”
It was all he had of her, except for the letter he was holding. Carrying this, he tiptoed toward the back with stilted step, unable to keep out of his gait a dream that princes were still needed here. And with his hand on the light switch, he’d made his discovery—rather early for a philosopher, circumstantially sad for a man. He knew what it was for which he did care.
Still in the dark, he pondered it, as if he hadn’t a world of time to do it in, or, since he was surely going to find her asleep there, he had to get it straight before he turned on the light. Was it in her difference from other women—that in the dark all cats weren’t gray? Perhaps, a little. But he’d known women who were far more different—novelties against whose planes, mental or physical, a man was hard put to it to recline. Was it only sexual choice then, merely sex, that ess-shaped giggle of the cosmos, which held him
Looking round the garage, he reconvinced himself of the ultimate fantasticality of right-where-one-is. Carefully, for himself, he rehearsed the small fantasies of the route home: first the guilty twilight of Harlem—a dream of which had sometimes stopped him in his tracks in Paddington, then the all-purpose plaid handkerchief of suburbia, and finally the dark, polite verdure—nowhere near so savage as Scotland, of his adopted hills. When the attendant came with the car, he tipped him. Sinking but resigned, he refitted himself into the car. The man leaned on the window to give him a friendly warning. Be sure to avoid midtown traffic; the latest astronaut was being welcomed home there, with confetti.
She was in the back room. When he entered her house, several nights later, letter in hand, he was almost convinced of it. To be haunted it is necessary only to feel oneself the ghost. He had come in from that doorstep at last. Inside the little downstairs with its steps going straight up, the two sitting rooms, bowing at each other from opposing mirrors, were as neat as a “restoration” from some Williamsburg of memory. The curtains were impossibly clean—he heard her word for them, “priscilla,” rustle again in her mouth, and saw how she looked at them with a touch of the farmgirl’s satisfaction in having what one is supposed to have. Once (the day he’d suggested a drive to Pennsylvania) she’d told him about the severe house-habits of the “Dutch”—what kind of housewifery had been going on here, in this sealed house? And once, going on into the back room, he’d at first thought himself alone with all that welter of stuff, then caught sight of her, asleep he thought, on that long New Guinea couch, but when he bent over her there’d been a sudden gleam in the lashes and she’d murmured a bit of Dutch talk at him. “Wann dich ime busch ferlore hoscht, guk ame bam nuf.” He’d made her write it down for him afterwards, meaning to have it engraved on a Christmas bangle. “When lost in the woods, look up a tree.”
It was all he had of her, except for the letter he was holding. Carrying this, he tiptoed toward the back with stilted step, unable to keep out of his gait a dream that princes were still needed here. And with his hand on the light switch, he’d made his discovery—rather early for a philosopher, circumstantially sad for a man. He knew what it was for which he did care.
Still in the dark, he pondered it, as if he hadn’t a world of time to do it in, or, since he was surely going to find her asleep there, he had to get it straight before he turned on the light. Was it in her difference from other women—that in the dark all cats weren’t gray? Perhaps, a little. But he’d known women who were far more different—novelties against whose planes, mental or physical, a man was hard put to it to recline. Was it only sexual choice then, merely sex, that ess-shaped giggle of the cosmos, which held him
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