out at the cheerful lights as they go by.
“Althea, honey, pull back my curtains so I can look out my window.”
“It’s too cold for you to open it now.”
“I know, I only want to see.…”
“—no chocolate, no books, you no want your music, your radio, I got your disks off the floor, I got all that put away, Rosalind come and put all that in order, she say Mozart with Mozart, Beethoven with Beethoven, she show me where …”
“No, just to rest, kiss me.”
She bent down and pressed her silky cheek to mine. She said:
“My baby.”
She covered me with two big comforters, all silk, and no doubt filled with down, Mrs. Wolfstan’s style, Karl’s style, that everything be real goose down, loving the weightless weight. She pushed them around my shoulders.
“Miss Triana, why you never call Lacomb and me when that man was dying, we woulda come.”
“I know. I missed you. I didn’t want you to be frightened.”
She shook her head. Her face was very pretty, much darker than Lacomb’s, with big lovely eyes, and her hair was soft and wavy.
“You turn your head to the window,” she said, “and you sleep. Ain’t nobody coming in this house, I promise you.”
I lay on my side looking straight out the window, through twelve shining clean panes at the distant trees and oaks, the color of traffic.
I loved again to see the azaleas out there, pink and red and white, crowded everywhere so luxuriantly along thefence, and the delicate iron railing painted so freshly black and the porch itself so shining clean.
So wonderful that Karl should give this to me before he died, my house restored. My house with every door to properly click, and lock to work, and every faucet to run the proper temperature of water.
Perhaps five minutes I looked dreaming out the window, perhaps longer. The streetcars passed. My lids grew heavy.
And only out of the corner of my eye did I make out a figure standing there on the porch, my tall gaunt one, the violinist, with his silky hair hanging lank down on his chest.
He hung about the edge of the window like a vine himself, dramatically thin, almost fashionably cadaverous yet very alive. His black hair hung so straight and glossy. No tiny braids tied back this time. Only hair.
I saw his dark left eye, the strong sleek black eyebrow above it. His cheeks were white, too white, but his lips were alive, smooth, very smooth, living lips.
I was scared for a minute. Just a minute. I knew this was wrong. No, not wrong, but dangerous, unnatural, not a possible thing.
I knew when I dreamed and when I did not, no matter how hard the struggle to move between the two. And he was here, on my porch, this man. He stood there looking at me.
And then I was scared no more. I didn’t care. It was a lovely burst of utter indifference. I don’t care. Ah, it is such a divine emptiness that follows the desertion of fear! And this was a rather practical point of view, it seemed at the moment.
Because either way … whether he was real or not real … it was pleasing and beautiful. I felt the chills onmy arms. So hair does stand on end, even when you are lying, all crushed in your own hair on a pillow, with one arm flung out, looking out a window. Yes, my body went into its little war with my mind. Beware, beware, cried the body. But my mind is so stubborn.
My voice, interior, came very strong and determined, and I marveled at myself, how one can hear a tone in one’s head. One can shout or whisper without moving the lips. I said to him:
Play for me. I missed you.
He drew closer to the glass, all shoulders for a moment it seemed, so tall and narrow, and with such torrential and tempting hair—I wanted so to feel it and groom it—and he peered down at me through the higher windowpanes, no angry glaring fictional Peter Quint searching for a secret beyond me. But looking right at what he sought. At me.
The floorboards creaked. Someone trod the path right to the door.
Althea came again. As easily
“Althea, honey, pull back my curtains so I can look out my window.”
“It’s too cold for you to open it now.”
“I know, I only want to see.…”
“—no chocolate, no books, you no want your music, your radio, I got your disks off the floor, I got all that put away, Rosalind come and put all that in order, she say Mozart with Mozart, Beethoven with Beethoven, she show me where …”
“No, just to rest, kiss me.”
She bent down and pressed her silky cheek to mine. She said:
“My baby.”
She covered me with two big comforters, all silk, and no doubt filled with down, Mrs. Wolfstan’s style, Karl’s style, that everything be real goose down, loving the weightless weight. She pushed them around my shoulders.
“Miss Triana, why you never call Lacomb and me when that man was dying, we woulda come.”
“I know. I missed you. I didn’t want you to be frightened.”
She shook her head. Her face was very pretty, much darker than Lacomb’s, with big lovely eyes, and her hair was soft and wavy.
“You turn your head to the window,” she said, “and you sleep. Ain’t nobody coming in this house, I promise you.”
I lay on my side looking straight out the window, through twelve shining clean panes at the distant trees and oaks, the color of traffic.
I loved again to see the azaleas out there, pink and red and white, crowded everywhere so luxuriantly along thefence, and the delicate iron railing painted so freshly black and the porch itself so shining clean.
So wonderful that Karl should give this to me before he died, my house restored. My house with every door to properly click, and lock to work, and every faucet to run the proper temperature of water.
Perhaps five minutes I looked dreaming out the window, perhaps longer. The streetcars passed. My lids grew heavy.
And only out of the corner of my eye did I make out a figure standing there on the porch, my tall gaunt one, the violinist, with his silky hair hanging lank down on his chest.
He hung about the edge of the window like a vine himself, dramatically thin, almost fashionably cadaverous yet very alive. His black hair hung so straight and glossy. No tiny braids tied back this time. Only hair.
I saw his dark left eye, the strong sleek black eyebrow above it. His cheeks were white, too white, but his lips were alive, smooth, very smooth, living lips.
I was scared for a minute. Just a minute. I knew this was wrong. No, not wrong, but dangerous, unnatural, not a possible thing.
I knew when I dreamed and when I did not, no matter how hard the struggle to move between the two. And he was here, on my porch, this man. He stood there looking at me.
And then I was scared no more. I didn’t care. It was a lovely burst of utter indifference. I don’t care. Ah, it is such a divine emptiness that follows the desertion of fear! And this was a rather practical point of view, it seemed at the moment.
Because either way … whether he was real or not real … it was pleasing and beautiful. I felt the chills onmy arms. So hair does stand on end, even when you are lying, all crushed in your own hair on a pillow, with one arm flung out, looking out a window. Yes, my body went into its little war with my mind. Beware, beware, cried the body. But my mind is so stubborn.
My voice, interior, came very strong and determined, and I marveled at myself, how one can hear a tone in one’s head. One can shout or whisper without moving the lips. I said to him:
Play for me. I missed you.
He drew closer to the glass, all shoulders for a moment it seemed, so tall and narrow, and with such torrential and tempting hair—I wanted so to feel it and groom it—and he peered down at me through the higher windowpanes, no angry glaring fictional Peter Quint searching for a secret beyond me. But looking right at what he sought. At me.
The floorboards creaked. Someone trod the path right to the door.
Althea came again. As easily
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