Lilith (40 page)

So such dark moments of perturbation and self-mistrust were swept aside by golden August afternoons in the fields surrounding Stonemont; by a visit to the county fair which still reigns in my heart with the brazen witchery of carousel music, and from which I have a hundred haunted images:

Lilith, shrieking in my arms, her hair streaming and her eyes wild with horrified delight, as the two of us go hurtling outward from the earth in a spinning, dizzy, sickeningly exalted violation of all its gravities—then, as the machinery slows, leaning forward to grasp the bar of our “Torpedo,” shaking her head from side to side and laughing with soft hysterical hilarity; Lilith with her lips stained and her cheeks appliquéd with a fine scarlet web of spun sugar, refusing to wipe it off; and a sudden sticky kiss in a canvas-walled passage between two tents: cloyed, candy-tasting kiss, our lips adhering slightly, magnificent maudlin leaping of my heart; Lilith with an apple, glittering, red, shellacked, Original; Lilith crouching at a spigot to drink, her head turned sideways, her eyes closed, making dulcet noises with her dripping lips; Lilith standing with her arm about the shoulders of a little girl with equally golden hair to watch a puppet show, their faces equally innocent, serene, enchanted, gravely offering each other salted cashews—“Why did he hit her with the stick?” “He is very wicked.” “Will he hit her again?” “Oh, I hope not.”; Lilith deformed, hideous, with a ravaged, hollowed face and blighted body, staring at me with steadfast mockery from the mirror of a fun-fair; Lilith sleeping sweetly as a child in my arms, in the shadow of the gray oaks above the cemetery, her fingers clasped about the body of a china fairy with blue, inane glass eyes, a shred of pink, diaphanous skirt and a tinseled, star-tipped wand. (A piece of bark falls in her hair; I pick it out cautiously, staring down at her with wounded eyes.) Oh, my love, my lady!

Once, when she had signed for an evening movie trip to Stonemont, we went instead to the orchards north of town, and in among the silent, moon-drenched trees, in the darkness with its fragrant reek of fruit-tree sap, with a dog distantly lamenting our iniquity, and her whole body wet with the juice of rotting peaches, I purged myself of a fantasy that had harrowed me for months.

I DO not know how long I expected this state of heedless rapture to endure—a week, a month, two months, perhaps; I do not think much longer, for although I never gave it conscious consideration (the states of faith, love, ecstasy and so forth being, by their very nature, immune to any awareness of their finitude) I do remember my persistent, barely conscious preoccupation with time, and the constant obsessive calculations which I made: “There are eight weeks of summer left, there are seven weeks of summer left, there are six weeks of summer left . . .” Still, this may have been more a concern with the future complexity and disjunction of our relationship than with its actual ending, for I realized that when the winter came our outdoor idylls would have to be suspended, there would be many less opportunities and pretexts for escorting her, and that we should have to resort to the difficult and dangerous business of arranging indoor trysts. I suppose if I had thought about it consciously at all, I should have felt that with proper caution and barring the possibility that she might be transferred to another hospital there was no reason why it could not go on forever; certainly I had lost all fear of detection, for I had gained, as I say, a bitter confidence in my own duplicity; and I knew that Lilith would never be discharged. She was resolved to resist all efforts to “rehabilitate” her, and I had come to respect her will as greatly as I later learned to fear it. But, as I say, I never made any such conscious estimations; I lived in a trancelike state of joy, with only faintly—ever more faintly—recurring spasms of shame at my own deceptions, breathing an atmosphere which seemed to blow from some far country where I had always longed to go, and which is as lost to me now as the shrill scent of her hair and the sovereignty of her beautiful white hands.

Certainly I had never expected it to be so soon transmuted into the torment and the horror which I have to describe now—not by her own hand.

Under the date of the 23rd of August there is written the briefest of all the entries in my journal:

Maybe if I try to write it down here some of the awfulness will go away, because they say that if you

I can remember dropping my pen with a shudder at this point and bending suddenly forward over my desk, grinding my forehead against the warm wood in a helpless, prayerlike throe of anguish. A few lines below—undated, although I think it was written about three days later—is inscribed a fuller testimony of my degradation:

“Nothing exists but joy,” she told me once. “Its servants do not exist, because if they are perfect servants they will be consumed by it.” Conjuror, whore! Nothing exists but perfidy!

What am I to do? I can see nothing ahead but horror. But I am hopelessly trapped. What will she force me to do next? Will she go on forever, demonstrating this “boundless capacity for joy” of hers? And she expects me to share it! To increase in my devotion to her with every monstrous thing she does. To enjoy these awful things myself, and even help her—willingly—to accomplish them! And the ghastly, the really fearful thing about it is that I may—she may persuade me to! Because the other morning, just for an instant, when I was standing there outside the barn, listening in that terrible way, I felt the faintest stirring of a hideous delight in my heart.

And afterward, when I was half mad with pain and indignation, when I seized her hair and shook her wildly, flinging her against the wall, she confronted me with this vicious piece of sophistry: “If you discovered that your beastly God loved others as greatly as he loved you, would you hate him for it? He shows love for none of you, and you worship him; I show my love for all of you, and you despise me.”

I think it has cost me my soul to learn the nature of her madness. It was suddenly so apparent when she said those words; why have I never been aware of it before? She believes—she really believes—that she is divine.

Good God, what can I do? I must somehow force myself to be calm, to think properly. There must be some way to defeat her. But the terrible thing is that she knows—she knows as well as I—that I will not betray her to them; not to protect myself, but because I will do anything to keep her love. For some monstrous reason I want her more now than I ever did before! Whore, monster, oh, beautiful tender child!

THERE is a hypnotic quality about terrible things. Whenever I recall the various disasters of my life—killing my horse, my mother’s and Eric’s deaths, the grenades in the amphitheater—I find myself re-creating their details, one after another, with a trancelike attention and respect, as if I found them strangely beautiful and just. I do not reflect upon them at all, but simply record them, tensely and involuntarily, hypnotized by the strange purity they assume. It is in this way that I recall the details of the morning mentioned above in the extract from my journal: meticulous, remote, fascinating in their known and inexorable progression. I see myself, as if behind a pane of polished glass, shaving at the bathroom mirror, carrying my shoes downstairs so that I will not wake my grandparents, who sleep later and later in their age; making my coffee and drinking it at the porcelain table in the silent kitchen (smiling all the while, staring up at the quavering violet webs of my cigarette smoke which marble the morning air); emerging from the front door with an air of controlled, expectant haste; pausing, as I cross the street, to examine a flattened toad on the pavement (it must have been run over days ago, because it is crisp, dry and leathery, its legs spread out in a perfectly symmetrical, ridiculously romantic attitude, as if attempting to embrace the whole world in some strange, mortal, primitive passion); walking under the cool elms, in spite of myself, with a constantly accelerating pace; pausing impatiently at the traffic light on Diamond Avenue; continuing briskly, smiling, until I stop suddenly—having seen a Negress in a red dress approaching me—cross the street again and continue down the opposite sidewalk with scarcely any adjustment of expression or emotion, the maneuver having become so habitual. (Once, many years ago, I did meet her, coming home from school, and, burning with humiliation, forced myself to look into her eyes, to watch her bitter contemptuous smile, as she approached and passed me. I could not do that again.) I enter the Lodge grounds, plucking the tip from an arbor vitae branch and crumbling it nervously in my fingers as I walk quickly up the drive. At the main building I pause, glance about with assumed indifference, then raise my eyes swiftly to her window. She is there, her gold hair glinting in its snood of shadow from the wire netting, her eyes vivid with anticipation. She purses her mouth to me in a soft, pleated rose of tenderness. My mind wanes wildly with delight. (Today I am to take her walking past the pond!) I go on up the drive, constraining with terrible determination the precious furor of my heart. I mount the shop steps, pausing at the top to look toward her window, then enter with inspired insouciance.

Dr. Lavrier is present to hold one of his occasional seminars with us. We discuss the patients earnestly, attentively, sipping our coffee out of paper cups, sprawling in the red leather armchairs. I give a cunning, extremely eager, diversionary report on Sonia Behrendt. She has expressed, as many of the patients have, an interest in fishing. I suggest stocking the lake with bass and blue-gills for this purpose. The suggestion is a great success. There is much animated discussion, in the course of which I offer to obtain details from the Fish & Wildlife Division. Bea is particularly pleased, smiling her gratification at me. I am asked about Warren. “He is considerably happier lately. I think it’s because of the attention he’s been getting from Lilith at the tea dances. He’s more active, too, and more productive.” Dr. Lavrier nods. “That was a good piece of work, getting her to attend them. It’s certainly done him good, as well as her. But we mustn’t let him build up any false illusions about Lilith’s affection for him; that could be disastrous, you know, as well as dishonest and undignified. But to enjoy her company and to dance with her occasionally—that seems to me to be perfectly acceptable, as long as he’s realistic about it. Try to keep it on that note. How has Lilith seemed this week?” “Well, I think she’s continuing to improve a little. I think Bob had her out yesterday, didn’t you, Bob? How did she seem to you?” Ah—adroit that was! Attention is shifted. (I have no monopoly on her company.)

Bea listens to the discussion with earnest, intelligent absorption, lightly brushing her brown hair. I move my eyes alternately to all their faces, my mind wandering. They are so intent, devoted. For a moment I am shamed by their sincerity; then I remember her laughter, the dazzling length of her thighs, a way she has of plucking at her eyelashes while she sits musing. She is waiting! Will they never finish their idiotic chatter? My love is waiting!

After the meeting I cross toward the main building with hectic, carefully disciplined excitement, determinedly limiting the length of my strides. My key sticks for a moment in the elevator door. I twist it savagely, in a rage of impatience, swinging back the heavy metal door, which closes with a solemn clangor behind me.

Lasciate ogni speranza.
I stand for a minute in mild, perpendicular propulsion while the hidden machinery hums infernally. At the second floor I push the steel door open tremblingly; it seems to scald my hand. I stop at the floor office. Miss Donohue is checking the night attendant’s reports, holding the sheets in one hand while she lays out towels for the morning baths. She is too harassed to notice that my whole body is flaming softly, like wind-blown coals. “Hello, Vincent. Who do you have this morning?” “I’m taking Lilith out by the pond.” “Good. Keep her out for as long as you can, will you? Give us a little peace around here.” “I’ll try. Are you having trouble?” “Oh God. Carter’s gone back up to Fourth; she just bit one of the attendants. God, it’s like a madhouse around here this morning. Where are the scissors?” I smile mechanically at her joke, proceed down the corridor with feet of fire.

The door of Lilith’s room is ajar; I knock twice lightly in an accustomed, intimate way, and enter, closing it behind me. She springs softly from her window seat, standing with her ankles in a pool of sunlight, and breathes
Hello
to me, her silent lips holding the
O
position of the final vowel in the same warm rose she offered me from the window. We stand for a moment in marvelous silence, our eyes joined, my heart raving. I say, “Good morning” rather harshly. She does not reply. Her eyes wander for a moment; she seems thoughtful. There are her manuscripts on the desk in front of me; she has been illuminating letters of her Gospels. I touch a great Gothic gold-leafed
A
with my finger tip. “That’s beautiful,” I say, raising my head. She lifts her hand, twisting a strand of hair between her fingers. “Are you ready?” I ask.

“Yes. Where are we going?”

“To the pond. Isn’t that what you wanted to do?”

“Yes. But, Vincent—I want to ask you a favor. A very special one. Will you promise?”

“I suppose so. What is it?”

“No, you have to promise.”

“All right. What is it?”

“Can we—can someone else go with us?”

“Someone else go with us?” (A joke of some kind—one of her pranks, whose delightful meaning will be revealed in a moment.)

“Yes. Yvonne. She asked me if she could. I know she wants to very much.”

“Yvonne?” (Cold. So cold suddenly. Must wait and see. Certainly not.)

“Yes. Do you mind, just this once? She so seldom gets out.”

I refuse to acknowledge the dread that has touched me. I am suddenly sternly matter-of-fact. I must dismiss the whole thing instantly. A brusque manner will help me to believe it does not exist. “If she wants to go out, I’ll get an escort for her. Greta can take her; she’s on casual duty this morning.”

“No, she wants to go with us. You see, there’s something she wants to talk to me about.”