“No?” I asked.
“Yes. In a little while. Come to me. I want to see to Kate, and then-”
“Mn?”
“I want to-be ready.” I saw the line of dark lashes as she dropped them. Getting ready was one of the little bits of modesty about her. She went away softly, as though not to break the spell. I picked up my glass again, and drank. I knew now why the cask had been brought, and why the Widow had cautioned not too early for bed. I knew tonight was meant to have a special significance, to evoke a particular awareness in Beth and myself, both separately and jointly.
And it was not over; I was certain there was to be more to the ‘experience.’
The night seemed to expand around me, to encompass and envelop me. The deeper colors of the chrysanthemums grew richer, more vibrant in the moonlight, like the colors in old tapestries. The coppery sheen of the beech leaves became brighter, hammered from precious metals. The sky pulsed and throbbed, evoking a low, touchable canopy, bejeweled, lighted by a globe I could at will reach up and extinguish. I was feeling a rush of intensity I did not understand, but did not care to; to have it was enough. I was aware; I was at one with my surroundings, with sky and earth and light and sound, with trees, flowers, corn, with all of nature.
Then it began, the rest of it.
I saw a figure. I did not move even a fraction as it appeared. I was right; the music had not been the end of it. It was a male figure, and I supposed it had come out of the cornfield, for it waited just at the edge, in a dark strip of soil between the meadow and the beginning of the corn. It stood enormously erect, wearing some kind of garments, though I could not perceive what they might be. I say the figure was enormous, for so it seemed, larger than any human I had ever seen. It took first one step, then another, and came into the full light of the moon.
It might have been a spirit of vegetation-I remember that the idiot trademark of the Jolly Green Giant immediately crossed my mind. Yet there was nothing humorous about it. It was deadly serious, earnest, real. In all its vividness and aliveness, it stood there, the embodiment of vigor and of growing; not demoniacal, but a benign spirit. Now I saw that the arms and legs were sheathed in tied-on bunches of straw, while the torso and lower quarters were girdled in corn leaves. A tight-fitting helmet-shaped cap of leaves covered the head, and the face itself was hidden behind a large straw mask. The expression formed by the angled eye slits, and that of the mouth, was again one of benevolence, the slightly vacant yet obtrusively concentrated expression of ancient Greek sculpture, a look at once bland yet enigmatic: the unknowable. The figure took the classic stance of
It was the figure from the corn quilt, of course. The Harvest Lord; but not a representation or facsimile. He brought his arms up very slowly, a gesture I found both equivocal and absolute: a wide, encompassing movement, as though within the curve of his arms lay revelation. With arms outstretched, he bowed, acknowledging me-a somewhat theatrical bow, I thought. I told myself it must be Justin Hooke, yet I was not sure. I looked for a glimpse of golden hair at the back of the neck, but could see none. He straightened again, and lowered one arm. With the other hand he made dumb gestures, pantomiming a flow of words from behind the mask. Then he turned slightly and another gesture indicated the raising of a curtain or drapery, behind which lay the cornfield, which he now indicated in a single wide sweeping arc. Then the arm came down, and he turned to his right.
My attention was drawn to where he looked, and I now saw another figure some distance away along the edge of the field. I had not seen this one appear, either; it was simply there. A female figure, hidden from top to toe under some sort of luminous veil. She remained immobile under the silvery shroud, facing me, then turned toward the male figure. I waited, wondering if they would approach each other simultaneously or if one would go to the other. Then I saw it was the woman who waited, the man who went, advancing to her slowly, ceremoniously, and simply. When he had got to within three or four feet of her, he lay down, couching himself in the short grass, one knee up, resting on one locked arm. For a moment neither moved; then the woman’s pale draperies parted and an arm appeared. In a slow gesture it revealed itself, the hand supple, graceful, the ringers relaxed, slightly bent, the forefinger extended. She leaned her shoulders slightly forward, and now the man raised his free arm and, with his pointing finger, awaited her touch. The space between the two fingers grew smaller, and as they closed I saw a quick flash, a single white sputter of light that leaped between them. It was the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo’s awakening of Adam, the divine spark given from Jehovah. But that was a fresco, this was real. The kinetic gift of the vital life force. The man got to his feet, bowed to the woman, to me, then returned to where he had originally appeared. I turned my eyes back to the figure under the veil. Her hand and arm had been withdrawn beneath the draperies again, the disguise assumed again.
Who was she? Who was she
I had thought at first it must be the Corn Maiden. But, observing her, I realized she had come in a form different from what I expected, something other than what I had seen in the quilt. I sensed it was not she but someone else, someone whose identity I was supposed to guess. The sphinx. In her very being lay the conundrum. Tell me who I am, she seemed to say. She remained motionless for a period, as if giving me time to make my guess; then she lifted her hands outward from her sides, and they met slowly over her head, raising the veil as the covered fingers touched above. I was both shocked and excited as I realized that under the veil she was completely naked, and I could see the gleam of her thighs, pale and marmoreal in the moonlight, with the dark, mysterious cleft between.
I thought she must remove the veil. I thought she must invite me, make some gesture, some signal that I was to come to her, to take the place of the other figure, but when the hem of the drapery had lifted almost to the waist, it immediately dropped again. I rose and took a step forward, revealing myself. I looked to the place where the man had been standing, but he had disappeared. Then the woman figure inclined her head beneath the veil, posed for an instant, turned, and stepped from the grass onto the strip of dark earth, into the shadows of the cornstalks, then into the corn itself.
She was gone.
I ran partway down the lawn, then stopped. I was not meant to follow. Something had been revealed to me, not only the woman’s charms, but also some deeper, metaphysical equation I could not solve. Watching the field, I heard the dry bone sound I had heard earlier, followed by a short flute passage, brief but effective, like the final coda in the Strauss
All was silence. I turned and went back up the lawn to the terrace. I found the peg for the cask, fitted it in, picked up the glasses, and carried them and the keg into the house. I rinsed out the glasses and set them in the rack. I let the cold water run on my hand; the flow had an incredible feeling to it. I turned off the tap and put the cask on the topmost shelf of one of the cupboards. I locked the kitchen door, switched off the lights, went through the hall, checked that the front door was locked, and went upstairs. I stopped and listened at Kate’s door, then opened it softly. She was asleep. I closed it again, and crossed the hall to our bedroom. The door was ajar. I went in to find Beth in the rocking chair by the window. Her hand was raised in what appeared to be a gesture, and at first I thought she was motioning to someone; then I saw she was only reaching for the tassel of the shade. She drew it down, and her hand dropped into her lap. She spoke softly, calling me darling, and rose to extinguish the only light, the small one on the bureau. She disrobed and got onto the bed, which she had turned down. She was waiting for me.
The moonlight streamed through the front windows, enough to undress by. I was careful with my clothes, folding them and placing them on the chair, my shoes beneath, and when I turned again Beth drew a little breath as I went to her, and I thought of a bride on her wedding night, waiting to submit to the demands of her spouse. But when I took her it was no virgin I took, but a woman, versed and capable, as accomplished a lover as any man could hope for. We were together as we had never been before, not even in the days of the Rue du Bac in Paris, a meeting of two people that was not only physical but spiritual as well, and if ever we knew one another, it was on that night when we had drunk from the Widow Fortune’s little wooden cask and the flutes had played.
Afterward, while Beth slept, I rose again and went into the bathroom. From the window over the radiator, I could look down onto the terrace, the lawn, the meadow, and the cornfield, all moon-flooded, and it seemed that I could see one of the figures standing there again, where it had stood before. Not the woman; the man-a dark shape, forming the figure of straw and corn, waiting. For what? I told myself that now I was really imagining, but I have since thought differently. Was it he, truly, the Harvest Lord?
I looked a moment longer, trying to make out the figure, and then it was gone. If it had returned at all. Or if
