say. Princess scuttled back, suddenly silent. Ish had the uncomfortable feeling that whoever was keeping him covered with the flashlight had him covered also with a gun held in the other hand. With the light in his eyes, he was blinded. This had been a crazy thing to do, he thought; an approach under cover of darkness always looked suspicious, and made people nervous. At least he was glad that he had shaved that morning, and that his clothes looked moderately clean.
There was a long pause. He stood waiting for the sharply barked question—the inevitable, if slightly ridiculous, “Who are you?” or else for that curt order, “Put up your hands!” That was why he had a sudden gasp of surprise when a woman’s voice came with an affirmation: “That’s a beautiful dog!”
There was a momentary silence, the memory of the voice in his ears was gentle and low, with a touch of some soft accent in it. At the sound he felt warm feelings rise up within him.
Now the light fell from his eyes, illuminating a path ahead of him, and Princess bounded up through the beam of light, her tail wagging in joy. The door of the house moved open wide, and against the dim light behind her, he saw a woman on her knees patting the dog. He walked up toward her, still with the hammer dangling ridiculously but comfortably from his hand.
Then Princess, in a sudden flurry of excitement, burst away and went tearing into the house. The woman leaped up with an exclamation, half-screamed, half-laughed, and also dashed in. “My God, she must have a cat!” thought Ish, and rushed after her.
But when he arrived in the living-room, Princess was merely dashing around the table and smelling at the chairs and the woman was standing erect beside a gasoline lamp sheltering it against being overthrown by the excited dog.
She was above middle height, brunette, not very young—no mere girl, certainly, but a fully developed woman.
She glanced at the antics of the scampering dog and laughed, and the sound of laughter was like something remembered from Paradise long ago. She turned to him, and he saw the flash of white teeth in the dark face. Then suddenly a barrier burst within him, and he laughed joyously.
After a moment she spoke again, neither questioning nor demanding. “It’s good to see someone.” This time Ish replied, but he could think of nothing better than an apology for the ridiculous hammer which still dangled from his hand. “Pardon me for bringing this thing in,” he said, and set it down on the floor upon its head with the handle sticking stiffly into the air.
“Don’t worry,” she said, “I understand. I went through it too—having to have something around to make you feel comfortable. Like a pocket-piece or a rabbit-foot, you remember. We’re still about the same as we used to be, all of us.”
After the sudden release of the laughter, he was trembling. All his body seemed growing weak. He felt, almost physically, more barriers breaking—those necessary barriers of defense, built up through the months of loneliness and desperation. He must touch another human being, and he put forward his hand in the old conventional gesture of the handshake. She took it, and doubtless as she noticed his trembling, she drew him toward a chair and almost pushed him into it. As he sat down, she patted his shoulder lightly.
She spoke again, once more neither questioning nor commanding: “I’ll get you something to eat.”
He did not protest, though he had just eaten heartily. But he knew that behind her quiet affirmation lay something more than any call of the body for food. There was need now for the symbolic eating together, that first common bond of human beings—the sitting at the same table, the sharing of the bread and salt.
Now they were sitting opposite each other. They ate a little, more in symbol than in reality. There was fresh bread. “I made it myself,” she said, “but it’s getting hard to find flour now that’s got no weevils in it.” There was no butter, but honey and jam for the bread, and a bottle of red wine.
And now, like a child, he began to talk. This was nothing like that time when he had sat with Milt and Ann on Riverside Drive. Then the barriers had still been up. Now, for the first time, he talked of all those days. He showed even the little scar of the fangs on his hand and the larger scars where he had slashed himself to apply the suction-pump. He told of his fear and of his flight and of the Great Loneliness that he had never quite dared face or imagine. And as he talked, she often said, “Yes, I know. Yes, I remember that, too. Tell me more.”
As for her, she had seen the catastrophe itself. She had faced more than he had, and yet he could see that she had come through better than he. She talked little, seeming to have no need, but she drew him on.
As he talked with her, he knew now at last that this, at least as far as he was concerned, was no mere casual meeting—or passing moment. In this lay all the future. Since the disaster he had seen men and women here and there, and no one before had ever held him. Perhaps time had healed him. More likely, she herself was different.
Yet she was a woman. As the minutes slipped by, he sensed that basic reality more and more, with an intensity that made him tremble. As between man and man the breaking of bread was the reality; the shared table, all the symbol needed. But as between man and woman there must be still more, in reality and in symbol, a further sharing.
They realized suddenly that neither knew the other’s name although each had been calling the dog Princess.
“Isherwood,” he said. “That was my mother’s maiden name and so she stuck it on me. Bad, wasn’t it? Everybody called me ‘Ish.’”
“I’m Em!” she said. “Emma, that is, of course. Ish and Em! We won’t get very far writing poetry about that combination!” And she laughed. And they laughed together.
Laughter—that was another sharing! And yet it was not the final one. There were ways these things were done. He had known men who could do them, had seen them at work. But he, Ish, was not the right kind. All those qualities which had permitted him to be by himself and survive through the bad days, alone—all those qualities now came up to work against him. And he sensed too, very deeply, that they would be wrong. The old methods had worked in the days when there were girls in every cocktail-bar, looking for adventure. But now such methods were not right, he knew, and knew deeply—at this time, when the vast city stretched away empty in all directions outside of the windows and all the ways of the world had vanished and this woman had lived through all the catastrophe and the fear and the loneliness and now had come out on the other side, still with courage in her eyes, and affirmation, and laughter.
For a wild moment he had an idea that they might say some kind of marriage vows. Quakers could marry themselves. Why couldn’t others? They could stand up together, and face toward the east where the morning sun would rise. And then he sensed that the mere babbling of words was in itself much more dishonest even than a straightforward feeling for the knee under the table. He realized that he had been silent for what might have been a full minute. She was looking across at him with level calm eyes, and he knew that she read his thoughts.
In his embarrassment he rose suddenly to his feet, upsetting the chair as he got up. Then the table between them had ceased to be a symbol joining them together and now held them apart. He stepped from behind it, and across toward her as she rose up too. And then there was the softness of her body against his.
She had gone now, into the inner room. He sat, still with breath and heart quick, tense and waiting. He had only one fear now. In a world where there were no doctors and even no other women, how could anyone risk the chance? But she had gone. He realized that she, too, in her great affirmation, would consider this also and care for it.
Chapter 7
