“You like that kind of thing, don’t you?” he said.
“Possibly,” she said.
“It’s crazy, Katie,” he said. “It’s crazy, it’s crazy. You come home with me and Charlie. You and Charlie can live in the other half of my house, and I’ll have a nice American kitchen put in for you.”
Streeter saw that she was touched by this remark, and he thought she was going to cry. She said quickly, “How in hell do you think America would have been discovered if everybody stayed home in places like Krasbie?”
“You’re not discovering anything, Katie.”
“I am. I am.”
“We’ll all be happier, Mama,” Charlie said. “We’ll all be happier if we have a nice clean house and lots of nice friends and a nice garden and kitchen and stall shower.”
She stood with her back to them, by the mantelpiece, and said loudly, “No nice friends, no kitchen, no garden, no shower bath or anything else will keep me from wanting to see the world and the different people who live in it.” Then she turned to her son and spoke softly. “You’ll miss Italy, Charlie.”
The boy laughed his owlish laugh. “I’ll miss the black hairs in my food,” he said. She didn’t make a sound. She didn’t even sigh. Then the boy went to her and began to cry. “I’m sorry, Mummy,” he said. “I’m sorry. That was a dumb thing to say. It’s just an old joke.” He kissed her hands and the tears on her cheeks, and Streeter got up and left.
“Tel era ci che di meno deforme e di men compassionevole si faceva veclere intorno, i scini, gli agiati,” Streeter read when he went again for his lesson Sunday. “Che dopo tante immagini di miseria, pensando a quella ancor piit grave, per mezzo ella quale dovrem condurre il lettore, no ci fermeremo ore a dir qual fosse lo spettacolo degli appestati che si strascicavano o giacevano per le stracle, de’ poveri, de’ fanciulli, delle donne.”
The boy had gone, he could tell?not because she said so but because the place seemed that much bigger. In the middle of his lesson, the old Duke of Rome came through in his bathrobe and slippers, carrying a bowl of soup to his sister, who was sick. Kate looked tired, but then she always did, and when the lesson ended and Streeter stood up, wondering if she would mention Charlie or Uncle George, she complimented him on the progress he had made and urged him to finish I Promessi Sposi and to buy a copy of the Divine Comedy for next week. THE WRYSONS
THE WRYSONS WANTED things in the suburb of Shady Hill to remain exactly as they were. Their dread of change?of irregularity of any sort?was acute, and when the Larkin estate was sold for an old people’s rest home, the Wrysons went to the Village Council meeting and demanded to know what sort of old people these old people were going to be. The Wrysons’ civic activities were confined to upzoning, but they were very active in this field, and if you were invited to their house for cocktails, the chances were that you would be asked to sign an upzoning petition before you got away. This was something more than a natural desire to preserve the character of the community. They seemed to sense that there was a stranger at the gates?unwashed, tirelessly scheming, foreign, the father of disorderly children who would ruin their rose garden and depreciate their real-estate investment, a man with a beard, a garlic breath, and a book. The Wrysons took no part in the intellectual life of the community. There was hardly a book in their house, and, in a place where even cooks were known to have Picasso reproductions hanging above their washstands, the Wrysons’ taste in painting stopped at marine sunsets and bowls of flowers. Donald Wryson was a large man with thinning fair hair and the cheerful air of a bully, but he was a bully only in the defense of rectitude, class distinctions, and the orderly appearance of things. Irene Wryson was not a totally unattractive woman, but she was both shy and contentious, especially contentious on the subject of upzoning. They had one child, a little girl named Dolly, and they lived in a pleasant house on Alewives Lane, and they went in for gardening. This was another way of keeping up the appearance of things, and Donald Wryson was very critical of a neighbor who had ragged syringa bushes and a bare spot on her front lawn. They led a limited social life; they seemed to have no ambitions or needs in this direction, although at Christmas each year they sent out about six hundred cards. The preparation and addressing of these must have occupied their evenings for at least two weeks. Donald had a laugh like a jackass, and people who did not like him were careful not to sit in the same train coach with him. The Wrysons were stiff; they were inflexible. They seemed to experience not distaste but alarm when they found quack grass in their lawn or heard of a contemplated divorce among their neighbors. They were odd, of course. They were not as odd as poor, dizzy Flossie Dolmetch, who was caught forging drug prescriptions and was discovered to have been under the influence of morphine for three years. They were not as odd as Caruthers Mason, with his collection of two thousand lewd photographs, or as odd as Mrs. Temon, who, with those two lovely children in the next room?But why go on? They were odd.
Irene Wryson’s oddness centered on a dream. She dreamed once or twice a month that someone?some enemy or hapless American pilot?had exploded a hydrogen bomb. In the light of day, her dream was inadmissible, for she could not relate it to her garden, her interest in upzoning, or her comfortable way of life. She could not bring herself to tell her husband at breakfast that she had dreamed about the hydrogen bomb. Faced with the pleasant table and its view of the garden?faced even with rain and snow?she could not find it in herself to explain what had troubled her sleep. The dream cost her much in energy and composure, and often left her deeply depressed. Its sequence of events varied, but it usually went like this.
The dream was set in Shady Hill?she dreamed that she woke in her own bed. Donald was always gone. She was at once aware of the fact that the bomb had exploded. Mattress stuffing and a trickle of brown water were coming through a big hole in the ceiling. The sky was gray?lightless?although there were in the west a few threads of red light, like those charming vapor trails we see in the air after the sun has set. She didn’t know if these were vapor trails or some part of that force that would destroy the marrow in her bones. The gray air seemed final. The sky would never shine with light again. From her window she could see a river, and now, as she watched, boats began to come upstream. At first, there were only two or three. Then there were tens, and then there were hundreds. There were outboards, excursion boats, yachts, schooners with auxiliary motors; there were even rowboats. The number of boats grew until the water was covered with them, and the noise of motors rose to a loud din. The jockeying for position in this retreat up the river became aggressive and then savage. She saw men firing
