“I won’t interfere. I won’t ask you questions.”
“No.”
He thought she was bargaining.
“You’ll get it out of your system. You’ll see, we’ll weather this.”
“No!”
He never understood to what she was shouting “No.”
Even men of limited imagination can sometimes imagine the worst. So he could not have been really surprised to see her packing one day, or to hear themselves discussing who would take what bureau, what candle-mould, or to find himself on the telephone making arrangements with movers to save Shell the trouble. For years now he had known he didn’t deserve her; it was a matter of time. Now it was happening and he had already imagined his gentlemanly role.
Shell visited her parents in Hartford. They still lived in the big white house, just the two of them. Officially they regretted the separation and hoped she’d soon return to her husband and her senses. But she had a long talk with her father as they walked over the property. The leaves were drained of green but they had not yet turned bright. She was surprised how easily she was able to talk to him.
“He had no right,” was all he said about Gordon, but it was a handsome old man speaking, who had lived out some kind of man’s life, and it fortified her.
He let her talk, inviting it with his silence and the paths he chose. When she was through he spoke about the first growth of some trees he had planted.
She could not help feeling that her mother regarded the breakup as a sinister triumph of heredity, like haemophilia in a royal child that had seemed too healthy.
Shell was lucky to be able to rent a small apartment on 23rd Street. She didn’t want to get too far from the Village. Except for a tiny kitchen, bathroom, and vestibule, she lived in one room. She stood the tall clock beside the entrance to the main room. She painted the walls lavender and threw lavender translucent draperies over the windows, which seemed to etherize the light, make it thin, and perfume the air with cool colour.
It was not her home in the same way her body was not her own. She merely lived in them. She watched herself move among the pretty things. She didn’t believe that she was the proper woman to have such a good career job, or to leave a husband or to entertain a lover. It horrified her.
She would not see Med again, of course, and one afternoon in the cafeteria she told him why. She was not created for a minor adventure. Their interview was interrupted by a young man whose curious declaration moved her unreasonably.
Breavman thought about her all the time but he experienced no lust for her. This was new. He thought about her presence with no longing. She was alive, her beauty existed, she was pulling on her gloves or pushing back her hair or staring at a movie with her huge eyes. He did not want to tear down the theatre in his fantasy and rescue her from the dark fiction. She was there. She was in the city, or some city, some train, some castle or office. He knew their bodies would move together. That was the least of it.
He didn’t think of himself as a lover. He knew they would lie mouth to mouth, happier, safer, wilder than ever before. One of the comforts of her merely being was that he need make no plans.
Once or twice he told himself that he ought to find her, ask people. It wasn’t necessary. He was willing to enter into homage whether he saw her again or not. Like a Wordsworthian hero, he did not wish her his.
He didn’t even remember her face too perfectly. He hadn’t studied it closely. He had lowered his head and dug his pen into napkin poems. She was what he expected, was always expecting. It was like coming home at night after a tedious extended journey. You stand a minute in the vestibule. No light is switched on. He didn’t have to explore her features. He could walk blindfolded into praise of her, once the first open armourless glance guaranteed her beauty.
It was the very last time Breavman let go the past and hard promises which he could barely articulate. He did no writing. He suspended himself in the present. He read an architectural survey of New York City and was surprised at his capacity for concentration and interest. He listened to lectures without thinking about the professor’s ambition. He built a kite. He strolled through Riverside Park without coveting the solitary nurses or growing the destinies of children in toy racers. The trees were fine as they were, losing their leaves, both Latin and common names unknown. There wasn’t much terror in the old women in black coats and lisle stockings sitting on the benches of upper Broadway, or the mutilated vendors of pencils and plastic cups. He had never been so calm.
He spent many evenings in the Music Room of World Student House. Thick blue carpet, wood panelling, dark heavy furniture, and a sign commanding quiet. The record collection was only adequate but it was all discovery for him. He had never really listened to music before. It had been a backdrop for poems and talk.
Now he listened to other men. How they spoke! It made his own voice small and put his body back into the multitudes of the world. No images formed while he listened, nothing he could steal for his page. It was their landscape where he sat guest.
He was following the flute in a Schubert quartet. It climbed and returned and ascended again, launched and received by low powerful strings. Shell opened the door, stepped into the room, turned to the door to give her attention to closing it softly. She quickly crossed the silent carpet and sat in
