“Will you come with me?”
“All right.”
“It’s almost dark.”
They left the room softly. Breavman closed the door carefully. They exchanged their names in whispers and laughed when they remembered that they could talk out loud.
They walked back and forth on the cement expanse that stretches in front of Grant’s Tomb. There is a certain formality about that area; at night it could be the private garden of an illustrious friend. They went in step over the large squares.
“The Grants are excellent hosts,” said Shell.
“They retire very early of an evening,” said Breavman.
“Wouldn’t you say their house is a wee bit pretentious?” said Shell.
“That’s generous. The entrance hall looks like a bloody mausoleum!” said Breavman. “And I hear he drinks.”
“So does she.”
They joined hands and ran down the hill. Crisp leaves splintered under their feet and they looked for drifts of them to trample down. Then they watched the traffic speed on the driveway below, the lights of countless cars. On the Hudson there were other lights, the necklace of the George Washington bridge, the slow-moving barges and the Alcoa sign across the water. The air was clear, the stars big. They stood close and inherited everything.
“I must go now.”
“Stay up the night with me! We’ll go to the fish market. There are great noble monsters packed in ice. There are turtles, live ones, for famous restaurants. We’ll rescue one and write messages on his shell and put him in the sea, Shell, sea-shell. Or we’ll go to the vegetable market. They’ve got red-net bags full of onions that look like huge pearls. Or we’ll go down to Forty-second Street and see ten movies and buy a mimeographed bulletin of jobs we can get in Pakistan —”
“I work tomorrow.”
“Which has nothing to do with it.”
“But I’d better go now.”
“I know this is unheard of in America, but I’ll walk you home.”
“I live on Twenty-third Street.”
“Exactly what I’d hoped. It’s over a hundred blocks.”
Shell took his arm, he brought his elbow close against her hand, and they were both part of a single motion, a sort of gentle Siamese beast that could cover ten thousand blocks. She took her arm away after a little while and he felt empty.
“Is there something wrong?”
“I’m tired, I guess. There’s a cab.”
“Talk to me a second before we get into a car.”
She thought it was too difficult to explain. He would consider her a perfect fool of a possessive female if she told him. She didn’t want to walk that close to anyone casually. And was the man supposed to declare himself after knowing her for half an evening? And she didn’t even know her own desires; he was a stranger. Of one thing only she was certain. She could not expend herself in the casual. “I’m married,” was all she said.
He studied her face. It was a temptation not to connect her loveliness with prosaic human problems. All her expressions were so beautiful, what did it matter what provoked them? Weren’t her lips perfect when they trembled? Then he remembered the pain he had sensed in her when she was sitting before the window. He shook his head and answered her.
“No, no, I don’t think you are.”
He hailed a taxi and before he could touch the handle of the door the cabbie leaned over and pushed it open. Times Square was a sudden invasion of light. Blue veins showed through the skin of their faces and hands and the bald head of the driver. They welcomed the comparative darkness of Seventh Avenue. They weren’t close enough yet to enjoy ugliness.
He told the cab to wait and took her to the elevator.
“I won’t ask you up,” Shell said without coyness.
“I know. We have time.”
“Thank you for saying that. I loved our walk.”
He dismissed the taxi and walked the hundred blocks himself. Trying not to step on cracks was the extent of any ordeal he entertained. He had retired into comfort, which is doing what you know you can do.
Shell got ready for bed quickly. When she was lying in the dark she suddenly realized that she hadn’t brushed her hair.
11
Breavman always envied the old artists who had great and accepted ideas to serve. Then the colour of gold could be laid on and glory written down. The death of a god in scarlet and glowing leaf is very different from the collapse of a drunkard in a blue café, no matter what underground literature might profess.
He never described himself as a poet or his work as poetry. The fact that the lines do not come to the edge of the page is no guarantee. Poetry is a verdict, not an occupation. He hated to argue about the techniques of verse. The poem is a dirty, bloody, burning thing that has to be grabbed first with bare hands. Once the fire celebrated Light, the dirt Humility, the blood Sacrifice. Now the poets are professional fire-eaters, freelancing at any carnival. The fire goes down easily and honours no one in particular.
Once, for a while, he seemed to serve something other than himself. Those were the only poems he ever wrote. They were for Shell. He wanted to give her back her body.
Beneath my hands
your small breasts
are the upturned bellies
of breathing fallen sparrows.
Or was it really for her that he worked? It made it easier for him if she liked her body. The bed was more peaceful. They didn’t begin as poems at all, but propaganda. The verdict was poetry. If she continued to believe her flesh an indifferent enemy then she would not let him look at her as he wanted.
He would fold the sheet away from her to watch her while she slept. There was nothing in the room but her uncovered flesh. He didn’t have to compare it with anything. To kneel beside her and run his fingers on her lips, follow every shape, was to annihilate sunsets he couldn’t touch. Ambition, demands of excellence were happily lost
