Snopes: The Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion

late at night to see in the window. Or maybe—” Because she was already up and probably for a moment I couldn’t have moved, just watching as she went to the window and had already begun to pull down the shade.

“Here?” I said again, like a parrot. “Here? In here?” Now she was looking at me over her shoulder. That’s right. She didn’t even turn: just her head, her face to look back at me across her shoulder, her hands still drawing the shade down across the window in little final tucking tugs against the sill. No: not again. She never had looked at me but that once as she entered. She simply confronted me across her shoulder with that blue envelopment like the sea, not questioning nor waiting, as the sea itself doesn’t need to question or wait but simply to be the sea. “Oh,” I said. “And be quick, hurry too maybe since you haven’t got much time, since you really ought to be in bed this minute with your husband, or is this one of Manfred’s nights?” and she still watching me, though turned now, standing, perhaps leaning a little against the window-sill behind her, watching me quite grave, just a little curious. “But of course,” I said. “Naturally it’s one of Manfred’s nights since it’s Manfred you’re saving: not Flem.—No, wait,” I said. “Maybe I’m wrong; maybe it is both of them; maybe they both sent you: both of them that scared, that desperate; their mutual crisis and fear so critical as to justify even this last desperate gambit of your woman’s— their mutual woman’s—all?” And still she just watched me: the calm unfathomable serenely waiting blue, waiting not on me but simply on time. “I didn’t mean that,” I said. “You know I didn’t. I know it’s Manfred. And I know he didn’t send you. Least of all, he.” Now I could get up. “Say you forgive me first,” I said.

“All right,” she said. Then I went and opened the door. “Good night,” I said.

“You mean you dont want to?” she said.

Now I could laugh too.

“I thought that was what you wanted,” she said. And now she was looking at me. “What did you do it for?” Oh yes, I could laugh, with the door open in my hand and the cold dark leaning into the room like an invisible cloud and if Grover Winbush were anywhere on the Square now (which he would not be in this cold since he was not a fool about everything) he would not need merely to see all the lights. Oh yes, she was looking at me now.- the sea which in a moment more would destroy me, not with any deliberate and calculated sentient wave but simply because I stood there in its insentient way. No: that was wrong too. Because she began to move.

“Shut the door,” she said. “It’s cold”—walking toward me, not fast. “Was that what you thought I came here for? Because of Manfred?”

“Didn’t you?” I said.

“Maybe I did.” She came toward me, not fast. “Maybe at first. But that doesn’t matter. I mean, to Manfred. I mean that brass. He doesn’t mind it. He likes it. He’s enjoying himself. Shut the door before it gets so cold.” I shut it and turned quickly, stepping back a little.

“Dont touch me,” I said.

“All right,” she said. “Because you cant.… ” Because even she stopped then; even the insentient sea compassionate too but then I could bear that too; I could even say it for her:

“Manfred wouldn’t really mind because just I cant hurt him, harm him, do any harm; not Manfred, not just me, no matter what I do. That he would really just as soon resign as not and the only reason he doesn’t is just to show me I cant make him. All right. Agreed. Then why dont you go home? What do you want here?”

“Because you are unhappy,” she said. “I dont like unhappy people. They’re a nuisance. Especially when it can —”

“Yes,” I said, cried, “this easy, at no more cost than this. When nobody will even miss it, least of all Manfred since we both agree that Gavin Stevens cant possibly hurt Manfred de Spain even by cuckolding him on his mistress. So you came just from compassion, pity: not even from honest fear or even just decent respect. Just compassion. Just pity.” Then I saw all of it. “Not just to prove to me that having what I think I want wont make me happy, but to show me that what I thought I wanted is not even worth being unhappy over. Does it mean that little to you? I dont mean with Flem: even with Manfred?” I said, cried: “Dont tell me next that this is why Manfred sent you: to abate a nuisance!”

But she just stood there looking at me with that blue serene terrible envelopment. “You spend too much time expecting,” she said. “Dont expect. You just are, and you need, and you must, and so you do. That’s all. Dont waste time expecting,” moving again toward me where I was trapped not just by the door but by the corner of the desk too.

“Dont touch me!” I said. “So if I had only had sense enough to have stopped expecting, or better still, never expected at all, never hoped at all, dreamed at all; if I had just had sense enough to say I am, I want, I will and so here goes—If I had just done that, it might have been me instead of Manfred? But dont you see? Cant you see? I wouldn’t have been me then?” No: she wasn’t even listening: just looking at me: the unbearable and unfathomable blue, speculative and serene.

“Maybe it’s because you’re a gentleman and I never knew one before.”

“So is Manfred!” I said. “And that other one, that first one—your child’s father—” the only other one I thought because, yes, oh yes, I knew now: Snopes himself was impotent. I even said it: “The only other one besides Manfred. Back there in Frenchman’s Bend, that Ratliff told me about, that fought off the five or six men who tried to ambush you in the buggy that night, fought them off with the buggy whip and one hand because he had to use the other to shield you with, whiped them all off even with one arm broken where I couldn’t even finish the fight I started myself with just one opponent?” And still not moving: just standing there facing me so that what I smelled was not even just woman but that terrible, that drowning envelopment. “Both alike,” I said. “But not like me. All three gentlemen but only two were men.”

“Lock the door,” she said. “I’ve already drawn the shade. Stop being afraid of things,” she said. “Why are you afraid?”

“No,” I said, cried. I might—would—have struck her with my outflung arm, but there was room: out of the trap now and even around her until I could reach the door knob and open it. Oh yes, I knew now. “I might buy Manfred from you but I wont buy Flem,” I said. “Because it is Flem, isn’t it? Isn’t it?” But there was only the blue envelopment and the fading Wagner, trumpet and storm and rich brasses diminuendo toward the fading arm and hand and the rainbow-fading ring. “You told me not to expect: why dont you try it yourself? We’ve all bought Snopeses here, whether we wanted to or not; you of all people should certainly know that. I dont know why we bought them. I mean, why we had to: what coin and when and where we so recklessly and improvidently spent that we had to have Snopeses too. But we do. But nothing can hurt you if you refuse it, not even a brass-stealing Snopes. And nothing is of value that costs nothing so maybe you will value this refusal at what I value it cost me.” She moved then and only then did I notice that she had evidently brought nothing with her: none of the scatter of gloves, bags, veils, this and that which women bring into a room with them so that the first minute of their quitting it is a problem resembling scavenging. “Dont worry about your husband,” I said. “Just say I represent Jefferson and so Flem Snopes is my burden too. You see, the least I can do is to match you: to value him as highly as your coming here proves you do. Good night.”