Snopes: The Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion

she did, with the eyes that were not blue or gray either but hyacinthine, the two of us standing there in the middle of that quiet block in full view of at least twenty discreet window-shades; looking at me even while she said, breathed, again:

“No. No.”

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s walk again,” and she did so, docile enough. “She knows you came to meet me this afternoon because of course she gave you my telephone message.—All right,” I said. “I’ll come to your house in the morning then, after you’ve left for school. But it’s all right; you dont need to tell her. You dont need to tell her anything—say anything—” Not even No No again, since she had said nothing else since I saw her and was still saying it even in the way she walked and said nothing. Because now I knew why the clothes, the scent, the makeup which belonged on her no more than the hat did. It was desperation, not to defend the ingratitude but at least to palliate the rudeness of it: the mother who said Certainly, meet him by all means. Tell him I am quite competent to plan my daughter’s education, and we’ll both thank him to keep his nose out of it; the poor desperate child herself covering, trying to hide the baseness of the one and the shame of the other behind the placentae of worms and the urine and vomit of cats and cancerous whales. “I’ll come tomorrow morning, after you’ve gone to school,” I said. “I know. I know. But it’s got too important now for either of us to stop.”

So the next morning: who—I—had thought yesterday to have seen the last of lurking. But I had to be sure. And there was Ratliff.

“What?” he said. “You’re going to see Eula because Eula wont let her leave Jefferson to go to school? You’re wrong.”

“All right,” I said. “I’m wrong. I dont want to do it either. I’m not that brave—offering to tell anybody, let alone a woman, how to raise her child. But somebody’s got to. She’s got to get away from here. Away for good from all the very air that ever heard or felt breathed the name of Snopes—”

“But wait, I tell you! Wait!” he said. “Because you’re wrong—” p height='0em' width='1em' align='justify'>But I couldn’t wait. Anyway, I didn’t. I mean, I just deferred, marked time until at least nine oclock. Because even on a hot Mississippi May morning, when people begin to get up more or less with the sun, not so much in self-defense as to balance off as much as possible of the day against the hours between noon and four, a housewife would demand a little time to prepare (her house and herself or perhaps most of all and simply, her soul) for a male caller not only uninvited but already unwelome.

But she was prepared, self, house and soul too; if her soul was ever in her life unready for anything that just wore pants or maybe if any woman’s soul ever needed pre-readying and pre-arming against anything in pants just named Gavin Stevens, passing through the little rented (still looking rented even though the owner or somebody had painted it) gate up the short rented walk toward the little rented veranda and onto it, my hand already lifted to knock before I saw her through the screen, standing there quite still in the little hallway watching me.

“Good morning,” she said. “Come in,” and now with no screen between us still watching me. No: just looking at me, not brazenly, not with welcome, not with anything. Then she turned, the hair, where all the other women in Jefferson, even Maggie, had bobbed theirs now, still one heavy careless yellow bun at the back of her head, the dress which was not a morning gown nor a hostess gown nor even a house dress but just a simple cotton dress that was simply a dress and which, although she was thirty-five now—yes: thirty-six now by Ratliff’s counting from that splendid fall like that one when she first crossed the Square that day sixteen years ago, appeared not so much as snatching in desperate haste to hide them but rather to spring in suppliance and adulation to the moving limbs, the very flowing of the fabric’s laving folds crying Evoe! Evoe!

Oh yes, it was a sitting room, exactly like the hall and both of them exactly like something else I had seen somewhere but didn’t have time to remember. Because she said, “Will you have some coffee?” and I saw that too: the service (not silver but the stuff the advertisements dont tell you is better than silver but simply newer. New: implying that silver is quite all right and even proper for people still thrall to gaslight and the horse-and-buggy) on a low table, with two chairs already drawn up and I thought I have lost even if she had met me wearing a barrel or a feed sack. Then I thought So it really is serious, since this—the coffee, the low table, the two intimate chairs was an assault not on the glands nor even just the stomach but on the civilized soul or at least the soul which believes it thirsts to be civilised.

“Thank you,” I said and waited and then sat too. “Only, do you mind if I wonder why? We dont need an armistice, since I have already been disarmed.”

“You came to fight then,” she said, pouring.

“How can I without a weapon?” I said, watching: the bent head with the careless, almost untidy bun of hair, the arm, the hand which could have rocked a warrior-hero’s cradle or even caught up its father’s fallen sword, pouring the trivial (it would probably not even be very good coffee) fluid from the trivial spurious synthetic urn—this, in that room, that house; and suddenly I knew where I had seen the room and hallway before. In a photograph, the from say Town and Country labelled American Interior, reproduced in color in a wholesale furniture catalogue, with the added legend: This is neither a Copy nor a Reproduction. It is our own Model scaled to your individual Requirements. “Thank you,” I said. “No cream. Just sugar.—Only it doesn’t look like you.”

“What?” she said.

“This room. Your house.” And that was why I didn’t even believe at first that I had heard her.

“It wasn’t me. It was my husband.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“My husband chose this furniture.”

“Flem?” I said, cried. “Flem Snopes?”—and she looking at me now, not startled, amazed: not anything or if anything, just waiting for my uproar to reach its end: nor was it only from McCarron that Linda got the eyes, but only the hair from him. “Flem Snopes!” I said. “Flem Snopes!”

“Yes. We went to Memphis. He knew exactly what he wanted. No, that’s wrong. He didn’t know yet. He only knew he wanted, had to have. Or does that make any sense to you?”

“Yes,” I said. “Terribly. You went to Memphis.”

“Yes,” she said. “That was why: to find somebody who could tell him what he had to have. He already knew which store he was going to. The first thing he said was, ‘When a man dont intend to buy anything from you, how much do you charge him just to talk?’ Because he was not trading now, you see. When you’re on a trade, for land or stock or whatever it is, both of you may trade or both of you may not, it all depends; you dont have to buy it or sell it; when you stop trading and part, neither of you may be any different from when you began. But not this time. This was something he had to have and knew he had to have: he just didn’t know what it was and so he would not only have to depend on the man who owned it to tell him what he wanted, he would even have to depend on the man