Other Voices, Other Rooms Read online

  “In the spring we sailed for Florida; Dolores had never been before to the States, and we went to New York, which she did not like, and Philadelphia, which she thought equally tiresome. At last, in New Orleans, where we took a charming patio apartment, she was happy, as indeed was I. And during our peregrinations the dream book disappeared: where she could have hidden it I do not know, for I searched every possible place: it was in a way a relief really not to find it. Then one afternoon, walking home from the market and carrying, if you please, a fine live hen, I saw her talking with a man there in the shade by the cathedral; there was an intimacy in their attitude which made me still inside: this I knew was no simple tourist asking direction, and later, when I told her what I’d seen, she said, oh, very casually, yes, it was a friend, someone she’d met in a café, a prizefighter: would I care to meet him?

  “Now after an injury, physical, spiritual, whatever, one always believes had one obeyed a premonition (there is usually in such instances an imagined premonition) nothing would have happened; still, had I had absolute foreknowledge, I should have gone right ahead, for in every lifetime there occur situations when one is no more than a thread in a design willfully woven by . . . who should I say? God?

  “It was one Sunday that they came, the prizefighter, Pepe Alvarez, and Ed Sansom, his manager. A mercilessly hot day, as I recall, and we sat in the patio with fans and cold drinks: you could scarcely select a group with less in common than we four; had it not been for Sansom, who was something of a buffoon and therefore distracting, it would all have been rather too tense, for one couldn’t ignore the not very discreet interplay between Dolores and the young Mexican: they were lovers, even slow-witted Amy could’ve perceived this, and I was not surprised: Pepe was so extraordinary: his face was alive, yet dreamlike, brutal, yet boyish, foreign but familiar (as something from childhood is familiar), both shy and aggressive, both sleeping and awake. But when I say he and Dolores were lovers, perhaps I exaggerate: lovers implies, to some extent, reciprocity, and Dolores, as became apparent, could never love anyone, so caught was she within a trance; then, too, other than that they performed a pleasurable function, she had no personal feeling or respect for men or the masculine personality . . . that personality which, despite legend, can only be most sensitively appreciated by its own kind. As it was getting dark in the patio, I looked at Pepe: his Indian skin seemed to hold all the light left in the air, his flat animal-shrewd eyes, bright as though with tears, regarded Dolores exclusively; and suddenly, with a mild shock, I realized it was not she of whom I was jealous, but him.

  “Afterwards, and though at first I was careful not to show the quality of my feelings, Dolores understood intuitively what had happened: ‘Strange how long it takes us to discover ourselves; I’ve known since first I saw you,’ she said, adding, ‘I do not think, though, that he is the one for you; I’ve known too many Pepes: love him if you will, it will come to nothing.’ The brain may take advice, but not the heart, and love, having no geography, knows no boundaries: weight and sink it deep, no matter, it will rise and find the surface: and why not? any love is natural and beautiful that lies within a person’s nature; only hypocrites would hold a man responsible for what he loves, emotional illiterates and those of righteous envy, who, in their agitated concern, mistake so frequently the arrow pointing to heaven for the one that leads to hell.

  “It was different, this love of mine for Pepe, more intense than anything I felt for Dolores, and lonelier. But we are alone, darling child, terribly, isolated each from the other; so fierce is the world’s ridicule we cannot speak or show our tenderness; for us, death is stronger than life, it pulls like a wind through the dark, all our cries burlesqued in joyless laughter; and with the garbage of loneliness stuffed down us until our guts burst bleeding green, we go screaming round the world, dying in our rented rooms, nightmare hotels, eternal homes of the transient heart. There were moments, wonderful moments, when I thought I was free, that I could forget him and that sleepy violent face, but then he would not let me, no, he was always there, sitting in the patio, or listening to her play the guitar, laughing, talking, near but remote, always there, as I was in Dolores’ dreams. I could not endure to see him suffer; it was an agony to watch him fight, prancing quick and cruel, see him hit, the glare, the blood and the blueness. I gave him money, bought him cream-colored hats, gold bracelets (which he adored, and wore like a woman), shoes in bright Negro colors, candy silk shirts, and I gave all these things to Ed Sansom, too: how they despised me, both of them, but not enough to refuse a gift, oh never. And Dolores continued with Pepe in her queer compulsive way, not really interested one way or another, not caring whether he stayed or went; like some brainless plant, she lived (existed) beyond her own control in that reckless book of dreams. She could not help me. What we most want is only to be held . . . and told . . . that everything (everything is a funny thing, is baby milk and Papa’s eyes, is roaring logs on a cold morning, is hoot-owls and the boy who makes you cry after school, is Mama’s long hair, is being afraid and twisted faces on the bedroom wall) . . . everything is going to be all right.

  “One night Pepe came to the house very drunk, and proceeded with the boldest abandon to a) beat Dolores with his belt, b) piss on the rug and on my paintings, c) call me horrible hurting names, d) break my nose, e and f and otherwise. And I walked in the streets that night, and along the docks, and talked aloud pleading with myself to go away, be alone again, I said, as if I were not alone, rent another room in another life. I sat in Jackson Square; except for the tolling of train bells, it was quiet and all the Cabildo was like a haunted palace; there was a blond misty boy sitting beside me, and he looked at me, and I at him, and we were not strangers: our hands moved towards each other to embrace. I never heard his voice, for we did not speak; it is a shame, I should so like the memory of it. Loneliness, like fever, thrives on night, but there with him light broke, breaking in the trees like birdsong, and when sunrise came, he loosened his fingers from mine, and walked away, that misty boy, my friend.

  “Always now we were together, Dolores, Pepe, Ed and I, Ed and his jokes, we other three and our silences. Grotesque quadruplets (born of what fantastic parent?) we fed upon one another, as cancer feeds upon itself, and yet, will you believe this? there are a medley of moments I remember with the kind of nostalgia reserved usually for sweeter things: Pepe (I see) is lighting a match with his thumbnail, is trying with a bare hand to snatch a goldfish from the fountain, we are at a picture-show eating popcorn from the same bag, he has fallen asleep and leans against my shoulder, he is laughing because I wince at a boxing-cut on his lip, I hear him whistling on the stairs, I hear him mounting toward me and his footsteps are not so loud as my heart. Days, fast fading as snowflakes, flurry into autumn, fall all around like November leaves, the sky, cold red with winter, frightens with the light it sheds: I sleep all day, the shutters closed, the covers drawn above my eyes. Now it is Mardi Gras, and we are going to a ball; everyone has chosen his costume but me: Ed is a Franciscan monk (gnawing a cigar), Pepe is a bandit and Dolores a ballerina; but I cannot think what to wear and this becomes a dilemma of disproportionate importance. Dolores appears the night of the ball with a tremendous pink box: transformed, I am a Countess and my king is Louis XVI; I have silver hair and satin slippers, a green mask, am wrapped in silk pistachio and pink: at first, before the mirror, this horrifies me, then pleases to rapture, for I am very beautiful, and later, when the waltz begins, Pepe, who does not know, begs a dance, and I, oh sly Cinderella, smile beneath my mask, thinking: Ah, if I were really me! Toad into prince, tin into gold; fly, feathered serpent, the hour grows old: so ends a part of my saga.

  “Another spring, and they were gone; it was April, the sixth of that rainy lilac April, just two days after our happy trip to Pontchartrain . . . where the picture was taken, and where, in symbolic dark, we’d drifted through the tunnel of love. All right, listen: late that afternoon when I woke up rain was at the window and on the roof: a k
ind of silence, if I may say, was walking through the house, and, like most silence, it was not silent at all: it rapped on the doors, echoed in the clocks, creaked on the stairs, leaned forward to peer into my face and explode. Below a radio talked and sang, yet I knew no one heard it: she was gone, and Pepe with her.

  “Her room was overturned; as I searched through the wreckage, a guitar string broke, its twang vibrating every nerve. I hurried to the top of the stairs, my mouth open but no sound coming out: all the control centers of my mind were numb; the air undulated, and the floor expanded like an accordion. Someone was coming towards me. I felt them like a pressure climbing the steps; unrecognized, they seemed to walk straight into my eyes. First I thought it was Dolores, then Ed, then Pepe. Whoever it was, they shook me, pleading and swearing: that bastard, they said, gone, sonofabitchinbastard, gone, with the car, all the clothes and money, gone, forever and ever and ever. But who was it? I couldn’t see: a blinding Jesus-like glow burned around him: Pepe, is it you? Ed? Dolores? I pushed myself free, ran back into the bedroom and shut the door: it was no use: the doorknob began to turn, and suddenly everything was crazy plain: Dolores had at last caught me in her dreams.

  “So I found a gun I kept wrapped in an old sock. The rain had stopped. The windows were open, and the room was cool and sweet with lilac. Downstairs the radio was singing, and in my ears there was the roar a seashell makes. The door opened; I fired once, and again, and Jesus dissolved, became nothing but Ed in a dirty linen suit; doubled over, he stumbled toward the stairs, and rolled down the steps loose like a ragdoll.

  “For two days he lay crumpled on the couch, bleeding all over himself, moaning and shouting and running a rosary through his fingers. He called for you, and his mother, and the Lord. There was nothing I could do. And then Amy came from the Landing. She was very good. She found a doctor, a little Negro dwarf not too particular. Abruptly the weather was like July, but those weeks were the winter of our lives; the veins froze and cracked with coldness, and in the sky the sun was like a lump of ice. That little doctor, waddling around on his six-inch legs, laughed and laughed and kept the radio playing comedy programs. Every day I woke up saying, ‘If I die . . . ,’ not realizing how dead I was already, and only a memory tagging along with Dolores and Pepe . . . wherever they were: I grieved for Pepe, not because I’d lost him (yes, that a little), but because in the end I knew Dolores would find him, too: it is easy to escape daylight, but night is inevitable, and dreams are the giant cage.

  “To be brief: Ed and Amy were married in New Orleans. It was, you see, her fantasy come true; she was at last what she’d always wanted to be, a nurse . . . with a more or less permanent position. Then we all came back to the Landing; Amy’s idea, and the only solution, for he would never be well again. I suppose we shall go on together until the house sinks, until the garden grows up and weeds hide us in their depth.”

  Randolph, pushing aside his drawing board, slumped over on the desk; dusk had come while he talked, and swept the room bluely; outside, sparrows were calling to roost, their nightfall chatter punctuated by a solemn frog. Pretty soon Zoo would be ringing the supper bell. None of this was apparent to Joel; he was not even aware of any stiffness from having sat so long in one position: it was as though Randolph’s voice continued saying in his head things that were real enough, but not necessary to believe. He was confused because the story had been like a movie with neither plot nor motive: had Randolph really shot his father? And, most important of all, where was the ending? What had happened to Dolores and old awful Pepe Alvarez? That is what he wanted to know, and that is what he asked.

  “If I knew . . .” said Randolph, pausing, holding a match to a candle; the sudden light flattered his face, made the pink hairless skin more impeccably young. “But, my dear, so few things are fulfilled: what are most lives but a series of incompleted episodes? ‘We work in the dark, we do what we can, we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passionis our task . . .’ It is wanting to know the end that makes us believe in God, or witchcraft, believe, at least, in something.”

  Joel still wanted to know: “Didn’t you ever even try to find out where they got off to?”

  “Over there,” said Randolph with a tired smile, “is a fivepound volume listing every town and hamlet on the globe; it is what I believe in, this almanac: day by day I’ve gone through it writing Pepe always in care of the postmaster; just notes, nothing but my name and what we will for convenience call address. Oh, I know that I shall never have an answer. But it gives me something to believe in. And that is peace.”

  Downstairs the supper bell sounded. Randolph did not move. His face seemed to contract with a look of sad guilt. “I’ve been very weak this afternoon, very wicked,” he said, rising for Joel to accept an invitation of open arms. “Do forgive me, darling Joel.” Then, in a voice as urgent as the bell, he added: “And please, tell me what I want to hear.”

  Joel remembered. “Everything,” he said gently, “everything is going to be all right.”

  NINE

  Jesus Fever was a sick man. For over a week he’d been unable to hold anything on his stomach. His skin was parched like an old leaf, and his eyes, milky with film, saw strange things: Randolph’s father, he swore, was lurking in a corner of the cabin; all the funny papers and Coca-Cola pictures plastering the walls were, he complained, crooked and aggravating; a noise like the crack of a whip snapped in his head; a bouquet of sunflowers Joel had brought became suddenly a flock of canaries crazily singing and circling the room; he was worried to frenzy by a stranger staring at him from a gloomy little mirror hung above the mantel. Little Sunshine, arriving to give what aid he could, covered the mirror with a flour sack in order that, as he explained, Jesus Fever’s soul could not be trapped there; he hung a charm around the old man’s neck, sprinkled magic ginger powder in the air, and disappeared before moonrise. “Zoo, child,” said Jesus, “how come you let me freeze thisaway? Fix the fire, child, it’s colder’n a well-bottom.”

  Zoo took a reasoning tone. “Papadaddy, now honey, we all us gonna melt . . . so hot Mister Randolph done change clothes three times today.” But Jesus would not listen, and asked for a quilt to wrap around his legs, a wool sock to stretch over his head: the whole house, he argued, was rattling with wind: why, look, there was old Mr Skully, his fine red beard turned white with frost. So Zoo went out in the dark of the yard to find an armful of kindling.

  Joel, left in charge, started when Jesus beckoned to him secretively. The old man was sitting in a rattan rocker, a worn scrapquilt of velvet flowers covering his knees. He could not stay in bed: a horizontal position interfered with his breathing. “Rock my rocker, son,” he said in a reedy voice, “it’s kinda restful like . . . makes me feel I’m ridin in a wagon an got a long way to go.” A kerosene lamp burned in the room. The chair, shadowed on the wall, swished a gentle drowsy sound. “Can’t you feel the cold, son?”

  “Mama was always cold, too,” said Joel, prickly chill tingling his spine. Don’t die, he thought, and as he pushed the chair back and forth the runners whispered, don’t die, don’t die. For if Jesus Fever died, then Zoo would go away, and there would be no one but Amy, Randolph, his father. It was not so much these three, however, but the Landing, and the fragile hush of living under a glass bell. Maybe Randolph would take him away: there had been some mention of a trip. And he’d written Ellen again, surely something would come of that.

  “Papadaddy,” said Zoo, lugging in a bundle of wood, “you is mighty thoughtless makin me hunt round out there in the dark where theys all kinda wild creatures crawlin just hungry for a nip outa tasty me. They is a wildcat smell on the air, they is, I declare. And who knows but what Keg’s done runaway from the chain gang? Joel, honey, latch the door.”

  When the fire commenced to burn Jesus asked that his chair be brought nearer the hearth. “I used to could play the fiddle,” he said, wistfully watching the flames slide upward “. . . rheumatism stole all the music outa my fingers.” H
e shook his head, and sucked his gums, and spit into the fire. “Don’t fuss with me, child,” he complained as Zoo tried to adjust the quilt. “Tell you now, bring me my sword.” She returned from the other room bearing a beautiful sword with a silver handle: across the blade there was inscribed, Unsheath Me Not Without Reason—Sheath Me Not Without Honor. “Mister Randolph’s granddaddy gimme this, that be more ’n sixty year ago.” In the past days he’d one by one called forth all his treasures: a dusty cracked violin, his derby with the feather, a Mickey Mouse watch, his high-button orange shoes, three little monkeys who neither saw, heard nor spoke evil, these and other precious things lay strewn around the cabin, for he would not allow them to be put again out of sight.

  Zoo presented Joel with a handful of pecans and gave him a pair of pliers to crack them with. “I’m not hungry,” he said and rested his head in her lap. It was not a comfortable lap like Ellen’s. You could feel too precisely tensed muscle and sharp bone. But she played her fingers through his hair, and that was sweet. “Zoo,” he said softly, not wanting the old man to hear, “Zoo, he’s going to die, isn’t he?”

  “I spec so,” she said, and there was little feeling in her voice.

  “And then will you go away?”

  “I reckon.”

  At this Joel straightened and looked at her angrily. “But why, Zoo?” he demanded. “Tell me why!”

  “Hush, child, speak quiet.” A slow moment followed in which she twisted her neckerchief, felt for and found the charm Little Sunshine had given her. “Ain’t gonna hold good forever,” she said, tapping the charm. “Someday he gonna come back here lookin for to slice me up. I knows it good as anythin. I seen it in my dreams, and the floor don’t creak but what my heart stops. Every time a dog howls I think, that’s him, that’s him on his way, on accounta dogs just naturally hate that Keg and start to holler time they smell him.”