Other Voices, Other Rooms Read online

  He crouched behind a door; through the hinged slit he could see into the hall where the light crawled like a burning centipede. It did not matter now if Randolph found him, he would welcome it. Still something kept him from calling out. The squshing steps moved toward the parlor threshold, and he heard, “Little boy, little boy,” a whimper of despair.

  Miss Wisteria stood so near he could smell the rancid wetness of her shriveled silk; her curls had uncoiled, the little crown had slipped awry, her yellow sash was fading its color on the floor. “Little boy,” she said, swerving her flashlight over the bent, broken walls where her midget image mingled with the shadows of things in flight. “Little boy,” she said, the resignation of her voice intensifying its pathos. But he dared not show himself, for what she wanted he could not give: his love was in the earth, shattered and still, dried flowers where eyes should be, and moss upon the lips, his love was faraway feeding on the rain, lilies frothing from its ruin. Withdrawing, she went up the stairs, and Joel, who listened to her footfalls overhead as she in her need of him searched the jungle of rooms, felt for himself ferocious contempt: what was his terror compared with Miss Wisteria’s? He owned a room, he had a bed, any minute now he would run from here, go to them. But for Miss Wisteria, weeping because little boys must grow tall, there would always be this journey through dying rooms until some lonely day she found her hidden one, the smiler with the knife.

  PART THREE

  TWELVE

  He sentenced himself: he was guilty: his own hands set about to expedite the verdict: magnetized, they found a bullet, the one thefted from Sam Radclif (Mr Radclif, forgive me, please, I never meant to steal) and, inserting it in Major Knox’s old Indian pistol (Child, how many times have I told you not to touch that nasty thing?—Mama, don’t scold me now, mama, my bones hurt, I’m on fire— The good die cold, the wicked in flames: the winds of hell are blue with the sweet ether of fever-flowers, horned snake-tongued children dance on lawns that are the surface of the sun, all loot from thievery tied to their tails like cat-cans, tokens of a life in crime) and put the bullet through his head: oh dear, there was nothing but a tickling, oh dear, now what? When lo! he was where he’d never imagined to find himself again: the secret hideaway room in which, on hot New Orleans afternoons, he’d sat watching snow sift through scorched August trees: the run of reindeer hooves came crisply tinkling down the street, and Mr Mystery, elegantly villainous in his black cape, appeared in their wake riding a most beautiful boatlike sleigh: it was made of scented wood, a carved red swan graced the front, and silver bells were strung like beads to make a sail: swinging, billowing-out, what shivering melodies it sang as the sleigh, with Joel aboard and warm in the folds of Mr Mystery’s cape, cut over snowdeep fields and down unlikely hills.

  But all at once his powers to direct adventures in the secret room failed: an ice-wall rose before them, the sleigh raced on to certain doom, that night radios would sadden the nation: Mr Mystery, esteemed magician, and Joel Harrison Knox, beloved by one and all, were killed today in an accident which also claimed the lives of six reindeer who . . . r-r-rip, the ice tore like cellophane, the sleigh slid through into the Landing’s parlor.

  A strange sort of party seemed in progress there. These were among those present: Mr Sansom, Ellen Kendall, Miss Wisteria, Randolph, Idabel, Florabel, Zoo, Little Sunshine, Amy, R. V. Lacey, Sam Radclif, Jesus Fever, a man naked except for boxing-gloves (Pepe Alvarez), Sydney Katz (proprietor of the Morning Star Café in Paradise Chapel), a thick-lipped convict who wore a long razor on a chain around his neck like some sinister crucifix (Keg Brown), Romeo, Sammy Silverstein and three other members of the St. Deval Street Secret Nine. Most were dressed in black, rather formal attire; the pianola was playing Nearer My God to Thee. Not noticing the sleigh, they moved in a leaning black procession around a gladiolagarlanded cedar chest into which each dropped an offering: Idabel her dark glasses, Randolph his almanac, R. V. Lacey the snipped hair from her wart, Jesus Fever his fiddle, Florabel her Kress tweezers, Mr Sansom his tennis balls, Little Sunshine a magic charm, and so on: inside the chest lay Joel himself, all dressed in white, his face powdered and rouged, his goldbrown hair arranged in damp ringlets: Like an angel, they said, more beautiful than Alcibiades, more beautiful, said Randolph, and Idabel wailed: Believe me, I tried to save him, but he wouldn’t move, and snakes are so very quick. Miss Wisteria, fitting her little crown upon his head, leaned so far over she nearly fell into the chest: Listen, she whispered, I’m no fool, I know you’re alive: unless you give me the answer, I shan’t save you, I shan’t say a word: are the dead as lonesome as the living? Whereupon the room commenced to vibrate slightly, then more so, chairs overturned, the curio cabinet spilled its contents, a mirror cracked, the pianola, composing its own doomed jazz, held a haywire jamboree: down went the house, down into the earth, down, down, past Indian tombs, past the deepest root, the coldest stream, down, down, into the furry arms of horned children whose bumblebee eyes withstand forests of flame.

  He knew too well the rhythm of a rocking-chair; aramparump, hour on hour he’d heard one for how long? traveling through space, and the cedar chest became at last confused with its sway: if you fall you fall forever, back and forth together, the ceaseless chair, the cedar chest: he squeezed pillows, gripped the posters of the bed, for on seas of lamplight it rode the rolling rocker’s waves whose rocking was the tolling of a bell-buoy; and who was the pirate inching toward him in the seat? His eyes stung as he tasked them to identify: lace masks confounded, frost glass intervened, now the chair’s passenger was Amy, now Randolph, then Zoo. But Zoo could not be here; she was walking for Washington, her accordion announcing every step of the way. An unrecognized voice quarreled with him, teased, taunted, revealed secrets he’d scarcely made known to himself: shut up, he cried, and wept, trying to silence it, but, of course, the voice belonged to him: “I saw you under the ferris-wheel,” it accused the pirate in the chair; “No,” said the pirate, “I never left here, sweet child, sweet Joel, all night I waited for you sitting on the stairs.”

  Always he was gnawing bitter spoons, or struggling to breathe through scarves soaked in lemon water. Hands coaxed down curtains of slumbering dusk; fingers leanly firm like Zoo’s rambled through his hair, and other fingers, too, these with a touch cooler, more spun than sea spray: Randolph’s voice, in tones still gentler, augmented their soothing traceries.

  One afternoon the rocking-chair became precisely that; scissors seemed to cut round the edges of his mind, and as he peeled away the dead discardings, Randolph, taking shape, shone blessedly near.

  “Randolph,” he said, reaching out to him, “do you hate me?” Smiling, Randolph whispered: “Hate you, baby?” “Because I went away,” said Joel, “went way away and left your sherry on the hall-tree.” Randolph took him in his arms, kissed his forehead, and Joel, pained, grateful, said, “I’m sick and so sick,” and Randolph replied, “Lie back, my darling, lie still.”

  He drifted deep into September; the blissful depths of the bed seemed future enough, every pore absorbed its cool protection. And when he thought of himself he affixed the thought to a second person, another Joel Knox about whom he was interested in the moderate way one would be in a childhood snapshot: what a dumbbell! he would gladly be rid of him, this old Joel, but not quite yet, he somehow needed him still. For long periods each day he studied his face in a hand mirror: a disappointing exercise, on the whole, for nothing he saw concretely affirmed his suspicions of emerging manhood, though about his face there were certain changes: baby-fat had given way to a true shape, the softness of his eyes had hardened: it was a face with a look of innocence but none of its charm, an alarming face, really, too shrewd for a child, too beautiful for a boy. It would be difficult to say how old he was. All that displeased him was the brown straightness of his hair. He wished it were curly gold like Randolph’s.

  He did not know when Randolph slept; he seemed to vacate the rocking-chair only when it was time for Joel to eat or co
mmit some function; and sometimes, waking with the moon watching at the window like a bandit’s eye, he would see Randolph’s asthmatic cigarette still pulsing in the dark: though the house had sunk, he was not alone, another had survived, not a stranger, but one more kind, more good than any had ever been, the friend whose nearness is love. “Randolph,” he said, “were you ever as young as me?” And Randolph said: “I was never so old.” “Randolph,” he said, “do you know something? I’m very happy.” To which his friend made no reply. The reason for this happiness seemed to be simply that he did not feel unhappy; rather, he knew all through him a kind of balance. There was so little to cope with. The mist which for him overhung so much of Randolph’s conversation, even that had lifted, at least it was no longer troubling, for it seemed as though he understood him absolutely. Now in the process of, as it were, discovering someone, most people experience simultaneously an illusion they are discovering themselves: the other’s eyes reflect their real and glorious value. Such a feeling was with Joel, and inestimably so because this was the first time he’d ever known the triumph, false or true, of seeing through to a friend. And he did not want any more to be responsible, he wanted to put himself in the hands of his friend, be, as here in the sickbed, dependent upon him for his very life. Looking in the hand-glass became, consequently, an ordeal: it was as if now only one eye examined for signs of maturity, while the other, gradually of the two the more attentive, gazed inward wishing him always to remain as he was.

  “There is an October chill in the air today,” said Randolph, settling overblown roses in a vase by the bed. “These are the last, I’m afraid, they are quite falling apart, even the bees have lost interest. And here, I’ve brought an autumn specimen, a sycamore leaf.” Another day, and though the air was mild, he built a fire by which they toasted marsh-mallows and sipped tea from cups two hundred years old. Randolph did imitations. He was Charlie Chaplin to a T, Mae West too, and his cruel take-off on Amy made Joel double up on the bed, finally absorbed in laughter for its own sake, and Randolph said ha! ha! he would show him something really funny: “I’ll have to fix up, though,” he said, his eyes quickly alive, and made as if to leave the room; then, releasing the doorknob, he looked back. “But if I do . . . you mustn’t laugh.” And Joel’s answer was a laugh, he couldn’t stop, it was like hiccups. Randolph’s smile ran off his face like melted butter, and when Joel cried, “Go on, you promised,” he sat down, nursing his round pink head between his hands: “Not now,” he said wearily, “some other time.”

  One morning Joel received the first mail he’d ever had at the Landing; it was a picture postcard, and Randolph, appearing with a copy of Macbeth, which they’d planned to read aloud, brought it to him. “It’s from the little girl down the road,” he said, and Joel’s breath caught: long-legged and swaggering, Idabel walked from the wall, rocked in the chair. He’d not directly thought of her since the night of the traveling-show, an omission for which he couldn’t account, but which did not strike him as freakish: she was, after all, one with the others covered over when the house sank, those whose names concerned the old Joel, whose names now in gnarled October freckling leaves spelled on the wind. Still Idabel was back, a ghost, perhaps, but here, and in the room: Idabel the hoodlum out to stone a one-armed barber, and Idabel with roses, Idabel with sword, Idabel who said she sometimes cried: all of autumn was the sycamore leaf and its red the red of her hair and its stem the rusty color of her rough voice and its jagged shape the pattern, the souvenir of her face.

  The card, which showed joyful cottonpickers, was post-marked from Alabama, and it said: “Mrs Collie ½sister an hes the baptis prechur Last Sunday I past the plate at church! papa and F shot henry They put me to life here. why did you Hide? write to IDABEL THOMPKINS.”

  Well, frankly, he didn’t believe her; she’d put herself to life, and it was with Miss Wisteria, not a baptis prechur. He handed the card to Randolph who, in turn, passed it to the fire; for an instant, as Idabel and her cottonpickers crinkled, he would have lost his hands to retrieve them, but Randolph, adjusting gold reading glasses, began: “First witch. When shall we three meet again In thunder, lightning, or in rain?” and he settled down to listen, he fell asleep and woke up with a holler, for he’d climbed up the chimney after Idabel, and there was only smoke where she’d been, sky. “Hush, now, hush,” said Randolph slowly, softly, a voice like dying light, and he was glad for Randolph, calm in the center of his mercy.

  So sometimes he came near to speaking out his love for him; but it was unsafe ever to let anyone guess the extent of your feelings or knowledge: suppose, as he often had, that he were kidnapped; in which case the wisest defense would be not to let the kidnapper know you recognized him as such. If concealment is the single weapon, then a villain is never a villain: one smiles to the very end.

  And even if he spoke to Randolph, to whom would he be confessing love? Faceted as a fly’s eye, being neither man nor woman, and one whose every identity cancelled the other, a grab-bag of disguises, who, what was Randolph? X, an outline in which with crayon you color in the character, the ideal hero: whatever his role, it is pitched by you into existence. Indeed, try to conceive of him alone, unseen, unheard, and he becomes invisible, he is not to be imagined. But such as Randolph justify fantasy, and if a genii should appear, certainly Joel would have asked that these sealed days continue through a century of calendars.

  They ended, though, and at the time it seemed Randolph’s fault. “Very soon we’re going to visit the Cloud Hotel,” he said. “Little Sunshine wants to see us; you are quite well enough, I think: it’s absurd to pretend you’re not.” Urgency underscored his voice, an enthusiasm in which Joel could not altogether believe, for he sensed the plan was motivated by private, no doubt unpleasant reasons, and these, whatever they were, opposed Randolph’s actual desires. And he said: “Let’s stay right here, Randolph, let’s don’t ever go anywhere.” And when the plea was rejected old galling grindful thoughts about Randolph came back. He felt grumpy enough to quarrel; that, of course, was a drawback in being dependent: he could never quarrel with Randolph, for anger seemed, if anything, more unsafe than love: only those who know their own security can afford either. Even so, he was on the point of risking cross words when an outside sound interrupted, and rolled him backward through time: “Why are you staring that way?” said Randolph.

  “It’s Zoo . . . I hear her,” he said: through the evening windows came an accordion refrain. “Really I do.”

  Randolph was annoyed. “If she must be musical, heaven knows I’d prefer she took up the harmonica.”

  “But she’s gone.” And Joel sat up on his knees. “Zoo walked away to Washington . . .”

  “I thought you knew,” said Randolph, fingering the ribbon which marked the pages of Macbeth. “During the worst of it, when you were the most sick, she sat beside you with a fan: can’t you remember at all?”

  So Zoo was back; it was not long before he saw her for himself: at noon the next day she brought his broth; no greetings passed between them, nor smiles, it was as if each felt too much the fatigued embarrassment of anticlimax. Only with her it was still something more: she seemed not to know him, but stood there as if waiting to be introduced. “Randolph told me you couldn’t come back,” he said. “I’m glad he was wrong.”

  In answer there came a sigh so stricken it seemed to have heaved up from the pits of her being. She leaned her forehead on the bed-post, and it was then that with a twinge he realized her neckerchief was missing: exposed, her slanted scar leered like crooked lips, and her neck, divided this way, had lost its giraffe-like grandeur. How small she seemed, cramped, as if some reduction of the spirit had taken double toll and made demands upon the flesh: with that illusion of height was gone the animal grace, arrow-like dignity, defiant emblem of her separate heart.

  “Zoo,” he said, “did you see snow?”

  She looked at him, but her eyes appeared not to make a connection with what they saw; in fact, there was about
them a cross-eyed effect, as though they fixed on a solacing inner vision. “Did I see snow?” she repeated, trying hard, it seemed, to understand. “Did I see snow!” and she broke into a kind of scary giggle, and threw back her head, lips apart, like an open-mouthed child hoping to catch rain. “There ain’t none,” she said, violently shaking her head, her black greased hair waving with a windy rasp like scorched grass. “Hit’s all a lotta foolery, snow and such: that sun! it’s everywhere.”

  “Like Mr Sansom’s eyes,” said Joel, off thinking by himself.

  “Is a nigger sun,” she said, “an my soul, it’s black.” She took the broth bowl, and looked down into it, as if she were a gypsy reading tea-leaves. “I rested by the road; the sun poked down my eyes till I’m near-bout blind . . .”

  And Joel said: “But Zoo, if there wasn’t any snow, what was it you saw in Washington, D.C.? I mean now, didn’t you meet up with any of those men from the newsreels?”

  “. . . an was holes in my shoes where the rocks done cut through the jackodiamonds and the aceohearts; walked all day, an here it seem like I ain’t come no ways, an here I’m sittin by the road with my feets afire an ain’t a soul in sight.” Two tears, following the bony edges of her face, faded, leaving silver stains. “I’m so tired ain’t no feelin what tells me iffen I pinch myself, and I go on sittin there in that lonesome place till I looks up an see the Big Dipper: right about now along come a red truck with big bug lights coverin me head to toe.” There were four men in the truck, she said, three white boys, and a Negro who rode in back squatting on top of a mountain of watermelons. The driver of the truck got out: “A real low man puffin a cigar like a bull; he ain’t wearin no shirt an all this red hair growin even on his shoulders an hands; so quiet he walks through the grass, an looks at me so sweet I reckon maybe he sorry my feets is cut an maybe’s gonna ax me why don’t I ride in his fine car?” Go on, he told her, tapping his cigar so the ash was flung in her face, go on, gal, get down in the ditch; never mind why, says the man, and shoved her so she rolled over the embankment, landing on her back helpless as a junebug. “Lord, I sure commenced to hoop n’ holler an this little bull-man says I hush up else he’s gonna bust out my brains.” She got up and started to run, but those other two boys, answering the driver’s whistle, jumped down into the ditch and cut her off at either end; both these boys wore panama hats, and one had on a pair of sailor pants and a soldier’s shirt: it was he who caught her and called for the Negro to bring a rifle. “That mean nigger look a whole lot like Keg, an he put that rifle up side my ear, an the man, he done tore my pretty dress straight down the front, an tells them panama boys theys to set to: I hear the Lord’s voice talkin down that gun barrel, an the Lord said Zoo, you done took the wrong road and come the wrong way, you et of the apple, he said, an hits pure rotten, an outa the sky my Lord look down an brung comfort, an whilst them devils went jerkin like billygoats right then and there in all my shameful sufferin I said holy words: Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I’ll fear no evil, for you is with me Lord, yea verily, I say, an them fools laughed, but my Lord took that sailor boy’s shape, an us, me an the Lord, us loved.” The boys had removed their panama hats; now they put them on again, and one said to the driver, well, what was wrong with him? and the driver sucked his cigar and scratched behind his ear and said, well, to tell the truth, he wasn’t much one for being watched; O.K., said the boys, and climbed back up the bank, the Negro following after them, all three laughing, which made the driver’s cheek twitch and his eyes “go yellow like an ol tomcat; an it was peculiar, cause he was one scared man.” He did not move to touch her, but squatted impotent at her side like a bereaved lover, like an idol, then the truck-horn blew, the boys called, and he bent close: “He pushed that cigar in my bellybutton, Lord, in me was born fire like a child . . .”