Green shadowy moonlight filled the room. The Captain's wife slept as her husband had left her. Her soft hair lay loosened upon the pillow and her gently breathing chest was half uncovered. A yellow silk spread was on the bed and an open flask of perfume sweetened the air with a drowsy scent. Very slowly the soldier tiptoed to the side of the bed and bent over the Captain's wife. The moon softly lighted their faces and he was so close that he could feel her warm, even breath. In the soldier's grave eyes there was at first an expression of intent curiosity, but as the moments passed a look of bliss awakened in his heavy face. The young soldier felt in him a keen, strange sweetness that never before in his life had he known.
He stood in this way, bent close over the Captain's wife, for some time. Then he touched his hand to the window sill to steady himself and very slowly squatted down beside the bed. He balanced himself on the broad balls of his feet, his back held straight, and his strong delicate hands resting on his knees. His eyes were round as amber buttons and his bangs lay in a tangled mat on his forehead.
On a few occasions before this Private Williams had had this look of suddenly awakened happiness in his face, but no one on the post had seen him then. If he bad been seen at such a time he would have beep court martialed. The truth was that in his long ramblings through the forest of the reservation the soldier was sometimes not alone. When he could get leave from work in the afternoon, he took a certain horse from the stables with him. He rode about five miles from the post to a secluded spot, far from any paths, that was difficult to reach. Here in the woods there was a flat, clear space, covered with a grassy weed of the color of burnished bronze. In this lonely place the soldier always unsaddled his horse and let him go free. Then he took off his clothes and lay down on a large flat rock in the middle of the field. For there was one thing that this soldier could not do without the sun. Even on the coldest days he would lie still and naked and let the sunlight soak into his flesh. Sometimes, still naked, he stood on the rock and slipped upon the horse's bare back. His horse was an ordinary army plug which, with anyone but Private Williams, could sustain only two gaits a clumsy trot and a rocking horse gallop. But with the soldier a marvelous change came over the animal; he cantered or single footed with proud, stiff elegance. The soldier's body was of a pale golden brown and he held himself erect Without his clothes he was so slim that the pure, curved outlines of his ribs could be seen. As he cantered about in the sunlight, there was a sensual, savage smile on his lips that would have surprised his barrack mates. After such outings he came back weary to the stables and spoke to no one.
Private Williams squatted by the bed in The Lady's room until almost dawn. He did not move, or make a sound, or take his eyes from the body of the Captain's wife. Then, as the day was breaking, he balanced himself again with his hand on the window sill and got up carefully. He went down the stairs and closed the back door cautiously behind him. Already the sky was a pale blue and Venus was fading.
Carson McCullers - Reflections In A Golden Eye
CHAPTER 3
Alison Langdon had lived through a night of torment. She did not sleep until the sun came up and the bugle sounded reveille. During those long hours many eerie thoughts had troubled her. Once just at dawn she even fancied, she was almost sure, that she saw someone come out of the Pendertons' house and walk off into the woods. Then, soon after she finally got to sleep, a great racket awakened her. Hurriedly she put on her bathrobe, went downstairs, and found herself confronting a shocking and ridiculous spectacle. Her husband was chasing Anacleto round and round the dining room table with a boot in his hand. He was in his sock feet, but otherwise completely uniformed for Saturday morning inspection. His sword banged against his thigh as he ran. They both stopped short when they saw her. Then Anacleto hastened to take refuge behind her back.
'He did it on purpose!' the Major said in an outraged voice. 'I'm already late. Six hundred men are waiting for me. And look, just please take a glance, at what he brings me!'
The boots indeed were a sorry sight. It looked as though they had been rubbed over with flour and water. She scolded Anacleto and stood over him as he cleaned them properly. He wept piteously, but she found the strength of mind not to console him. When he had finished, Anacleto mentioned something about running away from home and opening a linen shop in Quebec. She carried the polished boots up to her husband and handed them to him without a word, but with a look that took care of him also. Then, as her heart bothered her, she went back to bed with her book.
Anacleto brought her up her coffee and then drove over to the Post Exchange to do the marketing for Sunday. Later in the morning, when she had finished her book and was looking out the window at the sunny autumn day, he came to her room again. He was blithe, and had quite forgotten the scolding about the boots. He built up a roaring fire and then quietly opened the top bureau drawer to do a bit of meddling. He took out a little crystal cigarette lighter which she had had made from an old fashioned vinaigrette. This trinket so fascinated him that she had given it to him years ago. He still kept it with her things, however, so that he would have a legitimate reason for opening the drawer whenever he wished. He asked for the loan of her glasses and peered for a long time at the linen scarf on the chest of drawers. Then with his thumb and forefinger he picked up something invisible and carefully carried this speck over to the wastebasket. He was talking away to himself, but she paid no attention to his chatter.
What would become of Anacleto when she was dead? That was a question that worried her constantly. Morris, of course, had promised her never to let him be in want but what would such a promise be worth when Morris married again, as he would be sure to do? She remembered the time seven years ago in the Philippines when Anacleto first came to her household. What a sad, strange little creature he had been! He was so tormented by the other houseboys that he dogged her footsteps all day long. If anyone so much as looked at him he would burst into tears and wring his hands. He was seventeen years old, but his sickly, clever, frightened face had the innocent expression of a child of ten. When they were making preparations to return to the States, he had begged her to take him with her, and she had done so. The two of them, she and Anacleto, could perhaps find a way to get along in the world together but what would he do when she was gone?
'Anacleto, are you happy?' she asked him suddenly.
The little Filipino was not one to be disturbed by any unexpected, intimate question. 'Why, certainly,' he said, without a moment's consideration. 'When you are well.'
The sun and firelight were bright in the room. There was a dancing spectrum on one of the walls and she watched this, half listening to Anacleto's soft conversation. 'What I find it so difficult to realize is that they know,' he was saying. Often he would begin a discussion with such a vague and mysterious remark, and she waited to catch the drift of it later. 'It was not until after I had been in your service for a long time that I really believed that you knew. Now I can believe it about everybody else except Mr. Sergei Rachmaninoff.'
She turned her face toward him. 'What are you talking about?'
'Madame Alison,' he said, 'do you yourself really believe that Mr. Sergei Rachmaninoff knows that a chair is something to be sat on and that a clock shows one the time? And if I should take off my shoe and hold it up to his face and say, “What is this, Mr. Sergei Rachmaninoff?” then he would answer, like anyone else, “Why, Anacleto, that is a shoe.” I myself find it hard to realize.'
The Rachmaninoff recital had been the last concert they had heard, and consequently from Anacleto's point of view it was the best. She herself did not care for crowded concert halls and would have preferred to spend the money on phonograph records but it was good to get away from the post occasionally, and these trips were the joy of Anacleto's life. For one thing they stayed the night in a hotel, which was an enormous delight to him.
'Do you think if I beat your pillows you would be more comfortable?' Anacleto asked.
And the dinner the night o
f that last concert! Anacleto sailed proudly after her into the hotel dining room wearing his orange velvet jacket When it was his turn to order, he held the menu up to his face and then completely closed his eyes. To the astonishment of the colored waiter he ordered in French. And although she had wanted to burst out laughing, she controlled herself and translated after him with the best gravity she could assume as though she were a sort of duenna or lady in waiting to him. Because of his limited French this dinner of his was rather peculiar. He had got it out of the lesson in his book called 'Le Jardin Potager,' and his order consisted only of cabbage, string beans, and carrots. So when on her own she had added an order of chicken for him, Anacleto had opened his eyes just long enough to give her a deep, grateful little look. The white coated waiters clustered about this phenomenon like flies, and Anacleto was much too exalted to touch a crumb.
'Suppose we have some music,' she said. 'Let's hear the Brahms G Minor Quartet.'
'Fameux,' said Anacleto.
He put on the first record and settled down to listen on his footstool by the fire. But the opening passage, the lovely dialogue between the piano and the strings, was hardly completed when there was a knock on the door. Anacleto spoke to someone in the hall, closed the door again, and turned off the phonograph.
'Mrs. Penderton,' he whispered, lifting his eyebrows.
'I knew I could knock on the door downstairs till doomsday and you all would never hear me with this music going on,' Leonora said when she came into the room. She sat down on the foot of the bed so hard that it felt as though she had broken a spring. Then, remembering that Alison was not well, Leonora tried to look sickly also, as that was her notion of the proper behavior in a sickroom. 'Do you think you can make it tonight?'
'Make what?'
'Why, my God, Alison! My party! I've been working like a nigger for the past three days getting everything ready. I don't give a party like this but twice a year.'
'Of course,' said Alison. 'It just slipped my mind for a moment.'
'Listen!' said Leonora, and her fresh rosy face flamed suddenly with anticipation. 'I just wish you could see my kitchen now. Here's the way it will go. I'm putting in all the leaves in the dining room table and everybody will just mill around and help themselves. I'm having a couple of Virginia hams, a huge turkey, fried chicken, sliced cold pork, plenty of barbecued spareribs, and all sorts of little knickknacks like pickled onions and olives and radishes. And hot rolls and little cheese biscuits passed around. The punchbowl is in the corner, and for people who like their liquor straight I'm having on the sideboard eight quarts of Kentucky Bourbon, five of rye, and five of Scotch. And an entertainer from town is coming out to play the accordion '
'But who on earth is going to eat all that food?' Alison asked, with a little swallow of nausea.
'The whole shebang,' said Leonora enthusiastically. 'I've telephoned everybody from Old Sugar's wife on down.'
'Old Sugar' was Leonora's name for the Commanding General of the post, and she called him by it to his face. With the General, as with all men, she had a flip and affectionate manner, and the General, like most of the officers on the post, fairly ate out of her hand. The General's wife was very fat, slow, gushed over, and completely out of things.
'One thing I came over about this morning,' said Leonora, 'is to find out if Anacleto will serve the punch for me.'
'He will be glad to help you out,' Alison answered for him.
Anacleto, who was standing in the doorway, did not look so glad about it. He glanced reproachfully at Alison and went downstairs to see about luncheon.
'Susie's two brothers are helping in the kitchen and, my God, how that crowd can eat! I never saw anything to equal it. We '
'By the way,' said Alison, 'is Susie married?'
'Heavens, no! She won't have anything to do with men. She got caught when she was fourteen years old and has never forgotten it. But why?'
'I just wondered because I was almost sure that I saw someone go into your house by the back way late last night and come out again before dawn.'
'You just imagined it,' said Leonora soothingly. She considered Alison to be quite off her head, and did not believe even the simplest remark that she made.
'Perhaps so.'
Leonora was bored and ready to go home. Still, she thought that a neighborly visit should last at least an hour, so she stuck it out dutifully. She sighed and tried again to look somewhat ill. It was her idea, when she was not too carried away with thoughts of food and sport, that the tactful topic of conversation in a sickroom was an account of other illnesses. Like all very stupid people she had a predilection for the gruesome, which she could indulge in or throw off at will. Her repertoire of tragedies was limited for the most part to violent sporting accidents.
'Did I tell you about the thirteen year old girl who came along with us on a fox hunt as a whipper in and broke her neck?'
'Yes, Leonora,' said Alison in a voice of controlled exasperation. 'You have told me of every terrible detail five times.'
'Does it make you nervous?'
'Extremely.'
'Hmmm ' said Leonora. She was not at all troubled by this rebuff. Calmly she lighted a cigarette. 'Don't ever let anybody tell you that's the way to fox hunt. I know. I've hunted both ways. Listen, Alison!' She worked her mouth exaggeratedly and spoke in a deliberately encouraging voice as though addressing a small child. 'Do you know how to hunt 'possums?'
Alison nodded shortly and straightened the counterpane. 'You tree them.'
'On foot,' said Leonora. 'That's the way to hunt a fox. Now this uncle of mine has a cabin in the mountains and my brothers and I used to visit him. About six of us would start out with our dogs on a cold evening when the sun had set. A colored boy would run along behind with a jug of good mellow corn on his back. Sometimes we'd be after a fox all night long in the mountains. Gosh, I can't tell you about it. Somehow ' The feeling was in Leonora, but she had not the words to express it.
Then to have one last drink at six o'clock and sit down to breakfast. And, God! everybody said this uncle of mine was peculiar, but he sure set a good table. After a hunt we'd come in to a table just loaded with fish roe, broiled ham, fried chicken, biscuits the size of your hand '
When Leonora was gone at last, Alison did not know whether to laugh or cry; she did a little of both, rather hysterically. Anacleto came up to her and carefully beat out the big dent at the foot of the bed where Leonora had been sitting.
'I am going to divorce the Major, Anacleto,' she said suddenly when she had stopped laughing. 'I will inform him of it tonight.'
From Anacleto's expression she could not tell whether or not this was a surprise to him. He waited for a time and then asked: 'Then where shall we go after that, Madame Alison?'
Through her mind passed a long panorama of plans which she had made dining sleepless nights tutoring Latin in some college town, shrimp fishing, hiring Anacleto out to drudge while she sat in a boarding house and took in sewing
But she only said: 'That I have not yet decided.'
'I wonder,' Anacleto said meditatively, 'what the Pendertons will do about it.'
'You needn't wonder because that is not our affair.'
Anacleto's little face was dark and thoughtful. He stood with his hands resting on the footpiece of the bed. She felt that he had some further question to put to her, and she looked up at him and waited. Finally he asked hopefully, 'Do you think we might live in a hotel?'
In the afternoon Captain Penderton went down to the stables for his usual ride. Private Williams was still on duty, although he was to be free that day at four o'clock. When the Captain spoke, he did not look at the young soldier and his voice was high pitched and arrogant.
'Saddle Mrs. Penderton's horse, Firebird.'
Private Williams stood motionless, staring into the Captain's white, strained face, 'The Captain said?'
'Firebird,' the Captain repeated. 'Mrs. Penderton's horse.'
This order was unusual;
Captain Penderton had ridden Firebird only three times before, and on each of these occasions his wife had been with him. The Captain himself did not own a horse, and used the mounts belonging to the stable. As he waited out in the open court, the Captain nervously jerked the fingertips of his glove. Then, when Firebird was led out, he was not satisfied; Private Williams had put on Mrs. Penderton's flat, English type saddle, while the Captain preferred an army McClellan. As this change was being made, the Captain looked into the horse's round, purple eyes and saw there a liquid image of his own frightened face. Private Williams held the bridle as he mounted. The Captain sat tense, his jaws hard, and his knees gripping the saddle desperately. The soldier still stood impassive with his hand on the bridle.
After a moment the Captain said:
'Well, Private, you can see that I am seated. Let go!'
Private Williams stepped back a few paces. The Captain held tight to the reins and hardened his thighs. Nothing happened. The horse did not plunge and strain at the bit as he did each morning with Mrs. Penderton, but waited quietly for the signal to start. When the Captain realized this, he quickened with a sudden vicious joy. 'Ah,' he thought. 'She has broken his spirit as I knew she would.' The Captain dug in his heels and struck the horse with his short, plaited crop. They started on the bridle path at a gallop.
The afternoon was fine and sunny. The air was bracing, bitter sweet with the odor of pines and rotting leaves. Not a cloud could be seen in all the wide blue sky. The horse, which had not been exercised that day, seemed to go a little mad from the pleasure of galloping with unchecked freedom. Firebird, like most horses, was apt to be hard to manage if given free rein immediately after being led out from the pasture. The Captain knew this; therefore his next action was a very curious one. They had galloped rhythmically for perhaps three quarters of a mile when suddenly, with no preliminary tightening of the reins, the Captain jerked the horse up short. He pulled the reins with such unexpected sharpness that Firebird lost his balance, sidestepped awkwardly and reared. Then he stood quite still, surprised but tractable. The Captain was exceedingly satisfied.