Bright Flows the River

  “You love your country, don’t you, James?” asked Beth.

  He was a little taken aback at her American use of his Christian name. Then he said, sighing, “Yes. At least I love what she once was, the balance wheel of the world. Pax Britannica.” Now his large rotund face colored with suppressed anger. “It was one of your Presidents who destroyed the Empire, the great Empire which maintained law and order among the nations, to a great extent, for many decades. Your American ‘liberals’ were lovingly overjoyed at the destruction of that mighty force for peace among the various warring countries. They said they ‘loved’ England, but it was an evil depraved love. They caroled about ‘a happy little country.’ A happy little country, no longer the mighty Empire! A happy little country teeming with the risen street rabble! For that, America cannot be forgiven.” He added, with intense bitterness, ‘A happy little country whose requiem is sung by the shrill voice of Fascistic Communism!”

  The little house shook as the gale swooped into a thunderous passage over the land. The fire on the hearth blew outwards with gusts of smoke, showering sparks. Triumphantly, the wind screamed in the chimney. Without any anxiety or apparent concern, Beth moved the fire screen more firmly into position, after turning over the glowing logs. She inspected the hearth rug, absently stamped out minute embers. Uneasily, James listened to the powerful noise all about them. But above it all the clock spoke: It was seven. James said, “That is a fine old clock.”

  Beth looked at it and she smiled a little. “Yes. Isn’t it? Guy gave it to me two years ago.” Her eyes took and kept distance. The lamps flickered. She became alert, and went into the kitchen, returning with two hurricane lamps, which she placed on tables. She brought two more in. “Sometimes during storms like this the lines go down, and the lights go out. It happens in the summer, too. But it’s inconvenient to have them down in the winter. My furnace stops working. But we have plenty of wood here and in the shed.”

  James was thinking of England, no longer Great Britain. Little England. With a surge almost of passion his malaise returned. He floundered in it while Beth refilled his glass. What was it that eluded him? Or was he eluding it? He was so absorbed in his thoughts that when he heard a gigantic crash he looked about him dazedly. “I think,” said Beth, with some alarm, “that my old oak tree just blew down.” She ran to a window, trying to see through the almost solid wall of snow, but it was useless. Now cold fingers crept into the warm room from cracks about the window frames. James drew closer to the fire. “I loved that tree. It was an old friend. What will shade my begonias and fuchsias now?” She turned from the window, smiling. “They’re only frail little things, pink; I always think of them as being helpless. But they can survive better than the tall flamboyant flowers. Well, they’ll miss our friend, who will light the fire for me next winter. Trees and other innocent things have intrinsic value, don’t they?”

  “And people don’t, Beth?”

  She hesitated, sat down, looked into her glass. “Not many, James. You see, I speak from experience. Malice is an exclusively human thing, though other primates do show a little of it, too. Does malice inevitably accompany intelligence? Perhaps. But it does take brains, doesn’t it, to be evil?”

  James laughed. “I’ve heard it said that Satan was the most profoundly intellectual of all the powers and majesties, next to God Himself. Perhaps that’s why God loved him more than all His other sons. And still does, probably. At least, Satan is entertaining, malicious though he is. And I confess, I find entirely good people very boring and without imagination.”

  The electric lamps flickered, then went out. “Damn,” said Beth, without rancor. She lit the hurricane lamps and the light was soft and mingled pleasantly with the firelight. James felt very cozy, very much at home. “We won’t be able to hear the news,” said Beth, with no regret. “I’m so tired of hearing about wars and revolutionaries and terrorists and plots and counterplots, and threats. I once asked my mother if the world was always like this, and she said no.”

  “The closer we ‘draw together’ as a world, the more we’ll hate each other,” said James, in a dreamy and philosophical tone. “The brotherly-lovers don’t like to be reminded of that. So they vociferously demand more and more ‘togetherness.’ Well, we’ll have ‘togetherness’ fairly soon now. In one big universal cemetery.” He stopped smiling. “No wars, you know, are ideological in their essence, despite the protests of idealists. As always, and forever, they are struggles for raw power, territory, expansion. The only effective challenge to wars is a stronger martial challenge. War is based on human nature, which is immutable. Peace is only an accommodation during which nations catch their breath, rebuild, and prepare for the next conflict. The Greeks, always rational, understood this and called war an art. The real art is to do as little as possible to the next conquered territory. Such as the neutron bomb.”

  The intensity of the storm was growing. The gale shrieked in the chimney. The fire grew brighter. James listened with a certain placidity. Now that the electric power was off the air became colder in the room, but the fire seemed to increase its warmth. Never had James been so comfortable in America. How could old Jerry have pulled himself away from this to his chill empty house, his chill empty wife, his chill empty existence? James discovered that Beth had left the room. He must have been drowsing. He heard the pleasant clatter of china and silver in the small dining room off the end of this room. The aroma of food challenged his appetite. He sipped at the glass he held.

  “Dinner,” said Beth, and James pulled himself heavily to his feet and followed his hostess. The round dining-room table was small but set with stiff white linen; a pot of red geraniums glowed in the center, thankfully not plastic. The silver was highly polished and glinted in the peaceful lamplight. The white napkins were huge and hemstitched, the china white with a narrow blue-and-silver border. The soup was heavy and rich with meat juices and vegetables and barley, with a hint of dill and garlic and basil. Ambrosia, thought James. The casserole of ham and beans was moist with some delectable sauce, the warm brown bread exquisite, the homemade butter sweet and soft, the salad delightfully crisp and flavored with only olive oil and tart vinegar and salt and pepper. The apple tart, thought James, rivaled any of Emma’s chef’s. “It’s a good thing I have a gas stove,” said Beth, pleased by James’s obvious enjoyment and his compliments. Her plain yet beautiful face shone in the lamplight like a girl’s, and again James knew he was surrogate for Guy Jerald. She brought in the coffee and thick yellow cream and sugar, and provided hearty big cups, and brandy. James chose the brandy. He leaned back in his chair, surfeited, not remembering the casual yet happy conversation which had accompanied the meal. It was the sort of laughing conversation he always had with Emma at the table. He studied Beth with fond admiration. If he hadn’t his Emma, he thought, he could love this woman. In fact, in a way, he reflected, he did love her.

  The clock chimed. James was startled to discover it was ten o’clock. He examined his watch for verification. Where had the time gone?

  “I hate watches, men’s watches,” said Beth. “They’re so interfering. They remind people of duty and responsibility and distasteful work and routine and other dreary things, created by civilization. And—wives.” Her voice dropped, became neutral. “And children. They never speak of freedom, of course.” She stopped a minute. “Guy often said his father’s favorite book was about Gauguin. It’s mine, too. A man who broke free, at last, from his dull wife and his dull children, his dull life, and obeyed his imperative—and so saved his life and possibly his soul.”

  So, thought James, looking with compassion at her averted face.

  “And, in consequence, gave something of limitless value to the world,” Beth murmured. Then she laughed and looked at James and her eyes were bright with moisture. “Guy often said I talked as his father did. I wish I’d known his father.”

  James opened a new topic with delicacy. “I’ve met Jerry’s family, as I told you,” he said. “Did he e
ver speak much about them to you?”

  “Not too much. He’s a very taciturn man, you know. But sometimes, he talked. Not too directly. When he spoke with considerable appreciation of his wife I knew he was—disliking—her more than usual.” She drank a little of her brandied coffee. Her cheeks flushed. There had been good wine at the dinner, and all this, and the warm intimacy of the house and the meal, had overcome a great deal of her reserve. “I don’t think she and Guy had much rapport. I often wondered why he married her, but I never really knew. Sometimes he’d mention a girl he had known, Marlene, who had died; this was after he’d spoken of his wife.”

  “Ah,” said James, encouragingly.

  “I always thought,” said Beth, as if to herself, “that his wife was a replacement for that girl, Marlene. But he never said so. He is, by nature, a suspicious man. Or maybe living made him suspicious. I had the feeling that he confided more in me than he ever confided in others, except his father, perhaps. His attitude towards his father seemed to me ambivalent, and sometimes I felt that he had that attitude towards me, also. A mixture of—”

  “Love and hate,” said James, as she halted.

  Beth shook her head slowly, but not in denial. “I think we both goaded him, though it wasn’t our intention. I think he goaded himself, really.”

  “We all do, and even if that’s a cliché it’s also true, Beth.”

  “I suppose we’re our own hell, and I’m sure that’s a cliché, James.”

  “What would we do without clichés!” said James, and they both laughed. He approached the next topic with caution. “Did he speak much of his children, individually?”

  “Not too much. I bought this house some years ago. Before that, I lived in the city, in a miserable apartment with another teacher. I do remember some gossip about his son, from neighbors. The son had been arrested. I think it had something to do with a girl—Guy never spoke of it. As for his daughter—he did once say that she resembled his mother, who died about ten years ago. I don’t think he was exactly devoted to his mother. He wasn’t a man to talk much of his family. He did tell me how he acquired his money, though. He preferred to talk impersonally.”

  James nodded. “He had become cautious, which is another word for being afraid. But, what did you talk of, over those years?”

  Beth looked at him with smiling surprise. “Why, mostly of his father! I just remembered. And books, and places we had seen. And people. Dozens of things. He hinted to me, several times, that he had wanted to be a doctor, really. A cancer specialist, or a researcher in cancer. But he said there had been no money. I disputed that, and he would get angry. He would accuse me of ‘not understanding.’”

  “What he meant, Beth, was that you understood too much.”

  “I like to think that. But, I don’t know. We’ve been—friends—for over four years, and I know very little more about him now than I did in the beginning. Except that he trusts me; why he does that, I don’t know, either. Still—” She did not continue. After a few moments she added, “He liked to hear me talk of myself. He really did. I could make him laugh and smile, occasionally. Sometimes he would actually tell me something of his own childhood and boyhood. He never spoke of his years in the war, though. He never, I’m afraid, spoke of you.”

  James thought the time for bluntness had come. “You know that he tried to kill himself, don’t you?”

  She clasped her hands together tightly and turned away her face. “Yes. I know. I often think I was to blame. I told him not to come back unless he had resolved—something—in himself. I could see, over the past years, that his life was becoming intolerable to him. I’m not sure of the reason. I couldn’t stand seeing him suffer more and more acutely. Things—came to a crisis. He had to—choose. Not between me and his family, of course.” She looked at James candidly. “He had already nearly chosen me. But I represented something to him—Dear God, I don’t know, I don’t know! It was something that included me, and I knew it. Once he told me I had made him ‘come alive.’ It didn’t seem to please him, though. He almost threw the words at me. One time he stayed away for four months. Four terrible months. I thought he had finally chosen. He’d chosen his past life, accepted it, and it didn’t include me. I almost died of grief, literally. Then he came back. I never mentioned his absence. He seemed both relieved at this and angry about it, too. I knew he had to be let alone. Perhaps I was wrong. I should have prodded him.”

  “No,” said James. “Men always look for excuses to blame women, if something goes wrong. Or, they’ve chosen wrongly themselves. People should choose for themselves. The best psychiatrist”—and James laughed—“is one who gives no advice at all. After those four months—when was that?”

  “Five months before he tried to kill himself. I knew he hadn’t resolved anything at all. He had just delayed confronting it. He looked physically ill, too. But I told him, finally, that he must leave me and not come back until he had decided what he must decide. Then, he could ask for me, or come for me.” She stared at James with eyes bright with anguish. “Do you think I was wrong? Should I have just let it drift on, with him slowly dying inside?”

  James considered. Then he said, “No, you were right. After all, you owed something to yourself, too. None of us can know another, and we know ourselves only dimly. But to that which we know of ourselves we owe our full fidelity, imperfect though it is. It was your right, your duty, to think of yourself first of all. Only in that way could you think of Jerry, and understand him. Self-abnegation is not really to be admired, Beth. It means abnegation of others, too, and so is unpardonable. You had the best of rights to consider yourself, and I’m glad you did.”

  “Even if it precipitated his attempt at suicide?”

  “Even that. But I think he had been considering that a long time, anyway. Now he’s confronting what must be confronted.”

  “Will it include me?” She leaned towards him passionately.

  “I don’t know, Beth, I don’t know. I must tell you that honestly.”

  She fell back in her chair and closed her eyes in exhaustion. James studied her. A valorous woman. She would lay herself down and bleed awhile, then rise and fight again. Yes. Even if old Jerry never called for her or saw her again, she would survive. She would go on. Unlike his poor mother, who had had nothing in the world except her husband. But Beth had thousands of things. She had, indeed, “laid up a treasure” for herself, and her world was without boundaries. Sorrow might cause her to falter for a time, perhaps a long time. Then she would go on. She would survive this as she has survived many things, as Emma had survived her own tragedies, too. They were brave women. They had their multitude of scars, but these had never crippled them. They were not optimists, with silly “hope” for tomorrow. They had fortitude, and feared nothing, not even death. They would endure, without hope, but not in a gray twilight of despair.

  Was he worthy of Emma? Was Jerry worthy of Beth? James doubted this sincerely. Such women were rare glories, and no man deserved them. Even worse, men did not recognize the majesty of these women. They did not know valor when they saw it. They preferred the vacuous women who had never known tragedy; such women had no aura of terrors confronted and surmounted. Men preferred cozinesses, which, in the end, were not cozy at all, but only windy nothingness. They then wondered what had happened to their lives, what had leveled the walls they thought they had built, what had blown out the fraudulent fires which had never existed, what had ruined the vanished city they thought they had inhabited.

  The clock chimed. Eleven o’clock. James became aware that the storm was not subsiding at all. The little dining room was becoming noticeably cool. Beth said, “Let’s go sit by the fire and have some Bénédictine, or Drambuie. Whichever you prefer.” She paused. “I’m sorry I can’t tell you more about Guy. I’ve told you all I know and a lot I’ve conjectured.”

  You’ve told me far more than you know, dear lady, thought James, and he went back to the fire with her, and to small crystal glasses of
cordials. At least, James reflected, I understand Emma and how magnificent she is. But old Jerry apparently knows nothing of this fine woman. Or does he? Had she precipitated him from a death-in-life to the possibility of full life? Had it shaken him so profoundly that he had attempted to die?

  If so, then he had been a coward, and had pretended to himself that duty was preferable to life. James was so moved by Beth that he felt an angry contempt for old Jerry, who was afraid to live, apparently, and preferred the tenebrous hell he had made for himself to the savage freedom outside.

  The air was full of a constant roaring like freight trains passing overhead. James came to himself, with uneasiness. “Is it still snowing?” he asked.

  “I’ll see,” said Beth. The windows were white with snow. She went to the door and pulled at it. It would not open. She rubbed the glass. James got up. He was aghast to see huge drifts piled up everywhere, knife-edged drifts caught in the fluttering lamplight, drifts that smoked. “Oh, my God,” said Beth. “I’m afraid we’re snowbound. My car must be buried. And there won’t be any cabs out tonight, so I can’t call one for you. The roads are probably blocked, too.” She looked at him, appalled.

  James pulled at the door himself. It finally gave, and a mound of snow gushed into the room and the wind screamed inside the room also and nearly put out the lamps. James hastily closed the door. “Well,” he said. He shivered.