With Shuddering Fall

  Jerry sipped his coffee and blew on it when he found it too hot. From time to time he glanced up at Karen, but his face was expressionless. He never looked at Max or seemed to hear him, though Max’s words gained momentum with his excitement. He finished his grapefruit in a burst of enthusiasm and went on:

  “Yet when I lose my faith—and I am constantly losing and regaining it—do I fall back to innocence? No. Innocence is lost to me. I have never been innocent; I have always been this age.” The waitress, nervously approaching them, placed another plate before Max—a plate of soft eggs, mixed with colorless strips of bacon and little sturdy-looking globules of fat. “Always—always to have been the same age! Can you understand that?” His gaze was tempted downward; he began to eat, slowly at first, then, as the food lured him, faster and faster, though he did not stop talking. He seemed to think that if he stopped he would lose Karen’s attention. “How well I know that life is no imitation!—that it is absurd to have faith in anything except life. I won’t come again to this—I will never sit here again. I will never eat this again.” This was apparently a good point, for not only Karen but Jerry as well looked up. “Men make the error that things will turn out for the good—we religious people make that error, though our experience contradicts us. In literature, now, things are different; this long poem I’ve been rereading . . . temptation, sin, fall, and expiation, all around in a circle, into the garden and out of it, many angels, great blazes of rhetoric and light—an immense scheme of tautological relationships you need never believe in! As if it mattered that there was ever a paradise, or in what way it was lost to us—the only important thing is that we have no paradise; we have none. Yet a most beautiful poem! All an expression of something else—an imitation, a metaphor. These fragments that strain away from their center—they reel around, they cannot penetrate through to the outer world; there is no outer world. But life is not like that, your life is not being created for you out of a mind. Your life is not a metaphor for anything beyond it. It ends when you do—and when your grave is lost, where you are? Where is my pretty Karen then?”

  “My grave will never be lost,” Karen said.

  Apparently this was funny, for Max laughed luxuriously. He stopped eating for a moment to surrender himself to laughter. “She would be good for you,” he said to Jerry, “if it were not for Shar—as you say, very shrewdly; if it were not for Shar. I would like to keep her with me always!”

  Jerry looked at Karen. “Except for Shar and something that needs an operation,” he said.

  “An ugly topic to suggest at breakfast,” Max said, wiping remnants of egg off his plate with a piece of toast.

  “Shar is the one I’d like to give the operation to,” said Jerry. He looked at Karen with an amused, sadly sympathetic look. “How much would he be worth then?”

  Karen’s face began to burn. She stared at Jerry’s fingers as he tapped them patiently on the table.

  “You know nothing—nothing,” Max said angrily. His face was distorted with toast. He raised a finger and shook it at Jerry, as if Jerry were a child. “You degrade all things to your level.”

  “The hell with it,” said Jerry. “She’s going back home.”

  “That’s it, of course, Karen,” Max said, pointing the finger now at her. “We decided that, Shar and I, we talked of it for a long time. He understands that what he did is for the best. . . . Karen, I am prepared to help you, I hope you will allow me to help you—I will be very disappointed if you do not—Perhaps you would like to talk to me alone?”

  Before Karen could reply, Jerry had already stood. “I’ll be out in the lobby,” he said.

  Now Max clasped his hands before him and leaned toward Karen. Sunshine through the dusty window gave him a clean, eager look, though it seemed to trouble his eyes; they had narrowed until they were quite small, fringed by babyish lashes, and out of these he peeked earnestly at her as he spoke. “You wonder at me—you wonder what I am doing here with you, appealing to you. You wonder what kind of life I come from. I wonder at you too—I seriously wonder. I have never been able to understand you. I see you as innocent, and yet sometimes I am not so sure—not so sure of my own judgment—Perhaps I am the innocent one!” He smiled at her. His teeth were big and white. “My sister saw ghosts,” he said suddenly. “Do you have a woman in your family who sees ghosts? Why is it ghosts appear to women? I didn’t mind it but you do come to believe it—I mean, believe she sees them; I never did . . . myself, but perhaps it was only a matter of time—What could we say to her? I felt I should say something to her, since silence was, simply, a collaboration in ghosts! But you must be cautious with other people, people are so delicate, a word misspoken might never be amended, a look of the wrong sort never negated—no negations, only a slow piling up; try to get there and see what they want, to get it for them, you see how delicate it is—delicate and out of reach—dealing with the souls of others. Yourself you might negate, the conflicting wants, all, all the conflicts, you might negate one with another, heal yourself, but no one else—you only destroy—you only negate everything at once, a mistake. So it is with caution I approach you—with respect for you, for what you have endured. I will be happy to help you if—”

  Here he stopped to take a breath. But it was at an awkward moment, since his last words hung between them. Karen stared coldly. Max, sensitive of an indiscretion, raised his hands as if to distract her and went on, smiling, “I have always enjoyed as much as we have said to each other, for I do feel, as I’ve told you, that we have something in common—something mysterious in common; I feel this. I—” He licked his lips. He was conscious of a rapidity of heartbeat that startled him, but he was so caught up in what he had to say that he had no time to worry. He was afraid Karen would rise suddenly in disgust and leave. “I would like to talk to you. Perhaps up in my room? I would like to ask you some things. Not only about Shar—but about your life before him, your childhood, your father, and family, your experiences—Your dreams—And, of course, of Shar—you have told me little of him, what you’ve felt with him—And the baby,” he said. He was now leaning so hard against the table that his stomach bulged painfully against it. He and Karen looked at each other. “Will you come up with me?” he said.

  Karen’s eyes wandered behind him, behind his head. He felt for an instant that he had lost her. Perhaps she had heard little of what he said, perhaps she had been thinking all along of Shar. . . . Max waited, sweating, while she hesitated; then she said, “In what way will you help me?”

  “Money,” said Max.

  “How much money?”

  “I thought of a thousand.”

  “A thousand!” said Karen.

  “I’ll provide for the operation too, if you want it,” Max said quickly, “that is—if you need it; I can arrange for you to have the best of care—”

  Karen looked frightened. “I want to have the child,” she said.

  Max clasped his hands as if congratulating himself. “We’ll talk about it. We’ll decide about it.”

  Karen sat as if in a trance. Max could see tiny dots of perspiration on her forehead and upper lip. Her look of hauteur had changed and she seemed now surprisingly young—almost indecently young; but the incongruity of her youth and her situation delighted Max. Inspired by her helplessness, he began to shift himself about the cramping seat, crossing and uncrossing his hot legs at the ankles. “We’ll decide about it. It’s nine o’clock now. Nine o’clock,” he said, wiping perspiration out of his eyes. His voice trembled with excitement. “At twelve o’clock we’ll take you to the train station, we’ll get you ready, get your ticket—I’ll call from here to see when your train goes. Now . . . shall we—”

  He pulled himself up out of the booth and waited for her. At the counter the doctor did not glance around; he sat stirring his coffee. A few other customers looked over their newspapers and white coffee cups to stare blankly at Max, and then with interest at Karen, as she got unsteadily to her feet.

  IN THE HO
TEL LOBBY KAREN saw Jerry waiting for them. As they approached, Jerry stood up. For the first time since Karen had known him, he looked uneasy; he was licking his lips as he and Max conferred together. Though it must puzzle Jerry, Karen could not help staring at his face. She heard Max say something about Shar—“if he should come back.” Karen wanted to run at him, pound his fat, perspiring back, wanted to cry, “He will never come back! You know that!”

  When Max turned and took her arm, Karen pulled away. “No,” she said. “I’m going home now. I’ve decided to go home now.”

  Through the buzzing sunlight Max wondered at her. For a moment they seemed to brace each other in their astonishment, their arms lifted; then Max released her. “Going home now?” he said slowly. “Why are you going home now?”

  Karen tried to force him back by the bitter contempt she felt for him, by the power of her stare alone; but she could not. He accepted and absorbed her hysteria and left her exhausted. “I want to,” she said, backing away. “I’ve decided to. I’ve decided to.”

  “My dear child—”

  “I don’t want the things upstairs. I’ll leave them. I’m going back now. I don’t . . . I don’t want anything. Please—”

  “At twelve o’clock we will take you—”

  “No,” Karen said, shaking her head cautiously. “No. I’ve decided to go home now. I’m going home now.”

  She rushed past him just as he was about to reach out for her. She heard him say something to Jerry but she did not hear Jerry’s reply. Outside, she turned and hurried along the sidewalk, as if she knew where she was going; she walked for some time, breathing through her open mouth, her heart pounding, without seeing anything. People loomed up before her, bright-faced, anonymous, and sidewalks gave way to streets that she crossed when others did, staring fixedly ahead of her. She was conscious of having avoided something, just as she avoided colliding with people on the sidewalk; but she had acted by instinct only. Where had her mind been? Her mind had been raveled out into the sunlight, giddy and unbalanced, she could not depend on it. Though Karen touched her hot face and saw her reflection in store windows and in the eyes of people who passed by, she thought that perhaps her humanity was being lost to her—her soul and her mind, all that had made her herself, were confused, weakened, and she had nothing left to show of herself but a face, a body, a set of emotions. A face and a body! She looked at her reflection in a store window as if she could not believe it. Yet there she stood—dressed in white, a skirt being caressed by the hot dusty wind, stark, pale legs, uplifted arms, hands about to reach out and touch their reflections. An incredulous face, incredulous that anything should be behind it—that anything should stare out of those eyes. People passed her, amused reflections. Amused at her conceit, perhaps, or not noticing her at all. Karen felt a thrill of horror that she should deceive them—that they should assume, however briefly, that a human being stood where she was. All she could be sure of was a face and a body—her emotions came out as ordered. They were contrived. She could not believe in them any longer. She was sure she felt disgust for what had nearly happened, and yet, perhaps, she felt only regret for it, regret for having lost a thousand dollars; and the disgust was contrived to soothe her conscience.

  She walked on. She murmured to herself, “I am lost. I am lost.” The day was hot and windy with sunlight. It blew at her skirt and hair; sometimes raw bits of dust were flung up against her face. Scraps of sentences came to her, jumbled words. She found herself thinking, inexplicably, as she sometimes did when Shar made love to her, of scenes of her childhood—out-of-the-way barns, gullies, a bend in the creek she had not thought about for years. The proud pony one of the boys had ridden to school that time—why did she remember it now, and the big blue-black flies that worried it? The boy who owned it was forgotten; the day was forgotten; the child, Karen, who gaped at it was forgotten—only the pony remained, isolated out of time. How she had wanted a pony like that! How she had cried for it, crawling about her father’s knees! “But why didn’t he ever get it for me?” Karen wondered. She was struck by her father’s queer injustice. She felt she could not forgive him for that.

  She had prayed for the pony for months, and now these prayers returned to her. Mechanically her mind ran through them. Other prayers suggested themselves; she closed her eyes with the effort to remember them. Gradually her sense of horror lessened. She had left that behind, in the hotel. She had escaped him. The center of their lives! He drew them in to him, sucked them in, his appetite was insatiable. Perhaps Shar had not gone anywhere, but had been devoured by Max. . . . Her prayers redirected themselves, attached themselves to something else, more vague than the pony, more inaccessible; it had fled her. She could not quite reach it. The humiliation, the pain, the fear that possessed her! Karen felt that she had lost her mind. She could not even understand her emotions, or understand if they were truly hers—perhaps she took them from people who passed, that small boy crying and wiping his eyes with dirty fists, a man leering out at the street from an upstairs window—skinny in a white undershirt! In the middle of a confused “Our Father” she stopped and found herself staring at another of her many reflections. It was in a drug store window. The sight of herself staring at herself struck her as funny: murmuring to God, evoking Christ, she was in fact talking only to this reflection. The thought overwhelmed and disgusted her. The very presence of her image, the slight tilting of her head—was that coquettishness?—emphasized her isolation; she was indeed lost; she deserved to be lost. Like Shar, who could not hold together the fragments of his life, Karen could not hold together the snatches of herself that were revealed to her. She was incomplete, not quite human, a mockery of a person. Her beauty mocked the vacuity of her soul. She felt that the straggling people in the street, the people who lounged in doorways, could see through her disguise to the barrenness of her soul. Walking on, she became burdened by the pressure of their attention; she felt their curiosity turn into shame for her. . . .

  After a while she found her way to the bus station. It was small and grimy, in the rear of a garage. She had no money, so she sat and watched the clock as if that might tell her something while the ticket seller whispered about her to one of his customers. The morning went on: bus drivers sourly announced their buses, people milled in and out, a woman addressed her, asking anxiously if the newspaper on the floor belonged to her.

  One of the mechanics from the garage, a young, foreign-looking man, swaggered through, wiping his hands on a rag; someone must have told him about Karen. She did not look up. The ticket seller, leaning forward on his elbows, stared in detail at her white dress, which had become soiled by ashes on the chair. He hummed loudly to himself as if he were very pleased with something, then very vexed. He cleared his throat finally and said, “Miss, there ain’t no bus out of here till three o’clock now. You waiting for that one?”

  Karen looked around slowly, but her eyes stopped before they reached the man’s face. He stared at her a while, then scratched his head, muttered to himself, and arranged things before him on the counter. Another mechanic from the garage drifted in, smoking a cigarette, and put a coin in a soft-drink machine. He and the ticket seller talked together about the weather. Karen heard the ticket seller say something pettishly and end with: “—no bus out of here till three o’clock.”

  A while later Karen looked down from the clock—she was waiting for something, perhaps twelve o’clock—to see Jerry come in. He came right to her. He had gray eyes and small, sharp brows; he looked pleased with himself for finding her.

  “That fat bastard back there is all in a sweat,” he said, “but he sends you this anyhow.” He took an envelope out of his pocket and gave it to Karen. She wondered at it: it was a wrinkled, used, manila envelope with farming equipment advertised on it. “He says good-by to you. He wishes you good luck.”

  When Jerry left, Karen looked inside the envelope. She took the bills out to count them: ten hundred-dollar bills. Her face went hot with blood. The bill
s and the envelope trembled in her hands. The murmuring prayers and doubts and self-accusations of the morning were hurled back at her: hypocrite, she thought, and liar! She felt that now, with this money, with even the dirty envelope it had come in—fished out of a wastebasket—her degradation was complete.

  14

  The history of the city of Cherry River covered a respectable amount of time. It had been a minor, prosperous port up until the Civil War, though its prime had really been in the late eighteenth century. A few homes and gardens from this era remained in spite of violence during the war and neglect afterward—Cherry River, belonging to a part of the country bordering the South, had been mobbed righteously by both sides. The neglect was more natural. After the days of the sailing fleets had passed and industry along the coast settled in other cities, the population ebbed, young people moved to find work in coal fields, liquor distilleries, and tobacco markets elsewhere, or penetrated the mountain wall to the west and dissociated themselves from the civilization, now thought aged, along the east coast. At the turn of the century the town consisted of a main street, unpaved, and a few stores and a post office serving the farms in the area. The old harbor still put out fishing boats, and sometimes wealthy people from the western part of the state—wealthy from coal—came there to sail or to fish from their luxurious boats. There was a small tobacco trade that seemed to operate in a vacuum, as if done by amateurs.