Plexus (49 page)

Arriving home after one of these promenades I would usually find Marjorie and Mona waiting for me, the table spread for a light repast. What Marjorie called a “snack” consisted of cold cuts, salami, headcheese, olives, pickles, sardines, radishes, potato salad, caviar, Swiss cheese, coffee, a German cheesecake or apple strudel, with kümmel, port or Malaga to top it off. Over the coffee and liqueurs we would sometimes listen to John Jacob Niles' recordings. Our favorite was “I Wonder As I Wander,” sung in a clear, high-pitched voice with a quaver and a modality all his own. The metallic clang of his dulcimer never failed to produce ecstasy. He had a voice which summoned memories
of Arthur, Merlin, Guinevere. There was something of the Druid in him. Like a psalmodist, he intoned his verses in an ethereal chant which the angels carried aloft to the Glory seat. When he sang of Jesus, Mary and Joseph they became living presences. A sweep of the hand and the dulcimer gave forth magical sounds which caused the stars to gleam more brightly, which peopled the hills and meadows with silvery figures and made the brooks to babble like infants. We would sit there long after his voice had faded out, talking of Kentucky where he was born, talking of the Blue Ridge mountains and the folk from Arkansas. Marjorie, always, a-humming and a-whistling, would suddenly break out into song, some simple folk tune which one knew from the cradle.

It was the glorious month of September, described in the Old Farmer's Almanac as the time when “the porcupines take their fill of the ripening apples and the deer munch the fine green beans one has tended so carefully.” A lazy time and not a thing to worry about. From our window we looked down on a row of well-kept gardens studded with majestic trees. Everything in apple-pie order, everything serene. The leaves were turning gold and red, flecking the lawns and pavements with fiery splashes. Often I sat at the breakfast table, which commanded a view of the backyards, and fell into a deep reverie. On certain days not a leaf or twig stirred; there was only the splendor of sunlight and the incessant drone of insects. It was hard to believe sometimes that not so very long ago I had lived in this neighborhood with another wife, that I had pushed a baby carriage up and down the streets, or carried the child to the park and watched it romp in the grass. Sitting there by the window, my past grew dim and faint; it was more like another incarnation. A delicious feeling of detachment would overcome me and I would swim back, leisurely, playfully, like a dolphin, into the mysterious waters of imaginary pasts. In such moods, catching a glimpse of Mona flitting about in her Chinese shift, I would look at her as if
she were a total stranger. Sometimes I even forgot her name. Looking away, I would suddenly feel a hand on my shoulder. “What are you thinking about?” I can hear her say. (Even now I remember vividly how from far, far away her voice seemed to come.)
“Thinking … thinking?
I wasn't thinking of anything.” She would remark that there was such a concentrated look in my eyes. “It's nothing,” I would say, “I was just dreaming.” Then Marjorie would chime in: “He's thinking about what he's going to write, I guess.” And I would say, “That's it, Marjorie.” Whereupon they would steal away and leave me to myself. Immediately I would fall back into a state of reverie.

Suspended three stories above the earth, I had the illusion of floating in space. The lawns and shrubs on which my gaze was riveted would vanish. I saw only what I was dreaming of, a perpetual shifting panorama as evanescent as mist. Sometimes queer figures, garbed in the costumes of the period, floated before my eyes—incredible personages such as Samuel Johnson, Dean Swift, Thomas Carlyle, Izaak Walton. Sometimes it was as if the smoke of battle suddenly rolled away and men in armor, chargers sumptuously caparisoned, stood lost and bewildered amidst the slain of the battlefield. Birds and animals also played their part in these still visions, particularly the mythological monsters, with all of whom I seemed to be on familiar terms. There was nothing too outlandish, nothing too unexpected, about these apparitions to rout me out of my nothingness. I wandered with motionless feet through the vast halls of memory, a sort of living cinematograph. Now and then I relived an experience which I had had as a child: a moment, for instance, when one sees or hears something for the first time. In such instances I was both the child experiencing this wonder and the nameless individual observing the child. Sometimes I enjoyed that rare experience of synchronizing my thought and being with the tenuous fragment of a dream long, long forgotten, and, rather than pursue it, rather than fix it objectively in image and sensation,
I would toy with the fringes of it, bathe in its aura, so to say, grateful merely that I had caught up with it, that I had scented its immortal presence.

To this period belongs a night dream which I recorded with scrupulous accuracy. I feel it is worth transcribing.…

“It opened with a nightmarish vertigo which sent me hurtling from a dizzy precipice into the warm waters of the Caribbean. Down, down I swirled, in great spiral curves which had no beginning and promised to end in eternity. During this ceaseless descent a bewildering and enchanting panorama of marine life unrolled before my eyes. Enormous sea dragons wriggled and shimmered in the powdered sunlight, which filtered through the green waters; huge cactus plants with hideous roots floated by, followed by spongelike coral growths of curious hues, some sullen as oxblood, some a brilliant vermilion or soft lavender. Out of this teeming aquatic life poured myriads of animalcules, resembling gnomes and pixies; they bubbled up like gorgeous flux of stardust in the tail-sweep of a comet.

“The roaring in my ears gave way to plangent, verdant melodies; I became aware of the tremors of the earth, of poplars and birches shrouded in ghostlike vapors, bending gracefully to the caress of fragrant breezes. Stealthily the vapors roll away. I am trudging through a mysterious forest alive with screaming monkeys and birds of tropical plumage. There is a quiver of arrows in my girdle and over my shoulder a golden bow.

“Penetrating deeper and deeper into the wood the music becomes more celestial, the light more golden; the earth is carpeted with soft, blood-red leaves. The beauty of it is such that I swoon away. On awakening the forest has vanished. To my befuddled senses it seems that I am standing before a pale, towering canvas on which a pastoral scene of great dignity is depicted: it resembles one of those murals by Puvis de Chavannes in which the grave, seraphic void of dream is materialized. Sedate, somber wraiths move
to and fro with a measured, haunting elegance which made our earthly movement appear grotesque. Stepping in the canvas I follow a quiet path which leads towards the retreating line of the horizon. A full-hipped figure in a Grecian robe, balancing an urn, is directing her footsteps toward the turret of a castle dimly visible above the crest of a gentle knoll. I pursue the undulating hips until lost in a dip beyond the crest of the knoll.

“The figure with the urn has disappeared. But now my eyes are rewarded by a more mystifying sight. It is as if I had arrived at the very end of this habitable earth, at that magic fringe of the ancient world where all the mysteries and gloom and terror of the universe are concealed. I am hemmed in by a vast enclosure whose limits are only faintly discernible. Ahead of me loom the walls of a hoary castle bristling with spears. Pennants blazoned with incredible emblems flutter ominously above the crenellated battlements. A sickly fungus growth chokes the broad sweeps leading out from the terrifying portals; the gloomy casements are bespattered with the remains of great carrion birds whose foul stench is unbearable.

“But what awes and fascinates me most is the color of the castle. It is a red such as my eyes have never beheld. The walls are of a warm bloodlike hue, the tint of rich corpuscles laid bare by the knife. Beyond the frontier walls loom more spectacular parapets and battlements, turrets and spires, each receding rank steeped in a more awesome red. To my terrified eyes the whole spectacle takes on the proportions of a monstrous butchers' orgy dripping with gore and excrement.

“In fear and horror I avert my gaze an instant. In that fleeting moment the scene changes. Instead of poisonous fungus and the scabby carcasses of vultures there is spread before me a rich mosaic of ebony and cinnamon, shadowed by deep purple panoplies from which cascades of cherry blossoms slither away in billowy heaps on a checkered court. Within reach, almost, stands a splendid couch festooned
with royal drapes and smothered in pillows of gossamer loveliness. On this sumptuous divan, as if languidly anticipating my arrival, reclines my wife Maude. It is not a wholly familiar Maude, though I recognize at once her tiny, birdlike mouth. I wait expectantly for her usual inanities. Instead there issues from her throat a flood of dark music which sends the blood hammering to my temples. It is only at this moment that I realize she is nude, feel the vague, splendid pain of her loins. I bend over to lift her in my arms but recoil immediately in full horror as I perceive a spider slowly crawling over her milky breast. As if possessed, I flee in panic towards the castle walls.

“And now a strange thing happens. To the groaning and creaking of rusty hinges the towering gates swing slowly open. Swiftly I race up the narrow path which leads to the foot of the spiral staircase. Frantically I climb the iron steps—higher and higher, without ever seeming to reach the top. Finally, when it seems as if my heart will break from exertion, I find myself at the summit. The ramparts and battlements, the casements and turrets of the mysterious castle, are no longer there beneath me. Before my eyes there unfolds a black, volcanic waste furrowed with innumerable chasms of bottomless depth. Nothing of plant or vegetable life is visible. Petrified limbs of gigantic proportions, carbuncled with glistening mineral crustations, lie sprawled about over the void. Gazing more intently I perceive with horror that there
is
a life down below there—a slimy, crawling life which reveals itself in huge coils that wind and unwind about the crazy, dead limbs.

“Suddenly I have a presentiment that the towering steeple up which I had climbed in panic is crumbling at the base, that this immense spire is teetering at the edge of the loathsome abyss, threatening at any moment to hurl me into a shattering annihilation. For just a fraction of a moment there is an eerie stillness, then faintly, so faintly as to be almost inaudible, there comes the sound of a voice—a human voice. Now it rings out boldly, with a weird,
moaning accent, only to die out immediately, as if it had been strangled down in the sulphurous depths below. Instantly the tower lurches violently; as it swoops out over the void, like a drunken ship, a babble of voices breaks forth. Human voices, in which there are mingled the laughter of hyenas, the shrill screams of lunatics, the bloodcurdling oaths of the damned, the piercing, horror-laden cackles of the possessed.

“As the rail gives way I am catapulted into space with meteoric speed. Down, down, down, my frail body stripped of its tender flesh, the entrails clawed by leprous talons, by beaks crusted with verdigris. Down, down, down, stripped and mangled by fang and tusk.

“And then it ceases, this hurtling through the void; it gives way to a sliding sensation. I am shooting down a paraffin incline supported by colossal columns of human flesh that bleed from every pore. Awaiting me is the wide, cavernous maw of an ogre champing its teeth with fierce expectancy. In an instant I shall be swallowed alive, shall perish to the hideous accompaniment of bones, my own precious bones, being crunched and splintered.… But just as I am about to slide into the gaping red maw the monster sneezes. The explosion is so vast that the whole universe is snuffed out. I awake coughing like a smoking bellows.”

Was it a coincidence that the very next day I should run into my friend Ulric, that he should inform me stutteringly that Maude had been to see him the day before and had begged him to speak to me, urged me to return to her? She had been pitifully abject, he told me ruefully. She had wept unceasingly from the time she entered his studio until she left. She had even got down on her knees and begged him to promise that he would leave no stone unturned to accomplish his mission.

“I told her truthfully,” said Ulric, “that I didn't know where to find you. She said there must be a way to track you down. She begged you to forgive her as she forgave
you. She said the child was asking for you constantly. She said she didn't care what you did if only you would come back.… I tell you, Henry, it was an ordeal. I promised her I would do all I could, knowing though that it was futile. I know it must pain you to listen to all this.” He hesitated a moment, then added: “There's one thing I'd like to ask of you, if it's not too much—would you mind getting in touch with her yourself? I don't think I could face another session like that. It unnerves one.”

I assured him I would handle the situation myself. I told him not to worry about either of us. “Listen, Ulric, let's forget about this for a while. Come along with me and have a spot of lunch with us. Mona will be delighted to see you again. And I think you'll like Marjorie.” His eyes lit up at once. He rubbed his juicy lips with the tip of his tongue.

“All right,” he said, slapping his thigh, “I'll take you up on it. By golly, it's time we had a little powwow. Do you know, I began to wonder if I'd ever see you again. You must have lots to tell me.”

As I had surmised, Marjorie and Ulric hit it off perfectly. We had a staggering lunch, supplemented by a couple of bottles of Rhine wine. After lunch Ulric stretched himself out on the divan and took a little snooze. He explained that he had been working hard on a pineapple campaign. When he had had a little rest he might try a sketch or two. Perhaps Marjorie would be good enough to pose for him, yes? One eye was already closed. The other, frighteningly alive, rolled and lurched under his beetling brow. “You sure eat well around here,” he said, crossing his hands over his paunch. He raised himself on one elbow and shaded his eyes with his hand. “I say, do you mind if we were to lower that shade just a little? That's it, that's fine.” He gave a gentle sigh and sank quietly into sleep.