Shortest Day (4 page)

Mary waited at the bottom of the massive staircase of Widener Library, looking left and right for Homer, feeling guilty about the rehearsal. “You won't have to be involved at all,” she had promised Homer. “I'll come and go to rehearsals and performances by myself. I really want to do this, Homer.”

But here they were, welded together for the whole evening. Homer was going to loathe it. He hated the whole Revels idea, from first principles to the bells on the Morris men's knees. Morris dancers, he said, gave him a pain. So did ethnic costumes worn by descendants of the Pilgrim fathers and phony folk art created by employees of IBM and Smith-Barney. Adult men and women frisking around in costume—why didn't they grow up?

There he was, striding toward her along a path between patches of frozen grass. Mary looked at Homer critically as he came nearer, looking taller than ever in his long coat. His month-old beard looked terrible. She laughed. “Oh, Homer, when is it going to grow a little longer? It looks horrible.”

“No, no,” said Homer, “you don't understand. It's right in the forefront of fashion. La Mode Hobo. Haven't you heard? Where have you been? Don't you keep up? The style of the Great Depression, it's all the rage.”

“Oh, Homer, you're making that up.”

“No, I'm not, I swear. Look at those kids.” Homer nodded at a couple of boys in greasy fedoras and ragged overcoats. Mary watched them trot down the vast staircase. They were discussing the theory of least squares, their coats dragging behind them.

She took Homer's arm. “Well, I don't care whether it's fashionable or not, your beard is at a really gruesome stage.”

After supper they crossed the Yard again, and walked across the broad expanse of the mall above the sunken tunnel of Cambridge Street. A couple of homeless people had set up a crude shelter of wooden planks beside one of the hedges, and they were hammering it together, holding nails in their teeth.

Mary told Homer about Palmer Nifto. There he was in the square, still campaigning for homeless people, still being a thorn in somebody's side. “You know, Homer,” she said, looking at the shapeless dwelling under construction, “I sometimes wonder how our ancestors survived the winter. How did they keep themselves alive?”

“Well,” said Homer, making up a theory, “suppose you had a cow. You could bring it inside and snuggle up beside it. I doubt many people froze to death or starved.”

Mary wasn't so sure. She looked back at the two men with their hammers. One of them was Palmer Nifto. They might have been peasants in Yugoslavia with the cold funneling down between the mountains, or Irish farmers with their potatoes going rotten, or frostbitten muzhiks on the Siberian steppes. How many thousands of people had not made it through the winter? How many winter perishings had there been since the beginning of time?

With their heads down against the wind, they scuttled along the south side of Memorial Hall, climbed the steps to the entry, and pulled open the heavy door.

CHAPTER 5

I open the door, I enter in
.

I hope your favour we shall win
.

Whether we stand or whether we fall
,

We'll do our best to please you all
.

Traditional British Mummers' Play

G
ratefully Mary and Homer entered the high corridor. A throng of muffled shapes crowded through the door behind them, eager to get out of the wind. Inside the building there was no wind, only a cold breath moving down from the wooden vaults, sliding past the marble tablets with their sad memorials, flowing downward to creep past Mary's scarf and stiffen her freezing fingers. Somewhere in the lower reaches of Memorial Hall there must surely be an enormous furnace, but no gushes of steamy heat found their way into this lofty corridor. How many rich alumni and alumnae would it take to install a dozen giant radiators among the memorials? Too many, apparently.

“Come on, Homer. It'll be warmer in the great hall.”

And it was. The furnace, from whatever dark hole it inhabited, sent vast quantities of warm air on rising thermals to the summit of the ceiling of the great hall, where giant hammerbeams held up the roof. Downward currents warmed the lower reaches of the gigantic room, where a lot was going on. People were moving around in various stages of undress. Long rows of tables stretched into the distance, covered with props and costumes. There was an undercurrent of laughter and good humor. Well, of course, thought Mary, suppressing a feeling of bitterness, the show must go on. Time in its heartless way had closed over the memory of Henry Shady, leaving no seam.

“My God,” said Homer, goggling at the deer antlers, “what are those for?”

“The horn dance,” said Mary. “It's really ancient. You'll see.”

Homer looked up at the beams arching over the high rows of stained-glass windows, dark at this hour and colorless. Below the windows the drab walls were lined with portraits of Union generals and the busts of dead professors.

“I've always liked this place,” he said, remembering a time of crisis, a chase up the balcony stairs. It had been one of those foolish occasions when Homer had been forced back into his long-defunct role as an ex-lieutenant detective in the office of the District Attorney of Middlesex County. “What are they using this place for now? Sort of a giant dressing room?”

Mary introduced him to Tom Cobb, one of the stage directors, and Homer said, “How do you do,” but a gaggle of children rushed past them in an endless stream, and Tom said, “Hey, wait for me,” and took off after the children. Mary grasped Homer's arm and led him to a harried-looking woman hunched over an ironing board. “Our wardrobe supervisor, Joan Hill.”

“I was just saying—” said Homer, but then a human cherry tree said, “Excuse me,” and wobbled past them, heading for a mirror to inspect the twiggy growths growing out of its head. At once there was a clatter of small objects on the floor. “Shit,” said the tree, “all my cherries fell off.”

“Oh, God,” said the wardrobe supervisor. She waved her iron at Mary, and at once the ironing board collapsed. “Oh, could you, dear? Would you? I've got to do something about his cherries.”

Mary picked up the ironing board. “Really, Homer, you don't have to stay. Why don't you go to a movie or something?”

“Don't be silly. I want to see what it's like.”

“Well, just as you wish.” Mary wet her finger and touched the iron. It hissed. Someone shouted for the Morris dancers.

“Oh, God,” said Homer, “Morris dancers. All this folksy stuff, Ph.D.s and computer scientists pretending to be peasants. How do you stand it?”

“Oh, Homer, I knew you wouldn't like it.” Mary drove the iron along a length of wrinkled cloth. “It's true, there's a kind of Cambridge chic about the Revels. But the Morris dancers are really great. Why don't you go into Sanders Theatre and watch?”

Grumpily Homer did as he was told. Once more he crossed the cold high corridor. After pushing through the swinging doors of Sanders, he was again in the warm air.

The place was already buzzing. Three people were hunched over the tech table at the back of the floor, their equipment on a board mounted over a couple of benches. Homer sat down nearby and folded his arms and looked grimly at the stage.

But he couldn't maintain his cynicism. As always, the hollow chamber captured him with its nineteenth-century air of varnished wooden comfort, with its shadowy stage and enclosing semicircle of seats in rising tiers. Somehow the place had a quasi-medieval feeling. It was a Gothico-Victorian hall in a forest of oak trees in which wild boar and leaping stags were hiding, with huntsmen dodging behind the railings of the mezzanine. Ulysses S. Grant would appear in a moment in the robes of King Arthur, and so would John Ruskin, masquerading as Sir Galahad.

Homer winced. Oh, God, here came the Morris men, clumping onstage.

“Not yet,” shouted Tom Cobb. “Come on again. Wait for the music.”

The Morris dancers clattered off. A guy with a concertina struck up a tiddly tune, and they tramped in a second time.

“Hold it,” said Tom. “Wait for me.” He jumped up on the stage and joined them as they began to dance.

Homer slumped back on the bench and scowled as the six men stamped their feet and clashed their sticks together. Then he sat up and stopped scowling. Grudgingly he admitted to himself that they were very good.
Thump
went the stamping feet,
crash
went the sticks.

The dance was finished. The Morris men stopped leaping up and down and looked at Tom uncertainly as he backed away to become a stage director again. “Okay, that's it, go off in procession.” Then Tom raised his voice and shouted, “Chorus? You've got to come on as they go off. Chorus, where are you?”

They filed onstage from the left, ten men in tunics and long hose, ten women in bright gowns. Homer looked for Mary, but she was the last because she was the tallest. In spite of his disbelief in the whole thing, Homer beamed at his wife and shook his clasped hands over his head.

Mary turned to her neighbor and grinned artificially, pretending to be part of a jolly Christmas festival. At once there was an interruption. Tom Cobb said, “Wait, here's Sarah.”

There was a hush. Everyone stared offstage as Sarah came breezing in, and then, to their embarrassment, her husband appeared behind her. Morgan Bailey was a stranger to Homer Kelly, but everyone else recognized Sarah's husband, the driver responsible for the death of her star performer, Henry Shady.

But the two Baileys were boldly grasping the nettle. Morgan followed Sarah up the steps to the stage and made a little speech about what had happened. His hours of weeping were over. His voice was clear, his words were sensible. “Of course the accident was my fault, but Henry appeared so suddenly, right in front of my car. I swerved to avoid him, but in trying to get out of my way he jumped in the same direction. Sarah has told me how much you all loved Henry Shady. I will bear the scar for the rest of my life.”

Well, good for you, thought Homer, giving him credit.

Then Sarah talked about the fund they were organizing in Henry's memory, money to be collected for his family. “His mother,” whispered one of the technicians to Homer, “down there in West Virginia.”

There was loud applause from the Morris men and the members of the chorus, and from the technicians sitting beside Homer and the musicians clustered in the wings. Someone flourished a checkbook. Someone else tossed green bills in the air.

But of course it wasn't funny. Gravely Sarah Bailey waved her arm, urging the performers to carry on, and hurried down the steps again. Her husband followed. Then Morgan Bailey walked solemnly to the back of the hall and sat down by himself on a darkened bench, silhouetted against the light of the encircling aisle.

But Morgan wasn't really feeling solemn at all. Instead he was oddly exhilarated. It was so strange, after all that weeping and mortification, he had awakened yesterday morning feeling buoyant and lighthearted. A weight had been lifted from his chest. Smiling, Morgan filled his lungs with the glowing air of Sanders Theatre and held it a moment, then let it go.