Elena. Part 31

"That's a judgment on ideas, isn't it?" she asked.

"I would say so, yes."

"But what about people? What you seem to be saying, William, is that Elena was getting rather hard in the way she thought about things, rather rigid."

"I would say her standards were getting higher."

"Was she getting more judgmental?"

"Yes. Why shouldn't she? Would you rather she had settled for Jack MacNeill?"

Martha smiled. "Why didn't she? He would have married her, wouldn't he?"

"Yes," I said. "But of course, Elena wouldn't marry him." I smiled. "Once, long after the miscarriage, the two of them were having an argument, and Elena told Jack that he had applied everything he had to politics but his mind."

"How did he react to that?"

"He let it pa.s.s," I told her. "Jack could never be intimidated by Elena. His own experience was too authentic, and he always considered Elena's too cerebral to be respected beyond all bounds."

Martha looked doubtful. "Then why did he make love to her that night after the speech? And why did she let him?"

"Because she wanted to," I said. "She said they both needed it, and that more than anything it was like a good cry."

Martha quickly jotted it down. Then she looked up at me. "Did she ever talk about that evening?"

"Yes," I said.

Elena had already gone to bed when he arrived, drenched by the predicted rain. She had not in the least expected him, as she told me later, and for a moment she had had the impulse to slam the door in his face like some dejected heroine in a movie melodrama. But she had caught herself in time and stepped back from the door to let him in. It was then she saw the roses, soaked and crumpled beneath his arm. "I never gave you flowers," he said as he handed them to her. "Too bourgeois." Then he told her that he had seen her at the meeting but had sneaked out of the room before it ended.

She left him in the living room, slumped in the chair by the window, as she made coffee in the kitchen. From there he related his trials in Spain. When she walked back into the living room, he told her what must have seemed to him at that moment the central secret of his life.

"I know that review must have hurt you a great deal, Elena," he said, "and I suppose that's exactly what I wanted it to do. You see, while I was in Spain, I couldn't think of anything but you. I felt like a dupe, you know? A sap. While Franco was taking Catalonia and the Loyalists were giving it to the Deutschland, I was completely preoccupied with a woman in New York."

Martha's pencil was flying across the page. I stopped to let her catch up. When she had, she looked up at me with a quizzical expression on her face. "Do you think - this may sound silly - but do you think that Jack hated Elena because he loved her?" she asked tentatively.

"Not exactly," I said. "But there is the line from Pope about one's becoming the thing one most abhors. Well, maybe when Jack found himself thinking about Elena when he should have been thinking about nothing but the Loyalist cause, maybe he resented that - resented the fact that he'd become something of a bourgeois romantic."

"Ah, yes," Martha said, as if a light had just gone on in her brain. "So Elena's speech must have really gotten to him, all that talk about nonmaterial needs."

I nodded. "It probably did," I said. "But you should be careful to remember that Jack MacNeill always believed in his own ideas. He knew that he could be turned aside by a romantic notion, but only for a little while."

"So he didn't come back to Elena in order to apologize or anything like that?"

"Apologize for what?"

"For his review."

I shook my head. "He never believed Calliope was anything but a piece of obscure, breast-thumping nonsense, Martha, and he never took back one word of that review."

Martha nodded, wrote something down in her notebook, and looked back up at me. "So that review - it was not a subconscious effort to destroy Elena as a person?"

I shook my head. "No. It was an attack upon a book Jack felt to be utterly wrong-headed. He felt Elena had betrayed what he no doubt saw as her social duty. He felt that he had spent valuable time in Spain mooning over such a person."

"So he didn't spend his whole life loving Elena?" Martha asked.

"Absolutely not," I told her. "Jack was a very committed man, and when Elena took her interests away from matters of immediate political importance, Jack simply stepped aside." I glanced down at her notes. "Put down in your notebook that Jack MacNeill was as much his own man as Elena was her own woman and you'll be closer to the truth than you would be with any portrait of either one of them pining away for the other." I laughed. "Believe me, they didn't do that."

"Yes, all right," Martha said, accepting my judgment. "But did either one of them learn anything from this - what would you call it - this romance?"

"Elena learned something," I said. "She felt very stupid for getting pregnant, and I think because of that she began to think of her impulsiveness as something dangerous, something that could seriously mislead her."

"But how can you control your own impulsiveness?" Martha asked.

"By using your will," I told her. "And I think that for a while in Elena's life, she believed only in the will."

Even as I said this, however, it seemed to me that there was more to it than that, more to it than simply Elena's severe sense of self-reliance combined, as it was in her, with a deep distrust of her own impulsiveness. No doubt she felt very much alone after Jack left her, and no doubt that loneliness grew as she realized that she was carrying his child. But I also think that for a time she saw the baby as a way out of her dilemma, saw it as the one thing in life she might feel free to love with absolute heedlessness. In her short story "Work of Art," which was written only a week or so before her miscarriage, a connoisseur bestows just this kind of adoration upon an ancient urn because "it is complete in its beauty, flawless beyond particularities, so perfect that it seems unmade. Conceived without reservation, such a work can be loved the more for being mightier than our thought."

I will not say that when the baby died something in my sister died as well. But I do believe that with its loss Elena firmly turned away from those pursuits we term ordinary, and that she never sought them out again.

Thus when Elizabeth returned to New York, as I told Martha that afternoon, she found a friend less pliant than the one she left behind, less indulgent toward weaknesses she did not share, and thus less inclined to abide them patiently.

"Why did Elizabeth come back to the United States?" Martha asked. She was looking at me pointedly, as if there were some darker motivation than the most obvious. There wasn't, and I told her so.

"France fell," I said. "It's as simple as that." I shook my head. "I suppose it's hard now for anyone to imagine how dreadful the collapse of France seemed to us at the time." The very mention of it evoked once again the powerful dread that had seized us with the news. At the time, of course, the most grotesque German abominations had yet to be committed. Still, the fall of France cast a pall over our lives, heralding an unparalleled disaster. The shock was compounded by the images that swept over us, that appalling newsreel footage of Hitler standing on the esplanade of the Palais de Chaillot, leering toward the Left Bank at an Eiffel Tower which seemed, beneath his gaze, terribly naked and vulnerable. This vision of the unspeakable barbarian grinning maliciously within the heart of European culture offended even Harry, who in the beginning had espoused the standard defense of his cla.s.s, that at least the n.a.z.is had stopped the Communists in their tracks. For the rest of us, however, the invasion of France was merely the latest in a long series of German depredations, and I suppose that even Howard Carlton, standing utterly confused as German troops marched stiffly down the boulevard Saint-Germain, could feel the German noose tightening around him.

"And so they left Paris," I told Martha. "They packed their bags, took a train to Le Havre, and sailed back to New York."

"You met them at the dock?" Martha asked.

"No. They didn't tell us they were in the city right away. I suppose they were busy setting up their new apartment on Bank Street in the Village. Then one afternoon in mid-November Elena's phone rang and it was Elizabeth."

"Was Elena happy to hear from her?"

"Of course. We hadn't received a letter in quite some time. The Germans had entered Paris in June, and Elena hadn't heard a word from Elizabeth. It was a great relief to us all, but especially to Elena. You could hear it in her voice."

Martha looked up from her notebook. "Did she sense anything about Elizabeth?"

"I think she did," I said. "When I asked her how Elizabeth had sounded on the phone, she said that she had sounded just fine. But there was a tension in her voice, as if she were withholding judgment, or maybe just hoping for the best." I shook my head. "Of course, Elena was still rather out of sorts, herself. She had not been able to write anything but short stories since the miscarriage, and almost all of them had to do with some sense of loss or other. I suppose that those short stories are as spiritually autobiographical as anything she ever wrote, other than New England Maid. Not one of them is about a miscarriage, but that doesn't matter. The loss is everywhere."

"When did Elena actually see Elizabeth?" Martha asked.

"That same night," I told her.

It was already evening when Elena and I walked across the Village to the Bank Street address Elizabeth had given us. Alexander had been born only six months before, and I remember being preoccupied with various paternal concerns. Completely oblivious to how Elena might feel, I went on and on about my son, detailing his eating and sleeping habits. Still, she seemed to take a certain delight in my fatherhood, and I think that in the end she thought of Alexander as a good deal more than her nephew, particularly after Miriam died. But that evening, of course, it was Elizabeth who was most on her mind.

It was a four-story walkup, and I was winded by the time we reached Elizabeth's apartment on the top floor. Elena was visibly excited as she knocked on the door.

Howard opened it almost immediately. He was dressed in dark flannel pants, a white s.h.i.+rt, and a black suit vest. A cigarette dangled precariously from the corner of his mouth. He took it out by the tips of his fingers, a gesture that was as determinedly Continental as the thin mustache he had grown since we last saw him.

"Oh, it's Thursday," he said. "Elizabeth said you'd be coming on Thursday."

"Yes, it's Thursday, Howard," I told him.

He nodded slowly. He looked as remote as he ever had, his eyes full of the bafflement that pervaded his every mood, no matter how cheerful or downcast.

Elena peeped inside the door. "Is Elizabeth here?"

"Oh, yes, of course," Howard said as he stepped back into the tiny foyer. "Please, come in."

The apartment was small and somewhat cramped, filled with unpacked cartons and scores of canvases wrapped securely in brown paper and twine. There was a large sofa between the two front windows and a few small chairs scattered about. A lamp rested on the windowsill, the bulb beneath the shade s.h.i.+ning into the room like a yellow eye.

"We've not really done much to settle in, yet," Howard explained. He glanced down the hallway to the left. "Elizabeth, come out. William and Elena are here."

I could see her coming toward us through the dark hallway. She was dressed in a gray artist's smock, and she looked generally disheveled and somewhat overweight. And yet her face was still quite lovely, though now it possessed only the kind of beauty that Swinburne gave to Faustine, the sort that in h.e.l.l would be called human.

Elena rushed over to her and drew her into her arms.

"I was so worried about you, Elizabeth," she said. "We didn't know what had happened to you."

Elizabeth nodded. Her skin had a bluish pallor and her eyes were watery. At first I thought she might have had a bout of seasickness on the voyage over, but there was something almost broken in her manner, a distance and withdrawal. As Elena would later describe it to Jason, it was "the look of someone whose soul had drowned."

"I meant to call you before this," Elizabeth said weakly, "but I've been ill."

Elena gathered around her friend like a winter blanket and urged her gently toward the sofa, then eased her down onto it.

"It wasn't good over there, Elena," Elizabeth said. "It wasn't good at all."

"She means her painting," Howard said quickly. He pulled the cigarette from his mouth and crushed it into the gla.s.s ashtray in his other hand. "She had an exhibition, you know. At a little gallery in Montmartre." He looked at me. "It didn't go very well. It was really quite depressing for Elizabeth." He shrugged. "The reviews, you know. Very unfortunate."

Elena nestled in closely to Elizabeth and draped one of her arms lightly over her shoulder. "Don't worry about that sort of thing, Elizabeth." She offered a smile. "You're back in New York now. That's all that matters."

Elizabeth nodded tentatively, then stared down at her hands. They were trembling slightly.

"Actually, I'd like to see some of your work, Elizabeth," I said.

She looked up at me languidly, as if she were drugged. "See them? Why?"

"Because they're yours," I told her.

"Yes, good idea," Howard said. He walked over to a stack of paintings leaning against the far wall and began unwrapping them. Elizabeth looked on indifferently.

Howard quickly unveiled several canvases. Elena and I watched as he lifted one after another toward the light. Some were winter scenes. Some were of Paris street life. I recognized one as the gardens of Versailles. All the pictures appeared terribly gray and dreary, as if painted through filmy gla.s.s. The faces of the people suggested a kind of stricken panic, rather like those of Edvard Munch, their eyes crazed and sunken, their mouths open in gasps or screams or closed tight in mute horror. Had they been painted by anyone else, I would have dismissed them as too overtly advertising a fas.h.i.+onable despair - the grays too tedious, the black pure melodrama. But they were Elizabeth's, and because of that I marveled at their strangeness, as I'm sure Elena did. For after Howard had finished she turned to Elizabeth and asked her a series of routine questions about color and composition, avoiding the subject of her paintings' leaden mood.

Elizabeth answered quietly but with a shrug, as if her words were no more than table sc.r.a.ps thrown on some alley garbage heap.

"I'm not a painter," she said finally, dismissing any further discussion of her work, her voice rising once again with that older energy she had once possessed in Standhope. It was the last time either Elena or I would hear it.

"Actually," Elena said after a moment, "I was hoping to pry you away from Howard for a while so that just the two of us could spend some time together."

Elizabeth stared down at her hands again and said nothing.

"Not a bad idea, Elizabeth," Howard said. He turned to me. "We had a bright flat in Paris. Not far from the boulevard Raspail. Do you know it?"

I shook my head. "No. I've never been lucky enough to go to Paris."

Howard nodded, almost sadly, as if my misfortune were his own.

Elena continued to watch Elizabeth. "Why don't you come stay with me a few days," she asked urgently. "It would be wonderful to be alone together, just for a while."

Elizabeth looked up at Elena, her eyes listless, her head drifting to the left as if she could not hold it steady. "No. I wouldn't leave Howard alone."

Elena did not press the issue. She simply let it drop, one of those sins of omission which Dorothea Moore, in Inwardness, would later come so deeply to regret after her son's death: "Not long after Timon's death, I walked to the Louvre and sat and stared at the Winged Victory and thought how contradictory it was, this image of headless triumph, frozen in its broken arrogance, made accidentally great by its absurdity. And it seemed to me that what I had demanded of my son was not unlike this strange piece of sculpture, embodying both the idea and the reality, the dream of ascension and the earthly fall. Might my son have lived, had I brought him here, sat with him under my arm, inspected this shattered stone with him? I know now what I should have said: Timon, remain a man of earth, though your mother dreams you heavens.'"

They talked on for a time, Elena trying as much as possible to draw Elizabeth into a lighter mood. She even talked about Calliope a bit, describing the furor it had created in various circles. Elizabeth listened quietly but from a certain distance, as if she were listening to a radio report rather than to a friend she had not seen for years.

Elena continued on, however, as if she thought that the sustained sound of her voice might bring back the Elizabeth we both remembered. As she talked, her eyes turned down to Elizabeth's hands, to the trembling that occasionally seized them. And I suppose that it was then that Elena first understood that Elizabeth had sunk into the same disease as her father. There was no brown mug dangling from her hand, nor an a.s.sortment of empty bottles. But the physical evidence was in almost everything else about her - the stupor in her eyes, the slow measure of her voice, the swollen quality of her body, its alcoholic bloat.

Elena was still talking, stopping only to ask an occasional question of Elizabeth, when I walked into the kitchen, discreetly tugging Howard along with me. When we were out of earshot, I put the question to him directly.

"What's happened to Elizabeth?" I asked.

Howard's face was a blank page, utterly emotionless. "You might as well know," he said. "She's become something of a drunk."

"Yes, that's quite clear, Howard," I told him. "But why?"

Howard blinked slowly, then bit his lower lip. His voice was dry and flat. "She had this exhibition. She took it hard. They called her names. They said she had no talent."

I looked at him suspiciously. "That's not enough to change Elizabeth into what she is now, Howard."

He shrugged. "There were other things."

"Like what?"

Howard glanced about nervously, then slowly moved his eyes over to me. "I will stay with her, William," he said. "I will not desert her."

"That doesn't answer my question."

Howard drew in a deep breath and leaned against the small refrigerator that chugged ludicrously beside him. He had never looked more agitated.

"In Paris there was no place to get away from it. It was like New York, not Standhope. There was no way to get away from it."

"What are you talking about, Howard?" I asked.

He glanced away. "I took a lover."

It seemed so pedestrian a sin that I actually felt some relief.

Then Howard slowly turned toward me again. "This lover ... It was a man."