All the Days and Nights Page 8

  “The poor people who run the cinema,” Ellen said.

  “Why?”

  “No one came to see the movie.”

  “I suppose Périgueux really isn’t the kind of town that would support a movie theater,” Ray said.

  “That’s it,” Ellen said. “Here, when people want to relax and enjoy themselves, they have an apéritif, they walk up and down in the evening air, they dance in the street, the way people used to do before there were any movies. It’s another civilization entirely from anything we’re accustomed to. Another world.”

  They went back into the bedroom and closed the shutters. A few minutes later, some more people emerged from the movie theater, and some more, and some more, and then a great crowd came streaming out and, walking gravely, like people talking part in a religious procession, fanned out across the open square.

  The Patterns of Love

  KATE Talbot’s bantam rooster, awakened by the sudden appearance of the moon from behind a cloud on a white June night, began to crow. There were three bantams — a cock and two hens — and their roost was in a tree just outside the guest-room windows. The guest room was on the first floor and the Talbots’ guest that weekend was a young man by the name of Arnold, a rather light sleeper. He got up and closed the windows and went back to bed. In the sealed room he slept, but was awakened at frequent intervals until daylight Saturday morning.

  Arnold had been coming to the Talbots’ place in Wilton sometime during the spring or early summer for a number of years. His visits were, for the children, one of a thousand seasonal events that could be counted on, less exciting than the appearance of the first robin or the arrival of violets in the marsh at the foot of the Talbots’ hill but akin to them. Sometimes Duncan, the Talbots’ older boy, who for a long time was under the impression that Arnold came to see him, slept in the guest room when Arnold was there. Last year, George, Duncan’s younger brother, had been given that privilege. This time, Mrs. Talbot, knowing how talkative the boys were when they awoke in the morning, had left Arnold to himself.

  When he came out of his room, Mrs. Talbot and George, the apple of her eye, were still at breakfast. George was six, small and delicate and very blond, not really interested in food at any time, and certainly not now, when there was a guest in the house. He was in his pajamas and a pink quilted bathrobe. He smiled at Arnold with his large and very gentle eyes and said, “Did you miss me?”

  “Yes, of course,” Arnold said. “I woke up and there was the other bed, flat and empty. Nobody to talk to while I looked at the ceiling. Nobody to watch me shave.”

  George was very pleased that his absence had been felt. “What is your favorite color?” he asked.

  “Red,” Arnold said, without having to consider.

  “Mine too,” George said, and his face became so illuminated with pleasure at this coincidence that for a moment he looked angelic.

  “No matter how much we disagree about other things,” Arnold said, “we’ll always have that in common, won’t we?”

  “Yes,” George said.

  “You’d both better eat your cereal,” Mrs. Talbot said.

  Arnold looked at her while she was pouring his coffee and wondered if there wasn’t something back of her remark — jealousy, perhaps. Mrs. Talbot was a very soft-hearted woman, but for some reason she seemed to be ashamed — or perhaps afraid — to let other people know it. She took refuge continually behind a dry humor. There was probably very little likelihood that George would be as fond of anyone else as he was of his mother for many years to come. There was no real reason for her to be jealous.

  “Did the bantams keep you awake?” she asked.

  Arnold shook his head.

  “Something tells me you’re lying,” Mrs. Talbot said. “John didn’t wake up, but he felt his responsibilities as a host even so. He cried ‘Oh!’ in his sleep every time a bantam crowed. You’ll have to put up with them on Kate’s account. She loves them more than her life.”

  Excluded from the conversation of the grown-ups, George finished his cereal and ate part of a soft-boiled egg. Then he asked to be excused and, with pillows and pads which had been brought in from the garden furniture the night before, he made a train right across the dining-room floor. The cook had to step over it when she brought a fresh pot of coffee, and Mrs. Talbot and Arnold had to do likewise when they went out through the dining-room door to look at the bantams. There were only two — the cock and one hen — walking around under the Japanese cherry tree on the terrace. Kate was leaning out of an upstairs window, watching them fondly.

  “Have you made your bed?” Mrs. Talbot asked.

  The head withdrew.

  “Kate is going to a house party,” Mrs. Talbot said, looking at the bantams. “A sort of house party. She’s going to stay all night at Mary Sherman’s house and there are going to be some boys and they’re going to dance to the Victrola.”

  “How old is she, for heaven’s sake?” Arnold asked.

  “Thirteen,” Mrs. Talbot said. “She had her hair cut yesterday and it’s too short. It doesn’t look right, so I have to do something about it.”

  “White of egg?” Arnold asked.

  “How did you know that?” Mrs. Talbot asked in surprise.

  “I remembered it from the last time,” Arnold said. “I remembered it because it sounded so drastic.”

  “It only works with blonds,” Mrs. Talbot said. “Will you be able to entertain yourself for a while?”

  “Easily,” Arnold said. “I saw Anna Karenina in the library and I think I’ll take that and go up to the little house.”

  “Maybe I’d better come with you,” Mrs. Talbot said.

  The little house was a one-room studio halfway up the hill, about a hundred feet from the big house, with casement windows on two sides and a Franklin stove. It had been built several years before, after Mrs. Talbot had read A Room of One’s Own, and by now it had a slightly musty odor which included lingering traces of wood smoke.

  “Hear the wood thrush?” Arnold asked, as Mrs. Talbot threw open the windows for him. They both listened.

  “No,” she said. “All birds sound alike to me.”

  “Listen,” he said.

  This time there was no mistaking it — the liquid notes up and then down the same scale.

  “Oh, that,” she said. “Yes, I love that,” and went off to wash Kate’s hair.

  FROM time to time Arnold raised his head from the book he was reading and heard not only the wood thrush but also Duncan and George, quarreling in the meadow. George’s voice was shrill and unhappy and sounded as if he were on the verge of tears. Both boys appeared at the window eventually and asked for permission to come in. The little house was out of bounds to them. Arnold nodded. Duncan, who was nine, crawled in without much difficulty, but George had to be hoisted. No sooner were they inside than they began to fight over a wooden gun which had been broken and mended and was rightly George’s, it seemed, though Duncan had it and refused to give it up. He refused to give it up one moment, and the next moment, after a sudden change of heart, pressed it upon George — forced George to take it, actually, for by that time George was more concerned about the Talbots’ dog, who also wanted to come in.

  The dog was a Great Dane, very mild but also very enormous. He answered to the name of Satan. Once Satan was admitted to the little house, it became quite full and rather noisy, but John Talbot appeared and sent the dog out and made the children leave Arnold in peace. They left as they had come, by the window. Arnold watched them and was touched by the way Duncan turned and helped George, who was too small to jump. Also by the way George accepted this help. It was as if their hostility had two faces and one of them was the face of love. Cain and Abel, Arnold thought, and the wood thrush. All immortal.

  John Talbot lingered outside the little house. Something had been burrowing in the lily-of-the-valley bed, he said, and had also uprooted several lady’s slippers. Arnold suggested that it might be moles.

  �
��More likely a rat,” John Talbot said, and his eyes wandered to a two-foot espaliered pear tree. “That pear tree,” he said, “we put in over a year ago.”

  Mrs. Talbot joined them. She had shampooed not only Kate’s hair but her own as well.

  “It’s still alive,” John Talbot said, staring at the pear tree, “but it doesn’t put out any leaves.”

  “I should think it would be a shock to a pear tree to be espaliered,” Mrs. Talbot said. “Kate’s ready to go.”

  They all piled into the station wagon and took Kate to her party. Her too short blond hair looked quite satisfactory after the egg shampoo, and Mrs. Talbot had made a boutonniere out of a pink geranium and some little blue and white flowers for Kate to wear on her coat. She got out of the car with her suitcase and waved at them from the front steps of the house.

  “I hope she has a good time,” John Talbot said uneasily as he shifted gears. “It’s her first dance with boys. It would be terrible if she didn’t have any partners.” In his eyes there was a vague threat toward the boys who, in their young callowness, might not appreciate his daughter.

  “Kate always has a good time,” Mrs. Talbot said. “By the way, have you seen both of the bantam hens today?”

  “No,” John Talbot said.

  “One of them is missing,” Mrs. Talbot said.

  ONE of the things that impressed Arnold whenever he stayed with the Talbots was the number and variety of animals they had. Their place was not a farm, after all, but merely a big white brick house in the country, and yet they usually had a dog and a cat, kittens, rabbits, and chickens, all actively involved in the family life. This summer the Talbots weren’t able to go in and out by the front door, because a phoebe had built a nest in the porch light. They used the dining-room door instead, and were careful not to leave the porch light on more than a minute or two, lest the eggs be cooked. Arnold came upon some turtle food in his room, and when he asked about it, Mrs. Talbot informed him that there were turtles in the guest room, too. He never came upon the turtles.

  The bantams were new this year, and so were the two very small ducklings that at night were put in a paper carton in the sewing room, with an electric-light bulb to keep them warm. In the daytime they hopped in and out of a saucer of milk on the terrace. One of them was called Mr. Rochester because of his distinguished air. The other had no name.

  All the while that Mrs. Talbot was making conversation with Arnold, after lunch, she kept her eyes on the dog, who, she explained, was jealous of the ducklings. Once his great head swooped down and he pretended to take a nip at them. A nip would have been enough. Mrs. Talbot spoke to him sharply and he turned his head away in shame.

  “They probably smell the way George did when he first came home from the hospital,” she said.

  “What did George smell like?” Arnold asked.

  “Sweetish, actually. Actually awful.”

  “Was Satan jealous of George when he was a baby?”

  “Frightfully,” Mrs. Talbot said. “Call Satan!” she shouted to her husband, who was up by the little house. He had found a rat hole near the ravaged lady’s slippers and was setting a trap. He called the dog, and the dog went bounding off, devotion in every leap.

  While Mrs. Talbot was telling Arnold how they found Satan at the baby’s crib one night, Duncan, who was playing only a few yards away with George, suddenly, and for no apparent reason, made his younger brother cry. Mrs. Talbot got up and separated them.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t time for your nap, George,” she said, but he was not willing to let go of even a small part of the day. He wiped his tears away with his fist and ran from her. She ran after him, laughing, and caught him at the foot of the terrace.

  Duncan wandered off into a solitary world of his own, and Arnold, after yawning twice, got up and went into the house. Stretched out on the bed in his room, with the Venetian blinds closed, he began to compare the life of the Talbots with his own well-ordered but childless and animalless life in town. Everywhere they go, he thought, they leave tracks behind them, like people walking in the snow. Paths crisscrossing, lines that are perpetually meeting: the mother’s loving pursuit of her youngest, the man’s love for his daughter, the dog’s love for the man, and two boys’ preoccupation with each other. Wheels and diagrams, Arnold said to himself. The patterns of love.

  THAT night Arnold was much less bothered by the crowing, which came to him dimly, through dreams. When he awoke finally and was fully awake, he was conscious of the silence and the sun shining in his eyes. His watch had stopped and it was later than he thought. The Talbots had finished breakfast and the Sunday Times was waiting beside his place at the table. While he was eating, John Talbot came in and sat down for a minute, across the table. He had been out early that morning, he said, and had found a chipmunk in the rat trap and also a nest with three bantam eggs in it. The eggs were cold.

  He was usually a very quiet, self-contained man. This was the first time Arnold had ever seen him disturbed about anything. “I don’t know how we’re going to tell Kate,” he said. “She’ll be very upset.”

  Kate came home sooner than they expected her, on the bus. She came up the driveway, lugging her suitcase.

  “Did you have a good time?” Mrs. Talbot called to her from the terrace.

  “Yes,” she said, “I had a beautiful time.”

  Arnold looked at the two boys, expecting them to blurt out the tragedy as soon as Kate put down her suitcase, but they didn’t. It was her father who told her, in such a roundabout way that she didn’t seem to understand at all what he was saying. Mrs. Talbot interrupted him with the flat facts; the bantam hen was not on her nest and therefore, in all probability, had been killed, maybe by the rat.

  Kate went into the house. The others remained on the terrace. The dog didn’t snap at the ducklings, though his mind was on them still, and the two boys didn’t quarrel. In spite of the patterns on which they seem so intent, Arnold thought, what happens to one of them happens to all. They are helplessly involved in Kate’s loss.

  At noon other guests arrived, two families with children. There was a picnic, with hot dogs and bowls of salad, cake, and wine, out under the grape arbor. When the guests departed, toward the end of the afternoon, the family came together again on the terrace. Kate was lying on the ground, on her stomach, with her face resting on her arms, her head practically in the ducklings’ saucer of milk. Mrs. Talbot, who had stretched out on the garden chaise longue, discovered suddenly that Mr. Rochester was missing. She sat up in alarm and cried, “Where is he?”

  “Down my neck,” Kate said.

  The duck emerged from her crossed arms. He crawled around them and climbed up on the back of her neck. Kate smiled. The sight of the duck’s tiny downy head among her pale ash-blond curls made them all burst out laughing. The cloud that had been hanging over the household evaporated into bright sunshine, and Arnold seized that moment to glance at his watch.

  They all went to the train with him, including the dog. At the last moment Mrs. Talbot, out of a sudden perception of his lonely life, tried to give him some radishes, but he refused them. When he stepped out of the car at the station, the boys were arguing and were with difficulty persuaded to say good-bye to him. He watched the station wagon drive away and then stood listening for the sound of the wood thrush. But, of course, in the center of South Norwalk there was no such sound.

  What Every Boy Should Know

  SHORTLY before his twelfth birthday, Edward Gellert’s eyes were opened and he knew that he was naked. More subtle than any beast of the field, more rational than Adam, he did not hide himself from the presence of God or sew fig leaves together. The most he could hope for was to keep his father and mother, his teachers, people in general from knowing. He took elaborate precautions against being surprised, each time it was always the last time, and afterward he examined himself in the harsh light of the bathroom mirror. It did not show yet, but when the mark appeared it would be indelible and it
would be his undoing.

  People asked him, Who is your girl? And he said, I have no girl, and they laughed and his mother said, Edward doesn’t care for girls, and they said, All that will change.

  People said, Edward is a good boy, and that was because they didn’t know.

  He touched Darwin and got an electric shock: “… the hair is chiefly retained in the male sex on the chest and face, and in both sexes at the juncture of all four limbs with the trunk.…” There was more, but he heard someone coming and had to replace the book on the shelf.

  He stopped asking questions, though his mind was teeming with them, lest someone question him. And because it was no use; the questions he wanted to ask were the questions grown people and even older boys did not want to answer. This did not interrupt the incessant kaleidoscopic patterns of ignorance and uncertainty: How did they know that people were really dead, that they wouldn’t open their eyes suddenly and try to push their way out of the coffin? And how did the worms get to them if the casket was inside an outer casket that was metal? And when Mrs. Spelman died and Mr. Spelman married again, how was it arranged so that there was no embarrassment later on when he and the first Mrs. Spelman met in Heaven?

  Harrison Gellert’s boy, people said, seeing him go by on his way to school. To get to him, though, you had first to get past his one-tube radio, his experimental chemistry set, his growing ball of lead foil, his correspondence with the Scott Stamp & Coin Co., his automatically evasive answers.

  Pure, self-centered, a moral outcast, he sat through church, in his blue serge Sunday suit, and heard the Reverend Harry Blair, who baptized him, say solemnly from the pulpit that he was conceived in sin. But afterward, at the church door, in the brilliant sunshine, he shook hands with Edward; he said he was happy to have Edward with them.

  In the bookcase in the upstairs hall Edward found a book that seemed to have been put there by someone for his enlightenment. It was called What Every Boy Should Know, and it told him nothing that he didn’t know already.