He looked back on the supper at her house, and he thought of the way she had been looking at him. Again and again, he replayed in his mind the episode in the kitchen. He could see her standing askance before him. How he wanted to see her again!
The examiner had stopped speaking. She was sitting silently, looking over at him, and there was nothing in her eyes at all. She was just a husk, just patience itself. She would inhabit her body again when there was a reason to. In the meantime, she waited in some nearby place. That was almost how it was with her.
~ ~ ~
— EMMA, SAID THE CLAIMANT. I am ready to try again.
— Are you ready, she said.
— I am.
— To a meeting? To meet more people? You have been very quiet lately.
— I don’t think that I was very good, when we met that couple. Or when we saw them again. I need to try harder.
— It isn’t about trying, said the examiner. It is about being present. You are far inside yourself, and need to be at your edges, ready to spring.
— I will do it, he said. I will.
The examiner looked at the newspaper and saw that there was a meeting of a botanical society that very night.
— Who knew, she said. A botanical society.
— Oh, you must have known, said the claimant sharply.
The examiner raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.
~ ~ ~
THE BOTANICAL SOCIETY meeting was held in a building called the library. The claimant had not been to the library before, but he knew the word. It was a place for books to be kept, and indeed, when they arrived, it was quite full of books. This botanical society did not have very many plants or flowers. In fact, they were a sort of bibliographical botanical society, because mostly they talked about flowers and showed each other pictures of flowers in books. This is why the meeting was at the library; it was the place where the books were. Also, there were books that the members owned, and they brought these books with them when they came.
There were nineteen members of the botanical society. All of them were there. They were introduced to him one by one, all by name, and he shook hands with the men. With the women, he shook hands, but in a different way. He sort of held the ends of their fingers briefly. That was shaking hands with women. Then, they all sat down and began to talk. Someone had pots of coffee, and they drank from paper cups. The people of the botanical society were very concerned about him and Emma. Concerned, in that they felt he and Emma concerned them. That two botanists, or a botanist and an assistant, should be in the town was wonderful and quite reasonable. It was a fine town. Why shouldn’t it have a botanist? Indeed, it had a botanical society. There was an immediate motion for Emma to give a talk about botany, which Emma refused to do for the time being. My work disallows it, she said.
~ ~ ~
THE CLAIMANT found that he was having difficulties again noticing when it was that someone was speaking to him. He found that he was having difficulty controlling his breathing, and he found that he was scowling or changing his expression when he didn’t mean to do so. All of these things had been problems in the past, but now they had suddenly become meaningful to him. He had to fix these things if he was to become better for Hilda — if he was to be a person that Hilda would want to see and know. If she learned of the way that he was, well, she knew already. But, if it was confirmed to her that this was all that he could be, then…it didn’t bear thinking about.
So, the claimant poured himself into his effort to be social, and he tried desperately to notice when he was spoken to, and to speak back regarding the subject. He asked questions when he didn’t understand things, and he smiled as much as he could.
When they walked home, they would go under a street lamp, and the examiner would say,
— How careful you were back there.
and they would go out into the darkness past the light, and she would say,
— and how reckless!
— How careful…
— and how reckless!
— How careful…
— and how reckless!
It was a bit of a joke with her, for she had told him that this was the way that good learning proceeds. One must be careful at all careful points, and reckless at all reckless points. Those who are careful always get nowhere. Those who are reckless plummet.
When they got to the porch, she turned to him.
— What do you think about lying?
— I don’t lie, he said. You know that.
— Aren’t we lying about being botanists? asked the examiner. Isn’t that a sort of lie?
— But, we spend all day drawing plants.
— Is there a time, she asked, when it is worthwhile for everyone — for you to lie, and then is it a bad lie? Or should all lies be found out, exposed, and the liars excoriated?
— Don’t answer, she said. Just think on it.
And then she smiled at him. It was a warm, gentle smile. Such a smile she had never given him in all the time he had known her. With the flush of his success at the botanical society, he was off balance, and this smile swept over him. He suddenly felt that he should tell the examiner everything, that he should explain how he had met Hilda, and how she was plotting something, he didn’t know what. He felt that he should lay the whole matter before her and do just what she said he should do.
After all, she had always done right by him. The things that Hilda had said about her examiners — that isn’t how it had been with him.
And while he was thinking all this, the examiner went up the stairs, and he neither followed her nor spoke.
~ ~ ~
HILDA!
He thought he had spoken, but he had not.
The door was open before him. He was standing in her doorway, 23 Juniper Lane. She stood in the hall, in work garments, gardening clothes, rubber boots, a filthy shirt rolled up to the elbows, short trousers, and a thick cloth belt.
— I was just working in the garden. You are an hour early!
She came into the doorway and took his hand, pulling him into the house.
— Inside! Inside, quick.
— I’m sorry, he said.
— Don’t be sorry, you fool. Close the door behind you.
She drew him up the stairs, past all the photographs and over the creaking boards.
~ ~ ~
— I LOVE YOU, he said.
— You fool, you fool, you fool, she whispered. Let us never talk of such things. If it is true that there is only for me in this horrible place one thing and that thing is you, and there is only for you in this horrible place one thing, and that thing is me, then we need not talk of love. Love is a comparison. I like him but I love another. We are at the bottom of a ditch and there is just a parcel of air to be found, a parcel and when it is done, we push at the space, and another little space of air presents itself. Who can talk of love? There is only air — or none, and if there is none then there is nothing at all.