Lady if you are a lady though they said you had one illegitimate child whom they called God, listen to me. Are you really a creature to bring and alleviate people’s odd numbing blackness? Are you really a mother and would you really understand? I always think the most awful thing in the world to be would be to be the mother of God. But maybe that’s because I’m afraid. George said there needn’t be any children. Must I ever, should I ever have one? George Lowndes said I would look like Maria della something or other, he was always rubbing in his filthy old Italians. Italians crowded the steerage of rotten second class boats. . but they aren’t the same. Something tells me, Lady mea gratia, beata or whatever they are calling you that in Italy the mother of God is different. George. . pearls on her gown. It is hemmed and she wears pearls. Florence is (Browning says orris root or doesn’t he?) and pearls are wound round and round the diadem of the baby that hadn’t even the dirty ragged pieces of a rose. Not a petal of a rose. Is that what you are meant for, beata domina regina or whatever they are calling you? Incense to numb out your pain but Christ wouldn’t take the sponge (O why, why didn’t he?) they offered Him. Chloroform I read in the Materia Medica doesn’t always help though sometimes — don’t let me scream. Don’t let me die. Perhaps it’s my Hell and must we all pass through it to get to meadows thick with water lilies? Meadows, thick with iris, I search the meadows for the mirrored iris. I don’t think Fayne Rabb realized. . how I love her. Christ would understand. Jeanne d’Arc was more beautiful than Fayne, though I’m afraid her hands weren’t pretty. Couldn’t have been tending the swine or sheep or whatever it was she tended in Arc wherever that was or could ever have been. George said I was like the Madonna something or other della something and that all I wanted was a halo, a thin ring, he said of gold thread though that didn’t go with Undine. Undine, mother, lovely Nereid. . “Sleeping?” “I don’t know.” “Crying?” “I don’t know.” “Praying?” “I don’t know. . Josepha, you can’t whisper with this singing going on.” “Well, everyone else is. Shuffling their feet, blowing their noses on their petticoats.” “Where? What do you mean?” “There’s a crowd of gargoylesque, Rabelaisian peasants with market baskets and cheeses who have come to see the spectacle.” “What spectacle?” “Whatever it is that is going on here. Lets get out.” “Why get out?” “Mothers waiting outside in the sunshine. What’s the matter anyhow? Pretending? Showing off? Being emotional, hysterical, artistic? Being temperamental?” “A few of those things. Can’t you let me alone. You and your mother as thick as thieves, always crowding together and poking fun at me and then saying I’m not appreciative. Well, I am appreciative, damn you. Let me alone. This is my cathedral. Didn’t I get you to come here. Would you ever have heard of it if I hadn’t known Clifton Fennel?” “
The Fennel, I think you told us. And if it hadn’t been for madre and me you would be now sunk in your New Jersey mud flat, swamped by your mangy relatives and eaten by mosquitoes.” “Well let’s call it quits then. Go away anyhow—” “Sulky. Pretty Miss Sulks who adores sentiment, hysteria.” Nereid, lovely mother. . “I’m tired. You tire me. You wear me out. Can’t you let me alone. Kill me, do what you want with me, then leave me?” “Sweet perverse adulteress. It was you who started it.” “Started?” “Children, come outside. What are you quarrelling for? I’ve found a new sight—” Sights, sights. Sights. Sights. The clock so huge, the narrow arch and the cobbles that burnt and hurt the soles of her unsuitably clad feet. Court yards that had to be peered into. A little lunch room where a robust sophisticated creature (how did he get there) eyed Hermione and Fayne Rabb. “You girls — attract — attention.” “Well, it isn’t, is it, our fault, Clara.” “You don’t seem to have any — sense — of — proportion.” Whatever did she mean? Trudging along, meals at any hours. Sleep broken. Bugs in the bed. Having to get up and row the hotel people (they made Hermione do all the rowing in her sparse French) and people looking at them as much as to say well if you look like that and are off a transatlantic liner, why don’t you go to another, different hotel? Madame Dupont had given them a list of cheap hotels up the Seine all the way up the Seine even in Paris. Names of hotels, the kind French people go to, “don’t Mrs. Rabb let them cheat you,” just so much and just so much and just so much and don’t go over it or they’ll know you are foreigners though how anyhow could they help knowing it? “Pretend to be English. An English lady with daughters learning French. English people do. English people won’t let themselves be put on like you careless Americans.” Bugs in the bed. Huge room with heavy velvet curtains and they so tired eating plums out of a bag of plums for a few cents and that was what a livre was, a pound of plums not a book of plums. Going on and on. “And this is where Flaubert lived.” “Never heard of him.” Flaubert. Flaubert. Going up the Seine like the Sentimental Journey. Salammbô with ostrich feathers and a little person in tight silk drawers who danced but that was a little story in the Trois Contes. “Yes. He was the adopted father of de Maupassant. You know what I mean. I mean he made, de Maupassant — Guy his name was. How wonderful to be called Guy, you know Guy de Maupassant. He must have come here. I mean Flaubert lived here like a recluse and he taught Guy de Maupassant how to write. Boule de Souife. All ironical. Ironical. George Lowndes helped me to get books—” “O it was George Miss Showoff. You got it all out of George. Picked his brains and now pretending to know so much. Hateful little prig.” “I don’t. I didn’t. But how could one ever forget the woods burning and the smell of the smoke as the woods burnt—” “What woods burnt? Where did you see woods burnt?” “The woods you know. The tables were all laid for the banquet—” “Settlement Sunday School?” “No. No. No. No. No. I mean the banquet in Salammbô where the woods burnt — have another plum. No, there can’t be bugs in the bed. I never saw one in a bed though they always told me that was where to find them. And the clock on the mantel-piece actually is going but it can’t be half nine, we haven’t had our supper and they’re sprinkling the streets below, can you hear them.” “Don’t lean so far out of the window.” “What is it a little balcony high up over a street can do to one? It’s like a play. A scene in a play. Come look, Clara. All a little triangle and our clock isn’t right for listen to the boom (and the chime that goes with it) from the tower—” Christ in Heaven. Christ in Heaven, keep Jeanne d’Arc safe forever.