castrato … You hear me, Cynthia?… Darling William! You do not deceive me for a minute — not for a minute. I see through all this absurd pretense of naughtiness! — I see the dear frightened, fugitive little saint you are! — Ah, Cynthia, I knew I could trust you to understand me! I knew it, I knew it! — Come, William, it is spring in New England, and we will wander through fields of Quaker Ladies. Don’t you adore the pale-blue Quaker Ladies? — Yes, yes, Cynthia! Four petals they have, and sometimes they are blue, but sometimes ash color! — Come, darling William, and we will romp among them joyfully. We will climb birches. We will discover the purple-banded Jack-in-the-pulpit, hiding in the snaky swamp. We will tease the painted turtle, and give flies to the high-backed wood tortoise. — Yes yes yes. They sun themselves on stones. Plop, and they are gone into the water. — And the tree toads, William! Their ethereal jingling at twilight in the water meadows! Their exquisite little whisper bells! — Ah! the tintinnabulation of the toads! Poe wrote a poem about them. — How melancholy your New England is, William! One misses the hand of man. Deserted, forlorn, shapeless — but beautiful, wildly beautiful. I could cry when I see it. It fills me with nostalgia … A poor thing but mine own, Cynthia. These gray-lichened pasture rocks — I created them out of my tears. Out of my bitter heart grew these sumacs with blood-colored bloom. Out of my afflicted flesh came these white, white birches. Nothing of me but doth change into something rich and strange. — And those huge desolate frost-scarred mountains, the white and the green, lightning-riven, scree-stripped, ravaged by hail and fire — ah, William, my dearest, what a terrible weight upon the soul are they!.. My burden, Cynthia — the burden of my thought … Aaaaahhh-oo-oo-oo … aaaahhh-oo-oo-oo-oooo … MISERY … Damn that child, why doesn’t it go to sleep. Or damn its mother, anyway. Women are so extraordinarily unperceptive. All nonsense, this theory that the perceptions of women are acuter than men’s — or intuitions. No. I’ve never met one with perceptions as quick as mine — I can skate rings around them. You hear me, vain, intellectual, snobbish Cynthia? — To me, William, you would yield in this — to me alone. So sensitive am I to impressions, that … that … that … that … Quack … quack … And you beside me, quacking in the wood. For God’s sake, hold your tongue and let me love … The sagacious eye of the duck — something of that in Helen. And how she loved to quack. And how she loved to sprawl ungainly and kick her heels in the air and laugh and fling her slippers about and make absurd, hideous faces! Too young — it was merely the joy of release, rebellion, that she was experiencing — she was, at the moment, incapable of love. Listen, chaste Cynthia! And I will tell you … tell you … Speak fearlessly, William, as you always do — I am looking at you with wide deep eyes of understanding. I see the pebbles at the bottom of your soul. — Yes, Pyrrha’s pebbles. Arranged in pairs. Rose quartz, white quartz, gneiss. Rose quartz, white quartz, gneiss. And did you see that little trout hiding among them? That was my very me. My little trout soul … But I was going to tell you, Cynthia — tell you — Wait, dearest — first let us find some quiet little backwater of the Cher. There! the very thing. Under that low-hanging willow, to which we can fasten our punt. Now we cannot be seen or heard. Oxford two miles away — Lady Tirrell, my dear, dear friend, unsuspecting. Arrange the cushion under my head. Is my dress pulled down properly? Put the bottles in the shade to keep cool, or hang them in the water. I bought this dress especially for the occasion, so that none of my friends on the river would recognize me. All the castles of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales in the pattern. Here is Dover. Here is Harlech. Bodiam there, and there, on my left knee, Kenilworth. Why will these stupid people bring their wretched phonographs? So vulgar, so very vulgar … Aaaaahhhh-oo-oo-oo-ooo … I was going to tell you, Cynthia, of one night with Helen Shafter. Would you like to hear it? — Is it something I ought to hear? — Certainly. Why not? I believe in absolute frankness between the sexes — don’t you? Tooth brushes, sponges, cascara — everything. Our comings in and our goings forth. Our sittings down and our standings up. One egg or two. Linen changed once a week — twice a week — four times a week — daily. The matutinal dose of salts. The nocturnal suppository. The application of lip salves, clouds of powder, rouge, and deodorizers. The tweezers forextracting superfluous eyebrows — henna and orange-sticks for the nails. The stale sweetness of the clothes cupboard. All … Then, William, it is my painful duty to inform the police that you are a voyeur. Need I remind you of certain episodes of this character in your childhood — adolescence — youth — and early manhood? There was that time in … But this, Cynthia, has a kind of beauty! — Beauty, smutbird? Beauty? Beauty is that lascivious life of yours? No — it’s quite impossible. Quite. — But I assure you! I go down on my knees! I swear to God! I kiss the Bible, the Koran, and the Wisdom of Lao Tzü. This experience, although sensual and sexual in origin and fundamentals, nevertheless had a certain beauty. I swear it had, Cynthia! Listen, and you will see! You will be moved by it, I’m sure! — Poor Little William — I recognize in you this imperative impulse to confess — it is not for nothing that I go to confession myself and tell the holy father of my little white sins. But are you sure I am the proper repository for this secret? — Cynthia! Orbèd maiden with white fire laden! Moon-daughter, snow-cold and pure, but fiery at heart! It is from you alone that my absolution can come. I will tell you — But not so fast, William! This is Sunday, and I have tickets for the Zoo. Don’t you adore the Zoo — simply adore it? The toucans. The pelicans. The ring-tailed tallula-bird. The whiffenpoof. The tigers, miaowing, and the lions reverberating, rimbombinando. The polar bear — trying to lift from the wintry water, with hooked claws, a pane of ice. The elephants, swaying from one rubber foot to the other, swinging their trunks, and lifting their teakettle spouts for peanuts. And the little baboons and monkeys, so ingeniously and ingenuously obscene! — te hee! — Oh yes yes yes, Cynthia! I saw a madonna and child, once, swinging in a little trapeze! The mother was searching intensely … Aaaahhhh … oo-oo-oo-oo-oo … This is really passing endurance. It shouldn’t be allowed on a ship. Steward, take this child and throw it overboard. Push it head first through a porthole. Weight it with lead, or tie the anchor to it. Drape it with the star-spangled banner. Taps. The time the men in Company K, 4th Illinois, lent me a bugle and four bayonets — we paraded three times around the square. It was magnificent. The hot tropical sun on the asphalt. The trumpet flowers bugling on the graves, and Dr. Scott’s terrapins scrambling in the tubs and bins. Then there was that terrifying green sea turtle with soft flat flappers flapping softly in a separate tub. The cook said they would have to build a fire behind it to make it put its head out for the ax. Turtle’s eggs — soft, tough, puckered. They find them by thrusting a sharp stick into the hot sand — if it comes up stained, they dig … It must be the law of tetrahedral collapse that gives them that peculiar shape … Oh, that cartridge! I blush. I stole it — stole it from Private Davis’s tent — after he had been so nice to me, too. Good God, how awful it was. It was Butch Gleason who suggested it — he said he always took money out of a cash register in his father’s store. It must have been arranged. Sergeant Williams went out, and in a minute came back. I was leaning against the tent pole at the door. As he came in again, brushing against me, his large hand fell naturally (so I thought!) against my jacket, and he closed it on my pocket. Why, what’s this? he said. O God, O God. Then they were all silent and ashamed — they wouldn’t look at me. Why didn’t you say you wanted one, Billy? That’s no way to go about it, stealing from your best friends!.. Here, take it! You can have it … I didn’t want it, but I took it. I wanted to give it back to them — I wanted to explain everything — I wanted to cry, to wash the episode out of history with a vast torrent of tears. But I could say nothing. I crept home and put it on the mantelpiece in my room, above the toy battleship, and never touched it again … By George, how nice they were to me: that first day it was — I took them a big paper bag full of animal crackers, when they were just off the train, hungry. I believed them when they said they’d been living for months on nothing but tinned mule. Afterward I used to march into mess with them in the penitentiary yard — under a long wooden shed which had been built there, with long tables under it, tables of new pine. A tin cup, a tin plate, tin fork and spoon.