The pieces are there, simply waiting to be fitted together into what, from the start, they were meant to be: a set of instructions for the Ceremonies.
Carefully the Old One wraps the book in tissue paper and tapes it closed. He leaves it on the table in the hall. He will send it off tomorrow, in the box he's prepared.
He hopes that Carol likes his little gift. Dancing is supposed to be her specialty.
Bwada's walking better now, seems more affectionate than ever toward the Poroths – even lets Deborah pet her, which is something new – amp; has an amazing appetite, though she seems to have difficulty swallowing. Some minor mouth infection, perhaps; she won't let anybody see. Sarr says her recovery demonstrates how the Lord watches over the innocent; affirms his faith, he says. Quote: 'If I'd taken her to Flemington to see the vet, I'd just have been throwing away good money.'
Later this week he'll have his mother over to take a look at her. She healed Bwada once before, amp; maybe she can do it again.
But even without her, the swelling on Bwada's side is almost gone. Hair growing back over it like mildew growing up my wall, spreading fast.
Mildew. I'm all too familiar with it now. Every day it climbs higher on the walls of this place, like water rising; glad my books are on shelves off the ground. So damp in here that my note paper sags; books go limp, as if they're made of wet cloth. At night my sheets are clammy amp; cold, but each morning I wake up sweating. My envelopes have been ruined – glue's gotten moistened, sealing them all shut. Stamps in my wallet are stuck to the dollar bills. When I wrote a letter to Carol today, I had to use the Poroths' glue to stick the thing together.
Spent a lot of my afternoon in here rereading 'The Turn of the Screw,' which I hadn't looked at since my undergraduate days. Seem to be alone in finding it the single most pretentious amp; overrated ghost tale ever written (though perfect for the ML A crowd); Clayton's film version, which I showed in class this year, is ten times as effective. Searched in vain amid the psychological abstractions for an authentic chill amp; found only one image that moved me: his description of a rural calm as 'that hush in which something gathers or crouches… '
Outside, another drizzly day. Soggy-looking slate-grey skies, gloomy evening, thunder. Hasn't let up since Saturday night, amp; depressing as hell, like something out of Cold Comfort Farm. One huge cloud seems to have settled over the landscape like a bowl. A few pale shapes – seagulls again? – high overhead, but no other birds around, amp; no sign of the sun.
Wandered around the farm late in the afternoon, bored with sitting still. The Poroths were out pulling weeds among the shoots of corn amp; were blessedly silent for once. Was tempted to join them but didn't feel like getting my hands dirty, much less spending an hour or two bent almost double.
Rainy night. After dinner, reluctant to come out here amp; be alone again so soon, hung around the farmhouse with the Poroths, earnestly squinting through Walden in their living room while Sarr whittled amp; Deborah crocheted. Rain sounded better in there, a restful thumping on the roof; out here it's not quite so cozy.
Around nine or ten Sarr went to die kitchen amp; hauled out the radio, amp; we sat around listening to the news, cats purring around us, Sarr with Azariah in his lap, Deborah petting Toby, me allergic amp; sniffing. (My 'total immersion' experiment isn't working.)
Nice to have a radio, though, amp; feel that tenuous contact with the world out there. Even Sarr must recognize the attraction. Remember hearing how, up in Maine, some poor families spend each Sunday sitting in their car parked in their yard, listening to the only radio they own.
Guess I'm just not cut out to be a modern-day Thoreau.
Halfway through some boring farm report I pointed to Bwada, curled up at my feet, amp; said, 'Hey, get her. You'd think she was listening to the news!' Deborah laughed amp; leaned over to scratch Bwada behind the ears. As she did so, Bwada turned to look at me. I wonder what it is about that cat that makes me so uneasy.
Rain letting up slightly. I'm sitting here slouched over the table, trying to decide if I'm sleepy enough to turn in now. Maybe I should try to read some more, or clean this place up a bit. Things soon grow messy out here, even though I don't have much to keep track of: dust on windowsills, spiderwebs perennially in corners, notes amp; clippings amp; dried-up rose petals scattered over this table.
I think that the rain sound is going to put me to sleep after all. It's almost stopped now, but I can still hear the dripping from the trees outside my window, dripping leaf to leaf amp;, in the end, to the dead leaves that line the forest floor. It will probably continue on amp; off all night. Occasionally I think I hear a thrashing in one of the big trees down in the direction of the barn, but then the sound turns into the falling of the rain.
July Twelfth
Carol staggered into the apartment, fanning herself with a creased copy of Spring: 'Start Fresh with Our Three-Part Summer Makeover.' Her Tuesday-evening dance class had been exhausting, and the ride back downtown no better: twenty-five minutes on a crowded bus with inadequate air conditioning.
Here there was no air conditioning at all. As soon as I have the money I'm buying one, she reminded herself. It must be a hundred and ten in here. No sooner had she locked the door behind her than she was unbuttoning her damp clothes, dropping them to the floor in a heap as she made for the bathroom.
She felt a little better after showering. She brought in the cheap Woolworth's fan from her bedroom and planted it by the TV.
Switching both of them on, she settled back naked on the couch, eyes half closed, and listened to the reading of the news.
Except for the weather, it had been a normal day. The city was closing another hospital; vandals had defaced a statue of Alice in Wonderland in Central Park; blacks were charging police brutality in the arrest of a so-called 'voodoo priest'; the mayor had presided at a fashion show; a girl's head had been found in a trash can near the Columbia campus; and Con Ed was warning consumers to 'go slow' this week on the use of air conditioners. The catalogue was curiously soothing, a meaningless litany. It was almost enough to sleep to.
'Fireman in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn battled a six-alarm blaze that took the lives of at least seven persons, all but two of them children. And now-'
Behind her the buzzer sounded. She roused herself and went to the intercom.
'Package from a Mr Rosebottom.'
She buzzed him in and, stepping into the bedroom, wrapped herself in her bathrobe. A minute later the doorbell rang; she turned down the TV and went to answer it.
'Sign here, please,' said the delivery boy, handing her a flat grey cardboard box, then a slip of yellow paper and a pencil. He seemed bemused at finding an attractive girl in her robe waiting for him and looked as if he were struggling to think of something clever to say. She felt his eyes on her as she scribbled her name, and pulled the bathrobe tighter. 'Thanks, honey,' he said, a flicker of a smile. 'Enjoy it.'
She saw, when she'd gotten the box open, that Rosie had sent her another dress. It was old-fashioned looking, cut similarly to the first – maybe if she felt ambitious she could take it in a bit – but the color, this time, was dark green. Consider this a replacement, he had written in a note. At least this one won't show grass stains!
In the box with it, wrapped in tissue paper, he'd enclosed a second-hand book, a slim brown antique-looking volume whose spine had long since been rubbed clean of lettering. The title page read, The Ridpath Dance Series, Volume TV. On the Folk-Dances of Umbria and Tuscany. Newly translated into English. New York, 18J7. Idly she flipped through it. There were several crude line drawings of peasants dancing in various ungainly costumes, faces utterly expressionless, but most of the book was filled with diagrams, a mass of footprints and black arrows. She thought she recognized a few simple steps – there was one promenade that seemed right out of 'The Cunning Vixen' – but it was difficult to imagine what most of the others must look like. She put the book aside; probably Rosie would know.