Like all English voices, hers sounded to him underdeveloped. He stared down at the cardigan, drooping and empty-armed, at the tight belt and bulging seat of what he supposed was a dainty frock. He had avoided one sort of Canadian girl all his life, and here was the pure, the original mold. He asked, “Did you know Adrien Moser?” It seemed impossible.
“Oh goodness, yes. This is the fourth time I’ve been here.” She was gasping, as if he had splashed her with seawater. “I’ve been here a summer, and a Christmas, and an Easter, and this summer. Of course, he’s not here now, is he?” If only Ramsay would say, “He must have been charming” — something like that. She pretended he had: “Oh he was charming! He used to do so many kind things. Once he offered to buy me a bicycle. I refused, of course. But imagine! He’d hardly known me five minutes then.” Chewing on grass, airy and worldly now, she said, “I’ve been wondering.… No one’s told me. Are you a composer?”
“I’m studying with Jekel in Berlin.” And I am his best and strongest pupil, and if you knew anything you would know that, his mind continued. He had heard, for years, “Are you really only twelve? … only sixteen?” The voices had stopped; no one is ever likely to say, “Are you really only twenty?”
“Don’t you want a chair?” said Peggy, wiping the seat of one with her cardigan sleeve. “You’re not supposed to stand too long. I’ve heard … there’s something wrong.”
“Nothing’s wrong. I was in a smash-up about two years ago, that’s all. This girl was driving,” he said. “It wasn’t even her own car. There was all hell with the insurance. No one was killed.”
“Oh, good.” Having offered Moser’s kindness, and had news of Ramsay’s health, Peggy said, “Do you like Switzerland?” But she had lost him. Katharine Moser, with her cat in attendance, came toward them, smiling. The shadows that bent over her hair were cast by trees whose bark was like the skin of a snake. He had imagined another face for her; until a few days ago, he had known her only in letters. He had given her soft hair streaked with white, and humorous, intelligent eyes. His idea of a great man’s wife was very near a good hospital nurse. Even now, when he thought, I am in Moser’s house, he was grateful to the intelligent hospital nurse, who did not exist; at least she was not Katharine. Her eyes were green, uptilted. The straight parting in her hair was coquetry, to show how perfectly proportioned was her face. The only flaws he had seen were the shape of her nose, slightly bulbous at the tip, and the too straight body, which was a column for the fine head. The bees’ scent, which clung to her hands and dress, was like incense. She was impressive, beautiful, fragrant, and until she lifted her arm to point to the pavilion where he would now sleep, and saw the skin of the arm, palely freckled, spotted, slack, he almost accepted her own idea of herself, which was that she was guileless, a child bride, touchingly young.
“I wanted to know you before I put you in the pavilion. You do understand why? It mustn’t be a museum, but I want it kept alive just by people he liked, or might have loved. It’s furnished with — What is it, Peggy?” The smitten girl was following them across the grass. Katharine watched Peggy Boon skip off (pretending joy) and become excluded. “That girl is having a rotten time. My daughter is so rude,” she said, and sighed, and forgot all about it. “Now, Moser’s bed and his tiled stove came from the curé’s room in a château. I bought them at an auction.”
He ducked his head to enter the pavilion. The first thing he saw was the piano, small and gaily colored, looking like the piano sometimes given a little girl for her first lessons. He could not see the name of the maker, which had been covered over with paint.
“Those engravings belonged to a fervent German monarchist who collected caricatures of the new rich, unaware that he was mocking himself. Moser liked objects that came from rich houses, providing they looked poor. He always thought he might die of hunger any day. He saved screws and tacks and elastic bands — you’ll find boxes full of rubbish, all labelled. Moser told me that the walls of his family’s house were covered with rugs they would not put on the floor, and that there were sheets over the rugs to protect them from light. I hope you will like your bed.”
The bed was carved and bore a coat of arms and an angel’s head. The angel had a squint; Ramsay could not tell if it was looking reproachfully to Heaven or out of the window. The pavilion had been prepared in secret, while Ramsay was down in Montreux at a movie. He saw roses, a reading lamp, and then he saw the last photograph of the old man. The old man sat on a bench, in sunlight, holding a scarf. Katharine stood with one hand on his shoulder. Moser’s eyes were wild and fixed.
“This is a great picture,” he said, taking it up. “It was in the papers when he died. Someone in Berlin said it looked like a famous picture of Freud going into exile.”
“I don’t know what you mean by that. Moser was never in exile. He died in his native country.” She shifted ornaments on the washstand. A shell porcelain soap dish was moved from the extreme left to the far right. The vase of roses took its place. “Now, there are things you can look at, if you want to. Testimonials. All the obituaries. Boxes of caramels — I found them after his last stroke. He loved them, but wasn’t allowed to have any. When we found the empty boxes I knew he’d been eating on the quiet. I’ve kept them — I don’t know why. This one wasn’t opened.” When she spoke of something she touched it. When she finished speaking she touched Ramsay’s arm.
“Here’s what they’ll find after me,” he said, and tumbled out of his pockets the marbles, the Yo-yo, and the sponge ball that were part of the reëducation of his injured hands. He was arrogant, he never doubted; it was a joke only in part. When Douglas Ramsay died, his Yo-yo and the plastic marbles would be placed on a shelf and labelled and dated, and dusted every day. He had never had parents; there was nothing behind him, nothing to come; the first plant life on earth had never existed; the cities would be reduced to mossy boulders; he would never have children; he would be mourned nevertheless. The curé’s bed, Moser’s bed, was Ramsay’s bed. “How did he sleep in it?” they would say. “He was so big, and the bed is so small!”
The first night Ramsay spent in the pavilion a large moth brushed against his face. He knew it would not bite or sting, but its touch was pure horror, and his reaction uncontrolled. The moth was paper-white until it blundered against the pillow, and then he saw it was cream. Indigo eyes were painted upon its wings. He shot XEX out of the blue can Katharine had left for mosquito-killing. The battle the moth put up for its life now frightened him witless. It flapped its way under the bed. The frantic wings were louder than his heart. During the fight, scores of incidental casualties — gnats, midges, spiders, flies — dropped from the ceiling. He was afraid to open the window or the glass doors in case any more creatures came in, and he lay in the poisoned room blowing his nose all night long. He was on a mattress of straw that was just slightly too short. He was covered with tons of eiderdown. In his mind he had an image of his mended bones beginning to slip. If he got up now, he would not be able to stand. He could see, in moonlight, the paved terrace and the chair that had been the old man’s. The pavilion was like another beehive, and the old man had been sent here, with a curé’s bed and a doll’s piano, and told something: “You will be alone in eternity.” “Don’t eat sweets.” “If you think you are dying, ring that bell.”