They then proceeded up one more flight and around the vast cement floor, where they picked out a kitchen table, four chairs, a desk, a sofa, a bedstead, springs, a mattress, a chest of drawers, a dresser, a mirror, three lamps, and a rug. Marching up another flight, they chose their dishes and pots and pans. And Paul walked right up and touched everything. In his coat and shoes he had stretched out on half a dozen second-hand mattresses until he had found one with enough life left in it.
“Watch out you don’t fall asleep now, son,” said a Negro man who walked by carrying an old console-model radio.
Paul looked up and smiled; Libby smiled too. She was full of admiration for her husband, not to mention wonder: How can he put his head down there? Ever since grade school she had defended the rights of all men, regardless of race; she had willingly (deliberately?) married a Jew; she had always spoken up for the underprivileged (and this even before she had become one herself). Yet she stood looking down at her husband and thinking: These mattresses have belonged to colored people. I don’t want any … She had only sympathy and tenderness for the sick (and this, too, dating from before she had joined the ranks), but she thought: They have been slept upon by sick people, dying people—I DON’T WANT ANY! To her husband, however, she said nothing; all the while that Paul went around rapping, knocking, testing, she kept her hands in the pockets of her raincoat. She managed to get away without having had to touch anything.
“What do you think?” Paul had asked. “Do we need something else?”
There were blankets and sheets, but she did not choose to mention either until they were home. “That seems like everything to me,” she said.
“Whatever else we need then, we can pick up along the way.”
“Yes — if anything turns up …”
All together what they bought had cost $103, including the rug, which they never unrolled. “I just don’t like the pattern,” Libby said.
“Then why didn’t you say so when we were there?”
“Maybe later I’ll get used to it. Can’t we keep it rolled up a little longer? I don’t mind the floors, really, if you don’t.”
He had let her have her way, though she did not forget that the rug had cost them eight dollars — two of her visits to a doctor.
So with all of this behind her (the knowledge she had of her weaknesses, the decision to overcome the weaknesses), she took the bull by the horns and put her head all the way back onto the sofa. One could come to grips with life if only one used a little reason and a little will power. That was what she admired in Pauclass="underline" his will.
In her blue flannel robe, with her head held rigidly back (she was not going to give in to her worst side), she watched the sun on the bare floor. What to do until one o’clock? She could, of course, decide the hell with one o’clock and then go ahead and do anything. But she could go ahead and do anything anyway. She could paint the kitchen chairs. However, still unfinished was the dresser, which she had begun to paint a bright yellow some six weeks ago. It seemed now to have been a mistaken bit of economy to have bought such cheap paint, for instead of being bright and gay — brightness and gaiety was what she had told Paul the apartment lacked when she had pleaded with him for money for the paint — the piece was coming out a mean, mustardy color because of the stain beneath. Well, she could go ahead and make the bed then … No, she would save their bed for last. And not out of laziness; she suddenly had a motive: she wanted those sheets and blankets firmly in her mind when she went downtown. What could she do now?
She could read. But the trouble with her reading was that it was too casual; it did not satisfy. She had already decided that to remedy the situation she would have to try to read the works of one writer straight through, in chronological order. Then all of another writer, and so on. She planned to start with Faulkner but she did not have the books yet. So this was no morning then to begin that project — and to start another book would not make sense, since that would delay her entry into Faulkner when she did get a chance to go over to the library. She could do something practical then. She could make out the grocery list; she could—
She could write a poem.
The idea pleased her. She would write a poem. Why not? If she could write a poem about the night before—
She grabbed a yellow pad that was on the floor beside the books and ran off with it to the kitchen; she sat down so excited with her project, that she simply swept her hand across the table, brushing away the breakfast crumbs. She would attend to them later — they were unimportant. She had never written a poem before (though sick and in bed in Reading she had tried a story), but the idea of poetry had always stirred her. Toward certain poems she had particularly tender feelings. She liked “To His Coy Mistress” and she loved “Ode to a Nightingale,” “Ode to Melancholy,” too. She liked all of Keats, in fact; at least the ones that were anthologized.
She wrote on the pad:
Already with thee! Tender is the night
She liked Tender Is the Night, which, of course, wasn’t a poem. She identified with Nicole; in college she had identified with Rosemary. She would have to read it over again. After Faulkner she would read all of Fitzgerald, even the books she had read before. But poetry … What other poems did she like?
She wrote:
Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove.
Then directly below:
The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action — and till action, lust
Is perjured, murderous …
She could not remember the rest. Those few lines had always filled her with a headlong passion, even though she had to admit never having come precisely to grips with the meaning. Still, the sound …
She wrote, with recollections of her three years of college, with her heart heaving and sighing appropriately.
Sabrina fair
Listen where thou art sitting
Under the glassy wave—
And I am black but o my soul is white
How sweetly flows
The liquefaction of her clothes
At last he rose, and twitch’d his mantle blue
Tomorrow to fresh woods and pastures new.
I am! Yet what I am none cares or knows,