“It isn’t true, Mother. Whatever Mr. Narobi said isn’t true.”
She worked her face in the wet pillow like a child and he felt as if she were a child, his daughter, treated cruelly by some stranger.
“That’s what I prayed you’d say, that’s what I hoped you’d say but I can’t believe anything any more. Mr. Narobi told me all about it and why should he tell me if it wasn’t true? He couldn’t make that all up.”
“It isn’t true, Mother.”
“But why did he tell me all this then, why did he tell me all these lies? He said there’s this woman you’ve been going off with. He said she’s always calling the store when she doesn’t need anything and that he knows what’s going on.”
“It isn’t true.”
“But why did he tell me these lies then? Perhaps he’s jealous,” she asked in a reckless hopefulness. “You know the year before last he asked me to marry him. Of course I’ll never marry again, but he seemed cross when I said so.” She sat up and dried her tears.
“Perhaps that’s it.”
“He came here one night when I was alone. He brought me a box of candy and asked me to marry him. When I said no he was angry, he said I’d be sorry. Do you think that’s what he’s trying to do? Make me sorry?”
“Yes, that must be it.”
“Isn’t that funny? To think that someone should want to do me harm. Isn’t that funny? Don’t people do the strangest things?”
She washed her face and began to cook supper and Emile went to his room, worried about the sapphire ring, hidden in a drawer. He would feel safer if it was in his pocket. He opened the drawer and was taking the ring out of the box when he turned and saw her standing in the doorway. “Give that to me,” she said. “Give that to me, you devil. Whoever put the devil into you, who was it? Give me that ring. Is this how she paid you, you dirty, rotten snake? Don’t think I’m going to cry over you. I cried my last true tears at your father’s grave. I know what it was to be loved by a good man and nobody can take that away from me. You stay in your room until I tell you to come out.”
Moses answered the door the next evening when Mrs. Cranmer rang. She was wearing a hat, gloves and so forth and he couldn’t imagine what she wanted. She had no car and must have walked over from the bus stop. He thought at first that she had the wrong address. She might have been a cook or a seamstress, looking for work. To speak to him directly, as she did, seemed to drain her courage and self-esteem.
“You tell your wife to leave my son alone.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You tell your wife to leave my son alone. I don’t know how many other men she’s after but if I catch her near my boy again I’ll scratch her eyes out.”
“I don’t . . .” She had exhausted her strength and he closed the door calling: “Melissa, Melissa.” Why didn’t she answer? Why didn’t she answer? He heard her climbing the stairs and he followed. The door stood open and she sat at her dressing table with her face in her hands. He felt the blood of murder run in his veins and as, in desire, he sometimes seemed to feel her body beneath his hands before he had touched her, now he seemed to feel her throat, its cords and muscles, as he put out her life. He was shaking. He came up behind her, put his hands around her neck and when she screamed he strangled the scream but then some fear of Hell rose in him and he threw her onto the floor and went out.
Chapter XXVI
What had happened; what had happened to Moses Wapshot? He was the better-looking, the brighter, the more natural of the two men and yet in his early thirties he had aged as if the crises of his time had been much harsher on a simple and impetuous nature like his than on Coverly, who had that long neck, that disgusting habit of cracking his knuckles and who suffered seizures of melancholy and petulance.
Moses arrived suddenly in Talifer one Saturday morning, unannounced. He found his brother washing windows. A mythology that would penetrate with some light the density of the relationship between brothers seems to stop with Cain and Abel and perhaps this is as it should be. The utter delight with which Coverly and Moses greeted one another was seasoned unselfconsciously with mayhem. Moses smiled scornfully at his brother’s window-washing rags. Coverly noticed that Moses’ face was red and swollen. Moses carried a walking stick with a silver handle. As soon as he got into the house he unscrewed the handle and poured himself a martini from the stock. “It holds a pint,” he said calmly. “Wouldn’t Father have liked one?” He drank his gin that early in the day as if the memory of his father and so many other stalwarts had exempted him, as a Wapshot, from the problems of abstemiousness and self-discipline. “I’m on my way to San Francisco,” he explained. “I thought I’d drop in. There’s a plane out at five. Melissa and the boy are fine. They’re just bully.”
He said this boisterously and with force for like Coverly—like Melissa—he had developed an adroitness at believing that what had happened had not happened, that what was happening was not happening and that which might happen was impossible. The mystery of Honora was their first concern. Coverly had telphoned St. Botolphs but no one had answered. His letters to Honora had been returned. Moses had felt that her letters about the holly tree might have concealed the fact that she was sick but how could this fit in with the fact that she had broken some law? Coverly might have shown his brother the computation center or let him see the gantry line through his binoculars but instead he drove Moses to the ruined farm and they walked there in the woods. It was a fine winter’s day in that part of the world and Coverly brought to its brightness and space considerable moodiness. The orchard still bore some crooked fruit and the sound and fragrance of windfalls seemed to him as ancient a piece of the world as its oceans. Paradise must (he thought) have smelled of windfalls. A few dead leaves coursed along the wind, reminding Coverly of the energies that drive the seasons. Watching the leaves drawn down and along he felt in himself an arousal of aspiration and misgiving. Moses appeared to be concerned principally with his thirst. When they had walked for a little while he suggested that they find a liquor store. As they were going back to the car there seemed to be an abort on the gantry line. There was a loud explosion from that direction and then there were signs that an air alert had been sounded. No planes could be seen in the blue sky but they could be heard roaring like that most innocent of roarings when a sea shell is held by some old man to the ear of a child.
They went back to the car and drove to a liquor store in the outskirts but the place was shut. A sign hung in the glass window: “This store is closed so that our employees can be with their families.” Now sporadic and senseless panic sometimes swept Talifer. A handful of men and women would lose their hopefulness and retire to their shelters to pray and get drunk; but this seemed no more significant to Coverly than the Adventists of his childhood who would now and then dress in sheets, climb Parson’s Hill and wait for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Total disaster seemed to be some part of the universal imagination. They drove on toward the shopping center and found a liquor store that was open. Moses said that he needed cash and the proprietor of the store, on Coverly’s endorsement, cashed a check for a hundred dollars. When they got back to the house Moses filled up his walking stick and settled down for some serious drinking. At four Coverly drove his brother to the commercial airport and said good-bye to him at the main entrance; a farewell that seemed to be for both of them a violent mixture of love and combativeness.