He went to the long and dirty window to see the snow. There was some yellow light at the horizon, not lemony, not confined to its color, the light of a lantern, a lanthorne, a longthorne, the shine of light on paper, something that reminded him of childhood and its garden parties, isolated now by the lateness of the hour and the season.
“Coverly?” she asked, but she spoke in her sleep. He went back to his chair. He saw how terribly emaciated she was but he liked to think that this had not changed the force of her spirit. She had not only lived independently, she seemed at times to have evolved her own culture. There was nothing palliative in her approach to death. Her rites were bold, singular and arcane. The gloom and disrepair of her beloved house, the fraudulent nurse, the gaping roses—she seemed to have arranged them all around her satisfactorily as an earlier people had confidently supplied themselves, while dying, with enough food and wine for a long voyage.
“Coverly!” She woke suddenly, lifting her head off the pillow.
“Yes.”
“Coverly. I just saw the gates of Heaven!”
“What were they like, Honora, what were they like?”
“Oh, I couldn’t say, I couldn’t describe anything like that, they were so beautiful, but I saw them, Coverly, oh, I saw them.” She sat up radiantly and dried her tears. “Oh, they were so beautiful. There were the gates and hosts of angels with colored wings and I saw them. Wasn’t that nice?”
“Yes, Honora.”
“Now get me some more whisky.”
He went lightheartedly through the dark rooms, as happy as if he had shared her vision, and made some drinks, consoled to think that she would not, after all, ever die. She would stop breathing and be buried in the family lot but the greenness of her image, in his memory, would not change and she would be among them always in their decisions. She would, long after she was dust, move freely through his dreams, she would punish his and his brother’s wickedness with guilt, reward their good works with lightness of heart, pass judgment on their friends and lovers even while her headstone bloomed with moss and her coffin was canted and jockeyed by the winter frosts. The goodness and evil in the old woman were imperishable. He carried her drink back through the darkness and put another log on the fire. She said nothing more but he filled her glass twice.
He called Dr. Greenough at half-past six. The doctor was having his supper but he came about an hour later and pronounced her dead of starvation.
So they wouldn’t all come back to a place that was changed and strange and Coverly was the only member of the family at her funeral. He had no way of finding Moses, and Betsey was busy closing up the house in Talifer. Melissa had disappeared and the last we see of her is on a bus returning from one of the suburbs to the city of Rome. It is nearly Christmas but there are not many signs of this. Either Emile or his barber has cultivated a lock of hair that hangs over his forehead, giving him a look that is arch, boyish and a little stupid. He seems a little drunk and is, of course, hungry. Melissa’s hair is dyed red. One result of living with someone so much younger—and they are living together—is to have made her manner girlish. She has developed a habit of shrugging her shoulders and resettling her head, this way and that. She is not one of those expatriates who is ashamed to speak English. Her voice is musical, genteel, and it carries up and down the bus. “I know you’re hungry, darling,” she says, “I know that but it’s really not my fault. As I understood it they had invited us to lunch. I distinctly recall that she asked us for lunch. What I suppose happened was that after she had invited us to lunch the Parlapianos asked them to lunch and they decided to jettison us; put us off with a drink. I noticed that the table wasn’t set when we came in. I knew something was wrong then. It would have been much pleasanter if she’d telephoned and canceled the engagement. That would have been rude enough but to have us come all the way out there expecting lunch and then to tell us that they were engaged is one of the rudest things I’ve ever heard of. All we can do is to forget it, forget it, it’s just something else to be forgotten. As soon as we get back to Rome I’ll do the shopping and cook you some lunch. . . .”
And so she does. She goes to the Supra-Marketto Americano on the Via Delle Sagiturius. Here she disengages one wagon with a light ringing of metal from a chain of hundreds and begins to push her way through the walls of American food. Grieving, bewildered by the blows life has dealt her, this is some solace, this is the path she takes. Her face is pale. A stray curl hangs against her cheek. Tears make the light in her eyes a glassy light but the market is crowded and she is not the first nor the last woman in the history of the place to buy her groceries with wet cheeks. She moves indifferently with the alien crowd as if these were the brooks and channels of her day. No willow grows aslant this stream of men and women and yet it is Ophelia that she most resembles, gathering her fantastic garland not of crowflowers, nettles and long purples, but of salt, pepper, Bab-o, Kleenex, frozen codfish balls, lamb patties, hamburger, bread, butter, dressing, an American comic book for her son and for herself a bunch of carnations. She chants, like Ophelia, snatches of old tunes. “Winstons taste good like a cigarette should. Mr. Clean, Mr. Clean,” and when her coronet or fantastic garland seems completed she pays her bill and carries her trophies away, no less dignified a figure of grief than any other.
Chapter XXXII
Betsey and Binxey arrived the day before Christmas and Coverly went down to the station to meet the train. “I’m so tired,” Betsey said, “I’m just so tired I could die.” “Was the train trip bad, sugarluve?” Coverly asked. “Bad,” said Betsey, “bad. Just don’t speak to me about it, that’s all. I don’t see why we have to come all the way down here to have Christmas anyhow. We might just as well have gone to Florida. I’ve never been to Florida in my whole life.”
“I promised Honora that we’d have Christmas here.”
“But you told me she was dead, dead and buried.”
“I promised.” For a moment he felt helpless before this incompatibility; felt as if his blood had been transmuted by anger or despair into something syrupy and effervescent, like Coca-Cola. It was unthinkable that he should break his promise to the old woman, it was some part of his dignity, and yet he could see clearly that it was unthinkable to Betsey that he should trouble himself. Coverly walked beside his wife with the slight crouch of a losing sexual combatant, while Betsey stood more erectly, held her head more sternly, seemed to seize on every crumb of self-esteem that he dropped. Coverly had done what he could to get the house in order. He had lighted fires, decorated a tree and put presents under it for his son and his wife. “I have to put Binxey to bed,” Betsey said indignantly. “I don’t guess there’s any hot water for a bath, is there? Come on, Binxey, come on upstairs with Mummy. I’m just so tired I could die.”
After supper Coverly waited for the carol singers but they had either given up this ceremony or taken Boat Street off their route. At half-past ten the bells of Christ Church began to ring and he put on a coat and walked out to the green. The ringing of the bells stopped as he approached the door. He was preceded by three women, all of them unknown to him. They seemed not together and they were all three past middle age. The first wore a drum-shaped hat, covered with metal disks from which the street lights flashed with the brilliance of some advertising lure. Buy Ginger-Fluff? Texadrol? Fulpruff Tires? He looked into her face for the text but there was nothing there but the text of marriage, childbirth, some delight and some dismay. The other two wore similar hats. He waited until they had entered before he went in and found that they four were the only worshipers on Christmas Eve.