Four Souls Page 3

  Now Mauser might be found in the library, at a table, one end of which was spread with his business papers. He muttered and fiercely cracked book spines as he paged through ledgers untouched for years. Or he’d surprise the cook tippling good brandy in the kitchen where he’d wandered in search of a heel of bread. He might be examining a stamp, holding it up with a tweezers so it caught the most intense and clear southern light, scanning it with a magnifying glass. Or he might be settling himself at his correspondence or even doing what looked like mathematical calculations across sheet after sheet of paper. Or he might even give an order or ask for a specific type of food, but what he didn’t do yet and what no one expected of him, anyway, was that he take charge. That would happen. Fleur would see to it, and then it would see to her.

  ONCE SHE ’D memorized the sounds of the house above, Fleur came upstairs and got to know the house the way a hunter knows the woods. Which floorboards creaked and which were silent. Which steps groaned and which held firm. She greased the hinges of the doors and cupboards. She memorized the lay of the house so that she would be able to tread it easily upon the black night of her choosing. Each night she practiced, she roamed. No one knew it. The house obliged her by standing solid, refusing to shift even in the bluster of winds and roiling snow. The house was well made, thus predictable, the mortars set tight between the stones, the wooden interior pinned smoothly wall to floor. Fleur became so adept in her movements and knowledge that she regularly visited the sleepers, even Fantan, and watched them until she knew their habits even to the regularity of snores and the restless gulp of dreams. She marked the petulant tossing of Placide, and the chilly, deathlike stillness of her sister, Elizabeth. The cook growled mountainously with each breath. Though tongueless, Fantan talked in his sleep. Only Mauser stayed awake.

  There was a lamp next to his bed. She saw the crack of radiance below the door. Heard the rustle of stiff pages in a book as he turned them, slowly, reading himself through the deepest hours. Sometimes she frowned as she listened, and in utter silence crept to the wall and settled herself in order to ascertain just when he’d sleep. When he would stop reading and douse the light. The answer never varied. He read until dawn. Slept a few gray hours. Woke in a wretched temper and cursed all he saw and knew.

  He suffered an excess of self-sympathy—of that much we can be positive.

  In a crack of shadow beside his door, night after night, Fleur marked the turning of pages and grew impatient. Restlessness had plagued her ever since she had entered the house. After all, she was used to great spaces and large doings. She missed getting her own meat and medicines, catching her own fish, snaring rabbits and looping the necks of roosting partridge, the repair and upkeep of her cabin, canoe, traps, and gun, and most of all she missed the care of her daughter. In a strange fit of disconnection, she imagined that she longed for Lulu far more than the girl would miss her. After all, school was a child’s world, far from all that Fleur knew. Never having gone to such a place, she imagined it consisted of toys, games, play, children shrieking with excitement—all she’d seen of schools were children at recess. So she fell into the trap, like Mauser, of pitying herself. The great and strong, how is it that they can be so feeble in this regard? Sometimes it seems to me that it’s the old sodden weaklings like myself who have the least mercy on our own persons. Maybe we expect nothing. Or have been through far too much. Maybe we are just bottomlessly foolish. At any rate those two, one the shadow of a shadow in the hall and the other a shadow also, an imitation of the ruthless man who’d stolen from the world with careless ease, both poised, caught in time.

  Time is the water in which we live, and we breathe it like fish. It’s hard to swim against the current. Onrushing, inevitable, carried like a leaf, Fleur fooled herself in thinking she could choose her direction. But time is an element no human has mastered, and Fleur was bound to go where she was sent. Maybe in those long nights as she watched the crack of light beneath the door, she had an inkling. She thought revenge was behind that door, and satisfaction. Maybe she began to realize that she was wrong. There was only time. For what is a man, what are we all, but bits of time caught for a moment in a tangle of blood, bones, skin, and brain? She was time. Mauser was time. I am a sorry bit of time myself. We are time’s containers. Time pours into us and then pours out again. In between the two pourings we live our destiny.

  Though Fleur was immensely disciplined, the wait got to be too much for her. She sank down against the wall one night, still frowning at the band of light that said Mauser was sleepless. Annoyed with everything to do with him and with her situation, she brooded. The sharp anger that kept her wakeful dulled. Her thoughts drifted. She longed for the trusting touch of her daughter, grew angry at the man behind the door, forgot him, ached for her daughter, grew angry at the man again. Felt that self-pity that they both felt, on either side of the door. Finally, resenting that she had to waste her time to take revenge, she fell asleep.

  I haven’t said this, but she had a tendency to snore.

  The snores of a beautiful woman are both ridiculous and somehow moving. I know. Recall, she had lived in my cabin. Slumped in that grand hallway with her face tipped back, unguarded, her skin exquisitely molded over the stern bones, her eyes up-slanted, the bitter perfection of her lips stuck half open, she breathed an even gurgling gnash. Fleur’s snores, her self-betrayal, started softly and then increased in volume as she fell deeper into her sleep. Mauser, in his bed of feather down and fancy silk quilts and ruffed pillows, set his book aside. At the sound of the snores, he was alarmed. He imagined that Fantan had come to curl at his door, out of a protective instinct or because he’d had a bad dream himself. Or if not Fantan, perhaps, he thought, one of his old hunting dogs had been mistakenly left out of his plush night kennel and might catch cold on the floor. He turned his light off, and here is why Fleur did not hear him. Mauser also knew precisely where the creaks hid in the floor. He trod his way around the noisy boards when he wished not to rouse Polly Elizabeth. Now he padded to the door in absolute silence, and opened it. As Fleur herself had greased the hinges, the door made no sound. And as it was a night of moon radiance and the light streamed in the window behind him and the windows at either end of the hall, it was easy for Mauser to see at once that the source of the rumbling snores was no wornout cur, but a woman. A most extraordinary woman—the laundress who’d revived him. Her face caught the light as though it were poured of tarnished silver. Her face was sculpted of the fabulous dark side of a mirror. Or deep water. Or time, as I’ve said. Her face gave back an idealized reflection and Mauser was caught in it. That strange beauty emitting snorts and whistles. Oblivious. He watched her curiously for a while, and then he suddenly smiled. He shut the door. Crawled back between the covers. She never knew, but here it was. Like a child reaching into the lake and pulling out a fish, like a fish flipping out of the fry pan into a stream that rushes to the lake, like a dog biting randomly and hauling from the air a rump steak, she got her prize. She had caught him in her sleep.

  FOUR

  Karezza

  Polly Elizabeth

  AS SOON AS Fleur appeared in the doorway, ready for my inspection, I regretted my impulse to copy for her that uniform from a certain exclusive hotel in the South of France. The black was never meant to set off so tight a waist, nor the peplum to emphasize those narrow-swiveling sly hips. The bodice with its inset of jet ruche and wide, starched white collar—a terrible mistake. Who could have expected it to frame such an elegant throat? And her eagle’s grace of collar-bone—perfectly! The three-quarters sleeves and tight cuffs gave distinction to her arms. I turned away without a word. I won’t mention my choice of the tinted stockings and the shoes—how I regretted the clever, shiny heels! Her feet were too long for fashion, I told myself, walking from the room, and her hands were rough with work. I tried to find comfort in these shortcomings. But what man rejects a woman on the basis of small defects in her hands and feet?

  The rains were heavy
and the snows worse. Mold grew in the corners of my brain. Grayish days do that to me, when I’m shut in and contemplate my small surround. I’ve the wit to do more than run this house for my sister, but my face is bleak and martial. I’ve never married. And here’s the worst. I’ve a soft heart for children, as well as all things small and helpless, and I sometimes weep into my clenched fists for fury that my sister has provided me no nephew or niece. One day I decided, in spite of opposition from all quarters, to obtain a small lady’s lapdog—a Pomeranian. A black clever-eyed bit of fluff with sharp teeth and a bitter yap. I imagined myself in some way defined by my relation to another creature. The dog would look elegant when I rode in motorcars, and fit my wardrobe perfectly as I tended to favor contrasting checks and black-and-white plaids. I would be known for my black Pomeranian and there would be a dog, at least, to sleep with me in my bed.

  The breeder brought round the complete litter and I chose one at last—it took me just an hour—I picked him for his pleading eyes. Who else, after all, needed me enough to beg?

  THOUGH I AM fond of my sister and do not begrudge her the lopsided distribution of comely attributes, I am nevertheless aware of her limitations. Placide was considered scatterbrained, and our tutor had often chastised her, but I’ve had occasion to wonder whether indeed she was created with a brain at all. In the aftermath of brother-in-law’s episode, life resumed a routine serenity, outwardly at least. But I had seen what I had seen. I tried to tell Placide.

  “Sister,” I addressed her straight out, one morning as I posed for her in pale north light, “your husband has eyes for the laundress.”

  “She’s dark as a Nubian. More to the left. Turn your head. There. Your beard is rippling up on one side and your collar shows.”

  I smoothed the piece of lamb’s wool we’d taped to my chin, and persisted.

  “I’ve a mind to let her go.”

  “Oh, don’t!” This captured my sister’s attention. She even set her camel’s hair brush down, though she loves to flourish it. “She irons my ribbons!” Placide picked up her brush again and dabbed a minuscule bit of color on her canvas. “And the bedclothes, my underlinen, all the tablecloths and napkins. She gets them so very white, my dear, quite in contrast to her complexion!”

  Placide dimpled at me, waiting for me to laugh at her attempted witticism. I did not indulge her.

  “Watch out, sister, have a care. He’s quite”—I chose the word without thinking how absurd it might sound uttered from beneath a false lamb’s wool beard—“besotted.” The wool got in my mouth and I spluttered to get rid of it.

  Placide laughed out loud and shook her thin, dry curls. She wrinkled her nose, a gesture that was charming when she was a girl but which now made her look like a moth-eaten rabbit. She fluffed the silk bow on her painter’s smock as much as if to say, What would you know of men and their besottedness?

  I do know, I thought, I can see it. I know a love crush far better than you do, sister. You vain bit of fluff! Though I would die for you, I suppose, were it to come to that, I do see you clearly. And I know more about the direction of men’s desires because I’ve watched from the outside. I saw how they once looked at you, before everything about you dulled to an aged girl and your hair fell out. Their eyes followed your gestures and their bodies were always half poised, half turned, ready to sidle or leap, crawl or elegantly saunter in your direction whenever you changed your position in a room. You were the sun to their yearning faces, however eagerly they tried to conceal their interest. But it was a blank power. You were thinly wrought, a skim of cream, a pleasing sugar dip. Which is why I worry so intensely now, and fear this servant whose craft took me unaware.

  Yet the new woman did such an excellent job that I had absolutely no cause for complaint. Fleur filled and drained the electric tumbler washer, operated the short mangle, and at any time of day, while directing Mrs. Testor, I was apt to hear the thump and dance of her irons from below. The bedding appeared, stacks of it precisely folded and sun-bleached to a marvelous whiteness. In addition, she was discreet. I saw little of her. Fleur never appeared in the kitchen except at mealtimes, and as for the rest of the house, she made her rounds silent as a wraith. I never saw her on any of the other floors although the linens were delivered and changed, precisely as I had instructed, even to the paint smocks for Placide and the hand towels at my dressing table. Brother-in-law seemed both satisfied with the condition of his room and yet completely unaware that Fantan and Mrs. Testor no longer struggled and bickered over what was to be done with the mounds of soiled sheets and wrinkled pajamas that he discarded by the sixes and sevens. I was even lulled, as anyone would be I suppose, into the resumption of a modest social life.

  Nothing like life had been, of course, when Mother held sway. She had an unsurpassable gift for organizing formal picnics, sleigh rides, outings of various types. On those rare occasions when she pressed brother-in-law into joining the fun I never shall forget the picture that he and Placide, the two of them, made in spanking white, she on his arm, walking the grounds by the lake as the light turned golden and their shadows dragged beneath their heels like long and languid blue capes. They were really quite magnificent. She was the beauty of the avenue when she married—tall and slim, with a mass of dark golden hair that curled and crackled with lights. He was young too, wealthy, unpredictable, purported to be the son of minor British royalty and a German industrialist, an entrepreneur and scholar whose interests ranged from the classification and study of serpents to the quiet manipulation of investments. I was to find out that his heritage was more than exaggerated, it was a disgraceful lie, although his wealth was not. He was financially unharmed by all market tremors and even benefited from every crisis. He’d acquired a stiff reputation for his handling of the family lumber business and the railroad line, which stretched west from its terminus, went on forever, its print bold and black as doctor’s stitches on the maps he had me trace with my fingers.

  “Our son could run this, why not?” he used to say, wistfully, to Placide. Of course she had no interest in bearing a son or daughter. When he tried to interest me in his doings, I would politely dip my head. I could no more make out and take fascination in the schemes, the maps, the enthusiasms in his office, the ins and outs, than my sister could allow her body to conceive.

  It was a shame, I thought, that Placide and I had not been fused into a single person. I would have done things with her looks, and there’s no question that she sorely needed brains. But we were woefully separate and single in our beings. Perhaps if we’d worked together, we could have managed John James Mauser. But too late. Once the laundry woman had begun to exert some sort of influence, my brother-in-law started acting on his own. He actually summoned a doctor who specialized in male diseases. The man made a house call all the way here from Chicago. The famous doctor arrived on a drizzly afternoon and after we took his raincoat, umbrella, rubber galoshes, and a hat away to dry and brush, he was shown upstairs, where he secluded himself with brother-in-law for most of a day.

  SEEKING TO enlighten myself on the particulars of brother-inlaw’s condition, for his own good of course, I was forced to eavesdrop. After the esteemed Dr. Fulmer had finally finished examining his patient, he stepped into the hall where I was sitting, waiting, knitting. I had practically completed two pairs of socks.

  “Put down those needles,” he glared at me from underneath his little band of black hair. “Are you the wife?”

  “No,” I answered, though a bolt of conceit pierced me.

  “Then fetch the wife!” he ordered.

  I went upstairs and, with difficulty, persuaded Placide to leave off detailing the hem of some figure’s majestic robe. She followed me downstairs, and I ushered them both into a small sitting room, knowing full well that there was a thin panel in the wall between the two rooms. Through that panel, by means of an ordinary water glass pressed to my ear, I was able to hear the entire conversation so clearly that on several occasions I had to bite my lip so
as not to offer correct information. Placide, of course, distracted and immersed in her artistic pursuits, knew less than I of brother-inlaw’s diet, sleep, taking of the air, and general treatment.

  Placide had already hinted to me of her husband’s troublesome spermatorrhea, which he claimed was brought on by the practice of Karezza in the marital relation. So it did not surprise me to hear the doctor question my sister on the specifics of the practice laid out in Dr. Alice B. Stockham’s useful book. Placide had confided to me her terror of pregnancy, and I had laid aside my own longings for a nephew or niece in order to preserve Placide’s health. I had, of course, meant no harm when I placed the book in Placide’s hands, and in fact I still insist that Dr. Stockham’s adaptations of Zugassent’s practical methods of loving could, if sincerely practiced, improve the relations between the sexes and even save marriages.

  “Now I want you to be perfectly open with me, Mrs. Mauser,” said Dr. Fulmer. “Can you describe this practice of Karezza to me in exact physical terms?”

  Placide, of course, could not. Her modesty was a barrier. She tried her best to convey the spirit of the practice without resorting to crude word-pictures.

  “We exercise the mutual power of our wills,” said Placide. “And the power of the heart.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “To collect and act on loving thoughts.”