Swaying and cursing in the tiny lavatory he had shaved the sleep-blanched face, noting the hollows under the dark eyes, steadying himself with one hand on the metal basinrim, his legs braced apart. Blom the lighthouse, Blom looking not quite so well. The floor had been flooded by someone’s indiscretion, he tried to keep his feet in the drier places. Paper towels only; he was glad they had thought of pinching towels out of the Pullman on their way back from the diner the night before — that had been Gil’s idea. Clever. The night before? Already it seemed centuries ago. The clamor of the train was louder and more immediate in the lavatory, came up rounded and echoing, drafty, almost musical, through the w.c. A good thing to shave today and tomorrow, because after that, when they got into Mexico, God alone knew—
And then Gil was saying, as they waited for Noni, wiping his hands a little nervously with a handkerchief, just the tips of the fingers, then tucking it back in his breastpocket:
“Look here, Blom. I haven’t wanted to ask you before, in fact there hasn’t really been any chance, and I don’t quite know how to say it, but don’t you think all this is a little queer?”
“What do you mean, Gil?”
“Well, the suddenness of it. The abruptness.”
Gil swayed his head and shoulders forward and back, very slightly, very quickly, a habit he had when he was nervous: the pointed lean face, ascetic and Bostonian, but kindly, and the gray eyes, peering through the thick glasses, were frankly puzzled.
“To be candid, Gil,” and he tapped on the tablecloth with the prongs of his fork, “I hadn’t really thought about it. I’ve been too damned busy just getting it arranged!”
“Just the same, doesn’t it strike you as odd—?”
“I don’t know — Noni’s of course sometimes impulsive.”
“Yeah, Blom, but not like this, it’s not really like her, in a thing so important — she’s usually, if anything, rather deliberate.”
“Well, maybe you’re right. What were you thinking about it.”
“That’s what I thought you might know.”
“Me? No.”
He shook his head slowly, smiling at the slightly swaying tweed figure, the earnest eyes. Gil looked back at him rather fixedly for a moment, then said:
“When was it exactly that Noni first talked to you about it?”
“Sunday afternoon. Just after she had called up you. And then I saw her later that evening of course.”
“I thought maybe she might have told you earlier.”
“No. That was the first I knew of it. She told me she’d already talked with you and the lawyer.”
“Well, it’s really very funny. It’s not a bit like Noni — after all these years, so suddenly like this—”
He stared out at the sliding landscape — a farmhouse surrounded by tall trees, two red silos, a car speeding levelly along the flat road parallel with the train, a vast plowed field with the plow lines telescoping in swift perspective — then added:
“Not, of course, that I’m not frightfully glad. As you know.”
“You bet. I think it’s simply grand, Gil. My own only real regret is that you fellers haven’t got together years ago.”
“Yes. It’s just a little bewildering. But I suppose she must have had her reasons. For the sudden decision, I mean.”
“Possibly. Just possibly! But my guess is that she just up and did it on the spur of the moment. Because if she had any special reasons, it’s not like Noni to conceal them. You know as well as I do, Gil, that the one thing Noni cannot do is keep a secret!..”
Smiling broadly for the exchange of this shared knowledge, he elicited deliberately an answering smile from Gil; Gil’s face relaxed, lost the slight sadness which had clouded it; for the first time he seemed to feel a little at ease. With just a hint of some reservation, nevertheless? Gil had perceptions, Gil was no fool. In a way it was a dirty trick — the mere deception, quite apart from the nature of the deception — to keep anyone so lucid, so lucid by nature, thus helplessly in the dark. It wasn’t fair; it wasn’t fair even to himself. An accessory after the artifact! He smiled at the thought, whistling the little Bach tune. For a moment he felt almost gay; smoke sprawled in sinuous shapelessness past the window, the swift shadows forming and vanishing beneath it, the sun shone, the hurrying train drew him powerfully into its deep-rhythmed nostalgic hypnosis. Again and again the engine, far ahead, cried for the innumerable crossings of this dull rich flatland, its voice now half stifled, now clear, as the wind shifted. Whooooo — whooooo — whoo-whoo—a somber and deep-timbred voice, whose tone he likened, as he listened, to the color of bronze, the color of winter sunlight on black ice. Everything was so beautiful — everything — but then the cold metallic pang shut round his heart once more, for all this beauty was nothing at all but the backdrop, the décor, for Noni’s dream, Noni’s ballet, of which the end might so easily be tragic. The reason for all this beauty, this wonder — the train, the new and strange landscape, the incredible adventure, this hurrying breakfast table with Gil and himself sitting at it, and all the unshaped but already so powerfully creative future beginning even now to tower in vaguely predictable color and form above them — the reason for this was the possibility that Noni might die. It ran through the landscape, ran through the whole world, like a shadow. It grew in a dark corner of the picture like the deadly nightshade. It was the first note, offstage, tentative and tender, of the tragedian’s song, the goat song. Goat song in Mexico.…
The thought was almost intolerable, it was with difficulty that he restrained himself from jumping to his feet, muttering some sort of excuse, and fleeing to the smoker. But Gil was saying:
“Careful, Blom! Here’s Noni now.”
Not like the deadly nightshade, no, beautiful as that was — but the narcissus!
“Noni, you’re late!”
“Don’t you envy me? I overslept! Positively.”
“I don’t believe it. I suppose you and Gil know the one, speaking of all the train stories we know, about the fellow who was too tall for a sleeping car berth, and had to open the window and put his feet out?”
Noni’s blue eyes were naughty with delight, she was already beginning to laugh.
“No,” she said, fascinated. “No, you can tell us!”
“Well, when he took his feet in, in the morning, he found he had two red lanterns and a mailbag …”
“Fie! I don’t call that a story at all! Did it happen to you, Blom?”
The bland Negro waiter interrupted her glee; they sat back while with swift legerdemain he moved water bottle and sugar bowl to spread the new cloth, flung down and arranged his handful of bright silver. How well she looked, despite the ever-so-slight flush, and with what perfect unselfconsciousness she managed things! She sipped her water, looked over the glass brim to inspect their fellow voyagers, looked out of the wide window, studied the breakfast menu with delight. Then, with her hand on Gil’s sleeve, she said:
“It’s a lovely book!”
“What book, darling?”
“The one Nancy brought. The Cloud Messenger, it’s called, it’s a Hindu poem, very old—”
“Ah!” Gil said; “too highbrow for me. More to Blom’s taste!”
“Blom, you would love it. You must read it! So refreshing in this wasteland — a lover separated from his sweetheart who sends a cloud to her with a message — isn’t that nice? isn’t it lovely? — and the message is the poem—”