"Her house was lighted," I said.
"What in the world were you doing at her house?"
"I got lost."
"Well she was in Reno. I suppose she's just come back. Do you know her?" she asked.
"No," I said, "but I'd like to."
"Well if she's back I'll ask her for a drink tomorrow."
She came the next afternoon, wearing the black dress and the same high heels. She was a little reserved but I found her fascinating, not because of her physical and intellectual charms but because she owned the yellow rooms. She stayed for supper and I asked about her house. I presently asked if she wouldn't like to sell it. She was not at all interested. Then I asked if I could see the house and she agreed indifferently. She was leaving early and if I wanted to see the place I could come back with her and so I did.
As soon as I stepped into the yellow room I felt that peace of mind I had coveted when I first saw the walls in a walkup near Pennsylvania Station. Sometimes you step into a tackroom, a carpenter's shop or a country post office and find yourself unexpectedly at peace with the world. It is usually late in the day. The place has a fine smell (I must include bakeries). The groom, carpenter, postmaster or baker has a face so clear, so free of trouble that you feel that nothing bad has ever or will ever happen here, a sense of fitness and sanctity never achieved, in my experience, by any church.
She gave me a drink and I asked again if she would sell the place. "Why should I sell my house," she asked. "I like my house. It's the only house I have. If you want a place in the neighborhood the Barkham place is on the market and it's really much more attractive than this."
"This is the house I want."
"I don't see why you're so crazy about this place. If I had a choice I'd rather have the Barkham place."
"Well I'll buy the Barkham place and exchange it for this."
"I simply don't want to move," she said. She looked at her watch.
"Could I sleep here," I asked.
"Where."
"Here, here in this room."
"But what do you want to sleep here for? The sofa's hard as a rock."
"I'd just like to."
"Well I guess you can if you want to. No monkey business."
"No monkey business." "I'll get some bedding."
She went upstairs and came down with some sheets and a blanket and made my bed. "I think I'll turn in myself," she said, going towards the stairs. "I guess you know where everything is. If you want another drink there's some ice in the bucket. I think my husband left a razor in the medicine cabinet. Good night." Her smile was courteous and no more. She climbed the stairs.
I didn't make a drink. I didn't, as they say, need one. I sat in a chair by the window feeling the calm of the yellow walls restore me. Outside I could hear the brook, some night bird, moving leaves, and all the sounds of the night world seemed endearing as if I quite literally loved the night as one loves a woman, loved the stars, the trees, the weeds in the grass as one can love with the same ardor a woman's breasts and the apple core she has left in an ashtray. I loved it all and everyone who lived. My life had begun again and I could see, from this beginning, how far I had gone from any natural course. Here was the sense of reality-a congenial, blessed and useful construction to which I belonged. I stepped out onto the terrace. It was cloudy but some stars could still be seen. The wind was shifting and smelled of rain. I walked down to the bridge, undressed and dove into a pool there. The water was buoyant and a little brackish from the bogs in which it rose, but it had, so unlike the disinfected sapphire of a pool, a strong and unmistakably erotic emphasis. I dried myself on my shirttails and walked naked back to the house, feeling as if the earth were paved for my contentment. I brushed my teeth, turned out the light, and as I got into my bed it began to rain.
For a year or more the sound of the rain had meant merely umbrellas, raincoats, rubbers, the wet seats of convertibles, but now it seemed like some enlargement of my happiness, some additional bounty. It seemed to increase my feeling of limberness and innocence and I fended off sleep to listen to it with the attention and curiosity with which we follow music. When I did sleep I dreamed in this order of the mountain, the walled town and the banks of the river and when I woke at dawn there was no trace of the cafard. I dove into the pool again and dressed. In the kitchen I found a melon, made some coffee and fried some bacon. The smell of coffee and bacon seemed like a smell of newness and I ate with a good appetite. She came down later in a bathrobe and thanked me for having made the coffee. When she raised the cup to her lips her hand shook so that the coffee spilled. She went into the pantry, returned with a bottle of whiskey and spiked her coffee. She neither apologized or explained this but the spike steadied her hand. I asked her if she wouldn't like me to cut the grass. "Well I would frankly," she said, "if you don't have anything better to do. It's terribly hard to find anyone around here to do anything. All the young men leave home and all the old ones die. The mower's in the toolshed and I think there's some gasoline."
I found the mower and gasoline and cut the grass. It was a big lawn and this took me until noon or later. She was sitting on the terrace reading and drinking something-icewater or gin. I joined her, wondering how I could build my usefulness into indispensability. I could have made a pass at her but if we became lovers this would have meant sharing the yellow room and that was not what I wanted. "If you want a sandwich before you go there's some ham and cheese in the refrigerator," she said. "A friend of mine is coming out on the four-o'clock but I suppose you'll want to go back before then."
I was frightened. Go back, go back, go back to the greasy green waters of the Lethe, back to my contemptible cowardice, back to the sanctuary of my bed where I cowered before thin air, back to anesthetizing myself with gin in order to eat a plate of scrambled eggs. I wondered about the sex of her visitor. If it was a woman mightn't I stay on as a sort of handyman, eating my supper in the kitchen and sleeping in the yellow room? "If there's anything else you'd like me to do," I said. "Firewood?"
"I buy my firewood in Blenville."
"Would you like me to split some kindling?"
"Not really," she said.
"The screen door in the kitchen is loose," I said. "I could repair that."
She didn't seem to hear me. She went into the house and returned a little later with two sandwiches. "Would you like mustard?" she asked.
"No thank you," I said.
I took the sandwich as a kind of sacrament since it would be the last thing I could approach with any appetite until I returned to the yellow room and when would that be? I was desperate. "Is your visitor a man or a woman," I asked.
"I really don't think that concerns you," she said.
"I'm sorry."
"Thank you for cutting the grass," she said. "That needed to be done but you must understand that I can't have a strange man sleeping on my sofa without a certain amount of damage to my reputation and my reputation isn't absolutely invincible."