He opened his lips to answer her, and found she had left him nothing to say. Everything he could have produced by way of subterfuge she had anticipated, and now he could not lie to her, even if he’d thought for a moment he could have managed it successfully. How could he live with himself afterwards, if he ever began to suspect she had been right? To send her back to her own world and her own kind might have been almost bearable, as long as he could rest in the conviction that she would be happiest that way, which God knew any sane man would take for granted. But what if the unbelievable turned out to be true, and he was the one who was fooling himself, not she?
He had begun to shake and sweat, between crazy hope and craven fear; this sort of thing wasn’t for him yet, he wasn’t up to it. He dragged his gaze away from her face with an effort, pressing his fingers deep into his hollow cheeks to clamp the wrong words in until he could find the right ones and somehow get them out. There are hurdles not even love can take without a crashing fall; only the native obstinacy recent stresses had roused in her could make her attempt them, and when the stresses passed, and even the memory of them grew pale, she would regret ever assaying the leap. She was a reasonable being, she would listen. And this wouldn’t be lying to her.
‘Maggie,’ he began laboriously, ‘have you really thought what you’re suggesting? You know who you are, and what you are, nobody knows it better. A world figure, and going to be even greater…’
‘I could,’ she agreed very quietly, ‘given the right circumstances.’
‘And I’m the right circumstances? Wake up, girl, for God’s sake! I don’t have to go into details about myself, and I’m not going to. Don’t pretend you can’t evaluate well enough to get my number right.’
‘Better, perhaps,’ she said fiercely, ‘than you.’
‘All right, let it go. But you know very well what I mean. You belong in a world about which I know nothing, among people with whom I have nothing in common, except, perhaps, a liking for music, and that wouldn’t get me far. It’s a live, mobile, important world, with no room for hangers-on. You know what I’m talking about as well as I do. Do you think that would be an easy marriage?’
‘All right,’ she said after a long pause, her eyes wide and watchful on his face, ‘I do know what you’re talking about, and no, it won’t be easy. Did you ever hear of a marriage that was? But this one will be more difficult than most, I know it. And fathoms deeper! I’m not glossing over anything. I don’t know any of the answers, those we have to find as we go. I’m simply telling you that there isn’t any alternative! Marriage may be difficult, but separation is impossible. After what we’ve been through together, after what we know about each other, what do you suppose the ordinary pinpricks can do to us? Do you think two people ever drew as near as we have, and managed to pull themselves apart again without bleeding to death?’
He didn’t know whether she had reached that argument by a lucky inspiration or by serious thought, but as soon as she had said it he saw that it was irresistibly true, and thanked God for it, since resistance was becoming unendurable. For better or worse, they had grown together until separation would have been extreme mutilation, a death before death.
Whether she had convinced him, or whether he had surrendered only to his own awful longing to be convinced, however it happened, suddenly she was in his arms. They had, after all, no option but to make their own rules, having strayed so far out of range of any others. Maybe she could never have married anyone now for the ordinary, socially respected reasons. Maybe he would really turn out to be what she wanted, and what she would continue to want, life-long. Please God, he thought. And God help us both, because we’re going to need it! But when he kissed her all his lingering forebodings vanished like the mists dissolving over Lake Constance, and there was no room left in him for anything but incredulous gratitude and joy.
After a while they disentangled themselves silently and solemnly, and drove on mute and dazed with achievement into Scheidenau.
—«»—«»—«»—
APPENDIX
« ^
Text of Maggie Tressider’s English Singing Version of ‘WHERE THE SPLENDID TRUMPETS BLOW’
‘Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen,’ from Des Knaben Wunderhorn: set by Mahler.
Who’s that without there, who knocks at my door.
Imploring so softly, so softly: Sleep no more!?
Your love, your own true love is here,
Rise up and let me in, my dear!
And must I longer wait and mourn?
I see the red of dawn return.
The red of dawn, two stars so bright.
O that I were with my delight,
With mine own heart’s beloved!
The maiden arose and let him in.
Most welcome home, my more than kin,
Most welcome home, my own true love,
So long you’ve watched and waited.
She offered him her snow-white hand,
Far off there sang a nightingale.
The maid began to weep and wail.
O do not weep, love, do not pine,
Within the year you shall be mine.
Ere long you shall be one with me
As never bride on earth shall be,
No, none but you on earth, love!
Across the heath to war I fare.
The great green heath so broad and bare.
For there, where the splendid trumpets blare and thunder,
There is my house, my house the green turf under.
—«»—«»—«»—
[scanned anonymously in a galaxy far far away]
[v1 by anonymous for the Prooflist, 2002]
[v2 by MollyKate September 2002]
[A 3S Release— v3, html, reproofed and formatted from scan images]
[July 22, 2007]