I closed my eyes and, in the manner of those who, poised above the pan, fleetingly hug their feces to their bowels, retained the moment. For the sake of future recollection, I concentrated on the precise nature of my expectations. I was well aware of the universal law which pre-ordains a discrepancy between the imagined and the real—I even prepared myself for a disappointment. When I opened my eyes a number filled my vision—54. Page 54. Below that I found myself halfway through a sentence which had its origins on page fifty-three, a sentence sinister in its familiarity. “said Dave, carefully wiping his lips with it and crumpling it on to his plate.” I turned my face into the pillow, sickened and stunned by an apprehension of the complexity and sophistication of Sally Klee’s species and the brutish ignorance of my own. “Dave stared intently through the candlelight at his sister-in-law and her husband, his brother. He spoke quietly. ‘Or again, some think of it as a sharp, womanly odor (he glanced at Moira)… exciting. Certainly it suggests sexual activity of some…’” I threw the sheet aside and clutched at another, page 196: “of earth struck the coffin lid, the rain ceased as suddenly as it had begun. Moira detached herself from the main group and wandered across the cemetery, reading without real comprehension the inscriptions on the stones. She felt mellow, as if she had seen a depressing but ultimately good film. She stopped under a yew tree and stood there a long time, abstractedly picking at the bark with her long orange fingernails. She thought, Everything changes. A sparrow, its feathers fluffed against the cold, hopped forlornly at her feet.” Not one phrase, not one word modified, everything unaltered. Page 230: “‘-ing on clouds?’ Dave repeated peevishly. ‘What exactly does that mean?’ Moira let her gaze fall on a flaw in the Bokhara design and said nothing. Dave crossed the room and took her hand. ‘What I mean when I ask that,’ he said hurriedly, ‘is that I have so many things to learn from you. You’ve suffered so much. You know so much.’ Moira released her hand to pick up her cup of barely warm, weak tea. She thought listlessly, Why do men despise women?”
I could read no more. I squatted on the bedpost picking at my chest listening to the ponderous tick of the clock in the hallway downstairs. Was art then nothing more than a wish to appear busy? Was it nothing more than a fear of silence, of boredom, which the merely reiterative rattle of the typewriter’s keys was enough to allay? In short having crafted one novel, would it suffice to write it again, type it out with care, page by page? (Gloomily I recycled nits from torso to mouth.) Deep in my heart I knew it would suffice and, knowing that seemed to know less than I had ever known before. Two and a half next April indeed! I could have been born the day before yesterday.
It was growing dark when I finally set about arranging the papers and returning them to the file. I worked quickly, turning pages with all four limbs, driven less by the fear of Sally Klee returning home early than by an obscure hope that by restoring order I could erase the afternoon from my mind. I eased the file through the back of the desk and into its drawer. I secured the jagged segment of wood with drawing pins hammered down with the heel of a shoe. I threw the splinters of wood out the window and pushed the desk against the wall. I crouched in the center of the room, knuckles barely brushing the carpet, questioning the semidarkness and the frightful hiss of total silence about my head… now everything was as it had been and as Sally Klee would expect it to be—typewriter, pens, blotting paper, a single withering daffodil—and still I knew what I knew and understood nothing at all. Simply, I was unworthy. I did not wish to turn on the light and illuminate my memories of the happiest eight days of my life. I groped, therefore, in the gloom unique to bedrooms until, vibrant with self-pity, I had located all of my few possessions—hairbrush, nail file, stainless-steel mirror and toothpicks. My resolve to leave the room without once looking back failed me when I reached the bedroom door. I turned and peered, but I could see nothing. I closed the door softly behind me and, even as I set my hand on the first step of the narrow attic staircase, I heard Sally Klee’s key scratching for leverage in the front door lock.
I wake from my after-dinner sleep into silence. Perhaps silence, the sudden cessation of Sally Klee’s typewriter, has awakened me. My empty coffee cup still hangs by its handle from my finger, a viscous residue of tinned foods coats my tongue, whereas a trickle of saliva from my sleeping mouth has stained the paisley pattern of the chaise longue. Sleep after all solves nothing. I rise scratching and long for my toothpicks (fishbone in chamois pouch) but now they are at the very top of the house and to fetch them I should have to pass Sally Klee’s open door. And why should I not pass her open door? Why should I not be seen and be taken account of in this household? Am I invisible? Do I not deserve for my quiet, self-effacing removal to another room a simple acknowledgment, the curt exchange of nods and sighs and smiles between two who have known both suffering and loss? I find myself standing before the hallway clock, watching the small hand edge towards ten. The truth is that I do not pass her door because I smart from being ignored, because I am invisible and of no account. Because I long to pass her door. My eyes stray to the front door and fix there. To leave, yes, regain my independence and dignity, to set out on the City Ring Road, my possessions clasped to my chest, the infinite stars towering above me and the songs of nightingales ringing in my ears. Sally Klee receding ever farther behind me, she caring nothing for me, no, nor I for her, to lope carefree towards the orange dawn and on into the next day and again into the following night, crossing rivers and penetrating woods, to search for and find a new love, a new post, a new function, a new life. A new life. The very words are deadweight on my lips, for what new life could be more exalted than the old, what new function rival that of Sally Klee’s ex-lover? No future can equal my past. I turn towards the stairs and almost immediately begin to wonder if I could not convince myself of alternative descriptions of the situation. This afternoon, blighted by my own inadequacy, I acted for the best, it was in both our interests. Sally Klee, returning home from a troubled day, must have entered her room to discover it bereft of a certain few familiar articles and she must have felt then that her only source of comfort had left her side without a word. Without one word! My hands and feet are on the fourth stair. Surely it is she, not I, who is hurt. And what are explanations but silent, invisible things in your head? I have appropriated more than my fair share of damage and she is silent because she is sulking. It is she who longs for explanations and reassurance. She who longs to be esteemed, stroked, breathed on. Of course! How could I have failed to understand that during our silent meal. She needs me. I gain this realization like a mountaineer a virgin summit and arrive at Sally Klee’s open door a little out of breath, less from exertion than from triumph.
Wreathed by the light from her writing lamp she sits with her back to me, elbows resting on the desk, head supported under the chin by her cupped hands. The sheet of paper in her typewriter is crowded with words. It has yet to be pulled clear and laid in the blue clasp file. Standing here directly behind Sally Klee I am stuck by a vivid memory from my earliest infancy. I am staring at my mother, who squats with her back to me, and then, for the first time in my life, I see past her shoulder as through a mist pale, spectral figures beyond the plate glass, pointing and mouthing silently. I advance noiselessly into the room and squat down a few feet behind Sally Klee’s chair. Now I am here, it seems an impossible idea she will ever turn in her chair and notice me.