He slept until late in the morning. When he returned to the cemetery late in the afternoon, his belly sore from vomiting, a lawnmower was wandering through the hollow, which had formerly been a pleasant nineteenth-century pond where bereaved families picnicked. Here they were trimming the grass nearly to the roots, doubtless for the sake of hygiene. He saw the caretakers working around Victoria’s grave. The grass had been torn up as if by some large animal.
He walked away, returning at night through the hole in the fence.
Don’t ask me anything, she said.
Then he finally remembered that the caretakers must have removed the blanket he’d given her.
He did ask her, that time and the next; he pointed out, very reasonably in his own judgment, that since he came all this way to visit her, with his health not being of the best, it was only right that she inform him how much danger he might be in.
Well, I’ve already told you one secret thing, which isn’t to say I gushed with confidentialities.
And you won’t tell me anything more?
I don’t want to be part of this.
Then I’d say you hold me pretty cheaply, he said, and maybe I won’t come again. I have to say, Victoria, I feel disgusted…
Are the leaves back by now?
Can’t you see them?
You know I can’t! What is it you want of me? Why is everybody so demanding? All I want to do is be alone.
Then be alone; I’ll go—
No. Listen. Promise to keep another secret.
I promise.
All right. I made him understand. Do you believe me?
Sure.
He stays under the lake. Go down there and — but he’s not to know I told you.
Won’t he figure it out?
He doesn’t exactly think.
I’m afraid.
So am I, she said. — I’ll hold your hand.
Will it hurt me?
I asked him not to.
What happens if we don’t go?
He’ll come here every night until he corners you. We’d better go now.
Why are you afraid, Victoria?
Please… I said I love you. Isn’t that enough?
Elongating toward him in an ecstasy of avarice, the foul thing simpered expressionlessly. It sprang; he could hardly bear the horror. Sniffing him all over like a dog (its own odor almost unendurably foul), it drooled, dribbled and moaned. It afflicted him as relentlessly as a stench. When it got to his belly, it began to whine eagerly. Then it grunted. It sprang a few paces backward, then studied him, grinning. Its eyes reminded him of blue light-shards in black water. Victoria released his hand.
Shimmering like spiderwebs in a thick elderberry bush at dusk, the ghosts whined quarrelsome round and round their graves, much as Canada geese in autumn overcircle black swamp water, searching for what we do not know. No doubt he had imagined them. Victoria must know them all. He wished to ask what it was like underground, but this appeared to be another of her private secrets. Come to think of it, perhaps she didn’t know anything. Why was she here and not on the moon? If he inquired as to the whereabouts and identity of the husband of this Mrs. Emilia Woodruff, on whose grave he and Victoria sometimes sat, would he be answered? If not, would Victoria’s whims be to blame, or something else? During this last summer, wondering anything had become so considerable an effort that he felt guilty doing it and not doing it. There had been much sweetness in his relationship with Victoria; he had lived for her, and become better as a result, but now he could not tell whether the wrongness lay in her or him or both of them. When she had shut him out before, that felt different; he had been courting her. Perhaps even then he might have felt desperate and jealous when she kept something from him, but probably not; jealousy had never been his favorite vice. Nowadays what could be interpreted as a pattern of rejection still wounded him, coming from her; but being excluded from any particular thing left him indifferent. He was no crackshot astronomer, to map out her orbital period. Often he already seemed to be remembering both this summer and the other from some rainy, windy country. The whining of the ghosts, or insects, or whatever they were, made him look up from himself. Not seeing anybody else, not even Victoria, who had told him that tonight she wished to play by herself, he set out to find the green-faced thing again. After all, it was his dog.
Just as in the swamp he frequented he sometimes observed ripples starting and stopping in one place, then a darkness rising in the green water, a fin or narrow turtle-head showing itself before falling again, bubbling whitely as it vanished within its ripples, so it came from under the lake.
This time he felt more revulsion than fear. It somehow struck him that the thing was intelligent as well as sensitive, although he could not have defined its awareness or capacities. It grinned and grinned. He forced himself to stroke its head.
Victoria’s blonde hair glared luridly against Mr. Arthur J. Bishop’s black granite tombstone; she was sitting against it, running her left hand through her hair. She said: Tell me what it’s like where you go, in the day.
Well, until I got sick I used to spend too much time at home. Now I can’t even recall exactly what I did there. I lie down a lot now, of course, but when I’m not feeling too bad I try to go out. There are some reeds in the swamp down the road, and I love their jade-green color. Sometimes I think nothing’s as beautiful as the silver-blue slime they grow from—
Except for me, of course.
That’s right. Do you miss the sun?
The sun is horrible, she said quickly. Sometimes when I’m down in the ground, even as far as I can go, I feel it picking at me, rotting me and making everything worse. When my children and my husband all needed me at the same time, or— Anyhow, this is much more annoying than that. But there’s not much I can do about it.
I love the sun.
Well, you’re still alive. I suppose I did, too.
When I remember you, I think of summer. It seems as if it was always summer when we—
That’s because we were only involved for one summer.
It was longer than that!
No it wasn’t; my letters afterward didn’t count. But what else do you do with your days? Why don’t you have another womanfriend?
She died.
Did you love each other?
Very much.
Why did you call me up instead of her?
I don’t know.
What was she like?
You know, Victoria, it would be one thing if you cared to tell me about your family, not that I’m even so interested except that I’d like to know everything about you, while you—
Let’s not fight.
Speaking of daytime, is there somewhere you’d like me to go where you can’t, so I could come and tell you about it? For instance, I—
No.
Whatever you say.
But do tell me more about your friend Luke. What did he look like?
You know what he—
Before he died, silly.
When he was young, he was an extremely handsome man. After his first tumor he aged quickly. Unlike me, he was never fat. He had brown hair and greenish-blue eyes with twenty-ten vision. He was very strong, with great endurance, and he used to be a mountain climber. He took care of himself in more ways than I did, so it’s strange that he went first.
I wonder if he would have liked me?
I saw you with him.
What do you mean?
In the viewing room—
What do you mean?