Iron pot on a hook, iron spit for the impaling and roasting of some headless blue turkey, a little straw broom and dusty heart-shaped bellows, and on the andirons great solid brass balls fit for the gods. Suddenly the tall swallow-tailed flames and crackling puffs of orange and deep green light between the logs threw all these hand-forged or handmade engines into relief, set them in motion, brought them to life, and I smelled the damp bursts of smoke and the widow was warming herself at the witches’ fire. Beside the bellows was a coffin-shaped legless duck — faded decoy carved with a knife — that stared me down with two tiny bright sightless chips of glass. Fire in the antique shop. Dead duck. Smoke in my eyes.
“Take off your shoes, for God’s sake,” she said, and the mellow voice was loud above the chant of the SS men, the firelight landed in yellow lozenges on the slopes and in the hollows of her slacks, “you must be frozen. But go ahead, warm your toes while I tell you about Don.”
And I could only nod, tug at the wet laces, free my heels, roll down the socks, wring them out — drops of steam on the hearth — could only make room for her and sit beside her on the cold wide naked planks of that floor with my hands propped behind me and my white feet and hers thrust into the heat. She dropped down on an elbow, crossed her long straight legs at the ankles, held out the whiskey glass — but it was not for me, that whiskey, at least not then — and breathing deeply, straining at the nostrils, shirt binding and slackening across her breasts, she began to wheeze. To wheeze! The big white knuckles of the fingers holding the glass, her crowned breasts, the mighty head of black hair, the stomach girding her in front like the flexible shape of a shield, the fluted weight of neck and arms and legs, all the impressive anatomy of this Cleopatra who could row her own barge, this woman who could outrun horses on the beach or knock down pillars of salt, everything about her revealed perfect health, denied this sudden swirling of mud or rattling of little pits in her chest. But even above the raucous melody of the eager Germans and their impossible military band I heard it: the sound of obstructed breathing, tight low crippling whine in the chest. Yet her eyes on mine were direct and heavy and dark, were large and black and fierce and cracked by spears of silver light. She wheezed on, mocked by the competitive fire, waiting for the steel needle to descend once more into the grooves of plodding Reichstag hysteria, and then whacked herself once on the uppermost yellow thigh and began to talk.
“That’s him in the picture,” she said without moving, without pointing, merely assuming that I had seen it when I entered the room. I nodded. “That’s Don. Young, good-looking boy. He stepped on a land mine, God damn him. In Germany. He took a wrong step and then no more Don. Poof. I met him in South Carolina. There he was, toward sundown standing at a country bus stop in South Carolina. The end of nowhere and burning up at the edges. Nothing but the road, a tree smothered with dust, the little three-sided shed where they were supposed to wait for the bus, a field full of scarecrows. And in front of the shed and surrounded by perhaps twenty cotton pickers, there was Don. I saw him. Short, limber, smile all over his face, head of tight blond curls, overseas cap like a little tan tent on the side of his head. Bunch of tattered damn black cotton pickers out for blood and this wonderful bright little guy with his smile and curly hair. Don. A little angel in South Carolina. So I gave him a lift. Sense of humor? My God, he had a sense of humor.” And suddenly she was choking on a snort of laughter, choking, gasping, giving my now toasty bare foot a friendly push with hers. And now her wheezing had found another depth, and each word came out shrouded in its cocoon of gravelly sound, its spasm of spent breath, and there were streaks of moisture at the hairline and on her upper lip. She took another slow drink of whiskey and the silver strand of hair hung down, the voice was deep.
She set down the glass and filled her lungs and said: “Good God, I married him for his humor. Because he was light on his feet and light in his heart. And because he was quick and talented and because he was just a boy, that’s why I married him. Why I gave him a lift and followed him to Galveston, Texas, and married him. Don. Three dozen roses, a brand new hot plate, a rented room outside Galveston, and one day Don telling me he had been elected company mascot — what a sense of humor, what a winsome smile — and that night our celebration with a spaghetti dinner and bottle of dago red. I should have known then that it couldn’t last. My God. …”
The golden foot was struggling against mine, the perspiration was as thick as rain on her lip, her shirt was wet and through it I could see the sloping shoulder, the handsome network of blue veins, the companion to the black brassiere that was still hanging in the john upstairs. Stretched full-length at my side she was wheezing and staring into the light of the fire, and now there were dimples, puckers, unsuspected curves in the canary yellow slacks, and now her chest was maniacal, was as trenchant and guttural and insistent as the upturned German record itself. So I looked at her then, forced myself to return the stare of those vast dark eyes, and she tried to shrug, tried to toss back the thick length of silver hair, but only glowered at me out of her stricken heaviness and abruptly tapped herself on the chest.
“Asthma.” Tapping the finger, squaring the jaw, watching me. “I get it from too much thinking about Don. But it’s nothing. Nothing at all. …”
I nodded. And yet the fire had fallen in and the pot and spit were glowing and her knee was lifting. Her lips were moist, pulled back, drawn open fiercely in the perfect silent square of the tragic muse, and I leaned closer to smell the alcohol and Parisian scent, closer to inspect the agony of the muscles which, no thicker than hairs, flexed and flickered in those unhappy lips, closer to hear whatever moaning she might have made above the racket of her strangulation.
“What can I do? Isn’t there something I can do?”
“The secretary,” she said. “Bring me the box in the middle drawer. Saucer too. From the kitchen.”
So I embarked on this brief rump-swinging bare-and-warm-footed expedition, and with the woolen pants steaming nicely around my ankles and the checkered shirt pressing against my skin its blanket of warm fuzzy hairs, I glided heavily to the little chair, the papers, the oil lamp — God Bless Our Home etched on the shade — and calmly, backs of the hands covered with new warmth, licking my lips and feeling that I might like to whistle — perhaps only a bar or two, a few notes in defiance of the Horst Wessel—I returned to the cold kitchen with hardly a glance, hardly a thought for the remnants of poor Pixie’s breakfast and lunch and dinner. Solicitous. Professional search for a saucer. Long-faced scrutiny of the cupboards. The hell with the nipples.
And then I was kneeling at her side, leaning down to her again with the box in one hand and the dish in the other, and though she was heaving worse than ever with her eyes still shut, nonetheless she knew I was there and tried to rouse herself. “What next?” I asked, and was startled by the quickness of her reply, shocked by the impatience and urgency of her rich low voice.
“Put some powder in the dish and burn it. For God’s sake.”
Sputtering match, sputtering powder, glowing pinpricks and smoke enough to form a genie. I tried to fight the smoke, the stench, with my two wild hands. But it was everywhere. And now her voice was coming through the smoke and for a moment I could only listen, breathe in the terrible odor, keep watching her despite my tears.