It's nice to walk from your bed out a tall window onto a porch, back away from the street, and look through the ever glossy leaves of cherry laurels at a comforting commotion that doesn't take note of you.
I wouldn't give the Avenue for the Champs Elysees, for the Via Veneto, for the Yellow Brick Road, for the Highway to Heaven. But it's nice sometimes to be way back here in this easterly bedroom or to stand at the railing, too far from the street to be noticed, and peer out at the cheerful lights as they go by.
"Althea, honey, pull back my curtains so I can look out my window."
"It's too cold for you to open it now."
"I know, I only want to see.
"-no chocolate, no books, you no want your music, your radio, I got your disks off the floor, I got all that put away, Rosalind come and put all that in order, she say Mozart with Mozart, Beethoven with Beethoven, she show me where.
"No, just to rest, kiss me."
She bent down and pressed her silky cheek to mine. She said:
"My baby."
She covered me with two big comforters, all silk, and no doubt filled with down, Mrs. Wolfstan's style, Karl's style, that everything be real goose down, loving the weightless weight. She pushed them around my shoulders.
"Miss Triana, why you never call Lacomb and me when that man was dying, we woulda come."
"I know. I missed you. I didn't want you to be frightened."
She shook her head. Her face was very pretty, much darker than Lacomb's, with big lovely eyes, and her hair was soft and wavy.
"You turn your head to the window," she said, "and you sleep. Ain't nobody comi ng in this house, I promise you."
I lay on my side looking straight out the window, through twelve shining clean panes at the distant trees and oaks, the color of traffic.
I loved again to see the azaleas out there, pink and red and white, crowded everywhere so luxuriantly along the fence, and the delicate iron railing painted so freshly black and the porch itself so shining clean.
So wonderful that Karl should give this to me before he died, my house restored.
My house with every door to properly click, and lock to work, and every faucet to run the proper temperature of water.
Perhaps five minutes I looked dreaming out the window, perhaps longer. The streetcars passed. My lids grew heavy.
And only out of the corner of my eye did I make out a figure standing there on the porch, my tall gaunt one, the violinist, with his silky hair hanging lank down on his chest.
He hung about the edge of the window like a vine himself, dramatically thin, almost fashionably cadaverous yet very alive. His black hair hung so straight and glossy. No tiny braids tied back this time. Only hair.
I saw his dark left eye, the strong sleek black eyebrow above it. His cheeks were white, too white, but his lips were alive, smooth, very smooth, living lips.
I was scared for a minute. Just a minute. I knew this was wrong. No, not wrong, but dangerous, unnatural, not a possible thing.
I knew when I dreamed and when I did not, no matter how hard the struggle to move between the two. And he was here, on my porch, this man. He stood there looking at me.
And then I was scared no more. I didn't care. It was a lovely burst of utter indifference. I don't care. Ah, it is such a divine emptiness that follows the desertion of fear! And this was a rather practical point of view, it seeme d at the mc~ment.
Because either way . . . whether he was real or not real . . . it was pleasing and beautiful. I fe[t the chills on my arms. So hair does stand on end, even when you are lying, all crushed in your own hair on a pillow, with one arm flung out, looking out a window. Yes, my body went into its little war with my mind. Beware, beware, cried the body. But my mind is so stubborn.
My voice, interior, came very strong and determined, and I marveled at myself, how one can hear a tone in one's head. One can shout or whisper without moving the lips. I said to him:
Play for me. I missed you.
He drew closer to the glass, all shoulders for a moment it seemed, so tall and narrow, and with such torrential and tempting hair-I wanted so to feel it and groom it-and he peered down at me through the higher windowpanes, no angry glaring fictional Peter Quint searching for a secret beyond me. But looking right at what he sought. At me.
The floorboards creaked. Someone trod the path right to the door.
AIthea came again. As easily as if it were any common moment.
I didn't turn over to look at her. She merely slipped into the room as she always did.
I heard her behind me. I heard her set down a cup. I could smell hot chocolate.
But I never took my eyes off him with his high shoulders and dusty tailored wool sleeves, and he never took his deep brilliant eyes off me as he stared without interruption through the window.
"Oh, Lord God, you there again," AIthea said.
He didn't move. Neither did I.
I heard her words in a soft near unintelligible rush. Forgive this translation. "You here right at Miss Triana's window. Some nerve you got. Why, you like to scare me to death. Miss Triana, he be waiting all this time, night and day, saying he would play for you, saying he couldn't get near to you, that you loved his playing, that you can't do without him, he say. Well, what's you gonna play now that she come home, you think you can play something pretty for her now, the way she is, look at her, you think you gonna make her feel all right?"
She came strolling around the foot of the bed, portly, arms folded, chin stuck out.
"Come on now, play something for her," she said. "You hear me through that glass.
She home now, she so sad, and you, look at you, you think I'm going to clean that coat for you, you got another think coming."
I must have smiled. I must have sunk a little deeper into the pillow.
She saw him!
His eyes never moved from me. He paid her no respect. His hand was on the glass like a great white spider. But there at his side in the other hand was the violin, with the bow. I saw the dark elegant curves of wood.
I smiled at her without moving my head, because now she stood between us, boldly, facing me, blotting him out. Again, I translate what is not a dialect so much as a song:
"He talk and talk about how he can play and he play for you. How you love it. You know him. I ain't seen him come up here on the porch. .Lacomb should have seen him come. I am 't scared of him. Lacomb can run him off right now. Just say so. He don't bother me none. He played some music here one night, I tell you, you never heard such music, I thought, Lord the police will be here and nobody here but Lacomb and me. I told him, You hush now, and he was so upset, you never saw such eyes, he looked at me, he say, You don't like what I play, I say, I like it, I just don't want to hear it. He say all kind of crazy things like he know all about me and what I got to bear, he talk like a crazy man, he just jabbering on and on, and Lacomb say, If you're looking for a handout we gonna feed you Althea's red beans and rice and you gonna die of poison! Now, Miss Triana, you know!"
I laughed out loud but it didn't make very much noise. He was still there; I could see only a little of the big lanky darkness of him behind her. I hadn't moved. The afternoon was deepening.
"I love your red beans and rice, Aithea," I said.
She marched about, straightened the old Battenburg lace on the night table, glared at him, apparently, and then smiled down at me, one satin hand touching my cheek for a moment. So sweet, my God, how can I live without you?
"No, it's perfectly fine," I said. "You go on now, AIthea. I do know him. Maybe he will play, who knows? Don't bother about him. I'll look out for him."
"Look like a tramp to me," she muttered under her breath, arms folded tight again most eloquently as she started out of the room. She went on talking, making her own song. I wish I could better render for posterity in some form her rapid speech, with so many syllables dropped, and above all her boundless enthusiasm and wisdom.