Part 21 (1/2)

The gang which had been operating in the vicinity-presumably the same one I had encountered-moved on. At least no further crimes were attributed to it. Deputy Sheriff Beasley, who had evidently visited Haggershaven before without attaining much respect, came to question the girl and me.

I think he doubted her dumbness. At any rate he barked his questions so loudly and abruptly they would have terrified a far more securely poised individual. She promptly went into dry hysterics, whereupon he turned his attention to me.

He was clearly dissatisfied with my account of the holdup and left grumbling that it would be more to the point if bookworms learned to identify a man properly instead of logarithms or trigonometry. I didn't see exactly how this applied to me; I certainly was laudably ignorant of both subjects.

But if Officer Beasley was disappointed, Midbin was enchanted by the whole performance. Of course he had heard my narrative before but as he explained it, this was the first time he'd savored its possible impact on the girl. ”You see, Backmaker, her pseudo-aphonia is neither congenital nor of long standing. All logic leads to the conclusion that it's the result of her terror during the experience. She must have wanted to scream, but she dared not-she had to remain dumb while she watched the murders.”

For the first time it seemed possible to me there was more to Midbin than his garrulity.

”She crushed back that natural, overwhelming impulse,” he went on. ”She had to-her life depended on it. It was an enormous effort and the effect on her was in proportion; she achieved her object too well, so when it was safe for her to speak again she couldn't.”

It all sounded so reasonable that it was some time before I thought to ask him why she didn't understand what we said, or why she didn't write anything down when she was handed pencil and paper.

”Communication,” he answered. ”She had to cut off communication, and once cut off it's not easy to restore. At least, that's one aspect of it. Another one is a little more tricky. The holdup took place more than a month ago-but do you suppose the affected mind reckons so precisely? Is a precise reckoning possible? Duration may, for all we know, be an entirely subjective thing. Yesterday for you may be today for me. We recognize this to some extent when we speak of hours pa.s.sing slowly or quickly. The girl may be still undergoing the agony of repressing her screams; the holdup, the murders, are not in the past for her, but in the present. And if she is, is it any wonder she is cut off from the relaxation which would enable her to realize the present?”

He pressed his middle thoughtfully. ”Now, if it is possible to recreate in her mind the conditions leading up to and through the crisis, she would have the chance to vent the emotions she was forced to swallow. She might-I don't say she would-she might speak again.”

I understood such a process would be lengthy, but I saw no signs he was reaching her at all, much less that he was having an effect. One of the Spanish-speaking fellows translated my account of our meeting and read parts of it to the rec.u.mbent girl, following Midbin's excited stage directions and interpolations. Nothing happened.

Gradually I pa.s.sed from the stage when I wanted the decision of the haven on my application to be postponed as long as possible, to the one in which the suspense became wearing. And now I learned that there was no specific date set; my candidacy would be considered along with other business next time the fellows were called on to make an appropriation, or discuss a new project. This might be next day, or not for months.

When it did come, it was anticlimactic. Several of the fellows recommended me, and Barbara simply ignored my existence. I was a full fellow of Haggershaven, securely at home for the first time since I left Wappinger Falls more than six years before. I knew that in all its history few fellows had ever voluntarily left the haven, still fewer had ever been asked to resign.

Fall became winter. Surplus timber was hauled in from the woodlots and the lignon extracted by compressed air, a method invented by one of the fellows. Lignon was the fuel which kept our hot water furnaces going and provided the gas for lighting. Everyone took part in this work, but my ineptness with things mechanical soon caused me to be set to more congenial tasks in the stables.

I was one afternoon currying a dappled mare when Barbara, her breath still cloudy from the cold outside, came in and stood behind me. I made an artificial cowlick on the mare's flank, then brushed it glossy smooth again.

”h.e.l.lo,” she said.

”Uh... h.e.l.lo, Miss Haggerwells.”

”Must you, Hodge?”

I roughed up the mare's flank again. ”Must I what? I'm afraid I don't understand.”

”I think you do. Why do you avoid me? And call me 'Miss Haggerwells' in that prim tone? Do I look so old and ugly and forbidding?”

This, I thought, is going to hurt Ace. Poor Ace, befuddled by a Jezebel; why can't he attach himself to a nice quiet girl who won't tear him in pieces every time she follows her inclinations?

I finished with the mare, put down the currycomb and dusted off my hands. ”I think you are the most exciting woman I've ever met, Barbara,” I said.

It is said the attainment of a cherished wish always brings disappointment, but this wasn't true of my life at Haggershaven. My brightest daydreams were fulfilled and more than fulfilled. At first it seemed the years at the bookstore were wasted, but I soon realized the value of that catholic and serendipitous reading for more schematic study. I began to understand what thorough exploration of a subject meant and I threw myself into my chosen work with furious zest.

I also began to understand the central mystery of historical theory. Not chronology, but relations.h.i.+p is ultimately what the historian deals in. The element of time, so vital at first glance, a.s.sumes a constantly more subordinate character. That the past is past becomes increasingly less important. Except for perspective it might as well be the present or the future, or-if one can conceive it-a parallel time. I was not exploring a petrification, but a fluid.

During that winter I read philosophy, psychology, archaeology, anthropology. My energy and appet.i.te were prodigious. Even so I found time for Barbara. The ”even so” is misleading, however, for this was no diversion, no dalliance. People talk lightly of gusts of pa.s.sion, but it was nothing less than irresistible force which impelled me to her, day after day. The only thing saving me from enslavement like poor Ace was the belief-correct or incorrect, I am to this day not certain-that to yield the last vestige of detachment and objectivity would make me helpless, not only before her, but to accomplish all my ambitions, now more urgent than ever.

And yet I know I denied much I could have given freely and without harm. I know, too, that my fancied advantage over Ace, based on the fact that I had always had an easy-perhaps too easy-way with women, was no advantage at all. I thought myself the master of the situation because her infidelities-if such a word can be used where the thought of faithfulness is explicitly ruled out-did not bother me. I was wrong; my sophistication was a lack and not an achievement.

Make no mistake. She was no superficial wanton, moved by light and fickle desires. She was driven by deeper and darker than sensual urges; her mad jealousies were provoked by an unappeasable need for constant rea.s.surance. She had to be dominant, she had to be courted by more than one man; at the same time she had to be told constantly what she could never really believe-that she was uniquely desired.

I wondered how she did not burn herself out, not only with conflicting pa.s.sions, but with her fury of work. Sleep was a weakness she despised, yet she craved much more of it than she allowed herself; she rationed her hours of unconsciousness and drove herself relentlessly. Ace's panegyrics of her importance as a physicist I discounted, but older and more learned colleagues spoke of her mathematical concepts, not merely with respect, but with awe.

She did not discuss her work with me, for our relations.h.i.+p was not intellectually intimate. I got the impression she was seeking the principle of heavier than air flight, a chimera which had long intrigued inventors. It seemed a pointless pursuit, for it was manifest such levitation could not hope to replace our safe, comfortable guided balloons. Later I learned she was doing nothing of the kind, but not speaking the technical jargon of her science, that was what I made of Ace's vague hints.

In the spring all of us at Haggershaven became single-minded farmers until the fields were plowed and sown. No one grudged these days taken from study; not only were we aware of the haven's dependence on economic self-sufficiency, but we were happy in the work itself. Not until the first, most feverish compet.i.tion with time was over could we return, even for a moment, to our regular pursuits.

Midbin had for some while been showing the dumb girl drawings of successive stages of the holdup, again nagging and pumping me for details to sharpen their accuracy. Her reactions pleased him immensely, for she responded to the first ones with nods and the throaty noises we recognized as signs of agreement. The scenes of the a.s.sault itself, of the shooting of the coachman, the flight of the footman, and her own concealment in the cornfield evoked whimpers, while the brutal depiction of the Escobars' murder made her cower and cover her eyes.

I cannot here omit mentioning that Barbara constantly taunted me with what she called my ”devotion” to the girl; when I protested that Midbin had drafted me for the duty she accused me of hypocrisy, lying, faithlessness, sycophancy and various a.s.sorted vices and failings. Midbin, of course, explained and excused her outbursts by his ”emotional pathology,” Ace accepted and suffered them as inescapable, but I saw no necessity of being subject to her tantrums. Once I told her so not, I think, too heatedly, adding, ”Maybe we shouldn't see each other alone after this.”

”All right,” she said, ”yes... yes. All right, don't.”

Her apparent calm deceived me completely; I smiled with relief.

”That's right; laugh-why shouldn't you? You have no feelings, no more than you have an intelligence. You are an oaf, a clod, a real b.u.mpkin. Standing there with a silly grin on your face. Oh, I hate you! How I hate you!”

She wept, she screamed, she rushed at me and then turned away, crying that she hadn't meant it, not a word of it. She coaxed, begging forgiveness for all she'd said, tearfully promising to control herself after this, moaning that she needed me, and finally, when I didn't repulse her, exclaiming that it was her love for me which tormented her so and drove her to such scenes.

Perhaps this storm changed our relations.h.i.+p somewhat for the better, or at least eased the tension between us. At any rate it was after this she began speaking to me of her work, putting us on a friendlier, less pa.s.sionate plane. I learned now how completely garbled was my notion of what she was doing.

”Heavier than air flying-machines!” she cried. ”How utterly absurd!”

”All right. I didn't know.”

”My work is theoretical. I'm not a vulgar mechanic.”

”All right, all right.”

”I'm going to show that time and s.p.a.ce are aspects of the same ent.i.ty.”

”All right,” I said, thinking of something else.

”What is time?”

”Uh? Dear Barbara, since I don't know anything I can slide gracefully out of that one. I couldn't even begin to define time.”

”Oh, you could probably define it all right-in terms of itself. I'm not dealing with definitions but concepts.”

”All right, conceive.”

”Hodge, like all stuffy people your levity is vulgar.”

”Excuse me. Go ahead.”

”Time is an aspect.”