Other Voices, Other Rooms Read online

  From the first he'd noticed in the house complex sounds, sounds on the edge of silence, settling sighs of stone and board, as though the old rooms inhaled-exhaled constant wind, and he'd heard Randolph say: "We're sinking, you know, sank four inches last year." It was drowning in the earth, this house, and they, all of them, were submerging with it: Joel, moving through the chamber, imagined moles tracing silver tunnels down eclipsed halls, lank pink sliding through earth-packed rooms, lilac bleeding out the sockets of a skull: Go away, he said, climbing toward a lamp which threw nervous light over the stairsteps. Go Away, he said, for his imagination was too tricky and terrible. But was it possible for a whole house to disappear? Yes, he'd heard of such things. All Mr Mystery had to do was snap his fingers, and whatever wasthere went whisk. And human beings, too. They could go right off the face of the earth. That was what had happened to his father; he was gone, not in a sad respectable way like his mother, but just gone, and Joel had no reason to suppose he would ever find him. So why did they pretend? Why didn't they say right out, "There is no Mr Sansom, you have no father," and send him away. Ellen was always talking of the decent Christian thing to do; he'd wondered what she meant, and now he knew: to speak truth was a decent Christian thing. He took steps slowly, awake but dreaming, and in the dream he saw the Cloud Hotel, saw its leaning molding rooms, its wind-cracked windows hung with draperies of blackwidow web, and realized suddenly this was not a hotel; indeed, had never been: this was the place folks came when they went off the face of the earth, when they died but were not dead. And he thought of the ballroom Little Sunshine had described: there nightfall covered the walls like tapestry, and the dry skeletons of bouquet leaves littering the wavy floor powdered under his dreamed footstep: he walked in the dark in the dust of thorns listening for a name, his own, but even here no father claimed him. The shadow of a grand piano spotted the vaulted ceiling like a luna moth wing, and at the keyboard, her eyes soaked white with moonlight, her wig of cold white curls askew, sat the Lady: was this the ghost of Mrs Jimmy Bob Cloud? Mrs Cloud, who'd cremated herself in a St. Louis boarding house? Was that the answer?

  It struck his knee, and all that happened happened quickly: a brief blur of light flashed as a door banged in the hall above, and then he felt something hit him, go past, go bumping down the steps, and it was suddenly as though all his bones had unjoined, as though all the vital parts of him had unraveled like the springs of a sprung watch. A little red ball, it was rolling and knocking on the chamber floor, and he thought of Idabel: he wished he were as brave as Idabel; he wished he had a brother, sister, somebody; he wished he were dead.

  Randolph bent over the top banister; his hands were folded into the sleeves of a kimono; his eyes were flat and glazed, drunk-looking, and if he saw Joel he made no sign. Presently, his kimono rustling, he crossed the hall and opened a door where the eccentric light of candles floated on his face. He did not go inside, but stood there moving his hands in a queer way; then, turning, he started down the stairs and when finally he came against Joel he only said: "Bring a glass of water, please." Without a second word he went back up and into the room, and Joel, unable to move, waited on the stairs a long while: there were voices in the walls, settling sighs of stone and board, sounds on the edge of silence.

  "Come in." Amy's voice echoed through the house, and Joel, waiting on the threshold, felt his heart separate.

  "Careful there, my dear," said Randolph, lolling at the foot of a canopied bed, "don't spill the water."

  But he could not keep his hand from shaking, or focus his eyes properly: Amy and Randolph, though some distance apart, were fused like Siamese twins: they seemed a kind of freak animal, half-man half-woman. There were candles, a dozen or so, and the heat of the night made them lean limp and crooked. A limestone fireplace gleamed in their shine, and a menagerie of crystal chimes, set in motion by Joel's entrance, tinkled on the mantel like brookwater. The air was strong with the smell of asthma cigarettes, used linen, and whiskey breath. Amy's starched face was in coinlike profile against a closed window where insects thumped with a watch-beat's regularity: intent upon embroidering a sampler, she rocked back and forth in a little sewing chair, her needle, held in the gloved hand, stabbing lilac cloth rhythmically. She looked like a kind of wax machine, a life-sized doll, and the concentration of her work was unnatural: she was like a person pretending to read, though the book is upside down. And Randolph, cleaning his nails with a goose-quill, was as stylized in his attitude as she: Joel felt as though they interpreted his presence here as somehow indecent, but it was impossible to withdraw, impossible to advance. On a table by the bed there were two rather arresting objects, an illuminated globe of rose frost glass depicting scenes of Venice: golden gondolas, wicked gondoliers and lovers drifting past glorious palaces on a canal of saccharine blue; and a milk-glass nude suspending a tiny silver mirror. Reflected in this mirror were a pair of eyes: the instant Joel became aware of them his gaze dismissed all else.

  The eyes were a teary grey; they watched Joel with a kind of dumb glitter, and soon, as if to acknowledge him, they closed in a solemn double wink, and turned… so that he saw them only as part of a head, a shaved head lying with invalid looseness on unsanitary pillows.

  "He wants the water," said Randolph, scraping the quill under his thumb nail. "You'll have to feed him: poor Eddie, absolutely helpless."

  And Joel said: "Is that him?"

  "Mr. Sansom," said Amy, her lips tight as the rosebud she stitched. "It is Mr. Sansom."

  "But you never told me."

  Randolph, clutching the bedpost, heaved to his feet: the kimono swung out, exposing pink substantial thighs, hairless legs. Like many heavy men he could move with unexpected nimbleness, but he'd had more than enough to drink, and as he came toward Joel, a numb smile bunching his features, he looked as if he were about to fall. He stooped down to Joel's size, and whispered. "Tell you what, baby?"

  The eyes covered the glass again, their image twitching in the tossing light, and a hand trimmed with wedding gold poked out from under quilts to let go a red ball: it was like a cue, a challenge, and Joel, ignoring Randolph, went briskly forward to meet it.

  7

  She came up the road, kicking stones, whistling. A bamboo pole, balanced on her shoulder, pointed toward the late noon sun. She carried a molasses bucket, and wore a pair of toy-like dark glasses. Henry, the hound, paced beside her, his red tongue dangling hotly. And Joel, who'd been waiting for the mailman, hid behind a pine tree; just wait, this was going to be good; he'd scare the… there, she was almost near enough.

  Then she stopped, and took off the sun-glasses, and polished them on her khaki shorts. Shielding her eyes, she looked straight at Joel's tree, and beyond it: there was no one on the Landing's porch, not a sign of life. She shrugged her shoulders. "Henry," she said, and his eyes rolled sadly up, "Henry, I leave it to you: do we want him with us or don't we?" Henry yawned: a fly buzzed inside his mouth and he swallowed it whole. "Henry," she continued, scrutinizing a certain pine, "did you ever notice what funny shadows some trees have?" A pause. "O. K., my fine dandy, come on out."

  Sheepishly Joel stepped into the daylight. "Hello, Idabel," he said, and Idabel laughed, and this laugh of hers was rougher than barbed wire. "Look here, son," she said, "the last boy that tried pulling tricks on Idabel is still picking up the pieces." She put back on her dark glasses, and gave her shorts a snappy hitch. "Henry and me, we're going down to catch us a mess of catfish: if you can make yourself helpful you're welcome to come."

  "How do you mean helpful?"

  "Oh, put worms on the hook…" tilting up the bucket, she showed him its white, writhing interior.

  Joel, disgusted, averted his eyes; but thought: yes, he'd like to go with Idabel, yes, anything not to be alone: hook worms, or kiss her feet, it did not matter.

  "You'd better change clothes," said Idabel. "you're fixed up like it was Sunday."

  Indeed, he was wearing his finest suit, white flannels bough
t for Dancing Class; he'd put them on because Randolph had promised to paint his picture. But at dinner Amy had said Randolph was sick. "Poor child, and in all this heat; it does seem to me if he'd lose a little weight he wouldn't suffer so. Angela Lee was that way, too: the heat just laid her out." As for Angela Lee, Zoo had told him this queer story: "Honey, a mighty peculiar thing happen to that old lady, happen just before she die: she grew a beard; it just commence pouring out her face, real sure enough hair; a yellow color, it was, and strong as wire. Me, I used to shave her, and her paralyzed from head to toe, her skin like a dead man's. But it growed so quick, this beard, I couldn't hardly keep up, and when she died, Miss Amy hired the barber to come out from town. Well, sir, that man took one look, and walked right back down them stairs, and right out the front door. I tell you I mean I had to laugh!"

  "It's just my old suit," he said, afraid to go back and change, for Amy might say no he could not go, might, instead, make him read to his father. And his father, like Angela Lee, was paralyzed, helpless; he could say a few words (boy, why, kind, bad, ball, ship), move his head a little (yes, no), and one arm (to drop a tennis ball, the signal for attention). All pleasure, all pain, he communicated with his eyes, and his eyes, like windows in summer, were seldom shut, always open and staring, even in sleep.

  Idabel gave him the worm bucket to carry. Crossing a cane field, climbing a thread of path, passing a Negro house where in the yard there was a naked child fondling a little black goat, they passed into the woods through an avenue of bitter wild cherry trees. "We get drunk as a coot on those," she said, meaning cherries. "Greedy old wildcats get so drunk they scream all night: you ought to hear them… hollering crazy with the moon and cherry juice." Invisible birds prowling in leaves rustled, sang; beneath the still facade of forest restless feet trampled plushlike moss where limelike light sifted to stain the natural dark. Idabel's bamboo pole scraped low limbs, and the hound, eager and suspicious, careened through nets of blackberry bush. Henry, the sentry; Idabel, the guide; Joel, the captive: three explorers on a solemn trek over earth sloping steadily downward. Black, orange-trimmed butterflies wheeled over wheel-sized ponds of stagnant rain water, the glide of their wings traced on green reflecting surfaces; a rattlesnake's cellophane-like sheddings littered the trail, and broken silver spiderweb covered like cauls dead fallen branches. They passed a little human grave: on its splintered head-cross was printed a legend: Toby, Killed by the Cat. Sunken, a stretch of sycamore root growing from its depth, it was, you could tell, an old grave.

  "What's that mean," said Joel, "killed by the cat?"

  "It happened before I was born," said Idabel, as if this explained everything. She turned off the path into an area deep with last winter's leaves: a skunk skittered in the distance, and Henry boomed forward. "This Toby, you see, she was a nigger baby, and her mama worked for old Mrs. Skully like Zoo does now. She was Jesus Fever's wife, and Toby was their baby. Old Mrs Skully had a big fine Persian cat, and one day when Toby was asleep the cat sneaked in and put its mouth against Toby's mouth and sucked away all her breath."

  Joel said he didn't believe it; but if it was true, it was certainly the most horrible tale he'd ever heard. "I didn't know Jesus Fever had ever been married."

  "There's lots you don't know. All kinds of strange things… mostly they happened before we were born: that makes them seem to me so much more real."

  Before birth; yes, what time was it then? A time like now, and when they were dead, it would be still like now: these trees, that sky, this earth, those acorn seeds, sun and wind, all the same, while they, with dust-turned hearts, change only. Now at thirteen Joel was nearer a knowledge of death than in any year to come: a flower was blooming inside him, and soon, when all tight leaves unfurled, when the noon of youth burned whitest, he would turn and look, as others had, for the opening of another door. In the woods they walked, the tireless singings of larks had sounded a century, and more, and floods of frogs had galloped in moonlight bands; stars had fallen here, and Indian arrows, too; prancing blacks had played guitars, sung ballads of bandit-buried gold, sung songs grieving and ghostly, ballads of long ago: before birth.

  "Not for me: that makes it not so real," said Joel, and stopped, struck still by the truth of this: Amy, Randolph, his father, they were all outside time, all circling the present like spirits: was this why. they seemed to him so like a dream? Idabel reached back and jerked his hand. "Wake up," she said. He looked at her, his eyes wide with alarm. "But I can't. I can't."

  "Can't what?" she said sourly. "Oh, nothing." Early voyagers, they descended together.

  "Take my colored glasses," Idabel offered. "Everything looks a lot prettier."

  The grass-colored lenses tinted the creek where nervous minnow schools stitched the water like needles; occasionally, in deeper pools, a chance shaft of sunlight illuminated bigger game: fat clumsy perch moving slowly, blackly below the surface. Idabel's fishline quivered in the midstream current, but now, after an hour, she'd had not even a nibble, so, rooting the pole firmly between two stumps, she leaned back, pillowing her head on a clump of moss. "O. K., give 'em back," she demanded.

  "Where did you get them?" he said, wishing he had a pair.

  "At the travelin-show," she said. "Travelin-show comes every year in August; it's not such a big one, but they've got a flying jinny, and a ferris wheel. And they've got a two-headed baby inside a bottle, too. The way I got these glasses was I won them; I used to wear them all the time, even nighttime, but Papa, he said I was going to put out my eyes. Want a cigarette?"

  There was only one, a crumpled Wing; dividing it, she struck a match. "Look," she said, "I can blow one smoke ring through another." The rings mounted in the air, blue and perfect; it was so still, yet all around there was the feeling of movement, subtle, secret, shifting: dragonflies skidded on the water, some sudden unseen motion loosened snowdrop bells brown now all withered and scentless.

  Joel said, "I don't think we're going to catch anything."

  "I never expect to," said Idabel. "I just like to come here and think about my worries; nobody ever comes hunting for me here. It's a nice place… just to lie and take your ease."

  "What kind of worries do you worry about?" he asked.

  'That's my business. And you know something… you're an awful poke-nose. You don't ever catch me prying, hell, no. Anybody else in the country, why, they'd eat you alive, you being a stranger, and living at the Landing and all. Look at Florabel. What a snoop she is."

  "I think she's very pretty," said Joel, just to be aggravating.

  Idabel made no comment. She flipped away her cigarette, and, forking her fingers between her lips, whistled boylike: Henry, padding along the creek's shallow edge, scrambled up the bank, his coat shining soggy wet. "Pretty on the outside, sure, but it's what's on the inside that counts," she said, hugging the hound. "She keeps telling Papa he ought to do away with Henry, says he's got a mortal disease: that's what she's like on the inside."

  The white face of afternoon took shape in the sky; his enemy, Joel thought, was there, just behind those glasslike, smokelike clouds; whoever, whatever this enemy was, his was the face imaged there brightly blank. And in this respect Idabel could be envied; she at least knew her enemies: you and you, she could say, such and such and so and so. "Were you ever afraid of losing your mind?"

  "Never thought about it," she said, and laughed. "To hearthem tell it, I haven't got a mind no ways."

  Joel said: "You're not being serious. Here's what I mean: do you ever see things, like people, like whole houses, see them and feel them and know for certain they're real… only…"

  "Only they're not," said Idabel. "The time that snake bit me, I lived a week in a terrible place where everything was crawling, the floors and walls, everything. Now all that was plain foolishness. But then it was a peculiar thing, because last summer I went with Uncle August (he's the one that's so afraid of girls he won't look at one; he says I'm not a girl; I do love my Uncle August: we're lik
e brothers)… we went down to Pearl River… and one day we were rowing in this dark place and came on an island of snakes; it was real little, just one tree, but alive with old copperheads: they were even hanging off the branches. I tell you it was right spooky. And when folks talk about dreams-come-true, I guess I know what they mean."

  "That's not like what I was saying," said Joel, his voice small, bewildered. "Dreams are different, dreams you can lose. But if you see something… a lady, say, and you see her where nobody should be, then she follows you around inside your head. I mean like this: the other night Zoo was scared; she'd heard a dog howl, and she said it was her husband come back, and she went to the window: 'I see him. she said, 'he's squatting under the fig tree, she said, 'and his eyes are all yellow in the dark. But then when I looked there was nothing but nothing."

  All this Idabel seemed to find rather unexceptional. "Oh, shoot!" she said, tossing her head, the chopped red hair swishing wonderful fire, "everybody knows Zoo's crazy for true. One time, and it was hot as now, I was passing on the road, and she was there by the mailbox with this dumb look, and she says: 'What a fine snow we had last night. Always talking about snow, always seeing things, that Zoo, that crazy Zoo."

  Joel regarded Idabel with malice: what a mean liar she was. Zoo was not crazy. She was not. Yet he remembered the snow of their first conversation: it fell swiftly all about him: the woods dazzled whitely, and Idabel's voice, speaking now, sounded soft, and snow-hushed: "It's Ivory," she said. "It floats."