Anna laughed. "But let me tell you about how it starts, how they come back to life. I"ve got it all worked out." She bent forward, held onto her knees, staring at the street and the rain and the cistern mouths. "There they are, down under dry and quiet, and up above the sky gets electrical and powdery." She threw back her dull, graying hair with one hand. "At first all the upper world is pellets. Then there"s lightning and then thunder and the dry season is over, and the little pellets run along the gutters and get big and fall into the drains. They take gum wrappers and theater tickets with them, and bus transfers!"
"Come away from that window, now."
Anna made a square with her hands and imagined things. "I know just what it"s like under the pavement, in the big square cistern. It"s huge. It"s all empty from the weeks with nothing but sunshine. It echoes if you talk. The only sound you can hear standing down there is an auto pa.s.sing above. Far up above. The whole cistern is like a dry, hollow camel bone in a desert, waiting."
She lifted her hand, pointing, as if she herself were down in the cistern, waiting. "Now, a little trickle. It comes down on the floor. It"s like something was hurt and bleeding up in the outer world. There"s some thunder! Or was it a truck going by?"
She spoke a little more rapidly now, but held her body relaxed against the window, breathing out, and in the next words: "It seeps down. Then, into all the other hollows come other seepages. Little twines and snakes. Tobacco-stained water. Then it moves. It joins others. It makes snakes and then one big constrictor which rolls along on the flat, papered floor. From everywhere, from the north and south, from other streets, other streams come and they join and make one hissing and shining coil. And the water writhes into those two little dry niches I told you about. It rises slowly around those two, the man and the woman, lying there like j.a.panese flowers."
She clasped her hands, slowly, working finger into finger, interlacing.
"The water soaks into them. First, it lifts the woman"s hand. In a little move. Her hand"s the only live part of her. Then her arm lifts and one foot. And her hair . . ." she touched her own hair as it hung about her shoulders ". . . unloosens and opens out like a flower in the water. Her shut eyelids are blue. . . ."
The room got darker, Juliet sewed on, and Anna talked and told all she saw in her mind. She told how the water rose and took the woman with it, unfolding her out and loosening her and standing her full upright in the cistern. "The water is interested in the woman, and she lets it have its way. After a long time of lying still, she"s ready to live again, any life the water wants her to have."
Somewhere else, the man stood up in the water also. And Anna told of that, and how the water carried him slowly, drifting, and her, drifting, until they met each other. "The water opens their eyes. Now they can see but not see each other. They circle, not touching yet." Anna made a little move of her head, eyes closed. "They watch each other. They glow with some kind of phosphorus. They smile. . . . They-touch hands."
At last Juliet, stiffening, put down her sewing and stared at her sister, across the gray, rain-silent room.
"Anna!"
"The tide-makes them touch. The tide comes and puts them together. It"s a perfect kind of love, with no ego to it, only two bodies, moved by the water, which makes it clean and all right. It"s not wicked, this way."
"It"s bad you"re saying it!" cried her sister.
"No, it"s all right," insisted Anna, turning for an instant. "They"re not thinking, are they? They"re just so deep down and quiet and not caring."
She took her right hand and held it over her left hand very slowly and gently, quavering and interweaving them. The rainy window, with the pale spring light penetrating, put a movement of light and running water on her fingers, made them seem submerged, fathoms deep in gray water, running one about the other as she finished her little dream: "Him, tall and quiet, his hands open." She showed with a gesture how tall and how easy he was in the water. "Her, small and quiet and relaxed." She looked at her sister, leaving her hands just that way. "They"re dead, with no place to go, and no one to tell them. So there they are, with nothing applying to them and no worries, very secret and hidden under the earth in the cistern waters. They touch their hands and lips and when they come into a cross-street outlet of the cistern, the tide rushes them together. Then, later . . ." she disengaged her hands . . . "maybe they travel together, hand in hand, bobbling and floating, down all the streets, doing little crazy upright dances when they"re caught in sudden swirls." She whirled her hands about, a drenching of rain spatted the window. "And they go down to the sea, all across the town, past cross drain and cross drain, street and street. Genesee Avenue, Crenshaw, Edmond Place, Washington, Motor City, Ocean Side and then the ocean. They go anywhere the water wants them, all over the earth, and come back later to the cistern inlet and float back up under the town, under a dozen tobacco shops and four dozen liquor stores, and six dozen groceries and ten theaters, a rail junction, Highway 101, under the walking feet of thirty thousand people who don"t even know or think of the cistern."
Anna"s voice drifted and dreamed and grew quiet again.
"And then-the day pa.s.ses and the thunder goes away up on the street. The rain stops. The rain season"s over. The tunnels drip and stop. The tide goes down." She seemed disappointed, sad it was over. "The river runs out to the ocean. The man and woman feel the water leave them slowly to the floor. They settle." She lowered her hands in little bobblings to her lap, watching them fixedly, longingly. "Their feet lose the life the water has given them from outside. Now the water lays them down, side by side, and drains away, and the tunnels are drying. And there they lie. Up above, in the world, the sun comes out. There they lie, in the darkness, sleeping, until the next time. Until the next rain."
Her hands were now upon her lap, palms up and open. "Nice man, nice woman," she murmured. She bowed her head over them and shut her eyes tight.
Suddenly Anna sat up and glared at her sister. "Do you know who the man is?" she shouted, bitterly.
Juliet did not reply; she had watched, stricken, for the past five minutes while this thing went on. Her mouth was twisted and pale. Anna almost screamed: "The man is Frank, that"s who he is! And I"m the woman!"
"Anna!"
"Yes, it"s Frank, down there!"
"But Frank"s been gone for years, and certainly not down there, Anna!"
Now, Anna was talking to n.o.body, and to everybody, to Juliet, to the window, the wall, the street. "Poor Frank," she cried. "I know that"s where he went. He couldn"t stay anywhere in the world. His mother spoiled him for all the world! So he saw the cistern and saw how secret and fine it was. Oh, poor Frank. And poor Anna, poor me, with only a sister. Oh, Julie, why didn"t I hold on to Frank when he was here? Why didn"t I fight to win him from his mother?"
"Stop it, this minute, do you hear, this minute!"
Anna slumped down into the corner, by the window, one hand up on it, and wept silently. A few minutes later she heard her sister say, "Are you finished?"
"What?"
"If you"re done, come help me finish this, I"ll be forever at it."
Anna raised her head and glided over to her sister. "What do you want me to do?" she sighed.
"This and this," said Juliet, showing her.
"All right," said Anna, and took it and sat by the window looking at the rain, moving her hands with the needle and thread, but watching how dark the street was now, and the room, and how hard it was to see the round metal top of the cistern now-there were just little midnight gleams and glitters out there in the black black late afternoon. Lightning crackled over the sky in a web.
Half an hour pa.s.sed. Juliet drowsed in her chair across the room, removed her gla.s.ses, placed them down with her work and for a moment rested her head back and dozed. Perhaps thirty seconds later she heard the front door open violently, heard the wind come in, heard the footsteps run down the walk, turn, and hurry along the black street.
"What?" asked Juliet, sitting up, fumbling for her gla.s.ses. "Who"s there? Anna, did someone come in the door?" She stared at the empty window seat where Anna had been. "Anna!" she cried. She sprang up and ran out into the hall.
The front door stood open, rain fell through it in a fine mist.
"She"s only gone out for a moment," said Juliet, standing there, trying to peer into the wet blackness. "She"ll be right back. Won"t you be right back, Anna dear? Anna, answer me, you will be right back, won"t you, sister?"
Outside, the cistern lid rose and slammed down.
The rain whispered on the street and fell upon the closed lid all the rest of the night.
THE MACHINERIES OF JOY.
FATHER BRIAN DELAYED GOING BELOW TO BREAKFAST because he thought he heard Father Vittorini down there, laughing. Vittorini, as usual, was dining alone. So who was there to laugh with, or at?
Us, thought Father Brian, that"s who.
He listened again.
Across the hall Father Kelly too was hiding, or meditating, rather, in his room.
They never let Vittorini finish breakfast, no, they always managed to join him as he chewed his last bit of toast. Otherwise they could not have borne their guilt through the day.
Still, that was laughter, was it not, belowstairs? Father Vittorini had ferreted out something in the morning Times. Or, worse, had he stayed up half the night with the unholy ghost, that television set which stood in the entry like an unwelcome guest, one foot in whimsy, the other in the doldrums? And, his mind bleached by the electronic beast, was Vittorini now planning some bright fine new devilment, the cogs wheeling in his soundless mind, seated and deliberately fasting, hoping to lure them down curious at the sound of his Italian humors?
"Ah, G.o.d." Father Brian sighed and fingered the envelope he had prepared the previous night. He had tucked it in his coat as a protective measure should he decide to hand it to Pastor Sheldon. Would Father Vittorini detect it through the cloth with his quick dark X-ray vision?
Father Brian pressed his hand firmly along his lapel to squash any merest outline of his request for transferral to another parish.
"Here goes."
And, breathing a prayer, Father Brian went downstairs.
"Ah, Father Brian!"
Vittorini looked up from his still full cereal bowl. The brute had not even so much as sugared his corn flakes yet.
Father Brian felt as if he had stepped into an empty elevator shaft.
Impulsively he put out a hand to save himself. It touched the top of the television set. The set was warm. He could not help saying, "Did you have a seance here last night?"
"I sat up with the set, yes."
"Sat up is right!" snorted Father Brian. "One does sit up, doesn"t one, with the sick, or the dead? I used to be handy with the ouija board myself. There was more brains in that." He turned from the electrical moron to survey Vittorini. "And did you hear far cries and banshee wails from, what is it? Canaveral?"
"They called off the shot at three A.M."
"And you here now, looking daisy-fresh." Father Brian advanced, shaking his head. "What"s true is not always what"s fair."
Vittorini now vigorously doused his flakes with milk. "But you, Father Brian, you look as if you made the grand tour of h.e.l.l during the night."
Fortunately, at this point Father Kelly entered. He froze when he too saw how little along Vittorini was with his fortifiers. He muttered to both priests, seated himself, and glanced over at the perturbed Father Brian.
"True, William, you look half gone. Insomnia?"
"A touch."
Father Kelly eyed both men, his head to one side. "What goes on here? Did something happen while I was out last night?"
"We had a small discussion," said Father Brian, toying with the dread flakes of corn.
"Small discussion!" said Father Vittorini. He might have laughed, but caught himself and said simply, "The Irish priest is worried by the Italian Pope."
"Now, Father Vittorini," said Kelly.
"Let him run on," said Father Brian.
"Thank you for your permission," said Vittorini, very politely and with a friendly nod. "Il Papa is a constant source of reverent irritation to at least some if not all of the Irish clergy. Why not a pope named Nolan? Why not a green instead of a red hat? Why not, for that matter, move Saint Peter"s Cathedral to Cork or Dublin, come the twenty-fifth century?"
"I hope n.o.body said that," said Father Kelly.
"I am an angry man," said Father Brian. "In my anger I might have inferred it."
"Angry, why? And inferred for what reason?"
"Did you hear what he just said about the twenty-fifth century?" asked Father Brian. "Well, it"s when Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers fly in through the baptistery transom that yours truly hunts for the exits."
Father Kelly sighed. "Ah, G.o.d, is it that joke again?"
Father Brian felt the blood burn his cheeks, but fought to send it back to cooler regions of his body.
"Joke? It"s off and beyond that. For a month now it"s Canaveral this and trajectories and astronauts that. You"d think it was Fourth of July, he"s up half each night with the rockets. I mean, now, what kind of life is it, from midnight on, carousing about the entryway with that Medusa machine which freezes your intellect if ever you stare at it? I cannot sleep for feeling the whole rectory will blast off any minute."
"Yes, yes," said Father Kelly. "But what"s all this about the Pope?"
"Not the new one, the one before the last," said Brian wearily. "Show him the clipping, Father Vittorini."
Vittorini hesitated.
"Show it," insisted Brian, firmly.
Father Vittorini brought forth a small press clipping and put it on the table.
Upside down, even, Father Brian could read the bad news: "POPE BLESSES a.s.sAULT ON s.p.a.cE."
Father Kelly reached one finger out to touch the cutting gingerly. He intoned the news story half aloud, underlining each word with his fingernail: CASTEL GANDOLFO, ITALY, SEPT. 20-Pope Pius XII gave his blessing today to mankind"s efforts to conquer s.p.a.ce.
The Pontiff told delegates to the International Astronautical Congress, "G.o.d has no intention of setting a limit to the efforts of man to conquer s.p.a.ce."
The 400 delegates to the 22-nation congress were received by the Pope at his summer residence here.
"This Astronautic Congress has become one of great importance at this time of man"s exploration of outer s.p.a.ce," the Pope said. "It should concern all humanity. . . . Man has to make the effort to put himself in new orientation with G.o.d and his universe."
Father Kelly"s voice trailed off.
"When did this story appear?"
"In 1956."
"That long back?" Father Kelly laid the thing down. "I didn"t read it."
"It seems," said Father Brian, "you and I, Father, don"t read much of anything."
"Anyone could overlook it," said Kelly. "It"s a teeny-weeny article."
"With a very large idea in it," added Father Vittorini, his good humor prevailing.
"The point is-"
"The point is," said Vittorini, "when first I spoke of this piece, grave doubts were cast on my veracity. Now we see I have cleaved close by the truth."
"Sure," said Father Brian quickly, "but as our poet William Blake put it, "A truth that"s told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent.""
"Yes." Vittorini relaxed further into his amiability. "And didn"t Blake also write.
He who doubts from what he sees, Will ne"er believe, do what you please.
If the Sun and Moon should doubt They"d immediately go out.