There was a patter of polite laughter at this, and Elena added to it with her smile. She seemed genuinely pleased to be able to confront once more that mysterious public which had given her so much. She could never fathom exactly who they were, this unheralded community, but I suspect she knew them to be simply the ones who do not write but ably read, do not speak but wisely listen.
"I am pleased to be here today," she began, "and I am especially happy to be able to talk for just a few minutes about what may be the greatest book written by an American."
She surveyed her audience a moment, and when she spoke again, her tone was more serious.
"Anyone can have an interpretation of a book, and sometimes it seems that the greater the work the sillier some of the interpretations. Moby-d.i.c.k is one of those great books which has drawn the attention of both wise and foolish commentators." She laughed lightly, then shrugged. "Now it"s my turn."
The audience laughed again, warming to her.
"Like all great books, Moby-d.i.c.k is about many things, and so one finally can"t help resorting to impressionistic criticism, that is, to saying that this is what it means to me. With this caveat, then, I will say simply that I think Moby-d.i.c.k is about striving, that its theme is as old as the myth of Icarus. But Melville attached to this theme elements of tragic grandeur which give the work a special wisdom. This wisdom is something that is felt as powerfully as it is known. I think he knew that great striving is that which both raises man up and sets him apart, isolates him from the family of unconscious life, and by that means lends a special poignancy to his existence. We feel an empathy in the presence of failure that we do not feel in the presence of victory. Victory causes us to celebrate; failure causes us to reflect."
She smiled slightly, then continued. "I believe that Melville knew that it is only those who soar who have a right to fall as Ahab does. And Ahab is part of a long mythic chain. In the cause of human enlightenment, he comes to us both as a hero and as a victim. Adam gave up his innocence, Faust his soul, and Ahab his life, in search of that knowledge which we have every right to pursue. We know this knowledge will finally bring us peace, and that we live sad, narrow, and blighted lives for the lack of it. Without it, we continue to live, generation after generation, shrouded in a darkness which moves only toward a final, endless night."
She stopped again, her eyes searching the room as if looking for encouragement there, that single comprehending face to which every speaker speaks, every actor plays.
"Moby-d.i.c.k is a great book both in its form and in its content," she said as she began again, "for its notion of t.i.tanic striving is embodied both in what it says and in what it is. Melville allowed his book to sprawl in magnificent disorder, to stretch out toward impossible limits; that is, he allowed it to fail in its own mighty endeavor, so that the book itself becomes the physical embodiment of its own extended yearning. Thus, Moby-d.i.c.k relates Ahab"s failure all the more powerfully because it also relates Melville"s. In doing both, it is able powerfully to convey two inescapable truths of human life: that our beauty is as inseparable from our travail as our goodness is inseparable from our bafflement."
There was little more than polite applause when Elena resumed her seat. Clearly it had not been the address the group had expected, brief, somber in its tone, unflinching in its manner. The young man who followed her to the podium stammered his grat.i.tude for her having come, rather nervously thanked her for her remarks, then quickly opened the meeting to questions.
For a moment there was nothing but awkward uneasiness. Then a few hands rose tentatively into the air, and Elena answered each question crisply and concisely. Through it all she seemed unusually subdued, as if this speech had somehow drained her of her mission, that now, at last, there was nothing left to say.
"Are you feeling all right?" I asked her as we drove home.
"Yes, fine."
"Tired?"
"All the time, now."
Once at the house, Elena shed her pensiveness a bit. She seemed happy that David was to arrive for a visit a few days later and that Alexander was due the following week. "When you get right down to the core," she said, "they are really the only family we have."
By late afternoon, however, she had weakened, her steady walk becoming a cautious shuffle. She gripped her cane as if it were a life line, and only rarely and briefly did she walk without it again. She ate very little at dinner and retired early. Toward midnight, I heard her pacing the house once again.
I got up and walked out into the front room. She was sitting on the small sofa by the window, her body brightly lit by the reading lamp which glowed brilliantly above her. She looked up as I came in, then took off her reading gla.s.ses.
"Is there something you want, William?" she asked pointedly.
"Just to make sure you"re all right."
"I am fine."
I must have looked as though I did not believe her, because she repeated it. "I am fine, William."
"Well, it"s just that you looked so tired at dinner."
"I was tired at dinner, but I am not tired now."
I suddenly felt a powerful desire to rush to her and hold her tightly, but I knew that she would not have liked that. Whatever else may be said of Elena, she demanded that there be a little steel even in another"s love.
And so I simply smiled. "You look very lovely under that light, with that open book," I said.
Elena gave me a quick, desultory nod. "Thank you, William."
I went back to my room but could not sleep. Instead, I continued to watch this image I retained of my sister in the other room. Perhaps under other circ.u.mstances I would have turned this image into grief, but somehow the vision of Elena so fully illuminated, so resolute beneath the light, filled me with a quiet joy.
In June Elena"s interview was published in the Sat.u.r.day Review, and when Jason saw it he telephoned her immediately. Although she had been writing him regularly, they had not spoken to each other in quite some time, and the weakness in Elena"s voice must have alarmed him. He flew up from his home in Virginia a week later and I picked him up at the Hyannis airport. He was dressed immaculately as ever, in a dark suit, white shirt, and broad gray tie. He looked like an aging movie actor, the sort who always played the suave sophisticate.
When he saw me, he did not smile. His face was as grave as his tone.
"How is she, William?"
"She is herself," I told him, "but not well."
"How long did she intend to keep her health a secret?"
"I don"t know, Jason."
"Well, I can tell you this, I"m not going to pretend that I don"t know there"s something very wrong with her. I have never believed in that sort of charade."
"I doubt that she would have expected that," I said. "She knows how changed she is, how tired."
I suppose he wanted some sort of denial from me, that she was just out of sorts, that it was just a cold. When I offered no such thing, he looked more shaken than alarmed.
"William," he said, his voice full of disbelief, "my G.o.d, is she dying, William?"
"Yes."
He stared at me in silence. Then, in a very odd gesture, he slowly took off his hat. "It doesn"t seem possible."
"I"m afraid it is," I said. "Come, let"s go. I don"t like to leave her for very long."
We drove back to the house in a warm summer rain. Jason was still allowing the news to soak in, and I could tell that it was almost too dreadful to accept.
"She is really looking forward to seeing you," I told him. "She has missed you."
"We should have stayed together."
"Perhaps."
"I don"t know what happened to us. Was it just my vanity?"
"Only partly, Jason."
"Yes, you"re right. There was something missing between us, but it took me some time to discover what it was."
"But now you"ve discovered it?"
Jason nodded vigorously. "Oh, yes. It was generosity, William. That"s what was missing. She never understood how vulnerable I was."
"When she read your memoirs, she did," I said. "I remember watching her while she read them. She was very moved ... by your generosity."
"Really?" Jason asked. "That"s odd." He thought for a moment. "You know, from the time that I wrote The American Experience, I was considered brilliant by many people. I never believed them, though I tried to live up to their expectations. I knew there was an empty s.p.a.ce where all my genius was supposed to be. I covered it up pretty well. After all, I am a very clever man. But Elena saw through it. Then, rather brutally, she exposed it."
"She wrote about a book, Jason, not about a person."
Jason actually laughed. "You"ve known too many writers to believe that. She attacked my book as if the person who wrote it were no longer alive to read her attacks. But I was alive, William." He smiled. "Listen to me, how shameful. Elena"s dying and I"m still nursing my wounded pride."
It struck me then how difficult it must have been for Jason to have written with such beauty and grace about my sister. So much of him had been devastated by what she had written in Quality and by the final rejection implied by her leaving him, that it was hard to imagine so kindly a recovery.
"I want to say again, Jason," I told him, "that when Elena read your memoirs, she was moved, not only by the way you treated her, but by the book itself. She believes it to be an enduring work."
He looked at me. "She said that?"
"Yes," I said. "And as you know, she has always said that Quality is partly due to you."
Jason gave a sly nod. "A fair exchange, then."
"A fair exchange," I said. He seemed amenable to this judgment, though not exactly satisfied by it.
She was waiting for us in the back room when we arrived, sitting in her chair, facing the bay. Her cane was propped up against the chair and it was the first thing Jason saw. Still, as he stepped around to face her, he put up a determined front.
"I want you to know, dear lady," he said, "that I resent not being told of your ill health. I was your lover until you abandoned me, and I have remained your obedient servant since then. And I resent not being told."
For a moment they simply stared at one another. Elena seemed too weak to offer even the lightest rejoinder.
"William told you?" she asked.
"Yes."
"I suppose it would have been obvious in any event," Elena said. She smiled and held out her hand to Jason. "I"m glad you came."
For the next week the three of us spent all our time together. Neither Elena nor Jason seemed in the least interested in being alone together. It was as if both knew that the real intimacy of their relationship had pa.s.sed and that any attempt to renew it would prove awkward. Often they seemed like two old soldiers discussing a well-remembered campaign, careful to avoid its grimmer aspects.
Elena was still able to walk on the beach. With some help she could even manage the treacherous path of the jetty. But she also tired very easily and would often return to the house after we had strolled no more than a few yards. She would doze off in the middle of a conversation, leaving Jason and me staring mutely at one another, neither of us able to go on without her.
Yet when she was fully awake, she was very much the Elena of the past, tart and uncompromising. As always, she made little allowance for misplaced sentiment or thoughtless judgment, and she remained as stern as ever in her evaluation and a.n.a.lysis.
One evening, Jason tentatively mentioned that he was thinking of becoming a Catholic, and Elena, who had seemed especially fatigued, suddenly sprang to life.
"For what possible reason would you do that?" she demanded, squinting pointedly. "Is it an old man"s panic? Is that what it is? You think you"ve found a loophole in oblivion?"
Jason shook his head. "I"ve never been much on immortality."
"So why this sudden religiosity?"
Jason shrugged. "I"m not really sure."
"Don"t you think you should be?"
"Some motives, Elena, will always remain mysterious."
"Well, surely you don"t believe in the actual tenets."
"You mean the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, things like that?"
"Well, they do play a rather important part in the faith, don"t they?"
"Of course, for some."
"But not for you?"
"No."
"Then what"s the point of your conversion?" Elena asked.
"The spirit of the faith," Jason answered.
Elena shook her head. "Not enough, Jason."
"It is for me," he said firmly. "I love the beauty of the story. Surely you of all people should be able to understand that."
"Then say it"s a beautiful story, and leave it at that," Elena said. "Myth is all right, as long as it"s kept in its proper place."
"And where is that?"
"The imagination, or as part of a symbolic structure. But to believe in it as a reality, I"d say that"s making myth carry too much weight."
"But what about faith, Elena? Is there really no room for that in your mind?"
"No."
"Why?"
"It would take up useful s.p.a.ce," Elena said.
Jason laughed. "So you have no sympathy for my Christian impulses, then?"
Elena shook her head. "None whatsoever, I"m afraid."
And yet, in a sense, she did, although but marginally. In a letter to Jason a few weeks later, she wished him well on his decision, whatever it might be. "This much I will allow," she wrote, "that Christian irony is very beautiful, especially that humble and glorious idea that he who is most distant from redemption might offer to the saint a true deliverance."
By midweek of Jason"s visit, Elena seemed entirely comfortable with his presence in the house. They talked continually, and finally even broached the most sensitive subject between them, what Elena had written about The American Experience in Quality.
"I can"t say it wasn"t devastating," Jason admitted, "both to the book and to me."
Elena watched him guardedly. "Well, perhaps it was too severe."
"But you"ve not changed your mind, have you?" Jason asked.