THREE.
There is no conclusion . . . There are no fortunes to be told and there is no advice to be given. Farewell.
-WILLIAM JAMES, AT THE TIME OF HIS DEATH, 1910
A BLOOD-ROSE!.
Whispers the dying woman in amazement, a woman no older than Esther, look! a blood-rose! . . . though she"s staring at the ceiling and unable to see the black blood spreading about her thighs in a soft sighing explosion, soaking into the mattress, O G.o.d help me, a blood-rose! . . . in a fever delirium, in a parched heat so powerful that Esther"s fingers burn touching her skin, trying to steady her, as the older nurse works to staunch the flow of blood: and the room"s four walls press suddenly close.
So suddenly, Death. And Esther staring, numbed, unprepared as if the reversal of Life were a mistake of her own which, if she but knew what she"d done, she might rectify.
AFTERWARD IT"S SAID of the dead woman (aged nineteen, mother of three young children): What did she expect, doing a thing like that? And if she had three children already, why not four? why not five? six?
Had she lived, criminal charges would have been brought against her, but not against her husband, no longer living with his family.
A BLOOD-ROSE, THINKS Esther, appalled, fascinated, pressing her forehead against the windowpane of the dormitory room, while the other student nurses chatter behind her; and Death hovers about her, a thin coating of panic, sweat sticking to her skin. Standing here, her back to the crowded room, she can barely see-for it"s nearly dusk-the fine chill mist that rises in the valley each day at this time, blown in opaque little clouds, hurtful to breathe. On cold nights it freezes and the tall gra.s.ses in the field behind the hospital are covered unevenly in frost and in the morning Esther"s heart aches with thoughts of Muirkirk and home . . . for she has come a very great distance, it seems to her, and perhaps, as Katrina has warned, there will be danger in going back.
Standing with her back to the lighted room, staring out at the gathering dark, at Death, Esther begins to see in the gla.s.s her hazy image, taking form. It is strong, it is defiant, it is her own.
A BLOOD-ROSE, ESTHER whispers.
A blood-rose, she writes in her letter to Darian, telling him of this, and of other spectacles now commonplace, now daily, spectacles past imagining if one were to fully imagine (though Darian might write the music to express them: only he!) but words fail her as if, with clumsy fingers, she were trying to hold a pen too small, whose point broke when pressed against paper. Now there is so much to say, so much! but she cannot speak! the words turn to tears in her throat and she cannot speak! trying to describe for her brother (so many hundreds of miles away he will never hear, he will never understand) the quality of her life as a nursing student, one of three hundred girls, at the nurses" training school attached to the Port Oriskany General Hospital. But there is the restraint of paper, pen, ink, words. How very painfully they shape themselves, words, awkwardly held in the mouth, a tongue grown oversized. Esther would tell Darian about the young mother who hemorrhaged to death the previous day with no doctor in attendance but doesn"t the word hemorrhage make distant and clinical what was so real, Esther"s own first experience of Death, the astonishment of Death, that blood-rose blossoming so very suddenly in an ordinary room . . . .Esther would tell Darian of the strange angry strength that rushes through her in waves to leave her sick and numbed and exhausted . . . yet exulting. Esther Sophia Licht living away from Muirkirk for the first time in her life, enrolled at the Port Oriskany School of Nursing, in her starched white student"s cap, her nursing uniform and pinafore, her white stockings, white shoes.
For white is the hue of purity. Of idealism.
Esther"s secret, which she would tell Darian alone of all the world: Past terror, there"s happiness. I am on earth to serve, not to be served.
ZEALOUS ESTHER, IMPULSIVE Esther, Esther who"s so good-hearted and naive writes also to a young man named Aaron Deerfield, away taking premedical courses at the university in Albany. Aaron she"s adored since eighth grade; Aaron who"s embarra.s.sed by her attention and loyalty yet allows her to love him though he can"t, as he"s painstakingly explained, love her in return.
Yet, Aaron has made a vow that if he ever loves any young woman (which maybe he can"t, he has tried) it will be Esther.
Which fills Esther with a hot embarra.s.sed pleasure. As if, indeed, she were already loved.
To Aaron Deerfield, Esther writes several lengthy letters a week, not minding that he replies no more than once a month, and then briefly. It"s her privilege to write to him describing her nursing cla.s.ses, her routine at the hospital, her more interesting cases, providing sharply detailed little sketches of the doctors on the hospital staff, the older nurses, her instructors, her nurse-cla.s.smates who are emerging as "characters"-as it"s her privilege to love him. But she won"t embarra.s.s him by making such claims. Concluding her letters not with Love but As always.
Most of her fellow nurses have boyfriends. Fiances of one kind or another. Lovers. And some of the older, prettier girls-so excited rumors wash about, spilling and splashing as they will-are said to be involved with doctors at the hospital.
Married men.
(And what are the results of such affairs, sometimes?) (Of such matters, Esther doesn"t write Aaron Deerfield.) YES ESTHER IS happy, yes she"s privileged. It"s human beings that fascinate, more than disease and accident; though these are the means by which she, as a nurse, might come into intimate contact with them.
A fascination of flesh. Examining anatomy-text drawings, photographs. The extraordinary drawings by Leonardo da Vinci reproduced in a portfolio-sized book she"d purchased for $8 in a secondhand-book store in the city. The revelations of the dissection lab, that initially shock, disgust, terrify; then excite and illuminate. For how natural the body is, how . . . ordinary. Yet the amazing subtlety of flesh, its variations in thickness, solidity. How inadequate, mere words: to say of an individual"s skin white, black, colored. And how strange that we"re encased in flesh from birth to death.
Our first obligation is to serve the flesh. Others" flesh.
To relieve pain, to restore health. To allow the spirit to shine forth.
Not to punish by withholding all we can do.
Not to judge, not to moralize, not to punish. Not to give aid to Death.
ESTHER"S HEAD RINGS from twelve hours, fifteen hours on her feet. Sleepless hours of being commanded to hurry here, to hurry there, do this! do that! and promptly. The hospital is a vast ship at sea amid unpredictable weather, its captain is an elder doctor and his officers a hierarchy of doctors, exclusively male; below them a hierarchy of nurses and nurses" aides, exclusively female. Esther doesn"t yet question this double hierarchy for it seems to her as to everyone else, including the elder, head nurses who are so much more experienced and capable than the younger doctors, that this is the very principle of the universe, inviolable. It"s true, in high school, Esther Licht and Aaron Deerfield were both A students and possibly Esther was more imaginative in biology cla.s.s than Aaron, but neither of them would have thought that Esther, and not Aaron, should go to medical school. Esther"s father, and her sister Millie, even Katrina have expressed disapproval of Esther going to nursing school. Ugh. Blood and bodies. Excrement. How can you soil your hands?
There"s the concern, too, unspoken-Who would wish to marry a nurse?
Yet Esther"s happy. No matter she"s frequently sick with the flu that pa.s.ses continuously through the nurses" residence hall and the hospital. Fevers, infections, racking coughs that kill the weaker of the patients, even if they"ve been hospitalized with other ailments. Such are the facts of medical life, not to be helped. Or so it seems in 1918. Or so Esther wishes to think, in love with her destiny.
IN THE END, Esther"s father agreed to her request, seeing how pa.s.sionately she wanted to become a nurse. Seeing, perhaps, that like Darian she was stubborn and self-determined, and would become a nurse with or without his blessing. Making a show of taking out his checkbook with a flourish-"And how much is a semester"s tuition? Or better yet, a year?"
Poor Father. He"d returned to Muirkirk just before Christmas of 1917, exhausted and ill; he"d had a breakdown like the one he"d suffered when Esther was a little girl, many years ago; once again he was forced to abandon his business and retreat to Muirkirk, where Katrina and Esther nursed him back to health.
He"d been sick for nearly three months. He"d lost weight, and aged; what most frightened Esther, as she wrote to Darian, was He has aged in his soul. Something has happened of which he will never speak.
Abraham Licht was enough himself to be annoyed that a daughter of his should "wear her heart on her sleeve so openly" for a neighbor"s son, Aaron Deerfield; and should admire in such schoolgirl fashion Dr. Deerfield, who was an ordinary village doctor-"A sawbones, as I believe his ilk are called." Abraham"s scorn was rejuvenating to him; as Esther shrewdly saw, her father took heart when there was someone to oppose, a presumed adversary or enemy. It worked out well for her, as she overheard Abraham remarking to Katrina, "Let the girl go to nursing school, if she wants. Away from Muirkirk and the pernicious "Deerfield" influence. A daughter of mine in love with such a dolt!"
The days, the weeks, months . . . at the start, Esther kept a meticulous diary but soon fell behind for there wasn"t time, never enough time; losing count of all who"d died (and each death so precious, unique) . . . of the babies born (and each birth a miracle, beyond comprehension) . . . and the many letters written in head-on haste and emotion to Aaron Deerfield and others . . . Father, Millie, Darian, Katrina . . . who fail to reply to her in the spirit in which she writes to them, or fail to reply altogether. Am I too eager with love for them? Do I repel them with my hunger?
At the nursing school, Esther"s energy, stamina and idealism are spoken of with awe, admiration, exasperation, in some quarters mockery and envy. To no one"s surprise Esther Sophia Licht will graduate first in her cla.s.s of seventy-three students.
Yet one day in early spring rapidly climbing three flights of stairs to her airless, cramped room, shared with three other nursing students; in a basin of tepid water she washes her face, dries her eyes, pressing a towel against her eyeb.a.l.l.s she sees suddenly the blood-rose illuminated in fire where previously it had been dark; and shocks herself by beginning to cry; she, Esther Licht, who never cries, unable to stop crying for many minutes though by this time she"s accustomed to Death and, as she tells herself, happy, very happy.
THE WISH.
I am not ill-I am well."
"I am not ill-I am well."
"I am not ill-I am well."
This mantra the patients of the Parris Clinic, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, are instructed to chant one hundred or more times a day; silently or together in a swelling communal orison; with eyes open or tightly shut. The discipline is known as Autogenic Self-Mastery, the discovery of Dr. Felix Bies, cofounder with Dr. Moses Liebknecht of the Parris Clinic. Here, the infirm are taught that as the physical being can be cured of affliction by way of elixirs, diet, hot baths, hydrotherapy, herbal medicines and the like, so too can the spiritual being be cured of its more insidious afflictions by way of Self-Mastery. It"s an Eastern discipline descended from ancient yogic practices and Buddhist teachings yet as Dr. Bies and Dr. Liebknecht insist it"s a discipline uniquely suited to North America-"Where will and destiny are one."
Paralysis, cancer, nervous disorders; feebleness of intellect and of personality; anemia, otalgia, migraine, multiple sclerosis, myxedema; senility, aging-these are but symptoms of spiritual disequilibrium that can be treated at the Parris Clinic; with the contractual understanding beforehand, fully doc.u.mented and notarized, that only by way of the patient"s "active volition" can a true cure be effected. Among the permanent residents of the Parris community are an eighty-seven-year-old woman cured of glaucoma and ileitis; a ninety-three-year-old woman once crippled by arthritis and now capable of hiking on the Clinic"s fifty-acre grounds, and of playing lawn tennis; an eighty-six-year-old man wounded in the chest in the Battle of Bull Run and subsequently subject to numerous ailments-heart trouble, dyspepsia, fatigue, asthma-until recently, by way of a strict diet, hot baths and Autogenic Self-Mastery, he declared himself one hundred percent cured, and a candidate for remarriage. The Clinic"s most renowned patient is an elderly man said to be one hundred nineteen years old who suffers intermittently from the usual infirmities of age (arthritis, gum disease, vertigo, etc.) but as a result of Autogenic Self-Mastery and other Parris disciplines, he not only recently married for the eighth time but sired his twenty-first child, a healthy baby boy-an event written up in the New York newspapers. The Clinic"s former patients include a chess grand master, a youth of nineteen who"d once suffered from extreme melancholia; numerous veterans of the Great War now entirely cured and returned to active life; and numerous women-neurasthenic, hysterical, melancholic, amenorrheic, abnormally willful or will-less-also cured to various degrees and returned to the world as well-adjusted daughters, wives and mothers.
The Parris Clinic was founded in 1922, by way of a generous gift from a convert to Dr. Bies"s teachings, an elderly woman named Mrs. Flaxman Potter who willed her estate, including a s.p.a.cious Georgian house and numerous outbuildings, to the controversial physician-researcher. There have been numerous other gifts from cured, grateful patients; for the servicing of the physical dimension of being (the maintenance of the forty-room mansion, the grounds, the baths, etc.) is recognized as no less necessary than the maintenance of the spiritual. It is the promise of the Parris Clinic"s directors that none who enter through its wrought-iron gate will come to grief from any mortal affliction including age itself; yet such are the vicissitudes of natural and human frailty, a certain percentage of patients do occasionally fall short of this goal and come to unfortunate ends, with the result that the Clinic is often being sued, or is threatened with lawsuits, by relatives of the deceased, disinherited children, former physicians and the like. In addition, the goodwill of county and state officials is frequently costly. Financial solvency, therefore, is required-that"s to say a healthy cash flow. The Parris Clinic, despite the idealism of its directors, can"t open its doors to all who have need but only to those who can afford its high fees.
In spring 1926 when a Wall Street investor named Arthur Grille arranged for his neurasthenic daughter Rosamund to be admitted to the Clinic, on the eve of his departure for Naples with his new bride, he was initially shocked by the price quoted by Dr. Bies; yet came around to the doctor"s position as in such matters where health and peace of mind are concerned, money should be of secondary significance. Mr. Grille was a recent widower who"d come into prosperity like so many investors and speculators following the Armistice; he"d seen an investment of $400,000 in various stocks soar to $2.3 million in a whirlwind eighteen-month period in the early 1920"s, and was now a millionaire many times over. Yet it was his tragedy that, simultaneously, he lost his wife to a premature death and his only child Rosamund to numerous mysterious ailments-fainting spells, tachycardia, migraine, anemia, loss of appet.i.te, chronic melancholia and the like. Rosamund was an ethereal girl with a fondness for poetry, professing a morbid obsession with the work of such poets as Keats, Sh.e.l.ley, Chatterton, Byron-poets who"d all come to tragic or shameful ends. Between the ages of sixteen and twenty Rosamund experimented with poetry of her own, so caught up in writing verse that the family was forced to intervene and forbid her to continue, to prevent a complete mental breakdown; which provoked the rebellious girl to burn her poetry in a roaring blaze on the front lawn of the Grille estate on Long Island, and to lapse into a near-catatonic state afterward. Rosamund"s coming out at the Cotillion Club was cancelled, to her mother"s grief; and the New York City debutante season of 1920 pa.s.sed her by gaily and indifferently.
Eventually, when Rosamund emerged from her lethargy to try her hand at sculpting small figures in clay under the tutelage of a prominent society sculptor, she again became so involved with her work, as she called it, that she had to be chastened a second time, with more extreme results, for now the unstable girl broke out of seclusion with a manic zeal, attending jazz parties in Manhattan where drinking, only just prohibited by federal law, took place, as well as dancing of a wild, abandoned, lascivious kind; she became engaged to a young entrepreneur of whom the Grilles disapproved and, after breaking up with him in a tumultuous scene at the Plaza Hotel, she became engaged to a young tap dancer and Broadway actor whom the Grilles liked even less; at the height of her hysteria, as her condition was diagnosed by the family physician, Rosamund frequented such notorious Manhattan speakeasies as the Marlboro Club, the Stork Club, and Helen Morgan"s, where she was once swept up and arrested in a police raid. And all her antics were performed, as observers noted, without pleasure; indeed, in defiance of pleasure.
As if the new generation sought pain, humiliation, defeat and even death through the forms of "pleasure"-to spite their elders.
In his interview with Dr. Bies and Dr. Liebknecht, Arthur Grille explained that his daughter had been inclined since infancy to a certain degree of willfulness; but beyond the age of thirteen, when her mother first took ill, she became very difficult indeed. "All that was sweet in my little girl curdled; all that was soft and yielding turned hard, cunning and stubborn; she gave the impression of being stalled-caught up in the maladies and malaises I"ve told you about from which, as she said, striking terror into the hearts of her mother and me, "Only Death could release her."" Following this, Rosamund was never well. She often threatened to do injury to herself, setting afire her beautiful black hair or raking her skin with her nails or, like Ophelia, who was one of her morbid heroines, drowning herself in a stream. She wasn"t loved by anyone, she charged; or she was loved too much, and didn"t deserve it. She despaired of G.o.d and of being "saved"; then, abruptly, declared the idea of G.o.d "supremely silly" and announced herself content to be the descendant of African apes. After her mother"s death, when Rosamund was, in her own words, an old maid of twenty-four, she took to her bed and slept in a fevered state for as long as eighteen hours at a time; she ceased speaking except in sibylline utterances-"Where tragedy would enn.o.ble, farce intervenes"-"Eternity despises the productions of Time"-which puzzled and angered her grieving father. Mr. Grille took her to specialist after specialist, admitted her to clinic after clinic, begged her, and commanded her, to behave in a manner suitable for a young woman of her rank and family background; and all without success.
For she was ill, beneath her hysteria and histrionics-seriously ill.
Following the advice of a Wall Street a.s.sociate, Arthur Grille made the decision to commit Rosamund to the care of Doctors Bies and Liebknecht, before sailing for Europe on his honeymoon. (In despair of his life, Mr. Grille had suddenly fallen in love with a young woman twenty years his junior, whose soldier husband had died in France.) Dozens of physicians had failed with her; perhaps they would succeed; in any case, he told them somberly, since his daughter was more troubled now at the age of twenty-seven than she"d been before in her life, they could hardly do her harm. "If I were a superst.i.tious person, which I am not," Mr. Grille told the doctors, "I might almost believe that a . . . demon of some kind inhabited my poor girl."
"A DEMON! WHAT a laugh. Rather more, the absence of a demon. There"s the loss."
Rosamund Grille was a willowy, fine-boned, alarmingly thin young woman who looked more seventeen than twenty-seven. She had damp green gemlike eyes narrowed in playfulness one moment and mistrust the next; an aquiline nose with a charming little b.u.mp-where it had been broken, as she explained, in a speakeasy raid; a sullen, but very pretty mouth; and a grainy skin that looked as if it were rarely exposed to the sun. The insides of both her forearms were scarred with tiny nicks and scratches-"Hieroglyphics," as she called them. "Signifying nothing." Her hair was fine and filmy, a smoky-black threaded with dead-white hairs; at the time of her admission to the Parris Clinic she"d carelessly bobbed it with a scissors, and refused to go to a hairdresser to repair the damage. Her manner was both skittish and lethargic, sometimes within the s.p.a.ce of a few minutes. As Dr. Bies examined her (though he placed little emphasis upon the physical being, he knew it was necessary to consult it) she held herself stiff as a rod, resisting her impulse to recoil from a stranger"s, or a man"s, touch. Her elegant head high, her greeny eyes partly closed, Rosamund Grille gave no evidence of hearing the questions Dr. Bies asked, and no more cooperated with the physician than a dressmaker"s dummy would have done. Dr. Liebknecht, looking on sympathetically, his pince-nez pressed against the bridge of his nose, asked the young woman questions of his own, "Do you comprehend, Miss Grille, that it"s your own Wish turned against you that has made you "ill"?"-and appeared more annoyed than Dr. Bies when she ignored him. A stubborn creature, as her father warned. Not to be easily cured, if cured at all.
Afterward, when they were alone, Dr. Bies observed in a languid voice to Dr. Liebknecht, uns.c.r.e.w.i.n.g the top of his silver pocket flask, "We must hope for two things: that the wench doesn"t do herself in too quickly and that the second Mrs. Grille doesn"t spend her husband"s money too quickly." Dr. Liebknecht, who"d removed his pince-nez and was thoughtfully rubbing his eyes, sighed, and shrugged, and made no reply, as if he didn"t trust himself, at the moment, to speak.
"I am not ill-I am well."
"I am not ill-I am well."
"I am not ill-I am well."
Rosamund bites her lower lip to keep from laughing, and draws blood. Rosamund is racked with silent tears. Rosmund"s clenched fists fly striking any available surface, causing such a disturbance in the Ladies" Sulfur Bath that a therapist will lead her back to her room.
"Don"t touch. I can"t bear it!"
Trying to explain that she can"t continue, it"s no one"s fault but she can"t continue, yet she"s fearful of "crossing over" into the void, and so must continue; out of cowardice, not even pride.
"I am not well-I am ill."
Her heart trips. On the verge of running wild. It can beat as many as two hundred fifty times a minute and her doctors have warned it might beat her to death if she didn"t make an effort to calm herself.
Autogenic Self-Mastery does seem to her, despite the obvious charlatanry of the Parris Clinic (a haven for wealthy neurotics, misfits and failures), a basically sound idea. She accepts that her malaise is a malaise of the soul and that it creeps upon her from within. To master the malaise, she need only master the "self" that causes it-but how, precisely, is this done? Reciting the mantra I am not ill I am well, I am not well I am ill is like saying a rosary, numbing, hypnotic, silly, shameful. Laughter shades into a fit of coughing. Coughing shades into choking. Choking shades into heart palpitations. Heart palpitations shade into a fainting attack. And her swollen belly and bladder ache from the abnormal quant.i.ty of mineral water they"ve urged her to drink-twelve pints a day.
An insensible body sprawled in the hottest of the baths. Damp black hair in clots spread like a spider"s legs across the chipped marble rim. Bruised eyes shut. In a chamois smock that clings to her thin body, her prominent collarbone and small hard b.r.e.a.s.t.s with nipples like berries. Roughly she squeezes these b.r.e.a.s.t.s not out of sensuality but to determine if she"s there. "I am not ill-I am well. Am I?" Thinking of Bies and Liebknecht, a vaudeville team. The one vague, false-fatherly, clammy-fat weighing beyond two hundred fifty pounds at five feet nine; sausage-neck tight to bursting; small squinting red-rimmed eyes; a bald dome of a head, tufts of gray hair in a cupid-fringe. A legitimate doctor, Mr. Grille ascertained, with a degree from a respectable medical school and a number of publicized cures, generally of wealthy patients, to boast of.
Liebknecht, whom Rosamund fears, is Bies"s opposite: tall, lean, dry, watchful; quicksilver eyes that bore into Rosamund"s skull (one of the female patients shivering in the bath declares Liebknecht has the power to read thoughts); cheekbones severe and ascetic as if the flesh had eroded away; an air of angry sorrow, of pain, of loss. It"s believed among the Parris Clinic patients that Liebknecht has a tragic background-he"s a figure of romance, in his early sixties-perhaps a veteran of the War?-perhaps a Jewish emigre?-not a doctor of medicine like his fattish partner but a doctor of psychology, or is it psychotherapy-he"s reputed to have studied with the controversial Sigmund Freud and to have been a major partic.i.p.ant in the International Psychoa.n.a.lytical Congress at The Hague in 1920. (Freud! Rosamund, like the brightest young people of her circle, had read scattered essays by Freud and helpful resumes of his work, avidly accepting the mysterious unknowable Id as the volcanic source of libido, and the Ego, or "self," as the seat of both ident.i.ty and anxiety, and the Superego as internalized conscience-the dull, dreary, suffocating voice of authority. Less avid was Rosamund"s acceptance of Freud"s theory of s.e.xuality in which, in short, the female compensates for her castration or anatomical deficiency in three possible ways: s.e.xual anxiety and withdrawal, rivalry with men/lesbianism, or by shifting libido from her mother to her father, changing the object of her s.e.xual interest from female to male and hoping for an infant, ideally a male infant, as a subst.i.tute for the lost p.e.n.i.s. "But I don"t want an infant," Rosamund protested. "I don"t even want a p.e.n.i.s . . . what a burden!") If Liebknecht is a Freudian he has said nothing to Rosamund of his beliefs but has only reiterated, in a kindly, commanding voice, one of the mantras of the Parris Clinic: "It is your own Wish turned against you that
has made you ill, and it is your own Wish
that will make you well."
Rosamund sees Liebknecht when he isn"t present, for, as the other patients claim, Liebknecht has the power to see with eyes like X-rays and the power to read thoughts at a distance. Where Bies is a heavyset perspiring presence, Liebknecht is a mysterious absence. On weak days, too exhausted to rise from bed, or from the enervating bath, Rosamund cringes as the man appears to her, with his expression of severity; though her trembling eyelids are closed, he stares at her with knowledge of her; her voice rings in her head. It is your own Wish, Rosamund. Yours.
April, and Easter, and Rosamund wakes from her long languid drowse to find herself . . . herself. Her father has abandoned her and she has no relatives or friends she recalls with affection; her lovers have pa.s.sed through her body like mild jolts of electricity, leaving no memory; soon she will be twenty-eight years old; a voice ringing in her ears I am not ill, I am well! not well, ill! not ill not well! I am not I! In the day room there"s Mrs. Harold Bender of the Manhattan Benders with her rouged face beaked like a parrot"s, a low wondering boastful voice for she is dying (of some sort of wasting disease) even as she claims she is well! is well! is well! and will be returning home soon in time for the contract bridge tournament in May, in which in previous seasons she"s performed brilliantly. These eyes s.n.a.t.c.hing hungrily at where Rosamund who looks so youthful for her age stands, a willowy apparition in white. There"s the Captain, palsied, aged, a turtle"s head and sleep-dazed lidded eyes squinting up at Rosamund with the jest that he"d once been a tall dashing officer of the United States Army in charge of one of the post-War military districts in the South under the Reconstruction Act, his cousin was Thaddeus Stevens of Congress whose power had exceeded President Andrew Johnson"s-for a time. Hadn"t he known Rosamund, many years ago? Or had the woman been Rosamund"s mother, or grandmother? Nature had played quite a trick on him, the Captain laughed, for once he"d been young and now he was old; once tall, and now a virtual midget-"And yet, you know, dear, this isn"t truly me." And there"s a plump sighing woman in her mid-thirties, spinster daughter of one of President Warren Harding"s disgraced cabinet members who has, it"s rumored, tried to kill herself several times, with overdoses of aspirin and alcohol; she never speaks above a whisper, and never raises her eyes. And there is elderly "Tia" Flanner who"d once been a dancer with the New York City Ballet and a lover of numerous wealthy men, now crippled with arthritis, her face a creased sack, fingers like claws, nearly blind yet chattering of the Discipline that has made her well and restored her youth. And there is the quivering skeleton David Johnson Brown, New York"s most prestigious architect in the heady days of the 1890"s when the great houses of the wealthy were being built on Park Avenue, Fifth Avenue and vicinity, gazing with death"s-head yearning at Rosamund asking if she has seen his houses? his artwork? (yes, Rosamund has, in fact she"s lived in a Sixty-sixth Street brownstone built by Brown) would she be his bride? for he"s very wealthy, a man of powerful connections, and knows how to make a woman happy.
To avoid these apparitions in steamy Hades Rosamund finds herself running through the English garden; there"s a stand of juniper pines at the foot of a hill; she stands trembling at the edge of a pond staring, dreaming, swaying on her feet breathing in the scent of brackish water, ripening vegetation, algae, she moves out into the surprisingly warm water, water to her waist, arms too heavy to lift in an appeal, a partly naked woman quivering in the water beneath her, rippling, shivering, the sky beneath her too, veined and pale, light on all sides. "Rosamund. No."
Dr. Liebknecht has spoken, softly, commandingly. Rosamund looks around but can"t see anyone. She"s panting like an animal, clutching at her small hard useless b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Soft muck beneath her toes, the pressure of water against her belly, her pelvis. "But why not! Why not! If it"s my Wish." She begins to cry out of anger, resentment. Liebknecht in shadows at the edge of the pond, or hidden in the stand of juniper pines, or watching her from one of the myriad windows of the house flashing with the wan, dying light of sunset-"Rosamund, no. Come back at once."
Rosamund laughs, but obeys. Only a fool would try to drown herself in three feet of water clogged with lily pads and water irises.
IT"S MAY, AND June; a reluctant chilly spring; Rosamund wakes, and Rosamund sleeps, and Rosamund lies comatose in the bath, and Rosamund whispers I am not ill I am well, not ill well, I am I and not-I until a fit of childish laughter overtakes her, and she"s yawning over the postcard of Florence, her jaws ache with yawning, and she recalls suddenly how she"d loved her cousin Timothy who"d died in the War, his plane shot down over Colombey-les-Belles in May 1918, she has a photograph of Tim in his dashing aviator"s topcoat with its broad fur collar, Tim in his helmet, goggles pushed back onto his head, that glamor-stance, a boastful smile, what are War and Death but glamor and boastful smiles yet Rosamund vowed she"d never smile again after word came of his death (and the poor body burnt to ash amid the plane wreckage) but she refuses to tell Dr. Liebknecht of this secret because it will lessen her in his eyes: she"s shallow and worthless like the rest, in love with her own infirmities and imminent deaths. Rosamund tears the postcard into several pieces and scatters the pieces in the air. Caring not for her father and new young stepmother, truly she doesn"t care whether they regard her with affection or suspicion, whether they return from Europe or remain forever, whether they live or die, truly Rosamund doesn"t though Dr. Liebknecht has suggested that she cares very much, she"s consumed with rage, why not admit it.
"D"you know, Dr. Liebknecht-if "Liebknecht" is your name-I don"t like you. That, I will admit."
"That, Miss Grille, is your privilege."
"And please don"t call me "Miss Grille" as if I were some sort of North Atlantic fish. If you must call me anything-"Rosamund.""