Edward White - Lukundoo and Other Stories

“No,” I said harshly, “I don't see any picture and you know I don't. There isn't any picture there. I can't make out what you are driving at. It seems a senseless joke.”

“Joke! I joke!” Helen half whispered. The tears came into her eyes. “You are cruel,” she said, “and I thought you would be struck by the resemblance.” I was overwhelmed by a pang of self-reproach, solicitude and terror.

“Resemblance to what?” I asked gently.

“Can't you see it?” she insisted.

“Tell me,” I pleaded. “Show me just what you want me to notice most.”

“The child,” she said pointing, “is just exactly Amy and the dress is the very red suit she had on when — ”

“Dear,” I said, “try to collect yourself. Indeed you only imagine what you tell me. There is no picture on this side of the sections. The whole thing is pink. That is the back of the puzzle.”

“I don't see how you can say such a thing,” she raged at me. “I can't make out why you should. What sort of a test are you putting me through? What does it all mean?”

“Will you let me prove to you that this is the back of the puzzle?” I asked. “If you can,” she said shortly.

I turned the pieces of the puzzle over, keeping them together as much as possible. I succeeded pretty well with the outer pieces and soon had the rectangle in place. The inner pieces were a good deal mixed up, but even before I had fitted them I exclaimed:

“There look at that!”

“Well,” she asked. “What do you expect me to see “What do you see?” I asked in turn.

“I see the back of a puzzle,” she answered.

“Don't you see those front steps?” I demanded, pointing. “I don't see anything,” she asserted, “except green.”

“Do you call that green?” I queried pointing.

“I do,” she declared.

“Don't you see the brickwork front of the house?” I insisted, “and the lower part of a window and part of a door. Yes and those front-steps in the corner?”

“I don't see anything of the kind,” she asseverated. “Any more than you do. What I see is just what you see. It's the back of the puzzle, all pale green.”

I had been feverishly putting together the last pieces as she spoke. I could not believe my eyes and, as the last piece fitted in, was struck with amazement.

The picture showed an old red-brick house, with brown blinds, all open. The top of the front steps was included in the lower right hand corner, most of the front door above them, all of one window on its level, and the side of another. Above appeared all of one of the second floor windows, and parts of those to right and left of it. The other windows were closed, but the sash of the middle one was raised and from it leaned a little girl, a child with frowzy hair, a dirty face and wearing a blue and white check frock. The child was a perfect likeness of our lost Amy, supposing she had been starved and neglected. I was so affected that I was afraid I should faint. I was positively husky when I asked:

“Don't you see that?”

“I see Nile green,” she maintained. “The same as you see.” I swept the pieces into the box.

“We are neither of us well,” I said.

“I should think you must be deranged to behave so,” she snapped, “and it is no wonder I am not well the way you treat me.”

“How could I know what you wanted me to see?” I began.

“Wanted you to see!” she cried. “You keep it up? You pretend you didn't see it, after all? Oh! I have no patience with you.”

She burst into tears, fled upstairs and I heard her slam and lock our bedroom door. I put that puzzle together again and the likeness of that hungry, filthy child in the picture to our Amy made my heart ache.

I found a stout box, cut two pieces of straw-board just the shape of the puzzle and a trifle larger, laid one on top of it and slid the other under it. Then I tied it together with string and wrapped it in paper and tied the whole.

I put the box in my overcoat pocket and went out carrying the flat parcel. I walked round to MacIntyre's.

I told him the whole story and showed him the puzzle.

“Do you want the truth?” he asked.

“Just that,” I said.

“Well,” he reported. “You are as overstrung as she is and the same way. There is absolutely no picture on either side of this. One side is solid green and the other solid pink.”

“How about the coincidence of the names on the box?” I interjected. “One suited what I saw, one what she said she saw.”

“Let's look at the box,” he suggested.

He looked at it on all sides.

“There's not a letter on it,” he announced. “Except 'picture puzzle' on top and '50 cents' on the end.”

“I don't feel insane,” I declared.

“You aren't,” he reassured me. “Nor in any danger of being insane. Let me look you over.” He felt my pulse, looked at my tongue, examined both eyes with his ophthalmoscope, and took a drop of my blood.

“I'll report further,” he said, “in confirmation tomorrow. You're all right, or nearly so, and you'll soon be really all right. All you need is a little rest. Don't worry about this idea of your wife's, humor her. There won't be any terrible consequences. After Christmas go to Florida or somewhere for a week or so. And don't exert yourself from now till after that change.”

When I reached home, I went down into the cellar, threw that puzzle and its box into the furnace and stood and watched it burn to ashes.

When I came upstairs from the furnace Helen met me as if nothing had happened. By one of her sudden revulsions of mood she was even more gracious than usual, and was at dinner altogether charming. She did not refer to our quarrel or to the puzzle.

The next morning over our breakfast we were both opening our mail. I had told her that I should not go to the office until after Christmas and that I wanted her to arrange for a little tour that would please her. I had phoned to the office not to expect me until after New Year's.

My mail contained nothing of moment.

Helen looked up from her's with an expression curiously mingled of disappointment, concern and a pleased smile.

“It is so fortunate you have nothing to do,” she said. “I spent four whole days choosing toys and favors and found most of those I selected at Bleich's. They were to have been delivered day before yesterday but they did not come. I telephoned yesterday and they said they would try to trace them. Here is a letter saying that the whole lot was missent out to Roundwood. You noticed that Roundwood station burned Monday night. They were all burnt up. Now I'll have to go and find more like them. You can go with me.”

I went.

The two days were a strange mixture of sensations and emotions. Helen had picked over Bleich's stock pretty carefully and could duplicate from it few of the burned articles, could find acceptable substitutes for fewer. There followed an exhausting pursuit of the unattainable through a bewildering series of toy-shops and department-stores. We spent most of our time at counters and much of the remainder in a taxicab.

In a way it was very trying. I did not mind the smells and bad air and other mere physical discomforts. But the mental strain continually intensified. Helen's confidence that Amy would be restored to us was steadily waning and her outward exhibition of it was becoming more and more artificial, and consciously sustained, and more and more of an effort. She was coming to foresee, in spite of herself, that our Christmas celebration would be a most terrible mockery of our bereavement. She was forcing herself not to confess it to herself and not to show it to me. The strain told on her. It told on me to watch it, to see the inevitable crash coming nearer and nearer and to try to put away from myself the pictures of her collapse, of her probable loss of reason, of her possible death, which my imagination kept thrusting before me.