Элис Макдермотт - The Ninth Hour

Sally had understood the image in the basement laundry of the convent, when she watched Sister Illuminata put a hot iron to the nuns’ clean clothes—perfume of starch and of soap, of the heavy linen itself, dried in the courtyard’s sun. A clean cloth—immaculate and pure—to place against mankind’s wounds. She had felt, the fragrant steam rising, the joy of it, the rightness of it. No help in putting a soiled, sullied thing to what was itself debased and infected. One kept oneself, one made oneself, pure—dressed in these immaculate clothes, moved about these simple rooms, prayed the Hours, spoke softly, kept still one’s idle hands and kept gentle one’s thoughts, to offer relief to the wretched world, to assuage the seething wound, the lesion, laesio, of human suffering. The suffering that all things mortal were heir to, Sister Illuminata had said.

In her lovely habit, she wanted to be that pure antidote to human pain.

But she wanted, too, in some equal, more furious way, not to be mocked for it; not to be fooled. Sister Lucy had told her, Don’t think you can end all suffering with your charms.

The next time she got up to use the toilet she had to climb over the solid bulk of her sleeping companion. As Sally awkwardly crossed her lap, trying to step over the brown bags at her feet, she felt the woman grab at her hip and then poke a dirty finger at the seat of her skirt. Sally cried out, nearly tumbled, but swiftly caught her breath as she gathered herself in the aisle. She looked back at the woman, who had once more closed her eyes. The man on the aisle reached out to steady her, and briefly, although she didn’t need to, she gripped his hand. Warm and broad and very strong. She said, “Thank you.”

In the toilet, the odor of someone’s bowel movement was overwhelming. She stumbled out, walked to the thin corridor between the cars to get some air. Out here, the rattling echo of the steel over the tracks seemed to bounce off the darkness that surrounded them, as if the darkness itself were made of black stone. As if they had once more gone underground.

She saw a man approaching from the yellow light of the next car, a sleeping car—she could see a porter moving behind him. The porter was buttoning down the curtains on each berth, securing whoever was inside for the night. The girl from the Bronx, asleep on the money Sally’s mother had labored to earn. The man approaching seemed to smile at her, and, afraid, she stepped back inside just ahead of him. He followed her, even reached over her head to hold the door, pressing—was he pressing?—himself into her back. He went into the toilet and she made her way down the aisle. A card game was going on among four smoking men. They looked up indifferently as she passed. One of the men held the black stump of a cigar between his fingers; the end of it, blacker still, was wet. Everything reeked. Of smoke and sweat and the human gas seeping from these mounds of flesh. She put the back of her hand to her nose and her own flesh reeked.

Unsteadily, she walked past her seat, to the end of the car—“pee cans,” the dirty woman had said, vulgar—and then she turned around and walked back again. Here in the dim and smoky light were, for her consideration, a sampling of “the others” she was giving her life to: vulgar, unkempt, ungrateful. Pale, sleeping faces with gaping, distorted mouths, sprawled limbs, a hollow-eyed soldier looking out into the night, a khaki rucksack clutched to his chest, a yellow-skinned old man folded into himself, gazing forward with a murderous look. A young woman in a jaunty hat, chewing gum ferociously, reading a magazine, picking her nose and then flicking her fingertips into the aisle.

She passed the seat in front of hers, where the little bald boy now slept pressed up against his mother’s back, which was turned to him. His hands were between his knees, as if for warmth. He looked like the bums who slept beneath the elevated, like a little hobo curled against the concrete wall of a warehouse. There was a dirty, bloodstained handkerchief on the floor at his feet.

“Excuse me,” she said to her companion when she returned to her seat. The woman was sprawled and did not move. The man on the aisle was watching, smiling still. “Excuse me,” she said again, and now the woman merely turned her face away with a small snort and bubble. The man across the way said, helpfully, “You might have to poke her.” She looked at him straight on for the first time. An older man with a five o’clock shadow, balding, almost handsome, some missing teeth in the side of his smile. A look of weariness about him, too, of course, at this hour, but a kind eye. Did she really want to go through life without a man to protect her? He reached across the aisle to touch the woman’s thick elbow. “Madam,” he said. And louder, “Madam.” Again someone in the car called, “Pipe down.”

Sally, weary herself, screwed up her courage and shouted, “Excuse me!” She reached out—even to her own eye her movements had grown weird, as if weirdly weighted—and pressed a finger into the woman’s shoulder. The flesh beneath her coat seemed barely to give. Her wide thighs, straining against her dark skirt, twitched a bit, but continued to block the way. The man on the aisle said, “Madam,” once more.

Struggling to keep her balance in the aisle, Sally looked at her empty seat on the other side of this fleshy obstacle. She had never in her life so desired a single destination. She wanted only to curl into it, turn her face to the cool window. She wanted only to be left alone. Suddenly, in a kind of desperation, she reached down and slid the shopping bags off the woman’s feet and into the aisle. One of them toppled, an orange and a gold compact and a bit of bright silk, a scarf or a slip or a nightgown, spilling from the top, causing, at last, the woman to stir. She reached out her spiked hands in the startled way of sleepers, and in an instant of fear and rage, Sally swung her fist into the woman’s palm, made contact with it, and then swung again, striking this time the inside of her fat wrist, touching the bone beneath the ringed flesh. And then, it seemed all the same, continuous motion, although in truth it was choppy and abrupt, like pounding laundry, she swung again—the woman tried but failed to raise her elbow in defense. Sally felt the hard surface of the woman’s dry teeth against her knuckles, felt, too, the tacky lipstick and the humid breath.

“Keep your damn hands to yourself,” Sally said, stepping over the woman’s feet, kicking the greasy bags with her heel. “Stay away from me.”

She cleared the woman’s lap and drove herself into the seat, her heart pounding. Turned her face to the window.

There was an astonished pause, and then the woman shouted, “Mercy!” Panting more forcefully. Or not panting now, but sobbing. Sally glanced briefly over her shoulder. The woman, her awful fingers pressed delicately against her mouth, was now leaning out into the aisle to retrieve the bag. The man across the way had bent down to help her, and the little bald boy appeared, handing her the escaped orange and the thick gold compact. An act of betrayal on both their parts, Sally thought. “Thank you, sweetheart,” she heard the woman say as she wept. “Thank you, kind sir.” She told them, “You’d think butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.”

Sally turned her face to the window. Once again, she felt the woman’s breath on her neck. “A fine Sister you’ll make,” she hissed.

Sally raised her shoulder against the sound, against the woman’s breath. She was now the one who was panting. Her anger a clenched fist in her chest. And yet there was pride, too. She had, after all, spoken up.

“You’re a devil,” the woman said into her ear. Without turning to face her, Sally bared her teeth at her own reflection and whispered, “You are.”