Maeve Brennan - The Visitor

All the houses in the square were tall, with heavy stone steps going up to the front doors. They were occupied by old people, who had grown old in their houses and their accustomed ways. They disregarded the inconveniences of the square houses, their dark basements and drafty landings, and lived on, going tremulously from one wrinkled day to the next, with an occasional walk between the high stone walls of their gardens.

It was November when Anastasia came home from Paris. She sat in the living room, across the fire from her grandmother. It was an enormous shadowy room, and for light they had only the fire and one lamp. The fire was hot and bright. It threw trembling light to the farthest corner of the room, and hesitated across the old dull pattern of the wallpaper. There was no movement in the room except the wild movement of the fire-flames and the light they let go. The light washed up and down the room like thin water over stones.

Anastasia looked suddenly up at the mirror that hung over the mantel. It did not lie flat against the wall, but hung out slightly at the top. It reflected the fringed hearthrug where she had played when she was a little child, hearing the conversation go to and fro over her head. She looked hard at it, thinking that somewhere in its depths it must retain a faint image of the faces it had reflected.

She had often looked up and seen her father and mother stirring there, faces half in shadow and half in light, and sometimes one of them had looked up and found her watching. During these evenings it had been her habit to steal away from the fire and hide herself behind the heavy window curtains, wrapping herself in their musty voluminous depth, so that the room sounds were muffled and only the silent, dimly lighted square below was real, and that not too real, with its infrequent lamps, its brooding trees, and the shrouded passersby.

Standing behind the curtain she would launch herself into a world of dreams; she would deliberately absorb herself in a long, long dream, which would suddenly end and start all over again before the moment of discovery and the safe journey home to bed.

She rose abstractedly and crossed the room and twitched the curtains apart. There was no one standing behind the curtains. The square below was the same. The lamps were no brighter than she remembered, and the trees seemed the same. A lonely figure went along in the darkness as she watched.

She turned and looked at the mirror, but it reflected only empty chairs, and the firelight played indifferently on polished furniture as it had once across her parents’ faces. There is the background, and it is exactly the same. She let the curtains fall back into place and went back to her chair.

Her grandmother roused and put aside her book and took off her spectacles and sat moving them in her hand.

She said, “How long do you intend to stay here, Anastasia?”

Anastasia shrank in surprise.

“Well, indefinitely, Grandmother.”

After a time, into the silence, she said lamely, “Why, Grandmother? I’m afraid I didn’t consider doing anything else, except coming here. After she died, I came straightaway, as soon as I could settle things. She wanted me to.”

“Did she?”

Mrs King said in her gentle voice, “You know, Anastasia, you made a serious choice when you decided to stay with your mother in Paris. You were sixteen then, not a child. You knew what she had done. You were aware of the effect it was having on your father.”

She turned the spectacles thoughtfully in her hands.

“Didn’t you know what state he was in, when he left you in Paris, after trying to get you to come back here, and had to come alone?”

“Oh, Grandmother,” cried Anastasia, “how could I leave her?”

“We won’t go into that. I am going to be very matter-of-fact with you, Anastasia.”

Her voice was very matter-of-fact.

“You know that your mother disgraced us all, running off the way she did, like some kind of a madwoman.”

She said, half-amused, “Did you know that she went to one of the clerks in your father’s office, begging money for her ticket?”

Anastasia stood up in great agitation.

“She hardly knew what she was doing, Grandma. You should have seen her when I saw her, in Paris that time. She was half out of her mind.”

She began to cry, helplessly and awkwardly.

“She is dead, the Lord have mercy on her,” said Mrs King cautiously. “I’ll speak no ill of her. Don’t cry, Anastasia, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

She glanced toward the window.

“What did she go to Paris for, of all places? Will you tell me that?”

Remember that sad elderly pilgrimage, made long before its time, to a strange French address. They found the street with difficulty, and then the house, but no one there remembered the name they mentioned. Anastasia tried automatically to recall the address, and frowning, caught her grandmother watching her.

She said without interest, “I’m not sure what she wanted. She didn’t know herself. She was looking for someone she remembered from when she was at school there, but they had moved away It was just an idea she had.”

Mrs King drew back and sighed.

“Ah, I suppose it was a pitiful case, at that.”

She was silent, reviewing something bitter in her mind.

She said at last, “A pity she sent for you, Anastasia, and a pity you went after her. It broke your father’s heart.”

Anastasia said nothing. She felt tired, and sat down where she stood, on the hearthrug.

“Well, it’s a good thing that you came home, even if only for a visit. Your father would be glad to know that you are here, God rest his soul.”

The grandmother got up and collected her things from the table beside her. Her movements were stiff but determined. She always moved as though she knew exactly what she was doing.

“Are you ready for bed now, child?”

“Not yet, Grandma. I’ll stay by the fire a while.”

She looked up timidly.

“Grandma, what did you mean just now, ‘only for a visit’? I was really hoping to stay here for good.”

Mrs King turned to her.

“No, Anastasia. That’s out of the question. You kept the flat there, didn’t you?”

“Yes. I was in a hurry to get away. I thought I’d go back later and clear things up.”

“I’m afraid you’ve been counting too much on me. You mustn’t do that. I have no home to offer you. This is a changed house here now. I see no one whatsoever.”

She smiled with anger.

“I stopped seeing them after she ran off, when I found them asking questions of Katharine in the hall outside. I go out to mass, that’s all. When I got your telegram, I hadn’t the heart to stop you. You need a change. It’s natural that you should want to pay a visit here. But more than that, no. It might have been different, maybe, if you’d been with me when he died. But you weren’t here.”

There was no comfort in her. Anastasia gazed at her, and afterward gazed at the place where she had been standing. She watched the leaping flames till they began to die down. The red bars of the grate turned to gray and then to rusty black. There was an occasional weak flicker in the fading coals. She dozed, sitting on the rug. Shortly after midnight a light rain fell again, spit down the chimney and knocked a sizzle out of the dead fire. The little sound disturbed her and she sat up drowsily, chilled by the passing of a cold breeze that blew down the chimney and skittered soundlessly about the room. The silent dark room frightened her and she stumbled to the doorway. But the light in the hall reassured her, and so did the steady rise and fall of her grandmother’s breathing as she passed the open bedroom door on the second floor.

Anastasia slept heavily through the rest of the night, while the rain fell down outside. Some people in the city half wakened and listened for a while to the steady drumming on their dripping windowsills. Underneath the street lamps the circles of light were changed to shining pools of darkness and made crooked mirrors for faraway stars. All the clocks tolled the hours slowly, till the first spreading light of day came to show a gray morning, inside the house and out.