Hilda Doolittle - Asphodel

O Walter, Walter how kind of you to have asked us here. Walter suavity, fragrance (can a man be fragrant?). O Walter you are like great dog-wood trees, men are trees sometimes. But what makes me so happy is that you don’t seem to care, don’t seem to mind our being hot and draggled and after all not asking any odd questions, not thinking anything odd, just greeting one as if it were at Mrs. de Raub’s without surprise, bursting into French (exquisite French) and then going on and on, talking as if time never existed and “would you like, Hermione, to hear some more music?” Asking her if she would like some more music, not making any intermediate enquiries for what was there else to ask? “Hermione do you think there is more of the sea in this — ruuuuuuuuuuu — or this uuuurrrr—” “How can I tell, Walter? I think the other one, no not that one, has more of the idea but you see I don’t know much about music.” “No. Sit still. don’t move. I can play things, make things come right when you are listening.” Walter. Walter. No intermediate jangling of looking as if her face needed washing not caring that her arms were full of dusty wilted peonies. “But what a lovely flat.” Everything Walter had must become by the magic of his having it, lovely. Small rooms, leading one into another, hardly anything in them, some trees outside the window. Seine. Clichy. “I live out here, rather in the country. Can’t stand too much noise.” “We loved the trip up in the little steam boat. It was so kind of you to ask us. It was so kind of you to ask us. Fayne likes coming.” “I like having them.” He liked them. Walter liked Clara and Fayne Rabb. Now in the light of Walter’s liking them, who (she asked in her arid little starved way) ever had? Walter liked them. Walter found them sympathe-tic. What did he do with the word? “You sound foreign sometimes. What is the foreign way you talk?” “I was put to school in Munich when I was three.” German. Was he German? Du bist die Run’, du bist der Friede. She must say it to get near to Walter. “My mother’s people, some of them, about a third came from south Germany.” German. The wind was making a noise and Fayne sat crouched against the further wall. There was something stronger than Fayne Rabb. Hermione had made her great discovery. It was Walter’s music.

But this is worse than anything I have ever done or seen or thought of. Sitting quite still and as if something back of me were just simply using me, using me to get to Walter. Walter with his head bent in the dusk and Fayne sobbing (yes she’s actually crying) and Mrs. Rabb, poor Clara, sitting white and still and getting more white and being braver than Fayne really who was crying. I have to endure. It’s almost as if you, Clara, understood what I was, am going through. No, its no use. Things just don’t happen anyhow. Walter’s grandfather invented the Morse code and my father is the Gart formula and poor Bertrand. Things don’t just happen. There is a sort of aristocracy of the spirit. But you are stronger than I and O Walter poor little Walter they started you when you were three. Things don’t just happen. Art is sweating and going blind with agony. If I weren’t so sorry, didn’t feel you so much Walter, I couldn’t myself sit so still here, not saying anything afraid lest for some little breath I might move in some way, get out of key with something and the message wouldn’t get through. Morse code. I am a wire simply. But one doesn’t really choose casual instruments. But you Walter, they put you to school when you were three and don’t you see, all my life it’s killed me, this that they didn’t teach me something when I was three. But it doesn’t matter. Things don’t just happen and if I can’t play it makes it better for you, for just this moment. I am crucified for you and you for the thing beyond me that is getting through to you. Is this your own music Walter? But it isn’t music. Light outside, still able to see, glim and glim and another glim for someone was lighting up and they called Walter (the little children in the street — he said) le forgeron— laughing so charmed when he said it “they call me the blacksmith here.” Blacksmith that was what Walter was to ordinary people. O white and strong and powerful like great white breakers. Your face is alabaster. You are more beautiful than anything one could ever have imagined. It’s rather terrible Fayne crying like that. I couldn’t think she’d do it. But it’s worse, much worse, much more triumphant for us, quiet, who have Morse codes and Gart formulas to fall back on, Walter. . “Are you tired?” “Walter.” “Are you tired?” “Walter.” “I just thought for a moment—” “What did you think, Walter?” “I don’t know. That second movement. I wish you would come to Norway with me in the summer.” “Walter.” “I got the last bit and of course I’m going to get tea. No. Don’t move. I have everything. In the dark. Hermione. I thought you might like the other half better. Which movement did you like better? Debussy liked the andante but you said it was the sea grinding at low tide and got (did you say?) on your nerves, felt (you said) wrecks and didn’t you say it was like the little Mermaid. I have a drawing a friend of mine made. A man in London. Rallac. He is French. Likes London. Does fairy tale illustrations. Everyone knows him. I have a concert there next winter. Will send you to see them. I have done more work lately.” “Walter.” “I should get up and light the candles. Lights. We have electricity. Are your friends still here? What’s happened to them?” “They went looking for your little bathroom. Fayne Rabb has been crying.” “Crying? Whats she been crying for? What’s the matter with her? You’re not crying?” ” “O no, Walter.”

Of course the thing is terrible but it isn’t your fault and it isn’t my fault and it’s got to be borne. Windows facing east, west and south. Southern windows. No, there is no southern window in this music. Giving us little cakes and calling downstairs in exquisite French and someone running up, his old concierge he said, going out again, coming back with a beautiful shiny loaf like a loaf in a Rallac drawing he said. He is fond of the Rallacs and says we must see them in London. Fairy tales and going on now, having made the tea himself and some little radishes appearing with butter on a leaf and calling it supper with red wine afterwards. We had forgotten he had strips of white chicken and lettuce leaves, always had something on hand and started calling it tea. But it was supper now with the candles making blood chalices of the deep wide goblets that must do, he said as he hadn’t any proper wine-glasses. He didn’t (he said) really live here, just worked here. He had — friends up the road. Would she come to see them, some friends of his. Yes, she would be glad to come to see them, glad to see any friends of his. What kind of friends? A man who made blue, blue sea drawings and drew illustrations (for pot boilers, Walter said) for Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. Midsummer. But it was winter. It was winter when Walter played. Cold and chill and the sound of the notes was the last drop of an icicle that started to melt in the spring, melting, it must melt but it decided not to melt and broke off a little crystal bead and fell down, down, down and broke with an infinitude of sound, the lightest sharp cold ice note at the top of the piano, making the whole world vibrate. Red wine. The wine was like a frozen ruby, everything static where Walter was. Morse code, going on and on and on. Everything he did was written carefully away somewhere in a big book. There was a huge book that God turned to. “Ah this was Walter playing. It’s all written down here. It was the (what was the date?) about the middle of July, end of July. Late peonies. Lilacs all gone. Must have been about then for there were cherries on carts and the rabbits along the Seine on the left bank were chewing full headed lupin grass. Must have been there. Lucky to have books. My books. I am God. Look, here the candles blew askew in the wind and Walter went on and on and people collected on the pavement outside but he didn’t mind even when a small boy shouted (till he was suddenly quelled by the little crowd that had collected) ‘forgeron.’ He is certainly writing things for me, dots and dashes, things that I and only a few people (Hermione) can read. And there is Hermione knowing all about it. Something to have a Hermione, a negative instrument. May find later use for it. Fayne Rabb? Something gone wrong? How did I make that mistake? Clara better Whet.” Go on and on and on. What would God make of the page he would read, turning back, summer 1912 (was it?) long ago. Walter is still playing in the mind of God. Hermione is still sitting stiff and fearing lest she fall forward or fall sideways. Not backward. Nice little room wall with nice paper. Freshly papered. He told them all about it and how he had hesitated. He seemed to care so much about his wall paper, a sort of rose grey and his tumblers that weren’t the right ones for the wine that is frozen forever. That is Walter. Fire frozen. Suppose you melt the fire that is frozen. But you can’t. The thing is simply fire-frozen, frozen fire and no one can help the thing. It just is. There’s no use Clara your asking him to play Chopin but he will if you ask him. Why does he do the things we ask? It seems so odd, as if suddenly you should take it into your head to ask an ocean breaker to stop for a moment and play something, say Chopin. Well, there it would know how to do it. The ocean breaker would understand Chopin. It would fall at the right moment and make of itself a miniature little lake and you would see in a miniature little lake just all that. All that, that Walter was playing. Still he was too big for this; the breaker remembered, chafed all the time that it had plunged over a rock, got caught and was now the tiniest and most perfect little play lake. It would remember that it was part of the sea suddenly and when the tide came in it would flow out again and be lost again. “Would you rather have the window shut? Perhaps we’d better. Sometimes the gendarme complains that we collect too many people.” He shut the window, but Hermione was sure the thing that Walter was, still went through the window. He said he hated people but he closed the window softly, apologetically almost you might have thought. He said he loathed people and he smiled with his Byronic charm when he said the little boys shouted “forgeron” at him always. Going on and on and on. O it’s so late Walter. Why did you start again. Couldn’t you have let us off, let us somehow go home somewhere? Where is home? Eugenia wouldn’t understand this but Clara is bearing up beautifully. Clara has something “home” about her, making Walter’s little supper so sweet, presiding like an elderberry bush, Clara. Really rather like a flowering stiff wooded bush. Strong underneath. Clara. Clara not breaking. Clara even a little impatient with Fayne Rabb. Did Fayne think they were going to think of her when before their very eyes, an ocean breaker took form and white and white and white with its coat off and its sleeves rolled up and looking absolutely right with its collar loosened about its beautiful Byronic face. This is how beauty can look when God thought, “well, Helios, Apollo might take form again. Who for a father? Well someone in the background. That old Morse code fellow might do for a grandfather.” God thought it all out, thinking carefully. Sometimes He made mistakes. Fayne should have been — who? What? Did it matter. The candles blew straight up now that Walter closed the window. “You must be tired.” “I? I’m never tired.” Why did he say that, brushing back his hair (short hair) a little loosening, pulling at his collar. God. What fingers.