Conrad Aiken - Great Circle

Bertha Berty

lifting from the dark the open suitcase the nightgown holding it up laughing but it is spotted dirty a large spot he is laughing can’t be helped you don’t mind do you what can I say nothing say nothing but turn away sadly in the hotel room no it’s all right perfectly all right but sad I am going up the hill on the grass behind juniper trees birches the road dusty she is coming up the other side yes there she is look it is who is it not Berty no Molly no a girl with red hair comes through the oak trees beautiful loves me puts out her hand kisses me we are kissing become one face floating in air with wings one fused face with wings Turner sunset and this and this and this and this and this WINGbeat and WINGbeat where whirled and well where whirled and well where whirled and well—

To come upward from the dark world, through the mild shafts of light, as a swimmer in long and curved periphery from a dive; from the whirled and atomic or the swift and sparkling through the slower and more sleekly globed; effortless, but with a drag at the heels of consciousness — to float upward, not perpendicularly, but at an angle, arms at sides, turning slightly on one’s axis, like a Blake angel, through the long pale transverse of light — with the sounds, too, the bell-sounds, the widening rings of impalpable but deep meaning, as if someone far off with spheral mouth said, Time — and the goldfish mouth released its bubble, and closed, and then again opened to say, Time — to come upward thus slowly revolving, thus slowly twisting, the eye scarcely opened and almost indifferent to light, but opening more widely as the light with obscure and delicate changes teased at the eyelid, teased at the sleepy curiosity — and the textures too, the warm or soft, the wrinkled or knotted, those that caressed whitely and obliquely, and those also that withdrew, or focussed slowly in a single sharp point and pressed — to float upward like this, from plane to plane, sound to sound, meaning to meaning — the attitudes changing one into another as the hands shifted, the feet shifted, the breathing altered or the hearing cleared — from turbulent to troubled, from troubled to serene — but with the bell-sound nearer and nearer, as if the head were emerging into a glistening ring, and as if over the edges of this ring came the words like bubbles, at first meaningless, and then with half-meanings, and at last — not with meanings precisely but with gleams, as of fins that turned away in a flash and vanished—

To move upward like this, surrounded by one’s own speech, and continuously more closely surrounded by one’s own body, the hand heavy on the heart, the heart beating insistently in the ear, that which a moment ago was the chime of a dream become the rhythm of the pulse, the distorted faces and filaments of the dream becoming only the fluttering defense of the eyelashes against the square of light from the window — all the somatic disturbances, as of cramped elbow and bent knee and cold hand and stifled nostril, which were a moment since so marvelously translated into wastes of snow or ugly corners of rock or difficult escapes from social awkwardness, now again assuming the simple physical reality, against which the dream had fought, as it were, a rear-guard action — to say again, after all this obscure welter of images and spaces, this kaleidoscope of times, “here,” “now,” “time,” “I”—I that was there, twisted, twisted into that strange shape, am here again, but with a queer difference—

The confusion fell slowly away, in ebbing rings of sound, he looked more firmly at the window, putting one hand up to touch the brass knob at the head of the bed above him, he looked and listened, and knew that the sound was the bell of Memorial Hall. How many strokes he had missed, or heard only in his sleep, he couldn’t know, but he counted four. Four. Not in the morning, it was almost that when he had fallen asleep. It must be five or six in the afternoon. The light from the square of window at the foot of the bed was that of winter twilight, and lamplight, mixed — cold natural gray tinged with artificial orange: and something in it, too, suggested the pale reflections of snow. Thursday. Another day gone, soundlessly gone, an agony got through without pain, as if he had been anaesthetized. What a good thing. And to wake up, or come to, comparatively refreshed, comparatively calm! But how refreshed? He explored dry lips with his tongue, tasted the salt, opened and shut his mouth experimentally, and found himself thirsty. Turning his head from side to side on the pillow, he felt no headache, or only a very slight one, at the base of the skull. He looked at his watch. Seven o’clock.

But it was difficult to get up, if one didn’t know what one got up for. Or at such an hour, so dislocated, in such a place, after such a series of nights, with so much of oneself gone, so much of one’s secret gone. Idiot! You have confessed: your virtue is lost. Only the reticent man retains his virtue. But was virtue precisely the word? Or if not, what was it? He tried to remember the details: Michelangelo, the sea, Melville, the Gurnett, the secret of intimacy — intimate secrets. Sleep was better, or perhaps laughter.

He laughed lightly, almost gaily, but as if without meaning, and turned his head toward the door that led to Bill’s study; then cut the laugh short and said “Bill.” There was no answer. He heard the study clock ticking. He said it again, and listened again, and still getting no answer clasped his hands under his head. So it all came to this. After all the agony, all the confusion, all the death, one came to this. One awoke on a strange bed, at twilight, and found that suddenly everything was — peace. No longer a need to run, to hurry, to evade, to escape. No problems to solve. No people to avoid. No single person to hate. Except perhaps oneself. And why bother to hate oneself? Why bother? This curious amiable little collocation of wishes and repugnances — but more amiable than hateful — decidedly more amiable — with his hands clasped under his head and a fixed small smile — and the sounds of the Memorial Hall bell agreeably in his ear — why hate him? Or had it been the Unitarian Church. No, it was Memorial Hall. But was it still snowing?

He groaned, and heaved himself off the bed, and went to the window, which was six inches open at the bottom — that must have been done by Bill. A soft current of rainwashed air flowed in coolly over the sill, it was raining a little, and when he looked down at the street lamps and the College Yard he saw that most of the snow was gone. The slope of the hill towards the Union was white, but a white soddened and darkened; the street was cleared; only at the sides were the piled and hardened drifts. And the sound of the snow shovels, scraping the rain-loosened snow — the raucous scraping and chopping, the ringing of steel on stone—

The face that looked back at him, from the lamplit bathroom mirror, was pale, the cheeks pale and a little sunken, but it faced him steadily and calmly, and the eye was not as bloodshot as he might have expected. Nor did the hands, which supported him on the cold marble, tremble, though he felt weak. You, Andrew Cather — old One-eye Cather. You in the flesh again, redivivus; you emaciated and with a hangover; but with that soft-clear sort of hangover which a fried egg and a stiff whisky would put right. Clear-headed, amused, detached — and with a queer deep historical sense. Wash your face in cold water. Dip your face in the cold green basin of water. Your hair too. The time-worn temples. And the three-days’ growth of brown stubble, so long as to be getting soft. And shave, with Bill’s dirty little brush and rusty safety razor. The little ridged clots of soaped hair, floating testimonially in the water, the dirt-streaked water. And a borrowed collar from Bill’s bureau.