Conrad Aiken - Conversation; or, Pilgrims' Progress

She smiled at him, a smile that wasn’t a smile at all, added the neatly folded shirt, with a sort of unnecessary emphasis, to the little pile of freshly laundered linen on the corner of the kitchen table, then turned, before he could speak, and presented the pile to him, one hand on top (the wedding ring, and the pearl), the other at the bottom — it was of course the mute but eloquent evidence of her slavery. Her eyes looked up at him with cold amusement — but, no, not amusement, they were too hostile, too beautifully feline for that — it was almost hate. Good old Enid!

“And would you mind,” she said, “taking these up and putting them on my bed? And I think there’s someone at the door. It’s probably Mr. Peterson with the vegetables, and we don’t need any.”

“All right. I’m going for the mail.”

“In that case, perhaps you could take Buzzer along with you for a walk, if it isn’t too much trouble. I think it’s too cold for her to go in wading.”

“Oh, no trouble at all!”

“Thanks.”

He looked steadily into the level eyes for any sign of a relenting, but none came; the exchange between them was hard, unflinching, motionless, almost unbreathing; and in the pause before he turned away he felt that even as he looked at her, with his love for her still intact and vivid, she was being borne backward and away from him by her own will — exactly, he thought, as if she were the figurehead of a ship, swept dizzily away from him, and with just that look of sea-cold inscrutability. Or the stone eyelessness of a statue.

Damned handsome, he thought — dropping the laundry on the bed, and giving it a pat — damned handsome, even when she was angry — but jumping Judas, was there to be no end to it? No end to it whatever? Better an explosion than this everlasting smoldering, better a pitched battle than this guerrilla warfare, this merciless sharpshooting and sniping — and, good god, what a sharpshooter she was! She did him credit, she certainly had blood in her eye, she was the very devil!

“No vegetables today, Mr. Peterson. No, nothing today! Is it going to rain?”

“Well, kind of hard to say. Seems’s if it might burn off, but you never know, with the wind in the east!”

“No, looks kind of dark.”

The green truck with its piled boxes of cauliflowers, crates of pumpkins, crates of cranberries, was gone around the far corner at the turn of the street, under the bare dripping poplars; fog spat on the stone doorstep at his feet, fog dripped on the heaped leaves; and into the garden, as he went around the front of the house to enter it in search of Buzzer, the indiscreet dream about Nora once more slyly accompanied him.

The indiscreet dream — the fleshly, the sensual, the whirling, the Rubenslike — But a strange figure was standing at the foot of the garden, by the river wall, had just come up the steps there from the Town Landing, a little man with a shovel over his shoulder — a tramp, a gnome, a furry-faced gnome, who hobbled forward in trousers much too big for him. The trousers were held up by a string tied round the waist, the short shapeless coat had apparently been made out of a dirty piece of gunnysack, even the little eyes, above the dirty whiskers, looked dirty — obviously the creature had come straight out of the ground, out of the earth, with the caked earth still on him. In the middle of the lawn he stood still, appeared to be mute, darting furtive glances, weasel-like, to right and left, then jerked a quick thumb toward the pump house.

“I clean ’em out,” he said.

“What?”

“Name’s Pepoon, they all know me. I come to clean ’em out. Want yours cleaned? I live over the river, go ’round to all the houses regular, Bill Pepoon.”

He jerked his hand again toward the pump house, an animal-like gesture, blinked the gray eyes under rusty eyebrows.

“Want me to clean it? I got bags to take it away.”

“Oh, I see. But I haven’t got one.”

“Y’ain’t got one? What’s that ?”

Letting the shovel fall easily from his shoulder, he pointed with it once more toward the pump house, incredulous.

“It’s a pump.”

“A pump?”

“Yes, a pump. Come and see it.”

He opened the door, showed the little motor on the oil-stained floor, gleaming, motionless, an oilcan beside it, the red wooden pump shaft upright in its groove. The gnome stared at it, unconvinced.

“Oh. Y’ain’t got one.”

“No, it’s a pump.”

“Well, if y’ever want me, name’s Pepoon, over the river, let me know. Know anybody else wants one cleaned?”

“Thanks — no, I don’t.”

“Cracky, a pump. And it looks just like—! All right.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No trouble at all. Good-by.”

“Good-by.”

He hesitated for a moment, casting an appraising eye at the Purington house, as if estimating his chances there too, but now a little skeptical, then shouldered his shovel again, and was gone almost at a trot around the corner of the woodshed and down into the lane that led to the Town Landing, where presumably he had his “bags.” His “bags”! Good god, what a conception. He was all of a piece, an earth-god, and an earth-god of the very lowest — and best! — order. A miracle, no less, and probably inspired by the lilacs. Willed by the lilacs! A terrestrial empathy.

“Who was that funny man?”

Buzzer, squatted by the woodshed door, had arranged her collection of white quartz pebbles in a neat circle, like a crown, on the grass.

“Well, you know, Buzzer, I sort of think it was a god, I think it must have been an earth-god, just popped up out of the earth, like a jack-in-the-box!”

“He wasn’t a god! How could he be a god! He was too dirty.… Did you see my pebbles? This is kingy, and this is queeny, and I’ve got the king and queen of the toenail shells.”

“So you have. And what about a walk, my pet, to get the mail.”

“The mail?”

She raised the blue eyes, questioning, abstracted, looked beyond him, to the ends of the earth, as if considering the ultimate of all ultimate problems, then scrambled quickly to her feet, flapping the small hands, fin like.

“All right, but don’t you touch them, now!”

“No, I won’t touch them.”

“And can we walk to the golf-links road and go to the secret place?”

“Yes, perhaps, if there’s time, we can go to the secret place.”

“And eat a checkerberry leaf?”

“And eat a checkerberry leaf.”

“And look for Indian Pipes?”

“And look for Indian Pipes.”

“You mustn’t just say everything I say!”

“‘ Blueberry, bayberry, checkerberry, cherry — goldenrod, silverrod, jackin-the-pulpit-berry —’”

“‘ Mayflower, columbine, lady’s-slipper, aster — which is the flower for your mistress, master?’ Ho ho — and milkweed pods full of silk—”

“You can make a silk bed for kingy and queeny.”

“If they aren’t all gone. Do you think they’ll be all gone?”

“I don’t know, my pet. It’s pretty late, you know, and all those seeds have to get busy, and find homes for themselves before spring comes — ha, and this is something you didn’t know — I read it in a book.”

“What, daddy?”

“That seeds have hearts. Did you know that?”

“Hearts that beat ?”

“Well, I’m not so sure about their beating, but they’re hearts, just the same. A little teeny tiny heart, and it’s called a corculum—”

“A corculum! Ho ho! What a funny word!”

“Yes, it means ‘little heart,’ see? So I guess you’ve got a corculum.”