Jane Bowles - My Sister's Hand in Mine - The Collected Works of Jane Bowles

“I can’t any more,” Harriet sobbed in anguished tones. “I can’t … I’m old … I’m much too old.” Here she collapsed and sobbed so pitifully that Beryl, wringing her hands in grief, sprang to her side, for she was a most tenderhearted person toward those whom she loved. “You are not old … you are beautiful,” she said, blushing again, and in her heart she was thankful that Providence had granted her the occasion to console her friend in a grief-stricken moment, and to compliment her at the same time.

After a bit, Harriet’s sobbing subsided, and jumping up from the bed, she grabbed the waitress. “Beryl,” she gasped, “you must run back to the lodge right away.” There was a beam of cunning in her tear-filled eyes.

“Sure will,” Beryl answered.

“Go back to the lodge and see if there’s a room left up there, and if there is, take her grip into it so that there will be no question of her staying in my cabin. I can’t have her staying in my cabin. It’s the only place I have in the whole wide world.” The beam of cunning disappeared again and she looked at Beryl with wide, frightened eyes. “… And if there’s no room?” she asked.

“Then I’ll put her in my place,” Beryl reassured her. “I’ve got a neat little cabin all to myself that she can have and I’ll go bunk in with some dopey waitress.”

“Well, then,” said Harriet, “go, and hurry! Take her grip to a room in the upper lodge annex or to your own cabin before she has a chance to say anything, and then come straight back here for me. I can’t get through these pine groves alone … now … I know I can’t.” It did not occur to her to thank Beryl for the kind offer she had made.

“All right,” said the waitress, “I’ll be back in a jiffy and don’t you worry about a thing.” A second later she was lumbering through the drenched pine groves with shining eyes.

* * *

When Beryl came into the lodge and snatched Sadie’s grip up without a word of explanation, Sadie did not protest. Opposite her there was an open staircase which led to a narrow gallery hanging halfway between the ceiling and the floor. She watched the waitress climbing the stairs, but once she had passed the landing Sadie did not trouble to look up and follow her progress around the wooden balcony overhead.

A deep chill had settled into her bones, and she was like a person benumbed. Exactly when this present state had succeeded the earlier one Sadie could not tell, nor did she think to ask herself such a question, but a feeling of dread now lay like a stone in her breast where before there had been stirring such powerful sensations of excitement and suspense. “I’m so low,” she said to herself. “I feel like I was sitting at my own funeral.” She did not say this in the spirit of hyperbolic gloom which some people nurture to work themselves out of a bad mood, but in all seriousness and with her customary attitude of passivity; in fact, she wore the humble look so often visible on the faces of sufferers who are being treated in a free clinic. It did not occur to her that a connection might exist between her present dismal state and the mission she had come to fulfill at Camp Cataract, nor did she take any notice of the fact that the words which were to enchant Harriet and accomplish her return were no longer welling up in her throat as they had done all the past week. She feared that something dreadful might happen, but whatever it was, this disaster was as remotely connected with her as a possible train wreck. “I hope nothing bad happens…” she thought, but she didn’t have much hope in her.

Harriet slammed the front door and Sadie looked up. For the first second or two she did not recognize the woman who stood on the threshold in her dripping rubber coat and hood. Beryl was beside her; puddles were forming around the feet of the two women. Harriet had rouged her cheeks rather more highly than usual in order to hide all traces of her crying spell. Her eyes were bright and she wore a smile that was fixed and hard.

“Not a night fit for man or beast,” she shouted across to Sadie, using a voice that she thought sounded hearty and yet fashionable at the same time; she did this, not in order to impress her sister, but to keep her at a safe distance.

Sadie, instead of rushing to the door, stared at her with an air of perplexity. To her Harriet appeared more robust and coarse-featured than she had five weeks ago at the apartment, and yet she knew that such a rapid change of physiognomy was scarcely possible. Recovering, she rose and went to embrace her sister. The embrace failed to reassure her because of Harriet’s wet rubber coat, and her feeling of estrangement became more defined. She backed away.

Upon hearing her own voice ring out in such hearty and fashionable tones, Harriet had felt crazily confident that she might, by continuing to affect this manner, hold her sister at bay for the duration of her visit. To increase her chances of success she had determined right then not to ask Sadie why she had come, but to treat the visit in the most casual and natural way possible.

“Have you put on fat?” Sadie asked, at a loss for anything else to say.

“I’ll never be fat,” Harriet replied quickly. “I’m a fruit lover, not a lover of starches.”

“Yes, you love fruit,” Sadie said nervously. “Do you want some? I have an apple left from my lunch.”

Harriet looked aghast. “Now!” she exclaimed. “Beryl can tell you that I never eat at night; in fact I never come up to the lodge at night, never. I stay in my cabin. I’ve written you all about how early I get up … I don’t know anything about the lodge at night,” she added almost angrily, as though her sister had accused her of being festive.

“You don’t?” Sadie looked at her stupidly.

“No, I don’t. Are you hungry, by the way?”

“If she’s hungry,” put in Beryl, “we can go into the Grotto Room and I’ll bring her the food there. The tables in the main dining room are all set up for tomorrow morning’s breakfast.”

“I despise the Grotto,” said Harriet with surprising bitterness. Her voice was getting quite an edge to it, and although it still sounded fashionable it was no longer hearty.

“I’m not hungry,” Sadie assured them both. “I’m sleepy.”

“Well, then,” Harriet replied quickly, jumping at the opportunity, “we’ll sit here for a few minutes and then you must go to bed.”

The three of them settled in wicker chairs close to the cold hearth. Sadie was seated opposite the other two, who both remained in their rubber coats.

“I really do despise the Grotto,” Harriet went on. “Actually I don’t hang around the lodge at all. This is not the part of Camp Cataract that interests me. I’m interested in the pine groves, my cabin, the rocks, the streams, the bridge, and all the surrounding natural beauty … the sky also.”

Although the rain still continued its drumming on the roof above them, to Sadie, Harriet’s voice sounded intolerably loud, and she could not rid herself of the impression that her sister’s face had grown fatter. “Now,” she heard Harriet saying in her loud voice, “tell me about the apartment.… What’s new, how are the dinners coming along, how are Evy and Bert?”

Fortunately, while Sadie was struggling to answer these questions, which unaccountably she found it difficult to do, the stout agnostic reappeared, and Harriet was immediately distracted.

“Rover,” she called gaily across the room, “come and sit with us. My sister Sadie’s here.”

The woman joined them, seating herself beside Beryl, so that Sadie was now facing all three.

“It’s a surprise to see you up at the lodge at night, Hermit,” she remarked to Harriet without a spark of mischief in her voice.