Siri Hustvedt - The Enchantment of Lily Dahl

“Do you think your book will be finished soon?” Lily stared at the huge manuscript on Mabel’s desk.

“I’m beginning to think I’ll never finish. I’m beginning to think I can’t finish, or that it will end up finishing me. Do you understand?”

Lily shook her head. She turned to the keys on the pine table. “What are those keys to?” As soon as she said it, Lily regretted the question.

Mabel was silent. Then she said, “They’re the keys to a place where I once lived. I keep them there to torment myself.” She smiled.

Lily narrowed her eyes. She didn’t believe Mabel was insincere, and yet this speech had a prepared quality to it. “You know,” Lily said, “sometimes you talk like a person in a book.”

Mabel eyed Lily for a second, then laughed. “That’s what happens when you read too many.” She paused and said, “I dreamt about the play last night, that I auditioned and was given the part of Bottom the Weaver.”

“Bad casting,” Lily said.

“Well, that’s what I thought in the dream, a part of me rebelled, thought it was unfair and ridiculous. Then I decided it was a good part, and I’d make the best of it. It was one of those wandering dreams, you know, with hallways and stairs and doors that go on and on.”

Lily nodded. “I’ve had those.”

“I was carrying around the Ass head. At first it was very light, and then it got heavier and heavier.”

Lily imagined the papier-mâché head she had seen Mickey Berner working on in the prop room for Oren Fink, and she saw the unpainted form in Mabel’s arms.

“Then it started to bleed.”

“The head?”

Mabel nodded.

Lily changed the image in her mind to a real donkey head with fur. “Was it horrible?”

“No, it was just a fact.” Mabel removed her reading glasses and let them hang from their chain around her neck. “You were in the dream,” she said. “You were in one of the rooms. I didn’t know which. I couldn’t find you.”

Lily didn’t meet Mabel’s eyes. She felt embarrassed for some reason and stared at the bookshelf. After a couple of seconds she said, “Sometimes I remember a little thing, like a picture or part of a conversation, and I think it really happened, and I try to remember, and then I realize it was a dream.”

Mabel straightened her gray blouse and began muttering to herself. “Lost youth, of course, bottom, blood. It’s absurd, really, no subtlety at all.”

Lily had no idea what Mabel was talking about. The woman leaned back in her chair. “There was a man standing outside Berman’s for a long time last night. He was under the awning in the shadows, so I couldn’t get a good look at him, but he parked himself there and didn’t leave for a long time.”

“I heard someone,” Lily said.

“I was sitting by my window, as I often do when I can’t sleep or work, just staring out into the street. Usually there’s not much to see, a few drunk kids, a car or two, that deaf man riding by on his bicycle, but last night this man was there, holding vigil under the awning, and I couldn’t help thinking he wanted something. He looked up at me several times, or so I thought. It’s a wide street. I never saw his face. Then I fell asleep in the chair. When I woke up, he was gone, but our neighbor was there, standing in his window just like the other night, without the musical accompaniment. He stood there for, oh, five minutes, and I thought to myself, something’s finally happening on this street, not an event, exactly, but the preamble to an event — two men just watching and waiting. There’s something in it.” Mabel looked at Lily intently for several seconds. “He’s very good-looking, isn’t he?” She paused. “Our neighbor.”

Lily stared back at Mabel to see if the comment was directed at her or was just a general statement. She couldn’t tell. “I guess so.”

Mabel smiled at Lily. “I’ve always cultivated male beauty. I don’t discriminate. I never had a type. I liked them short and tall, thin and stocky — not fat, although there was a fat man once I found very sexy. Of course he was brilliant, really brilliant, and bulk suited him, like Ben Jonson — a big brain in a big body. Dark, light, bearded, shaven, muscular or smooth and skinny.” Mabel sighed. “I’ve fallen for them all. In general, I suppose, stupidity has always alienated me, but there was a stupid boy I met in an elevator many, many years ago that made me weak in the knees.”

“How did you know he was stupid?”

“I found out, my dear.”

Lily opened her mouth at Mabel. “Were you in love a lot?”

“I was always in love.”

Lily laughed. She looked at the manuscript. “Is it in the book?”

“Yes.”

“Will you let me read it sometime?”

“If you’re very good,” Mabel said.

“Last night,” Lily said. “Did he see you looking at him?”

“Which one?”

“Either one,” Lily said.

Mabel smiled. “Why?”

“I don’t know, just because.”

Mabel laughed. “Because why?” she said. Mabel laughed more, and when she laughed, she wrinkled her nose and her eyes looked very small.

Lily laughed, too.

“Why are we laughing?” Mabel choked out the words.

“Because why,” Lily said and laughed harder.

Mabel laughed until she coughed and gasped.

Lily stood up and pounded Mabel on the back. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. It depresses me to think this old carcass can’t even stand up to a good joke. It’s pathetic.”

“It wasn’t good. It wasn’t even funny,” Lily said.

“Oh, it was funny. We just don’t know why it was funny.” Mabel moved her eyebrows up and down.

“Don’t start that again,” Lily said.

The two remained silent for about a minute. It would have seemed overlong had they not laughed so hard together, but Lily liked that pause. The room was warm, and the heat seemed to make Mabel’s perfume stronger. Its sweet smell mingled with the dust, and the sun shone through the open curtains onto the coffee table. She concluded that Edward Shapiro had gone to the window to look for her, and this made her glad.

Lily heard a sound, looked over and saw that Mabel had slumped down in her chair. Lily leaned toward her. The woman’s eyelids fluttered. She gasped and looked wildly around her. Her hands trembled. “Help me!”

“My God, Mabel!” Lily grabbed the woman’s shoulders. “What’s the matter?”

“Lysander, help me!” Mabel cried. “Do thy best.”

Lily let go of the woman’s shoulders. “Jesus, Mabel. You scared me to death!”

Mabel straightened up in the chair and adjusted her blouse, which had slid up around her waist. She pressed one lock of hair behind her ear, and then with an expression both prim and satisfied, she said, “Good, now you scare me to death.”

* * *

Lily looked up at the roof of the Arts Guild and added a steeple where there wasn’t one. The real steeple had been missing for as long as she could remember. Maybe it had been blown off in a tornado, or maybe someone had decided that acting and actors did not belong in a building that looked like a house of God even if it wasn’t, and had hacked off the spire along with its cross. Running up the steps, Lily heard talking, hammering and laughter coming through the open doors. Then someone shouted, “Quiet,” and the noise stopped. In the vestibule Lily looked toward the stage and saw Martin Petersen sitting under a spotlight that turned his blond hair white and erased the color of his eyes. He looks happy, she thought, happy to be the center of attention even for a moment. Then Martin noticed her and his expression changed. He stared hard at her for several seconds and then nodded, as if she should know what he meant by this, as if they had some secret understanding, but Lily ignored him and looked away. “Thanks, Martin,” someone yelled from behind her. The spot switched off, and the room returned to ordinary, dull brightness.