Patrick White - The Aunt's Story

‘Go, hang out your soul to dry. You Russians were always damp,’ replied Mrs Rapallo.

Theodora did not know if the General slammed his door then or later, or where the retreat of Mrs Rapallo began, grating on the darkness her slow and solemn rags. Now the night was denser. Emotions had trodden into the carpet the slight white rime which was what remained of the nautilus. Theodora herself felt considerably reduced.

THEODORA Goodman began in time to knit a garment in grey wool.

‘What is your great work, Miss Goodman?’ asked Mademoiselle Marthe. ‘We should be interested to know.’

‘Perhaps it will be a jumper,’ said Theodora Goodman. ‘But I have not yet made up my mind.’

‘How right you are,’ Mademoiselle Berthe sighed.

Because the Demoiselles Bloch were quite determined in their projects, which often failed.

Doilies, for example, doilies, they said, sometimes have intentions of their own.

The Demoiselles Bloch stirred their hair with crochet hooks. They were perplexed.

But Theodora Goodman continued to knit her grey wool, in the angle of a kind of little wintergarden, on one side of which pressed the jardin exotique , and on the other the sea. The corner of the little wintergarden in which she sat was transparent, but it was not dangerous. Flies died frequently, but on the whole it was sympathique .

‘ Oui, il est tout à fait sympathique, votre petit coin ,’ said Monsieur Durand to the Anglaise who stayed.

Because this was one of the gifts of Monsieur Durand, to fit the landscape to the guest.

Theodora Goodman did not protest. Just as she had not chosen, particularly, that particular petit coin . But it suited. And she watched her hands knit. She listened to the stiff palms. The forms of the jardin exotique pushed upward endlessly. And on the sea side, the waves folded and unfolded, also endlessly, their receiving and rejecting hands.

Theodora Goodman drew out a long grey stream of wool, out of an undistinguished bag.

It is easy and contenting, she confessed, to be a chair.

But she was not altogether deceived. She counted the bodies of the dead flies. She waited to be pushed around.

She began to hear the approach of Katina Pavlou into the little conservatory. The approach of Katina Pavlou cut through the long grey strands of sleep that knit together the Hôtel du Midi after déjeuner . For after déjeuner the Hôtel du Midi was only held together by sleep. Into the grey woollen fuzz and buzz of afternoon sleep fell the first white phrase of Katina Pavlou’s approach.

Now Katina Pavlou walked without direction. Her eyes were dark. She had written, Theodora knew, in the blue cahier that she had bought from the papeterie beside the post office, she had most certainly written:

Your voice is the first velvet violin

that my heart beats against

in so much sadness wrapped

waiting for you my love to take.

Almost certainly Katina Pavlou had written in purple ink. Her hands were stained. Her eyes were cloudy with the words, and with the emotions that still welled up.

Theodora Goodman sat and knitted the long grey soothing strands of wool that did not altogether soothe. Theodora loved Katina Pavlou. She waited to be pushed around. She could feel Katina laying the hot palms of her hands on the window pane, as she looked not particularly at the sea, waiting for what. It was a grey day. Mist hung about the sea, tatters of mist on the hills and the sharp spikes of the jardin exotique . Theodora felt Katina lay her hot cheek against the mist. Her skin drank the moisture which did not satisfy. She waited. Outside in the garden the aloe had not yet shrivelled into its legend of death.

Oh, the afternoons, the afternoons, Katina Pavlou would have sighed.

In the useful pocket of her dress Theodora Goodman had the letter from Lou. Lou was writing in purple ink. Lou’s letter was heavy with other afternoons.

… algebra, Aunt Theo, is my chiefest torture. I cannot think in x and y . It is doubtful whether I shall ever learn. But whatever Father says, the nuns are nice. He says that Mother is wrong to send a girl to a convent with a lot of micks. But I cannot see, from experience, that there is anything wrong with nuns. In fact, I love Sister Mary Perpetua. She has the loveliest, saddest face. On my birthday she gave me a bag of aniseed balls and a little wooden cross. Sometimes in the afternoon we sit together, and watch the boats, and then I feel that I shall never ever have such a friendship ever again.

When I leave here and go to Audley, it is different. I think parents are difficult. Last holidays the MacKenzies came to stay. Mr MacKenzie is now quite red, and once fell down. Mrs MacKenzie told Mother I would be better if I lost my sallowness, and filled out, though thin and ugly women wear their clothes more easily. Sometimes the holidays at Audley are rather long. It is not the mornings, but the afternoons. Then I can only hope I shall be free …

Theodora felt the letter from Lou crumpled hot and electric in her pocket. She remembered the violet sparks from trams in the late, grey, heavy afternoons.

Now she heard Katina Pavlou, round another corner in the wintergarden, and several palms, she heard her turning magazines. She heard the leaves of magazines hesitate and stick in the thick and steamy afternoon. She heard also the other presence begin to swell.

‘Ah, there you are, my dabchick,’ Theodora heard.

‘Here I am and nowhere else,’ Katina Pavlou sighed.

‘A little pale, but not less interesting.’

‘I am nothing,’ Katina Pavlou said quite firmly. ‘I know exactly what I am, General Sokolnikov. I know myself. I know.’

She turned the pages of the magazine. Theodora knew that the General was about to bounce. There were all the first indications of elasticity.

‘I doubt,’ he said, ‘whether my moorhen knows the shape of her own ear.’

‘My ear? Now you are being ridiculous, Alyosha Sergei,’ Katina Pavlou said.

She laughed. It fell light and white into the afternoon.

‘It is most earnest. See? Now you are touching it, you are touching your ignorance, but you cannot touch it away.’

‘My ear is an ear,’ Katina Pavlou said.

‘Your ear is a fascinating organ. It is far more interesting than that stupid American magazine.’

‘How funny you are, Alyosha Sergei,’ Katina Pavlou said. ‘This magazine is full of people doing things, in factories, aeroplanes, and diving suits.’

‘Alas, you are still impressed by the age of motion. You are a child, Katina Pavlou. And I am old.’

‘I am sixteen,’ Katina Pavlou said.

But it fell with no less melancholy, its small bell. Theodora Goodman counted the bodies of dead flies.

‘You are sixteen,’ the General murmured.

Theodora realized that his sigh was scented. Without seeing, she knew that the smile of Sokolnikov had been embalmed.

‘If I were to give you my life, child?’

‘Your — your life !’

‘You laugh?’

‘But dear Alyosha Sergei, you say such funny things.’

Theodora Goodman, under the dry spasmodic palms, knew that her own laughter, which she held inside her, hurt.

‘This is disastrous,’ said Sokolnikov, all steam, because he wanted still to show himself something that perhaps he could not show.

‘It is the unseasonable weather,’ he said. ‘This morning in the bathroom my own voice cannoned off the wall. The glass from which I was about to gargle shattered in my hand.’

‘It is lovely weather, but sad,’ said Katina Pavlou.