Patrick White - The Aunt's Story

‘I am afraid,’ said Lieselotte, ‘that I may do you violence if I stay.’

Hell has its words, Theodora heard, as she trod deeper water beneath her brass bar. But it is too late to hate, she sighed, it is far too late. Far away a mouth of glass bit the darkness. This way words finally shatter, or the envelope that protects human personality.

‘Miss Goodman, oh, Miss Goodman,’ Theodora heard.

Words sucking her back to the surface struck her with a dry gust. She sat up straight in bed. She was oblong and straight. Suddenness had made her function on a hinge.

‘Miss Goodman, something has happened,’ said Lieselotte. ‘You must come.’

But she was still hinged.

‘You must come at once. Something terrible,’ Lieselotte said. ‘You must come quick.’

How beautiful she is now, Theodora saw. As if some terror has melted wax. Fear flowed in Lieselotte’s transparent face. Her gestures and her hair streamed. But her eyes were a dark, fixed terror. Then it is, said Theodora, something terrible and strange. And the air is branching, she saw.

‘Yes, do please come quickly,’ Lieselotte cried. ‘Do not you understand? I tell you, I tell you there is a fire.’

Now, in fact, you could touch the grey branches of the air. Paper roses were dying on their stems. Theodora felt for conviction and her slippers.

‘Can’t you see?’ Lieselotte cried. ‘The fire!’

Terror was streaming on her wax hair. But Theodora’s gestures were wood. She watched the revival of roses, how they glowed, glowing and blowing like great clusters of garnets on the live hedge.

‘Oh, please, please, let us do something,’ Lieselotte said.

‘Have you informed the pompiers ?’

Because Theodora Goodman had not yet caught. She was filled with a solid purpose. Her handkerchief sachet must be reached. Whether or not the pompiers , and Lieselotte’s recitative.

‘I have never seen fire run,’ Lieselotte cried. ‘It ran across the carpet. If I could find him. After the lamp broke. If I could see his face. After the words smashed, in a moment of glass. After the fire. And now, Wetherby, Miss Goodman, Wetherby is dead. I have killed him.’

Theodora Goodman had to reach the handkerchief sachet.

‘There is a garnet ring,’ she said, ‘that was left me by my mother.’

She took in her hand the small cool stone.

‘Then we can do nothing?’ asked the dead voice of Lieselotte.

Her voice was grey smoke.

‘Do? Yes, we shall do. Lieselotte?’ Theodora called.

We shall do, Theodora heard her own thin voice promising smoke. But where and who was Lieselotte was also problematical.

Theodora trod through smoke.

‘Lieselotte?’ she called.

But she was calling fire.

She was alone now, in the passage of a hotel, of which wallpaper rejected a long imposed flatness. Walls whipped. All the violence of fire was contained in the hotel. It tossed, whether hatefully or joyfully, it tossed restraint to smoke. Theodora ran, breathing the joy or hatred of fire. She was not certain where. She heard the desperate cockroach pop under foot. Her own report, she supposed, would not be so round or, authorities said, final.

Then the night was thick with quiet stars.

‘Ahhhhh,’ said the voices. ‘ En voilà encore un .’

Theodora suspected regret.

She saw the white faces, or the crowd face, breathing the fire. There are moments when faces are interchangeable. It was one of those. Sparks shot and fell. The flat, flower faces bent on their emotions, swaying to receive some strange pollen of fire.

‘ Il n’y a pas d’ enfants lá-dedans ?’ asked the crowd.

Because children are best.

‘ Il n’y a pas de mères ?’

When the wind ran, they shivered with regret or fear.

Theodora Goodman put the garnet ring on its usual finger, below the joint which showed signs of stiffening with arthritis. It was rather an ugly little ring, but part of the flesh. In the presence of the secret, leaping emotions of the fire she was glad to have her garnet.

‘Mademoiselle Good-man! Mademoiselle Good-man!’ she heard.

Then the crowd still had its personal moments. It was the Demoiselles Bloch. They were wearing identical raincoats, and their hair.

‘We have lost everything, everything,’ said Mademoiselle Marthe, as if she took a pleasure in confirming what had always been bound to happen.

‘But you have yourselves,’ suggested Theodora.

‘ Oui, c’est vrai ,’ Mademoiselle Berthe said, perplexed. ‘ Mais vous savez, quand on perd ses affaires …’

The Demoiselles Bloch were sure that even fire conspires.

When the roof falls, said the crowd, then it will be something. The falling of the roof is always the best.

‘But where are the pompiers ?’ Theodora asked.

‘It appears that they are having some difficulty with the carburettor,’ said Mademoiselle Berthe. ‘It is often like this, the people say.’

Yes, exactly, Theodora realized, exactly this fire, but which does not always burst skywards so triumphantly.

She craned her neck to watch the stars of sparks. Much sawdust would burn in this fire, and combed hair, and the black beetle in the wood, and the cockroach in the cold consommé .

‘Katina! Katina Pavlou!’ the voice called.

Theodora Goodman had not heard this old ewe since lambing time, its solitary bleat separated by frost.

‘I have lost Katina Pavlou,’ said Miss Grigg. ‘I was asleep. Then, people are shouting fire. ’Ow can a woman keep ’er wits amongst a lot of bloody French? And now I ’ave lost Katina. I shall never answer to ’er parents.’

‘Miss Grigg, it cannot, you will see, it cannot happen,’ Theodora called, before the exasperated bell.

‘ Ah, voilà les pom piers !’

Nothing can happen, she promised glibly, when everything did.

But the bell will save, they said. Voilà les pompiers .

‘ Vite! Vite! II y a des hommes dans la maison ,’ said Theodora, salving with difficulty a few words.

Her tongue was as effectual as the stiff clapper of a bell.

‘ Ouai, ils sont perdus là-dedans, les gens ,’ said the pompier .

He began with tact to unfold a hose, which neither he nor Theodora expected to function. They brought a thin ladder to prop against an incandescence.

‘ Regardez. Voyez ,’ they said. ‘ Ahhh! La vieille! ’

Theodora watched the window, on which the crowd now focused. The window had become quite encrusted with fire. It had a considerable, stiff jewelled splendour of its own, that ignored the elaborate ritual of the flames. Everything else, the whole night, was subsidiary to this ritual of fire, into which it was proposed that the thin ladder should intrude.

‘ Mais ils n’approcheront jamais de cette fenêtre ,’ said the hopeful crowd.

The window remained aloof, apparently determined to resist. For a moment Mrs Rapallo looked out, as if she were not watched, but watching something that was taking place. She was wearing her hair, for the occasion, but her eyes had floated out of reach. How the petit paquet will flare, Theodora regretted, and the commode en marbre crack. But it was obvious that Mrs Rapallo was gratified by such magnificence. From the window she contemplated, only vaguely, the vague evidence of faces. Fire is fiercer. Fire is more triumphant. Then, she turned and withdrew, and there was the windowful of smoke, and Mignon pressing her hands on hot glass.

‘ Ah, la pauvre !’ they called. ‘ La pauvre bêtel La vieille !’

‘But where is Katina Pavlou?’ cried Miss Grigg.