Patrick White - The Vivisector

Rhoda had obviously got it into her head that he was trying to make a fool of her. She composed her mouth and didn’t answer as she trotted along after him.

It was the same in the tram: his attempts at adorning a sense of duty with love, all seemed to fall flat. He truly loved Rhoda. Wasn’t she his past? The knowledge they shared had a common source.

He cleared his throat of an obstruction. ‘How do you like the idea of nutria? That’s a practical, discreet fur.’ What came out in a blast, ended as too much of a whisper when muted midway.

Rhoda, who never wore a hat, pushed back her greying, straying hair, held up her wedge-shaped chin, and said: ‘Squirrel is what I’ve always hankered after. I wanted Maman to give me squirrel, but she wouldn’t.’

‘Perhaps she was right. Squirrel was a soubrette’s fur. Don’t think it’s in fashion any more. Probably tears very easily too.’

They must have looked and sounded odd, seated side by side on the tram bench, fatally belonging to each other while not owning to it. Most of the passengers were too refined to stare: only the children did, fish-mouthed, in one case picking his nose; the children looked right inside.

Rhoda said: ‘If I have to go through with this, I want squirrel, Hurtle.’

Because she was deforming his intentions he remained silent for a whole section.

Then he said, looking with distaste at the circumspect expressions surrounding them: ‘It isn’t a major issue, though you want to turn it into one.’ The tram bell seemed to mark the end of a round, with him the loser.

Rhoda was sitting as erect as her body allowed. It was he who could afford to loll, not sloppily, at an elegant angle, as he had sometimes noticed in the glass: having shoes fitted, for instance.

‘Who’s trying to expose you to ridicule, I’d like to know? Tarting yourself up in squirrel! My idea was to see you warmly, presentably clothed in winter, instead of looking a fright.’

‘Oh, dry up, Hurtle! I couldn’t begin to compete with your vanity and arrogance.’

A couple of children began to laugh; while all the hatted ladies had been born deaf, it seemed: they glanced at the view or their engagement books. Only one of them, less controlled, or more honest, was fascinated by his ankles in the left-over pair of Sulka socks, a present from Boo Davenport, he had come across that morning.

He uncrossed his legs, and squirmed around on the unyielding bench. He hated the prudent faces of the powdered ladies; he hated them for their discretion towards his hunchbacked sister, and at least one of them for her stupid admiration of what she saw as elegance of form: when he too, if they had known, was a freak, an artist.

It brought him very close to Rhoda. It made him glance at her, wondering whether she could have been hiding some secret gift inside her deformity all these years; but her expression wouldn’t allow him even to guess at its nature.

Arriving at what he had taken to calling the fur ‘salong’, and which Rhoda had refused to see as their private joke, they were accepting each other, if not as closely united as he wished.

The big Jewess in charge surged towards him with a smile which acknowledged his fame. ‘You remember,’ he fairly spat it at her, ‘I discussed with you a relative who would need special attention.’

‘Oh yes, Mr Duffield!’ The Jewess tilted her head till her moist lips were glistening with light and understanding.

‘This is my sister.’ He stepped aside, unveiling Rhoda.

The woman had been well trained; but it was obviously something of an occasion. The fitter she brought was nervous to the point of neurosis. The manager came as they contemplated Rhoda’s hump.

‘I thought, perhaps, nutria.’

‘Squirrel, Hurtle. We agreed on squirrel.’

Once this was established, Rhoda settled down as though in the hands of Maman. He wished Maman had been there; even Harry would have managed the situation better; Harry’s worldliness would have risen to the choosing of skins.

Both the Courtney children grew noticeably shyer, he knew, in leaving the fur ‘salong’. Would he pay a deposit? He did — humbly, if they had guessed — in notes: while Rhoda turned her back.

They were received into an almost empty tram for the return journey. As they rode the hills of Sydney, the luxury of seeming privacy and a glow from his recent generosity allowed him to ask: ‘What about Kathy?’

‘Who?’

‘Kathy Volkov. Have you seen her?’

Rhoda’s nostrils began to get their pinched look: scenting a prelude to bribery, no doubt.

‘Oh, I see her. Yes. When I visit her mother,’ she casually admitted. ‘I go there fairly often. They’re very excited.’

‘Why should they be — excited?’ His voice sounded dislocated; the motion of the tram was churning them round against each other whether they liked it or not.

‘Because of the recent developments, of course.’ Rhoda was perhaps attempting to tell calmly, unless he had irritated her by not knowing. Had she already told, and he was drunk or thoughtful at the time? Or was he already senile? He certainly couldn’t remember, and was relieved when the tram pitched her into her narrative. ‘Yes. Mr Khrapovitsky retired from the Con,’ she shouted against the screeching of the tram. ‘Mrs Khrapovitsky — well-connected, it appears — has inherited property in Melbourne. They are moving — down — there. He’s keeping Kathy on, because she’s an exceptional pupil. She’ll stay with a relative — Mrs Volkov’s cousin.’

‘When is she leaving?’ he shouted back into Rhoda’s teeth.

‘End of the month.’

He quickly calculated, and saw how cruel it was, but only too probable: the sort of thing that does happen.

‘Will you be seeing her?’ he asked with assumed meekness.

Rhoda wet her lips. ‘I’ve been bidden,’ she began (why the hell did she use ‘bidden’?) ‘by Bernice Cutbush — to a little afternoon party. It can only be boring for a child — but poor Mrs Cutbush — and Kathy at times does suggest she’s older than she is.’

He subsided on the wicked seat he was sharing with Rhoda. They were mostly silent. He tried to nauseate himself by remembering the smell of school tunic on a hot evening; while the poetry of Katherine Volkov constantly headed his misery in other directions.

It was fortunate he had his work. In the following weeks he painted several versions more or less abstract of his ‘Girl at Piano’. There were drawings too, which poured out on his board, on odd scraps of paper, on the walls of the dunny. He even returned to his conception of the boy-girl, both in drawings and, finally, in paint. The half-veiled face might have been tattooed in purple: or was it an eruption of pimples? Evil-looking by either interpretation; but the evil painting, coming to a head, relieved him to some extent.

In the meantime Rhoda had been for several fittings for the fur coat, which was giving trouble.

‘She’s so nice,’ she said, ‘really — when you get to know her.’

‘Who is?’ He was irritated by Rhoda’s sly innocence; he almost put up an arm to prevent her brushing against Katherine Volkov, the actual one he was at present creating in his mind, as opposed to the figment of his original lust.

‘The lady at the fur place,’ Rhoda was explaining. ‘So understanding. She was in Auschwitz. Has the numbers tattooed on her arm.’

‘Too flabby.’

‘You reduce everything to a physical level. How do you suppose anyone survives? How did Mrs Grünblatt, for instance?’

In the end you couldn’t talk to Rhoda.

She had taken to smothering herself in powder, which didn’t at all improve her nose: the transparent tip kept its same gleam of gristle, while a chalky residue collected round the periphery. Whether Mrs Grünblatt was the sole reason for these attempts at camouflage, he couldn’t decide: Rhoda was so secretive, yet at the same time naive.