Marilynne Robinson - Lila

He said, “It is interesting. I guess I’ll have to read the whole thing over again. It is amazing how I always seem to be thinking about the parts I like best. And there are a lot of them. But there is all the rest of it.” There in the darkness they were quiet for a while, and then he said, “I guess I’ve had my time of suffering. Not so much by Ezekiel’s standards. And there might be more to come. At my age, I’m sure there is. But at least I’ve had enough of it by now to know that this is grace.” His arm was across the back of the couch behind her, and he touched her hair. He was still so shy of her.

She said, “Well, that’s interesting.” She had to wonder what Mrs. Ames would think about it. Poor girl just trying to give him a baby. “I’ll reflect on it.”

* * *

Now that her belly was getting round she sat at the table in her room to do her thinking, but she still locked the door when he left the house, for the loneliness of it. He never came into her room, he never preached from Ezekiel, and he never asked her another question about Doll, even when he gave her back that knife. The morning after she mentioned it, it was just lying there on the breakfast table between the cream pitcher and the sugar bowl, the blade closed into the handle, looking harmless enough. She’d left it there. Seemed like he might want to know where it was, until he knew her a little better. Doll had whetted the blade till it was sharp as a razor and a little worn down, the polish gone off the edge of it. When Lila was alone, she opened it. Doll’s patience and her dread were all worked into that blade. She would be spitting on the whetstone and then there would be that raspy, whispery sound, Doll thinking her thoughts, working away at her knife, making it sharp as it could be. Never you mind. Then that one night she said, “Better you take it. Wash it down good, and hide it when you get a chance. Don’t you never use it unless you just have to.”

It was the only thing Doll had to give her, too good to be thrown away and much too risky to keep, but what else could she do? It had a handle made of antler, shaped just enough to feel right in her hand, smooth and stained with all the hands that had held it. Doll never was the first one to own anything, and she wasn’t the last, either, if she could help it. There was always something to trade for, even if it was only a favor of some kind, and everything came with a story about the woman who got it from a fellow who stole it from somebody else, which wasn’t really stealing, since she never used it, and he knew she took it from a cousin’s house when he was dead, and he had brothers, so she had no right to it, but he felt bad anyway, so he was selling it cheap.

Everything was as stained and worn by use and accident as a hand or a face. There were things you just had to respect, and that knife was one of them. Sometimes a stranger would settle himself at the fire, sitting on his heels the way folks do when they might want to move quick, and they’d study him to see what was at his back, what he carried with him, which was nothing at all and could be anything at all, like a shifting of the wind. And sometimes he had that Heck, I wouldn’t harm a fly! look that made Doane glance at Arthur, and then there would be the long, careful business of sending him on his way, meaning no offense, since he looked like the kind who might want to take offense, given the slightest chance. Snakes, knives, strangers, darkening in the sky — you felt some things with your whole body. What they might mean. It could be they were on their way to do harm elsewhere and you just saw them pass by, but how could you know? Maybe twenty people had owned that knife and only one or two had done any hurt with it. A wound can’t scar a knife. A knife can’t weary with the use that’s been made of it. Still.

She was sorry there was nothing left of that shawl. It would have been a different thing entirely to tell the old man Doll had left that to her. When Doane held it over the fire it burned so fast it was like a magic trick. It was gone before the heat could touch his hand. It was so worn then, threads that stayed together somehow, you could see right through it. Gray with enough pink here and there to show where the roses used to be. He didn’t know what it was, why they kept it. It was useless, except for the use they made of it, remembering together. There wasn’t much that felt worse than losing that shawl. There is no speech nor language; their voice is not heard . That’s true about things. It’s true about people. It’s just true. So the knife was lying there where the old man had put it, on the kitchen table next to the sugar bowl, which was missing its cover and a handle because one of the children broke it, the boy John Ames. His mother and father remembered the day. The children were at home and inside because of a blizzard, and they were all in the kitchen because it was the warmest room in the house. There was bread baking. Days like that make children rambunctious, eager to be out in the snow. The old man said he always wished he remembered that day, too. Not that there weren’t always more blizzards, more days in the kitchen. But they made his father serious and his mother sad, so there wasn’t much pleasure in them. Lila told the child, “The world has been here so long, seems like everything means something. You’ll want to be careful. You practically never know what you’re taking in your hand.” She thought, If we stay here, soon enough it will be you sitting at the table, and me, I don’t know, cooking something, and the snow flying, and the old man so glad we’re here he’ll be off in his study praying about it. And geraniums in the window. Red ones.

Don’t go wanting things. She said that to herself. Doll hated snow.

She was still thinking about Ezekiel, as much as anything. The man takes up the baby that’s been thrown out in the field. Then washed I thee with water; yea, I thoroughly washed away thy blood from thee, and I anointed thee with oil. The blood is just the shame of having no one who takes any care of you. Why should that be shame? A child is just a child. It can’t help what happens to it, or doesn’t happen. The woman’s voice calling after them from the cabin, Lila probably made that up. She could never ask. Doll said, Nobody going to come looking for her. And for a while nobody did. There must have been someone Lila hoped would call after them, someone a little sorry she’d be gone.

Why did it matter? Doll had washed away her shame, some part of it, when she took her as a child. And then that night, when she hadn’t even seen her for a month, didn’t even know she was in the same town, Doll came to her all bloody. The scrawnier Doll got, the more time she’d spent on that knife, whetting it long after it was as sharp as it ever would be. Sometimes Lila would hear that sound, be waked by it, when Doll had trouble sleeping. Doll carried it open, tied to her leg, so there wouldn’t be any problem in using it fast if she had to. When Doll came to her finally, white and trembling, it took Lila a lot of washing even to find her wounds, because she had been hiding all day until it was dark, with her dress loosened so the blood wouldn’t dry the cloth onto the cuts. And the blood wasn’t all hers, either. Probably most of it wasn’t. The poor old woman seemed positively ashamed she hadn’t died. She said, “I do hate to trouble you, child.” She said, “When him and me went to it, I thought that would be the end of me for sure. I expected I might die this morning, or die on the way over here. I don’t know.” So Lila tried to be gentle and Doll tried to be brave, and there was just blood all over everything. The sheriff came the next morning. He said, “I never thought I’d see a woman your age mixed up in a knife fight,” and Doll mustered the strength to say, “He wasn’t no spring chicken hisself.” He laughed. “Looks like you won for sure. He lost, no doubt about that. Too bad for the both of you.” He was amusing himself with the strangeness of it all, and Doll knew it. But her face and hands were washed and her hair was brushed, and the rags were hidden away under the bed so some of the awfulness was put out of sight. Lila had slit Doll’s dress open with that filthy knife, and then pinned it closed again over the bandage, so she was covered, at least. They brought a stretcher for her.