Steven Millhauser - The King in the Tree

destroyed the power of their wills, humiliated them in every fiber of their being. But it did not stop there. For like a conqueror who can never be content with mere destruction, the harsh angel demanded of its victims that they lift their voices in praise. And Don Juan seemed to hear himself say, as he lay there broken in spirit: Praise be to you, O fiery one, O angel of my devastation, for without you I would have known only a terrible calm.

When he opened his eyes the angel had gone. Mary was seated in an armchair beside the bed. Her maid stood somewhere in the background, looking away.

“You cried out in your sleep,” Mary said.

“I need—” Juan said. “I need—”

“I will bring you what you need, Don Juan,” Mary said, lowering her eyes.

When he woke it was dark. A candle burned on the small table where four volumes of English poets — Spenser, Milton, Waller, and Pope — lay one on top of the other, turned in different directions. In the chair beside the bed sat Georgiana, looking at him with an expression of interest.

“Good evening to you, Don Juan. I hope you are feeling a little better.”

When he said nothing, she continued.

“I am told you are suffering, Don Juan. Suffering because of — me. Nay, Sir — pray don’t speak. ’Tis highly irregular for me to be here — in this room — at this hour. My maid is posted at the door, but I must hurry. Your attentions — flatter me, Sir. When you first came among us, I confess I did not like you very much. It seemed to me you were a proud, self-loving man, who looked upon the world as a feast prepared expressly for his own pleasure. I have come to think better of you, Sir. I will say that to you now. But I will also say, Don Juan, that I can never return your feelings in the way you might wish. I tell you this not to cause you unhappiness, but to spare you needless. . sorrow. I will tell you one other thing. You should leave this place, Don Juan. You should leave this place at once.”

She stood up. The kindness in her voice had soothed him, had masked, to a certain extent, a harshness that he preferred not to contemplate at the moment, and it seemed to him that it was absolutely necessary to keep her standing there beside his bed, looking down at him, for when she left there would be nothing to prevent the harshness from rushing in.

She looked at him kindly, with her faint smile. Suddenly she bent over and placed on his forehead a cool, chaste kiss.

She straightened quickly and drew back a little, but continued to look down on him.

“Good night, Don Juan. May you have a good night’s rest.”

She turned to go. Perhaps it was the kindness of the kiss, perhaps it was the aloofness in that kindness, perhaps it was the sight of her body turning to go, but something seemed to give way deep in Juan’s chest, and he heard himself groan — an unpleasant sound that might have come from an old man— and tears began to fall along his cheeks. He had last cried at the age of six, when his father had struck him in the face for cringing before a rearing horse. “Never show fear,” his father had said with outraged eyes. “Fear is for women and animals.” Georgiana had half turned at the sound of the unpleasant groan and stood looking at him with a frown. Juan felt the deep shame of his tears, and he scorned himself, for wasn’t he weeping like a child? But at the thought that he, Don Juan Tenorio, was weeping like a child, a pity came over him, for the grown man stricken in his bed, and the tears came hot and fast, in great heaving desperate convulsions — which almost comforted him a little, as if, by abandoning himself to his unhappiness, he were protecting himself from some deeper harm.

If Georgiana’s kiss had been cool and chaste, if her night visit had had about it all the signs of a farewell, it was also true that she had been kind to him — kinder than ever before — that she had placed her mouth against the burning skin of his forehead, and that she had remained in the room until he fell into uneasy sleep. Encouraged faintly by these signs, as well as by the fact that she hadn’t expressly forbidden him to see her, Don Juan rose the next day and returned wearily to the life of Swan Park. He had the sense that he had entered a new era of feeling — an era of hope no longer believed in, of hopeless hope and joyless longing relieved at times by dim and unpersuasive illusions of distant happiness. Georgiana no longer avoided him. She was friendly and even attentive; but there was a propriety in her friendliness, a discipline in her attentiveness, that stung worse than dismissal. She no longer mocked him, or openly disdained him, but instead watched carefully over his feelings. It was as if she would do anything to prevent another outburst. The new watchfulness troubled Juan, for it was the opposite of intimacy: she paid close attention to him in order to hold him at the precise distance that allowed her to bear his presence at all.

Exhausted with longing, oppressed by obsession, Juan found that he was soothed a little in the company of Mary. He knew that Mary was drawn to him, even in love with him — in the old days he would have considered her easy prey. He’d had scores of women like her, the pretty, not unhappy, faintly discontented wives of busy husbands. Now she seemed to him a fellow sufferer. She doted on him, longed for his company, hungered for a sign of tenderness; in her pretty hazel eyes he sometimes saw a look of terrible yearning. He felt for her a delicate, wounded sympathy. She was his sad sister — they were members of the fellowship of the forlorn. It comforted him to speak to her of Georgiana, who sometimes left them to themselves, but it also comforted him to feel her own formidable despair. He studied the plum-colored pouches under her eyes, knowing that she lay awake at night thinking of him. He tried to recall whether her face had always been so pale and cheerless and drawn. And a tenderness came over him for poor Mary Hood, who had fallen so foolishly in love with Don Juan. He understood that his tenderness was itself painful to her, because it was the tenderness of a brother toward a sister; and sometimes he felt a little angry at her, for failing to inspire passion in him, for failing to be Georgiana.

One morning at breakfast Mary began to rise from her seat, stopped suddenly, and stood with her hands on the table, her head bowed, her eyes closed, before falling very slowly to one side. A footman caught her as she fell; Georgiana rose dramatically. Mary was carried into the drawing room and placed on a sofa, where Georgiana soon revived her with hartshorn and water fetched by a maid. “You don’t eat properly, Mary,” Georgiana said, but Juan, looking at the pale woman lying wearily on the sofa, felt in his blood the restless nights, the devouring fantasies, the ferocious longing destined to disappointment.

Later that day, as he climbed the stairs to his apartment, Don Juan stumbled for a moment and had to seize the broad handrail to steady himself. Blood drained from his face, he felt a touch of dizziness; it was over in a moment; and when, later in the day, he reported the incident to Mary, he saw on her lips a small, melancholy smile.

Don Juan had never given much thought to the sexual relations of husbands and wives, which had always struck him as tedious, ludicrous, and utterly superfluous, but sometimes he wondered a little about Hood and Mary. They had separate bedrooms, which might mean anything; Hood seemed fond of her in a dim way, sometimes patting her on the arm and sometimes commenting on the color of her gown, but more often appearing rather surprised that she was there at all. It was as if he misplaced her each night and found her again the next morning. He had once said to Juan that he was pleased, for Mary’s sake, that Juan had come to stay at Swan Park, for he himself was devilish busy with his projects, and Mary— an angelic wife, who never complained — was often without employment.