John Gardner - October Light

Ruth shook her head and laughed. “It’s the craziest thing,” she said, delighted. Both small boys were looking up at her, grinning, from over near the door with DeWitt. She was aware of it and played as much to them as to Father Hernandez. “Every time some barn burns down, the farmers come barreling in from miles around to try to put the fire out and save the stock — with the help of the Volunteer Fire Department — and when it’s all over, one way or the other, we all go barreling to the nearest neighbor’s, or sometimes the house of the poor man himself, and out comes the cocoa and cinnamon-toast. It’s just like Old Home Week!”

“That’s very strange,” the priest said, smiling with just his mouth.

“It’s not that we got no feelins,” Ed Thomas said, grinning still more broadly, his face becoming redder. He grabbed a gulp of air. “We do it as much for the victim as for ennabody else — true, Ruth?”

She shook her head happily. “It’s the craziest thing.”

He too shook his head, the exact same gesture. “Hi gol,” he said.

“Well, different people do things differently,” the priest said, apparently to excuse them. He folded his plump hands, and in his slanted black eyes lay the vast superiority of a cat-god.

Estelle said, smiling her forgiveness at the priest, “It’s just as you’ve said yourself, Father. It’s a fragile life. One moment we’re happy and wonderfully healthy, and our children are all well, and it seems as if nothing can possibly go wrong, and the next some horrible accident has happened, and suddenly we see how things really are and we cling to each other for dear life.”

“Hear, hear!” Dr. Phelps said merrily, as if she’d said something funny. They all laughed, understanding his intent. Yet after the moment of laughter the room was unnaturally quiet, as old and insubstantial as the yellowed lace curtains, infirm as the shadows on the fireplace bricks, the whole house still as a grave except for the music of the horn and flute, coming from the sitting room-bedroom. Estelle partly turned her head, listening. They played like young professionals, it seemed to her. Every generation the music in this part of the world got better. Her Terence was studying with Andre Speyer, in Williamstown, who’d played first horn for years with Dimitri Mitropoulos — she had records he’d made and had heard him play once with the Sage City Symphony in North Bennington (formerly Sage City). It was a sound to make your bones tingle, solid and true as a golden cup, full of light and air as love, soaring! It was a sound, when he played, unlike anything else in the orchestra, as if one of the instruments had suddenly come alive, sprouted wings. Her Terence would perhaps play like that someday. He was already very good, at sixteen. But all the children — she hastened to add, as if someone might be listening to her mind and might be offended — all the children in this part of the world had fine teachers these days, musicians from the Albany Symphony, or the Berkshire Symphony, or the Vermont State Symphony. What would the country ever do with so many good musicians? And in the summer there were music camps and conferences nearby — Tanglewood, Kin-haven, Interlocken, Marlboro …

It made her heart ache. For a moment she couldn’t think why, but then she remembered, of course: listening to the hi-fi with Ferris, in North Bennington, music arching up like a cathedral window. They’d attended High Mass at Notre Dame when they visited France. When they came out it was late and the Seine was still, with colored lights on it, floating like pure, stable voices. She would hardly recognize Paris now, people told her. She smiled. Nor would Paris recognize Estelle Moulds Parks.

All at once she was startled by a memory more harsh. Ferris had thrown a cigarette in the river, and she’d been furious. Was that all? Had there been something more than that? She’d been so angry she couldn’t speak. Had he said something, perhaps? Insulted her, made her jealous? As for Ferris, his face had gone white as ivory — he was always rather pale — and his lip had curled up uncontrollably, almost in a sneer. They’d walked like two deadly enemies, in silence, or in silence except for the click of their footsteps, as in a tomb. Such fools they’d been! Such children! The night had been enormous above Notre Dame, as menacing and empty as a gargoyle’s eyes — the mad, staring gargoyle that eats a small animal eating its arm. The noise and lights of the cathedral garden, where hucksters sold trinkets, live birds, fruit, relics, had seemed sullen and far away, a shoddy vision of hell. She remembered the lighted cathedral spires against the pitch-black night and imagined herself on the walled sidewalk along the Seine, absolutely alone.

When she stirred from her reverie, she was surprised to hear Ruth reciting, dead serious, as if a party to her thought:

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Yes, she said inwardly. She had believed, like old King What’s-his-name, that nothing could go wrong. She’d been happy before, or so she’d imagined, but then there was Ferris, beautiful and successful, and traveling with him to France and Germany, Mexico and Japan, she’d discovered that the world was radiant and holy and above all — if they could be true to one another — safe. She remembered walking through a huge Shinto temple in Kyoto. There was almost no one there. Their Japanese friend, Professor Kayoko Kodama, a scholar whom Richard had known at Yale, had told them in his shy, gentle voice about Shinto, how it had legends but no theology — it was the favorite religion of the young, these days — how one clapped in prayer to get the god’s attention, though perhaps, he thought, the idea was much older, much deeper than that, had to do with electro-magnetic forces, ancient theories of the body that come down to us, for instance, in acupuncture. Tears came to Professor Kodama’s eyes when he spoke of the generosity of the American people to the defeated Japanese. He could not know then (Estelle was thinking of Sally Abbott’s indignation), he could not know then what loveless welcome Americans had in store for their allies in Viet Nam. “Very fragile, this world,” Professor Kodama had said, “the tiniest rent in the veil, as we say — the tiniest disturbance of the god’s sleep …” He’d removed his glasses, smiled shyly, brushing tears from his eyes again. Only this instant did it dawn on her that he must have been speaking of some personal grief. Professor Kodama! she thought, partly in sympathy, partly as a cry for help, as to a spirit-guide. The music of the horn and flute had ended, she realized — perhaps had ended some minutes ago. Virginia was coming through the kitchen door, carrying baked apples.

“Look here!” Dr. Phelps cried. “To the blessed Virgin-ia!” He held up his cup, splashing cocoa. They all laughed and lifted their cups and hoorayed, Estelle among them, though her mind was far away. She registered that the boys were gone from the doorway, registered that their voices came now from the kitchen, squealing something, and she heard DeWitt answer — registered that the dog was moving toward Virginia with an obsequious look, begging for whatever it was she carried on the yellow plastic tray — but she was remembering images from a movie she’d seen with Ferris in Japan, a film about Kamikaze pilots, mere boys, devout Buddhists. She remembered how beautifully they smiled, how they waved with gloved hands, taking off at dawn to die for the Emperor and all they loved in this tragic, fragile world. They wore trailing white silk scarves. The tiniest disturbance of the god’s sleep … Sally and Horace Abbott had saved her life, when Ferris died. If one said it aloud it would sound foolish, but it was true. It would be good to speak, now that she was wiser, with young Professor Kodama.