IN WHAT CAVERN OF THE DEEP
by Robert F Young
Snow lay along the cliff top and more snow was slanting in over the
Atlantic, pitting the leaden waves that one by one were assailing the
narrow strip of beach at the cliff's base. The trees along the cliff
top were black, their leaves long torn away by November storms. The
cottage sat some distance back from the trees, bluish smoke rising
from the chimney and fleeing with the wind. In front of the cottage
and on the edge of the cliff was a small gun-emplacement, and beside
the emplacement, mackinaw collar raised against the slanting snow,
David Stuart stood.
And he, took his staff in his hand, and chose him five smooth stones
out of the brook and put them in a shepherd's bag . . . and his sling
was in his hand . . .
Many summers had fled the cliff and the cottage, many springs and
falls. Winter loved to lash the gentle grass that grew before the
door, to whip the trees that stood along the cliff top, to belabor
the little beach that lay below . . .
In the cottage, storm-bound they had lain, flesh against flesh and
breath to breath warding off the bitter cold. Winter had tried with
all its might to destroy the fortress that their love had built
around them and they had laughed in darkness, laughed in warmth,
knowing that the fortress would not fall.
But now the fortress was gone.
Snow stinging his face, David looked out to sea. He looked for gold -
the gold of a woman's hair. For golden tresses kelp-bed vast, for
shoal-shoulders surging with the sweep of cyclopean arms; for the
tempest-thrust of mast-long legs. There would be gulls and dolphins,
too, if the reports were correct - the gulls circling high above her
spume-crowned head, the dolphins romping all around her. Out of the
deep she would rise, as golden as the sun - comely as Jerusalem,
terrible as an army with banners - and then his huge horrendous sling
would speak, and she would be no more. . . .
How lovely was thy gentle forehead - how beautiful were thy feet with
shoes!
The wind took on an added sharpness and David turned his head to
shield his numbing cheeks. The cottage came into his line of vision,
and as he stood there gazing at the memoried winter-bower a girl came
out and started walking toward him through the day-before-Christmas
snow. A heavy
coat muffled the tall figure he knew so well; a woolen kerchief
restrained the dark brown hair that sometimes fell about him in the
night. The clear grayness of her eyes was forever taking him
unawares, and it did so now as she came up to him and said, "I
made some coffee, David. It's on the stove. Drink some and then lie
down."
He shook his head. "I'll have a cup, and come right back."
"No. You've been up all night. If she comes, I'll call you the
minute I see her. You'll have plenty of time to align the gun."
Awakened by the thought of sleep, his tiredness rose up and tried to
overcome him. He fought it back. "The wind is raw," he
said, "You should have brought a blanket to wrap around
you."
"I'll be all right."
He said, "I wonder if she's cold."
She said, "You know she can't be. That she's not human any more.
Go inside and sleep."
"All right - I'll try."
He hesitated, wanting, to kiss her. Somehow, he could not. "Call
me if she comes then. Call me anyway in three hours."
"I put some blankets on the sofa. It's warmer there. Now don't
worry - everything will be all right."
He left her side and walked across the snow-covered lawn. Victorious,
his tiredness climbed upon his shoulders. They sagged beneath the
crushing weight. He felt like an old man. Old before I am forty, he
thought. Old before I am even thirty-five.
This day will the Lord deliver thee into mine hand; and I will smite
thee...
It was warm in the cottage. Wood that he had split the day before
burned brightly in the fireplace, the reds and yellows of the flames
playing over the blanket covered sofa. David removed his mackinaw and
hung it on the rack beside the door. He hung his hat beside it and
kicked out of his galoshes. The warmth laid soothing fingers upon his
brow. But he knew that he could not sleep.
The aroma, of, fresh-brewed coffee came from the kitchen, and he went
out into the little room and poured a steaming cupful. All around
him, memories hovered: in plate and bowl and saucer, in pot and pan
and stove; in the color of the curtains, in the panels of the walls.
Honeymoon mornings she had made coffee, fried bacon; broken eggs into
a crackling pan. The table where they had breakfasted stood like a
shrine in the middle of the floor. Abruptly, he turned and walked
away, leaving his coffee forgotten on the stove.
In the living room again, he sat down on the sofa and took off his
shoes. The heat of the fire reached out and touched his face. His
woolen shirt began to prickle, and he removed it and sat there in his
T-shirt and his trousers, staring at the flames. He could hear the
wind and her name was on its breath. Helen, it whispered again and
again. Helen!... Far out to sea, the sunny tresses he had once
caressed spread out like golden kelp-beds; far out to sea, the lovely
head he had once cradled on his shoulder plied cold and dismal waves;
far out to sea, the supple body be had once adored rolled to and fro
in leviathan undulations... In the gray morning light he saw that
the backs of his hands were glistening with tiny drops of moisture.
He stared at the drops uncomprehendingly, and as he stared another
one appeared. He knew then that they were fallen tears.
I
Oddly enough, he had received an impression of tallness the very
first time he saw her. The impression was a false one, arising from
their different positions - she had just stood up on the raft and he
was climbing onto it - but in the years that followed he never forgot
how goddess-like she seemed when he emerged from the blue water at
her very feet and gazed up at her. It was the first faint sounding of
a leitmotiv that was destined to grow in sound and grandeur until it
dominated his life.
The fullness of her pectorals and the deepness of her chest led him
to suspect that she was an excellent swimmer. Her long legs, smoothly
yet powerfully muscled, strengthened the suspicion, and the golden
cast of her skin did nothing to disaffirm it. But she was not a
particularly tall girl, he saw when he stood up beside her; tall, yes
- but no taller than the five feet, four necessary to put the top of
her golden head on a level with his chin. The brown-haired girl who
had also been sun bathing on the raft and who had also stood up was
unmistakably the taller of the two. She gave David a penetrating
glance out of cool gray eyes, then donned a yellow bathing cap.
"Come on, Helen, we've got to dress for dinner'' she said to her
companion, and dived into the water and struck out in an easy crawl
for the white strip of beach with its decor of piers and cottages.
The golden girl donned a white bathing cap and was about to follow,
when David said, "Don't go yet - please."
She regarded him curiously and he saw that the September sky had
copied its color from the blue of her eyes." 'Please? Why
please' ?"
"Because I'll probably never swim out here again and find
someone like you standing in the sun," David said. "Because
I'm a miser as regard to moments, and when I find a golden one like
this I'm compelled to do everything I can to keep it from slipping
through my fingers before I get a chance to hoard it."
"You're strange. Do you joust with windmills, too?"
He smiled. "Sometimes." And then, "I already know
your name," he went on. "Or at least the first part of it.
For the record, mine's David - David Stuart."
She removed her bathing cap, and her golden hair came tumbling softly
down around her cheeks and neck. Her face somehow managed to be both
oval and heart-shaped, and the line of her eyebrows was a logical and
natural extension of the delicate line of her nose. "For the
record," she said, "the last part of mine is Austen."
She seemed to make up her mind. "Very well, I can spare a minute
- three, if I skip my shower. But no more than that."
She sat down in the sun, and be sat down, beside her. White caps
danced around them on the blueness of the lake and above their heads
a lofty family of cirrus clouds hovered sedately in the sky. "I
thought I knew everyone at the resort by this time," she said.
My sister Barbara and I have been here for almost a month. You must
be cryptozoic."
"No," he said, "I just arrived this morning. Not long
ago, I found myself the inheritor of quite a number of things, among
them a beach house. I wanted to get some benefit out of it before the
season died."
"You won't get very much. Tomorrow's burial day, you know."
"Not for my season. I've struck Labor Day from my calendar. I've
always had a penchant for September beaches, but this is the first
time I've ever had a chance to indulge it. I'll probably hang around
here till October, keeping company with the herring gulls and old
memories."
She looked out over the dancing water. "I'll think of you when
I'm back in the salt mines laboring over dictation pad and
typewriter."
The line of her neck and chin was faintly childlike. Somehow, she
made him think of a little girl. "You're hardly more than
nineteen, are you?" he asked wonderingly.
"I'm twenty-one, and secretarial school is far behind me. I
wanted to go into training and swim the English Channel, but my
sister Barbara, who is wise in all things, convinced me that I should
settle for a more staid career."
"You don't look like your sister," he said. And then,
"Tell me about your swimming."
"I took the women's long distance A.A.U. championship in 1966.
Does that contribute anything to your-golden moment?"
"It enhances it no end. But it also gives me a feeling of
inferiority. I can't even swim a mile."
"You could if you went about it right. Swimming is a more
natural form of locomotion than walking is." She donned her
bathing cap again - this time for keeps - and stood up. I'm afraid
your three minutes expired some time ago and now I really must
go."
He stood up beside her. "I'll swim in with you," he said.
They dived together, emerged glistening in the sun, and struck out
for shore, she with a lazy play of arms and legs, he with a laborious
side stroke. On the beach, water dancing down her smooth tanned skin,
she said, "I hope the moment makes a distinguished addition to
your collection. And now, I must run."
"Wait," he said. "I wouldn't be a true miser if one
golden moment didn't make me greedy for another."
"But one more will only make you greedy for, still another
-isn't that so?''
"It is a sort of vicious circle, at that," he admitted.
"But I can't help myself, and time is running short, and -"
"I'll be at the pavilion with Barbara tonight," Helen said.
"You may buy me one glass of beer, if you like - but only
one." She turned and ran toward the flight of stairs that
climbed the low bank along whose crest -the summer cottage stood.
"Good bye now," she called over her shoulder.
"Good bye,'' David said, the late afternoon sunlight warm upon
his back, the song of her sounding deep within him. Yes, she was the
one; he was sure of it now. The song said so over and over. His
footsteps were airy as he made his way toward the beach house. There
was none like her - none, the song sang. None like her - none.
Arrayed beside her, the windfall of his inheritance was a scattering
of withered apples. She was the single golden apple that had not yet
fallen and he would climb high into the branches of the tree and
taste the golden sweetness of her and put to rout the hunger of his
lonely years.
His uncle's beach house - he hadn't yet grown accustomed enough to
his new way of life to think of the various items of his inheritance
as his own - was one of the three residences among which the old man
had rationed the last years of his long life. The other two were a
cottage on in isolated section of the Connecticut coast and a
bungalow on Bijou-de-mer a small island in the Coral Sea. In addition
to owning tile bungalow the old man had also owned the island, and on
it in his younger days be had pursued two of the very few hobbies he
had ever permitted himself - the cultivation of rice and the
production of copra.
The beach house was more than a mere summer home - it was a young
mansion. Compared to it, the ordinary resort cottages brought to mind
a collection of caretakers' dwellings. On the beach side, a green
lawn patterned with elms and weeping willows spread lazily down to a
low breakwall. The motif of trees and grass was repeated on the east
and on the west sides, and was varied slightly in the rear by a
blacktop driveway that wound in from the resort road to a three car
garage.
American Colonial design, the house stood three stories high. A high
ceilinged living room ran the entire width of the first story and
from the living room two archways led respectively to an elaborate
dining room and a king sized kitchen. The second story was given over
to a spacious den, a period-piece bar, a large library, a three
tabled billiard room a big bathroom and a huge master bedroom. The
third floor was devoted entirely to guest rooms, each of which had
its own bathroom. The servant quarters were just off the kitchen and
could be reached by a separate outside doorway. This was the doorway
David used. He hadn't as yet shed the awe of the rich that his
middle-class parents had instilled in him before they broke up, and
he felt more like a trespasser than he did an owner. Moreover, the
mere thought of getting sand on the thousand-dollar living room rug
appalled him.
The servants had been discharged after his uncle's death, and, other
than making arrangements with someone in the nearby village of
Bayville to come around twice a week and do what needed to be done to
keep the grounds, he had hired no one to replace them. Even if he had
known exactly how to go about getting a butler and a cook and a maid
he would have balked at the idea, not because he considered it wrong
for one human being to wait on another but because having always done
for himself he instinctively shied away twin the idea of having
someone else do for him. Besides, all his life he had yearned for the
privacy that only wealth can bring, and now that he had it he had no
intention of sharing it with strangers. After undressing in the
modest guest room that he had chosen for his own, he shaved and
showered in the adjoining bathroom. For the evening he donned a
slacks and shirt ensemble that had cost him more than he used to pay
for his suits. "For casual wear," the clerk ha
d said, but David felt anything but casual as he stood before the
mirror and surveyed himself. He felt stiff and awkward and out of
place, and he looked exactly the way he felt.
He drove into Bayville for dinner. Shadows were long upon the lawn
when he returned, and he sat on the colonnaded porch till they grew
longer, till they fled before the soundless footsteps of evening;
then he set off down the beach toward the pavilion he had never
visited the place, but he recognized it the minute he saw it
sprawling on the shore, its lights leaking through its poplar-guarded
windows and spilling onto the sand. The second he stepped inside, he
felt lost. Young people lined the bar and crowded around the tables.
All of them it seemed, were talking at once, and their voices
blending with the juke-box blare created a background roar that was
downright nerve-racking. This is a place for children, not adults.
David who was only twenty nine, felt forty.
He edged into a narrow space at the bar and ordered a beer that he
didn't want. He was beginning to wish that he hadn't come; then he
saw Helen and Barbara come in and take a table by one of the wide
windows that looked out over the lake. He ordered two more beers, and
carrying them along with his own, made his way across the crowded
room. Helen's eyes were on him all the way and when he set the three
glasses down on the table at the end of his precarious journey she
rewarded him with a warm "Hello". "This is David
Stuart, Barbara," she said to her companion. Turning back to
David she said, "This is my sister Barbara. She writes love
stories for the magazines." Barbara gave him a long cool glance.
She was wearing a white dress that brought to mind a Grecian tunic.
Helen's dress was pastel pink, and clung like morning mist to her
golden skin. Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins
which feed among tile lilies . . .
"You are the David Stuart I read about some time ago, aren't
you?" Barbara asked him after he sat down. "The one who
harvested the golden grain?"
David nodded. "My uncle's golden grain."
"Helen wouldn’t believe me when I told her you were filthy
rich."
"You talk as though being rich were a crime."
"It's only my envy showing. I have no uncles, but if I did have
you could depend on everyone of them being as dirt poor as I
am."
"Well I have no uncles either," Helen said, "and I
don't feel a bit bitter. Do you like being rich, David?"
"I don't know I haven't got used to it yet."
"You should read Fitzgerald," Barbara said. "He had a
complex about rich people. Perhaps you have read him."
David nodded. "Poor Julian."
"Poor David," Helen said. "Get off his back, will you,
Babs?" Then, to David, "I've been thinking about what you
said about gulls and old memories. It will be nice after all the
people have gone."
"But not after you've gone. I wish you could stay."
"I wish I could too. But come tomorrow night it's back to
Buffalo."
"And back to Steve," Barbara said. "Don't forget
Steve."
"Steve?" David asked.
"Steve is her true love. Didn't you tell him about Steve,
Helen?"
"Don't be such a shrew, Barbara. You know perfectly well I
haven't had time to tell him about anything."
David looked into his beer glass. He should have known there would be
a Steve. How could there help but be?
Barbara was speaking again: "What will you do with all your
delightful dough Mr. Stuart? Buy a yacht?"
He forced himself to smile. She was beginning to bug him a little,
but he wasn't going to give her the satisfaction of knowing it.
"I already have a yacht. What I'd like to do is buy a typewriter
and write the Great American Novel."
Barbara shook her head. "You won't though, because you won't be
pressed. Great books are written by men who need the money they bring
in. Take Balzac. Take Dostoevski. Take - "
"Why not take Flaubert?" David interrupted. "He wasn't
pressed."
"Not financially - no. But you may rest assured that he was
pressed in, other ways." She looked at him keenly. "I don't
think you are Mr. Stuart. I'll bet you've never written anything in
your whole life."
David grinned. "Oh well, it was only a passing thought. Probably
what I'll really do is buy a castle with a moat filled with Cutty
Sark and drink myself to death. Does that fit your preconception of a
parvenu any better, Miss Austen?"
"Much better." She raised her glass, took a single sip out
of it, and set it back down on the table. She stood up. "I'm
going to turn in early for a change, so I'll be on my way."
"Wait, Babs," Helen said.
"I can't. Don't forget to tell him about Steve now."
Barbara walked away. Helen stared after her angrily. "I can't
understand it - she's never acted like that before."
David said, "I have a hunch she doesn't like me." He
touched glasses. "I know you said only one, but please drink up
and have one more."
"No - one's my limit. Anyway, I think I'd better be getting back
to the cottage too." His disappointment must have shown on his
face, for she added, "But you can walk me home if you like, and
we can sit on the beach stairs and talk for a while."
"Fine. I don't like it here anyway."
Outside, she removed her shoes. "I like to walk barefoot on the
sand."
He took them from her. "Here, let me carry them."
The stars were out, but there was no moon, and the shoreline lay in
pale and dreamlike darkness. The lake sighed at their feet, and a
warm breeze breathed against their faces. They passed dark blurs of
blankets and heard lovers whispering in the night. When they came to
the stairs, Helen said, "This is where I meant. I've sat here
lots of time, looking at the stars."
"All alone?"
"Yes, all alone. You're the only boy I've met this summer."
David laughed. "I haven't been a 'boy' for quite some time."
"To me, you seem like one. Shall we sit down?"
The stairs were narrow, and they had to squeeze to make it. They sat
there side by side, shoulders touching. "You were supposed to
tell me about Steve,'' David said. "Remember?''
"There isn't much to tell. I've known him for about a year. He's
asked me to marry him several times, but somehow I couldn't say
'yes'. I guess it was because I didn't know for sure whether I loved
him or not."
"Didn't?"
"Did I use the past tense? Yes, I guess I must have. Because I
do know for sure now."
"That you do love him?"
"That I don't."
David realized that he had been holding his breath. He expelled it
softly. "I think I'd better tell you a little bit about
myself," he said. "I'm frightened of my wealth, because in
my heart I'm still poor. You get so used to being poor that you
accept it as the normal order of things, and if you become rich
overnight you try to reassure yourself by continuing to associate
with the people you associated with when you were poor. And then you
find out what kind of people they really are. They drive you from
their doors with their envy and they hound you in public places, and
there you are, stranded between two worlds - the old one that no
longer wants any part of you and the new one that you're too timid to
enter. I'm at sea in another respect too. Somehow, I've always had
the notion that books are as important to a man as his daily bread,
and I've spent half my life reading them. Good books, bad books,
mediocre books - all kinds of books. When my mother and father got
divorced
- that's why my uncle disinherited them, incidentally - I was old
enough to take care of myself, and I quit school and went to work.
Since then, I've worked at all sorts of jobs in all sorts of
different places. I drove trucks, I delivered mail, I pumped gas. I
did this and I did that, and all the while I read, read, read. For
about six months I worked on a Great Lakes ore boat and studied
navigation in my spare time, but that didn't suit me either, and I
finally ended up in Lackawanna working at Bethlehem Steel. When my
uncle died I was working the swing shift, and reading 'The Forsyte
Saga' in my spare time in a cheap roominghouse. You can't imagine
anything more incongruous than that - or anything more pathetic.
Beware of the man of many books who can't put what he's read to
practical use. Beware of the dreamer. There, you can't say you
haven't been forewarned."
"Weren't there any girls?"
"A few. But the only ones that meant anything to me were the
ones I met in books."
"It's a shame your parents couldn't get along. Did they try to
contest the will?"
"My father did - my uncle was his brother. But it was no dice.
As soon as I get straightened around I'm going to set up an annuity
for him, and one for my mother too. They're both remarried and
they're well off, and both of them have children and neither one of
them likes to be reminded that I'm still around; but it wouldn't be
right if I didn't do something for them."
"It's good to be kind to your parents. I never knew mine."
"You're an orphan then?" David asked.
"A foundling. Sort of a freakish one. Barbara's father -
afterwards he became my father, too - found me one winter when he was
vacationing in Florida. I was lying on a public beach, and I was
naked and all tangled up with seaweed and I looked as though I was
half dead. I wasn't half dead though -I was very much alive. But I
couldn't walk and l couldn't talk and I had no memory of what had
happened to me. I still haven't. When dad adopted me and brought me
home he estimated my age to be ten years and figured out the day and
the year of my birth accordingly. He was a widower and had no other
children except Barbara. She and I grew up together in his house in
Buffalo. My first memory goes no further back than my eleventh
"birthday." I could walk and talk by then, though not very
well. After that I recovered fast, but what I recovered from I've no
idea, and I don't think any of the doctors dad took me to have
either. Anyway, I wasn't mentally retarded, and with dad's and
Barbara'
s help I easily made up for all the school I'd missed, and managed
to graduate from high school before I was eighteen. Dad gave me his
wife's name and when he died three years ago he left the house to
both Barbara and me. It's a fine house, and we've lived there ever
since. She does all the managing of course - she's three years older
than I am. Three years is quite a lot when you're young."
"Eight must seem an eternity,'' David said. Suddenly he snapped
his fingers. "I'll bet that's why your sister doesn't like me -
she thinks I'm too old for you.''
Helen shook her head. "No, that's not why. Barbara's very
broad-minded about such things. Besides I think she does like you.
Sometimes she's hard to understand." She stood up. "I must
go in now, I'm afraid. May I have my shoes please?"
"I'll put them on for you."
When she did not demur, he knelt before her in the sand. Her feet
were pale blurs in the starlight. His fingers trembled at the touch
of her smooth cool skin. He slipped each shoe on gently. The
starlight seemed to intensify, to become rain, and the rain fell
soundlessly all around him in the soft summer night. For a moment he
could not breathe, and when he could he said, still kneeling in the
sand, "How beautiful are thy feet with shoes!" He felt her
hand touch his hair, rest lightly there for a moment, then fly away.
When he stood up, she stood up too, and standing as she was on the
first step she was slightly taller than he was. Her starlit face was
very close. The leitmotiv sounded again when he kissed her, stronger
this time, then faded away as they drew apart. Yes, it was true, his
heart sang. She was the one, and there could never be another like
her. "Good night," he whispered gently into her hair.
"Good night," she whispered gently back, and he stood there
in the sta
rlight listening to the sound of her retreating footsteps and long
after he went to bed he heard them in the deep dark recesses of the
night and in his dreams he saw her starlit gentle face again
and rejoiced in her starlit gentle kiss. There was none like, none.
None like her. None.
II
The wedding had been a modest one. It took place on the twentyfourth
of December of that same year in a little church not far from where
Helen and Barbara lived. Barbara was bridesmaid, and for the best man
David chose the only friend he had thus far acquired in the new world
in which he had recently taken up residence - Gordon Rawley, the
youngest member of the law firm that had handled David's uncle's
affairs and that now handled David's. That same day, David chartered
a plane and he and Helen flew to Connecticut, and night found them in
the little cottage on the cliff. They could just as easily have flown
to Florida, but both of them liked white Christmases too well to
sacrifice this one - the loveliest, probably, either of them would
ever know - on the altar of the tropics.
They remained in the cottage two weeks, hiking along the snow-crowned
cliffs by day and drinking German beer in the warmth of pine knot
flames by night. Mornings, they slept late, and afterward they
lingered over second coffees at the little table in the kitchen. It
was here that the Great Inspiration was born. They would go for a
long cruise in David's yacht, the Nereid, and visit his island in the
Coral Sea!
The Nereid was in Boston Harbor. After hiring a navigator and a crew
they set out on the 29th of January and braved their way down the
wintry coast. When the Panama Canal was behind them, David took
advantage of the serene Pacific days and nights and, with the
navigator's help, supplemented his knowledge of navigation to a point
where he could have plotted the course himself. Time passed swiftly.
March found the Nereid passing between the Solomons and the New
Hebrides and not long afterward, Bijou-de-mer was raised.
David's uncle had loved Bijou-de-mer the way Stendhal had loved Milan
but to David it was it big disappointment. He had expected to find
the sort of colorful tropical paradise that travel brochures depict;
instead, he found an overgrown cocoanut plantation and an expanse of
neglected rice fields. Backgrounding the cocoanut groves and the rice
paddies, was a series of jungle-clad hills. There was it good-sized
harbor, however, whose waters were deep enough for a small ship to
anchor and whose beach pure coral. An aged pier jutted from the
shore, and beyond the pier a trail led from the beach to a low
embankment that ran between two acreages of rice paddies to the hill
on which the bungalow stood.
In back of the bungalow there was a shed containing a generator, but
the generator had seen its better days, and David couldn't get it to
work. The bungalow, however, was in halfway decent condition, and
there were plenty of candles available. He and Helen made the
necessary repairs and cleaned the place up; then they settled down to
a halcyon life of swimming and fishing and general all-around
loafing. She loved the sea, and awakening mornings and finding an
empty pillow beside his own he would look through the bedroom window
and see her romping in the distant surf and sometimes swimming out
into the blue waters beyond the place where the Nereid lay at anchor.
Upon her return, he would bawl her out for her recklessness, but she
would. only laugh, and say, "Don't be an old woman David. The
sea will never harm me."
They remained on the island for a week. Probably they would have
remained longer if the rainy season hadn't set in. David had heard
about the rainy season, but it was necessary to experience it in
order to believe it. The rain fell in blankets and water rushed down
from the hills turning once-gentle brooks into raging torrents. The
rice paddies didn't just fill - they overflowed - and sometimes
moisture hung so heavily in the air that it seemed to be raining
inside as well as outside the bungalow. Everything was damp - the
clothes they wore, the books they read, the towels they tried to dry
themselves with, the sheets they slept on, and the food they ate.
David endured it for three days, said, "I've had it, Helen -
let's go home."
He decided not to go by way of the Panama Canal this time, but to
proceed to Tacoma, Washington, and leave the Nereid with Reese and
Harrison, Inc. - a shipbuilding concern in which he owned stock. The
yacht needed innumerable repairs, and even though he knew that in the
end the money he would save would be negligible, it pleased him to do
business with a company that in part belonged to him. Rather than
keep the navigator and the crew on his payroll any longer, he let
them go at the end of the voyage and paid their plane fare back to
Boston. Then, after turning the Nereid over to the ship-building
concern and leasing space for it at their private dock, he bought
plane tickets and he and Helen returned to Buffalo. They spent the
summer at the beach house, and in the fall they rented a duplex on
Delaware Avenue and moved into the city.
David had yet to decide what he wanted to do with his life, and now
he began trying this thing and that. But without the immediacy of
having to make living to goad him on, his pursuits invariably fell
into the hobby category. He bought the most expensive electric organ
he could find and he and Helen began to take lessons. It required
less than a month for them to realize that at best their playing
would never be anything more than wooden, and at Helen's suggestion
they abandoned music and took up painting. David fared no better in
this second field of endeavor than he had in the first, but Helen
proved to have a latent talent of sorts, and in a matter of weeks she
was turning out canvases that were remarkable for their subject
matter alone. David found some of them upsetting and one of them he
found downright frightening. It depicted the interior of a huge
cavern. Dominating it was an eerie castle built of crude stone
blocks. Its towers were disproportionately tall and were c
overed with a slimy green growth that faintly resembled ivy. In
places, the "ivy" had torn loose, and was trailing outward
from the towers like ragged pennants streaming in a wind. The windows
were high and narrow, and the darkness behind them was unrelieved by
so much as a single light. The atmosphere was unearthly. It had it
cobalt-blue cast, and it was shot with strange rays and filmy
phosphorescences. As though to intensify the unpleasantness of the
over-all effect, Helen had painted in a scattering of weird piscine
birds. He thought, for some reason of Shelley's 'The World
Wanderers', and the lines:
TeII me, thou Star, whose wings of light
Speed thee in thy fiery flight,
In what cavern of the night
Will thy pinions close now?
When he asked her what the painting was supposed to signify, she
seemed confused. "Should it signify something?" she asked.
"Well I should hope so! How else can you justify it?"
She Iooked at the bizarre scene for some time. At length, she shook
her head. "I just painted it - that's all. Maybe it's surreal or
something. But if it has an underlying meaning, I don't know what it
is."
He let the matter drop. However, he disliked the canvas intensely,
and never went near it again.
At this time the leitmotiv, which had lain dormant in the orchestral
background all these months, sounded once again - this time loudly
enough for him to hear it.
For some weeks he had been aware of a change in Helen's habits, but
he had been unable to discover its cause. Formerly, she had gone to
visit Barbara once or twice week, and often the two of them had
attended Saturday matinees together and dined out afterward. Now,
Helen stayed at home virtually all of the time and once, asked her to
go to a concert at Kleinhan's Music Hall with him she declined with a
vehemence that startled him. It was shortly after this incident that
he noticed that she had taken to wearing low heeled shoes. When he
asked her why, she said that her back had been bothering her lately
and that site had hoped that low heels might help it.
He thought no more about the matter. Then, not long afterward when he
was going through his mail one afternoon, he came across a statement
that floored him. It was from a dress shop that Helen had never
patronized before, and the amount ran way into four figures.
Nevertheless, it was not the amount that astonished him - it was the
list of items she had bought. For it added up to something more than
a mere total - it added up to the fact that she had bought a new
wardrobe.
Thanks to his insistence that she deny herself nothing, she already
had more clothes than she knew what to do with. Why, then, should she
suddenly have taken it into her head that she needed new coats, new
dresses, new shoes, new negligees, and new underthings? And why had
she kept their purchase a secret?
Maybe she hadn't meant to keep it a secret. Maybe it just seemed that
way to him because he hadn't been home the day the clothes had been
delivered. Still, it was odd that she hadn't made any mention of the
matter- unless she wanted to surprise him. But if she wanted to
surprise him she had waited a little too long.
Leaving the statement on his desk, he left his den, crossed the
living room, and ascended the stairs to the second level. Helen had
converted one of the three bedrooms into a studio, and she was there
now, hard at work on a new canvas. He paused in the doorway, drawing
a long draught of her loveliness and drinking it down to the last
drop. It was one of those phenomenally warm days that sometimes occur
during Indian Summer and she had removed her shoes and stripped down
to her slip. Her legs seemed longer and more graceful than ever, her
arms and breasts and neck more goddess-like. A playful October wind
was wafting through the open window and ruffling a series of
impromptu bang's that had fallen over her forehead.
She was so absorbed in her work that she didn't notice him till he
went over and stood beside her. Even then, she didn't look up, but
went oil painting. The scene taking shape on the canvas was a
disquieting one. There was a chasm-like valley filled with strange
green plants, the tenuous filaments of which were growing straight
upward in defiance of the law of gravity. Scattered over the valley
floor were hundreds of tiny green disks and farther up the valley so
deep in the background as to be barely discernible, was a series of
upright rib-like timbers. In the foreground stood a copper-banded
chest of the kind associated with seventeenth-century buccaneers, and
on top of it lay a human skull.
Finally she laid her palette and brush aside and faced him.
"Something on your mind darling?
He forced his eyes away from the canvas. "Yes. I thought we
might go out to dinner tonight. Don our glad togs and do the
town."
Her blue eyes absconded. "No, I don't think I'd care to tonight,
David."
"But why not? It's been ages since we've gone anywhere . . . I
should think you'd want to show off some of the new things you
bought."
Her eyes came back, rested briefly on his face, then ran away again.
"You got the statement then. I was going to tell you, but
somehow I -" Abruptly she turned away and walked aver to the
window and looked down into the street. "Somehow I just
couldn't," she finished.
He went over and took her shoulders and turned her around.
"Don't be upset - I'm glad you bought new clothes."
"I wouldn't have bought them, only-" Suddenly she raised
her eyes. "Look at me," she said. "Can't you see
what's happening?''
"I am looking at you. What is it I'm supposed to see?"
"Look harder." She moved closer to him. "The top of my
head used to be level with your chin - remember? Now look where it
comes to!"
His first impulse was to laugh; then he realized that his lips were
brushing her forehead and that her hair was level with his eyes.
Instinctively, he stepped back to see if she was standing on tiptoe.
She was not. For a moment, he could not speak.
"Now you know why I don't go anywhere any more," she said.
"Now you know why I avoid Barbara. Seeing me every day, you
haven't noticed; but other people would. Barbara would. When you
don't see someone every day you can spot a change in them the minute
you lay eyes on them."
"And this - this is why you bought a new wardrobe?"
"I had to - don't you see? Oh, I let the hems down on my dresses
- that, was no problem. But finally it reached a point where the
dresses had to be let out, arid I didn't know how to do it and I was
afraid to hire someone to do it for me for fear they'd guess the
truth. You see, I'm not just growing taller - I'm growing bigger too.
My feet are growing bigger, my hands are growing bigger. I can't even
wear my wedding ring any more. I -"
He took her in his arms before the tears had a chance to begin. ''But
don't you see," he said, "that what's happening to you is
perfectly normal? You're supposed to grow until you're
twenty-five!"
"I'm supposed to fill out, yes - but I'm not supposed to grow
taller." She rested her head on his shoulder. "Let's not
pretend, David, I've known for a long time that I was growing taller
- that I'd never even stopped growing taller. But my growth-rate was
so gradual that I didn't think anything about it. Now, it's begun to
accelerate. I've grown two inches in the last two months! I'm three
inches taller now than I was when you married me! I'm ten pounds
heavier!"
"All of which makes you the exception that proves the rule but
which certainly doesn't mean you're going to go on growing
taller."
She didn't seem to hear him. "With high heels on I'd be as tall
as you are!" A shudder shot through her. "Oh, David, it's
not fair!"
"I'll tell you what," he said. "Tomorrow, we'll pay
your family doctor a visit and let him put your fears to rest. But
tonight, we'll get dressed and go out to dinner, and afterwards we'll
take in a show. You've been cooped up here for so long that you've
imagined yourself to be taller than you really are. Why, I'll bet it
you measured you'd find that at the most you've only grown half an
inch!"
"Don't you think I have measured? Don't you think -"
"All right then - you have. But it's nothing to worry about.
Come on, get ready and we'll go. If there's any worrying that needs
to be done, I'll do it."
All the while he was getting dressed he tried to convince himself
that there was none, but he didn't quite succeed. He didn't know very
much about gigantism, but he knew enough about it to ruin his dinner
and to spoil the movie that they went to afterward. If Helen really
was suffering from the condition, her continued growth wasn't
necessarily going to stop at three extra inches and ten extra pounds.
It could go on and on till she turned into the freak she already
imagined she had become.
But Doctor Bonner, Helen's family physician, didn't share David's
premonitions. After giving her a complete physical, he said that he
had never seen a healthier woman. There was no indication that normal
ossification hadn't occurred, and she showed no signs of the physical
weakness that usually accompanies gigantism. Like David, he didn't
believe that she had grown nearly as much as she thought she had, and
he told her that she had gotten herself upset over nothing. "I
hereby pronounce you physically sound," he said. "If you
suffer from any more growing pains," he added with a grin,
"be sure to let me know."
"I don't think he believed a word of what I told him,"
Helen said on the way home. "Why, he treated me like a little
child!"
"But don't you think," David suggested, "that part of
it might be your imagination? Maybe you grew an inch, or maybe even
an inch and a half, but three seems a little far-fetched."
"But I tell you that I did grow three inches! Three and a
quarter inches, in fact!"
David laughed, "All right - I won't argue with you. But
apparently they're perfectly normal inches, so I don't see what harm
they can do. It's stylish for girls to be tall these days."
Suddenly, she smiled. "Well if you don't mind I certainly
shouldn't. Do you know what? - I think I'll go see Barbara this
afternoon."
She did, too. She returned, radiant. "Barbara didn't even notice
till she saw that I was wearing low heels. It's funny, isn't it, how
everybody thinks they're the center of the universe and that if they
even so much as comb their hair different, the whole wide world will
sit up and take notice right
away? I feel like celebrating. Do you think you could stand a date
with the same girl two nights running, Mr. Stuart?"
"Only if she happens to be a lovely number I happen to know.
Let's go as we are - I know a small cafe where it won't matter what
we wear."
"I'll redo my face and be with you in a minute."
The evening that followed, he reflected afterward, constituted the
last carefree hours they ever spent together. During the next week
Helen grew another inch, and by the end of the month she was as tall
as he was.
III
The second time they had visited him Doctor Bonner's professional
joviality had failed to manifest itself. Doctor Lindeman, the
specialist to whom he promptly referred them gave Helen another
complete physical, but he couldn't find anything wrong with her
either. He asked her to tell him the history of her life, and after
she complied he questioned her about the years preceding her eleventh
"birthday". But she could tell him nothing. Finally, he
made arrangements for her to spend a week under observation at the
hospital to which he was attached. At the end of the week he didn't
have any more idea of what was wrong with her than he had had at the
beginning of it.
They tried other specialists, both in Buffalo and in other cities.
None of them could throw the slightest light on the cause of Helen's
gigantism. Meanwhile, she continued to grow, and as her size
increased, so, too, did her sensitivity. To ease her embarrassment,
David began wearing shoes with Cuban heels. For a while, he was able
to maintain the illusion that she was no taller than he was, and when
she continued to grow he managed to maintain the illusion for a while
longer by having a shoemaker increase the thickness of the heels. But
it was a makeshift subterfuge at best, and at length he abandoned it.
By this time, Helen was two inches taller than he was, and almost
equaled him in weight.
The only aspect of her affection that enabled her to endure it was
the fact that she grew proportionately. For all her budding
gianthood, she still possessed the same symmetry and grace she had
known before, and whenever he saw her at a distance with no familiar
objects to compare her to she looked exactly as she had looked a few
short months ago. But this perspective was soon denied him, for the
time came, as he had known it would, when she refused to leave the
apartment.
Keeping her supplied with food posed no problem as yet, but keeping
her supplied with clothes did. Her shoes, her dresses, her coats -
everything had to be made to order. In view of the fact that she no
longer went out, the coats could have-been dispensed with, and she
even said as much; but David wouldn't hear of such a thing. He was
determined that she should have clothes for all occasions, whether
she wore them or not.
When their first anniversary came around, she was six feet, six
inches tall. The only visitor she allowed in the apartment was
Barbara, and it was Barbara, dropping in every other evening who was
making it possible for Helen to go on. David did all he could to keep
up her morale, insisting over and over that he loved her more than he
had before; yet even through she knew he was telling the truth, the
knowledge wouldn't have been enough to sustain her. She needed
additional assurance that she was still wanted, and Barbara supplied
it.
If anything, David's wife was even lovelier on this their first
anniversary than she had been the day he married her. Her complexion
should have been sallow from lack of sunlight. Instead, it was
radiant. Moreover, her skin had a golden cast, and seemed to glow as
though strange fires burned within her. For weeks, he had hoped that
in honor of the occasion she would consent to go out to dinner with
him. But when the occasion actually arrived even he was dubious about
subjecting her to such an ordeal, and he was more relieved than
disappointed when she insisted on staying home.
He had a magnum of champagne sent up, and engaged a catering service
to prepare and deliver a special wedding dinner. With Helen's help,
he set up the Christmas tree he had brought home that afternoon, and
afterward they trimmed it together. Then they exchanged presents. For
David, Helen had bought - via Barbara - a calendar wristwatch. For
Helen, David had bought a new easel - taller, but not-obtrusively so,
than the one she had - and a dozen canvases. They toasted each other
in champagne, and sat down to dinner. That evening didn't begin to
compare with their first evening together in the Connecticut cottage,
but the hours were precious for all that, and David knew that he
would never forget them.
Christmas went its way. The New Year honked its tinselly horns, and
then was heard no more. Helen continued to grow. Her growth rate
involved a form of arithmetical progression now, and it seemed to
David that every day she became perceptibly taller. And as her height
increased, so, too, did his desperation. There was utterly nothing he
could do. She was so sensitive about her condition by this time that
she wouldn't have consulted a specialist even if he or Barbara could
have found one capable of helping her. What bothered him almost as
much as her ineluctable increase in size was the effect that severing
herself from society would eventually have upon her. And there was
yet another source of worry. He loved her more than he ever had, and
she returned both his affection and his passion; but there was a
ludicrous quality about their relationship now - a ludicrous quality
that had imposed a psychological handicap upon a race that was
already half lost. The knowledge that event
ually the race would be lost altogether preyed upon his mind with
greater and greater frequency as winter gradually gave way to spring
and the young giantess in his house attained ever more terrifying
proportions. He began awakening just before dawn and lying sleepless
between cool sheets, staring at the outsize bed next to his own and
listening to her breathing and sometimes his thoughts would match the
gray cast of the early morning sky and the grayness would linger with
him all through the day.
No, it could not go on like this. There was nothing he could do about
her gianthood, but there was something he could do about her
environment. The beach house, with its high ceilings and its
commodious rooms, would do for now. Later on, more permanent
arrangements could be made. But he needed help; he could no longer
hoe his row alone. On a rainy evening late in April, he went to see
Barbara.
The rain was coming down in sheets when he parked his car in her
driveway and ran across the lawn to the verandah. As he climbed the
steps, deja vu transiently tinged his thoughts, bringing a frown to
his forehead. Was Barbara somehow associated in his mind with rain?
Would she be someday? . . .
From beyond the door came the clatter of typewriter keys. He rang the
bell, and the sound ceased. Presently he saw her coming down the
hall. She was wearing slacks and an old sweater. Her dark brown hair,
always recalcitrant, had an almost savage mien about it as it tumbled
halfway to her shoulders. Her cool gray eyes seemed to see him
standing on the verandah even before she switched on the outside
light. They registered surprise for a fleeting second, then returned
to their coal gray selves. "Come in, David," she said,
opening the door. "It's not a fit night for either man or dog to
be abroad."
He almost abandoned his plan then and there. He had never been able
to cope with her cynicism because he had never been able to determine
how much of it was directed toward him in particular and how much of
it was directed toward the world in general. Only his desperation saw
him through.
Barbara helped him off with his trenchcoat, hung it on a rack in the
hall and showed him into the living room. "How's Helen?"
He shook his head. "The same."
She sat down on a low-backed sofa and he sat down facing her in a
low-backed chair. Through a doorway on his right he could see the den
in which she had been working. A rebuilt standard stood on a desk
cluttered with papers. There were reference books piled everywhere.
At the rear of the living room, another doorway gave into an
unlighted dining room. On the wall above the sofa hung a framed
collotype of Sargent's "Daughters of Edward D Boit". David
remembered the picture well from the days when he was courting Helen.
He leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees and looked down at
his hands. "Barbara, I want you to come to work for me. I want
you to help me take care of Helen."
There was a silence. Presently a lighter clicked on and a moment
later a bluish veil of cigarette smoke came between them. Finally, he
heard her voice: "You're like everybody else in this tinkertoy
utopia, aren't you? You think that the whole thing was set up for you
and you alone, and that when crevices appear in your walls everybody
should drop whatever he or she is doing and come to help you shore
them up."
He lifted his gaze to her face. Her gray eyes were even cooler than
they had been before. "You can go on writing," he said.
"There shouldn't be too many demands on your time - and I'll pay
you whatever you say the job is worth."
Money heals all wounds, doesn't it, O, noble physician? Well, I can
assure you that it won't heal mine. But that's beside the
point." She got up and walked over to the mantel arid leaned
against it, staring at the wall. Abruptly, she turned and faced him.
"Yes. I'll come to work for you, noble David. But not because
you've offered me a sinecure that won't interfere with what,
presumably, I really want to do. I'll come to work for you because
you've provided me with an escape route from futility. Because you've
freed me from the necessity of writing simpering boy-meets-girl fairy
tales to earn my daily bread. I'll wash and I'll iron, and I'll cook
and I'll sew, but I'll never again demean my intelligence by using it
to turn out fairy tales about silly paper dolls who meet each other
on planes and trains and rafts and fall two dimensionally in love
between Lucky Strike and Betty Crocker ads. Yes, I'll come to work
for you, noble David. Indeed, I will!"
Dismayed, he said, "But I don't want you to give up writing,
Barbara. That's the last thing in the world that I want."
"But don't you see? - it's what I want. A person can go on doing
something in good conscience only so long as she believes in what
she's doing. But when she stops believing, it's time for her to stop.
I should have stopped long ago, but somehow I couldn't bring myself
to. Now, I've made up my mind... How tall is Helen now?"
He shrugged. "An inch or so taller than when you saw her last. I
suppose I guess it's a process that goes on forever."
"Well she can't go on living in that apartment - it must seem
like a prison to her. We'll have to take her some place else."
He nodded eagerly, aware that his burden had already grown lighter.
"Yes. We can stay at the beach house till the cottagers start
coming out. She'll have plenty of freedom there. Meanwhile, I can
look around for a better place if I have to. I can buy a whole farm
and fence it in. An isolated one with a big house. There're plenty of
them in the hills beyond Bayville." He got to his feet.
"I'll go out to the resort tomorrow and get the place ready. You
can be packing and making arrangements to close up the house, and
later on in the week I'll buy a van and we'll move."
She faced him across the room.
"I make lousy coffee, but you're welcome to a cup before you
go."
"I think I'd better take a rain check.." (Now why had he
used that expression? He wondered.) "Helen expects me back right
away."
"You still love her very much, don't you?"
"Of course."
"I'll bet you'd still love her if she grew to be a hundred feet
fall . . . Would you?"
He felt uncomfortable. "I suppose I would."
The cool eyes were full upon him.
"And it came to pass in an evening tide that David walked upon
the roof of the king's house: and from the roof he saw a woman
washing herself; and the woman was very beautiful to look upon.
. . . And thus did David see Bathsheba and fall in love. But unknown
to him he was victimized by a state of mind and a set of
circumstances, and regardless of what woman he had seen at that
particular moment he would have fallen in love."
"Which means?" David said, frowning.
"That Bathsheba was in exactly the right place at exactly the
right time. I'll get your coat."
He followed her into the hall. Outside, the rain drummed on the
verandah roof, made gurgling sounds in the eave troughs. Her hand
touched his as she helped him on with his coat. It was the briefest
of contacts, but suddenly he knew. Knew the way it was with her and
the way it might have been - and still might be - with him. And
simultaneously he knew that far from simplifying his problem he had
merely complicated it.
She opened the door. "Good night," he said without looking
at her, and hurried out into the rain.
IV
The last shoemaker had laughed in his face, and it seemed that he had
been walking now for hours. He knew that this could not be so, that
the time-lapse had been to it large extent subjective. Hours would
have brought on the winter night, and dusk was still on hand. Lights
were more in evidence, though street lights and car lights, and the
lights of colored bulbs strung on pine and spruce and ornamental
arborvitae. Barabbas would have loved such a gaudy display, and maybe
that was where everyone had gone wrong in the first place. Paying
lip-service to the one and groveling at the feet of the other. Tinsel
twinkles like a two-edged sword, merchants are highwaymen in houses.
Give us this day your daily dollar, for ours is the kingdom of
commerce. It was 'Barabbas - not Christmas - Eve'.
David fed the iron kettle of a gaunt, bell-clanging Santa, and turned
down a different street. The lights were coming into full bloom now -
the reds and greens and yellows of the Druid lights and the bright
glares of the automobile lights and the fluorescent fires of the
store lights. The garden of the city knew not Gethsemane, but it knew
Prosperity. Hordes of last minute shoppers trooped in and out of
doorways. Carolers raised pious voices to stars that neither heard
nor cared. The annual emotional binge was at fever pitch. Tomorrow,
there would be relatives and turkey, and stodgy afternoons.
Dusk, then sleep . . . the rude awakening. Even Barabbas should have
known that gold and glitter do not make for better dawns.
Snow began drifting down between the rows of buildings in large and
gentle flakes. The poetry of earth is never dead… but ah for the
poetry of a new pair of shoes!
There was a shoe store up ahead but David's footsteps did not
quicken. It was the creators of shoes whom he sought, not the
sellers. Today, "shoemaker" was a misleading word. It meant
"repairer" not "maker". Today, machines made
shoes, and vague people in vague factories helped the machines along;
but for one man to take on the job alone, for a shoemaker to make a
pair of shoes?
"You must he craze, mister. I fix the shoes - yes. Make the
shoes? Make such big shoes? You must be craze!"
When he came abreast of the shoe store he stopped and looked into one
of its two windows. It was the woman's side, and all manner of
feminine footwear was on display. There were high-heeled shoes and
low-heeled shoes and shoes with pointed toes; there were scuffs and
step-ins and sandals. A pair of white pumps caught his eyes, and he
stood there staring at them, shoulders hunched against the cold and
the snow and the passers-by, ears deaf to the Christmas carol oozing
ingratiatingly from a loud-speaker above his head. The sighing of the
lake along the shore came sweetly back to him; he smelled the
sweetness of the summer night. Kneeling before her in the sand, he
slipped the white pumps on her feet, his fingers trembling to the
touch of her smooth cool skin. The starlight seemed to to become
rain, and the rain fell soundlessly all around him... How beautiful
were thy feet with shoes! . . .
Sitting in the house that afternoon, he hadn't been able to stand it
any longer. The small house on the hill that overlooked the adjoining
farms he had bought that spring. The small house in the hills beyond
Bayville that he and Barbara shared like brother and sister. Through
the living-room window he bad looked down the snow-covered hillside
to the big house where Helen lived - the big house that he had
remodeled himself and to which he and Barbara had brought her in the
van when the cottagers had started coming out weekends to cut their
little tracts of grass. The big house with the outsize front door and
the raised ceilings and the knocked out partitions; the big house
where Helen spent her lonely giant's life. There were woods all
around, and enclosing the grounds was an electric fence. There was a
small lake where she could swim during the warm months and there were
fields where she could run and play. The people of the nearby hamlet
of Timberville were unaware of her ex
istence, and, God willing, would remain so. Barbara made her clothes
and cooked her food, and he had made the bed on which she slept and
the chairs on which she sat and the table at which she ate. He had
made her many special things, but he couldn't make her special shoes.
Shoe manufacturers would have laughed at him if he had told them what
he wanted or, even worse, have tried to find out why. Yes, it was
Barabbas - not Christmas - Eve.
A package brushed against his shoulder. "Excuse me,"
someone said. He did not look to see who it was, but continued on
down the street. There was only one more name on the list of
shoemakers that he had compiled from the Buffalo directory before
climbing into his pickup and setting out. The shop was in the next
block. He would try once more.
It was a narrow shop, sandwiched between a false-fronted haberdashery
and a false-fronted variety store. A single light burned in the
window - a sad little light that hung from the ceiling and did more
to betray the fact that the ceiling needed painting than it did to
reveal the concomitant fact that the shop was open. Flaked letters on
the window glass said, 'Shoes Repaired Wile U Wait' and above the
narrow doorway other flaked letters proclaimed the establishment's
name: FRANCONI'S SHOE SHINE PARLOUR.
A stooped old man was standing behind a small counter, buffing a pair
of oxfords on an electric buffer. At David's entry, he laid the
oxfords aside, turned off the buffer, and faced the counter, he made
an almost imperceptible bow.
"Good evening, sir," he said, giving the
"evening" three meticulous syllables "I am Mr.
Franconi."
"Good evening," David said. "I wonder if you can help
me."
Mr. Franconi stood up it little straighter. This did not make him
tall, but it did something for his stooped shoulders that definitely
had needed to be done. "It is shoes you want, sir?" he
asked, eagerness in his voice.
"Yes."
"New shoes?"
"Hand-made shoes. Women's. But -"
Mr. Franconi stood up straighter yet. Excitement colored his face,
lent it an almost youthful cast. "You have tome to the right
place, sir. It has been many years, but I, Anthony Franconi was once
a first-class maker of shoes, and one does not easily forget an art
one loves. How soon do you want them, sir?"
Hope had come alive in David's breast. "Tonight. They're to be a
Christmas present."
"Tonight!" Mr. Franconi breathed in, breathed out. "I
- I am not sure, sir, that I can -"
David said, "It may be even more difficult than than you think.
They are not... ordinary shoes."
"They are not?"
David swallowed. "I want them to be white. And they're to be
quite big."
"How big, sir?"
Again, David swallowed. Then he took a notebook out of his pocket and
opened it to the page where he had set down the dimensions he had
carefully calculated before leaving for the city. After he read them,
a silence settled in the shop.
At length, Mr. Franconi asked. "You said they were to be a
Christmas present?"
David nodded. "To show you I'm sincere I'll pay you right now if
you'll say you can make them. Can you make them?"
"No," Mr. Franconi said.
A heaviness came over David; a weariness such as he had never known.
He said, "Thanks anyway for not laughing," and started to
turn away.
"Why did you wait till the last minute?" Mr. Franconi
asked. "Given enough time, I could have made such shoes."
"I didn't think. We'd been wrapping her feet in - It seemed
impossible that- I didn't think, that's all. Good night, Mr.
Franconi."
"Wait," Mr. Franconi said. "I have such a pair of
shoes."
Disbelievingly, David faced him. "You have such a pair?"
"Yes. They are just about the size you say, and they are white.
It is almost like providence, is it not? I make them for an
advertisement display five years ago, and the shoe company who give
me the order say that after the campaign is over they are going to
cut up the leather and use it to make regular shoes. So I tell them I
will buy them back. It is a shame for such workmanship to be torn
apart - workmanship their factories cannot even dream of . . . The
shoes are stored above the shop. You would like to see them?"
"Yes," David said. "Very much."
He followed Mr Franconi up a narrow flight of stairs. The old man
switched on a ceiling light, revealing a long narrow room cluttered
with odds and ends. "Over here, sir."
In a dim and dusty corner, he drew back a length of canvas.
"They are beautiful, are they not?"
David gasped. Then he stepped forward and touched the nearer shoe. It
was as soft as foam. The line of the heel and the instep was as trim
as the line of a clipper ship. The toe was slightly pointed, and,
relatively speaking, the heel was of medium height. The material was
calfskin, and as white as new fallen snow. "Burke didn't
understand."
"Burke?" Mr. Franconi asked.
David smiled. Where cold had once resided around his heart, warmth
reveled. "Burke was an eighteenth-century British statesman who
thought he knew a great deal about beauty ... I would like to buy the
shoes, Mr. Franconi, if you will be so kind as to sell them to
me."
The old man was looking at him puzzledly. "You have a friend who
is in shoes, perhaps? Who wishes to put on a display?"
"No. But they will be on display in a way. Will you sell them to
me, Mr. Franconi?"
"They will not be torn apart?"
"Never. I can promise you that."
"That is what is important. For years, they have lain up here,
collecting dust. Fine shoes should be worn. Of course, I know that
such shoes as these cannot be worn, but they should serve a useful
purpose. You have a car, sir?''
"I have a pickup. It's in a parking lot a dozen blocks from
here." "Come then, we will take the shoes downstairs, and
you will go and get your pickup and we will load them on."
Carrying a shoe apiece, they descended single file to the shop. From
a nearby phone booth David called a cab, and when it arrived he went
for his pickup. The aspect of the world had changed. The sound of
carols was haunting now; there was beauty in the multicolored lights.
Barabbas had forsaken the streets, and people were going home to
firesides and families. David could go home now, too. For now he had
the means to fill a Christmas stocking.
How beautiful are thy feet with shoes!
When he parked the pickup at the rear of the small house. Barbara
came out on the back porch. "David, where in the, world have you
been? It's almost midnight!"
He got out of the cab and walked around to the truck bed.
"Barbara, wait'll you see! It was a miracle almost. Come here.
Look!"
Hugging herself to thwart the cold, she descended the porch steps. He
threw back the tarp with which he had covered his purchase.
"Look!" he said again.
It had stopped snowing, and the stars were out, and to him the shoes
had something of the aspect of a pair of Cinderella slippers. But not
to Barbara. She took one look at them, then swung around and faced
him. "David, you're a fool! After all the trouble we've gone to
keep this thing a secret, buying our supplies in different towns and
letting on that we're a pair of eccentric writers so that no one will
come near us, you go out and pull a trick like this! Why, it's like
hanging up a sign with the word 'giant' on it and with an arrow
underneath pointing to our door! You know how people are. You know
how newspapers are. How could you do such a quixotic thing?"
Hurt, he said, "I bought them in the city from an obscure
shoemaker the world forgot about years ago. No one'll ever
know."
"You think no one ever will. But you don't know. In our position
we can't afford to take chances. We just have enough privacy to risk
arousing curiosity. We -"
Suddenly she paused, looking at him. A moment ago, he had been
standing tall and straight. Now, his shoulders had slumped, and he
was staring at the ground. "Poor David." she said softly.
And then, "They are lovely, aren't they? Come on, we'll take
them in and wrap them."
His shoulders straightened, and he looked eagerly into her eyes.
"Do we have a big, enough box? And enough wrapping paper?"
"I saved the box that the new sewing machine came in. That
should do. Come on, well manage somehow."
They carried the shoes through the kitchen and into the living room.
The floor was covered with bolts of calico, percale, and jersey.
David cleared a space, and they set to work. The sewing-machine box
proved to be large enough, but wrapping it took all of the Christmas
wrapping paper they had. "Darn!" Barbara exclaimed.
"Now I won't be able to wrap your present."
"And I won't be able to wrap yours."
She smiled at him across, the painted patterns of Christmas bells and
holly. "We'll have to put them under the tree when the other of
us isn't looking. Come on out in the kitchen and have your supper - I
kept it warming in the oven."
He ate at the kitchen table, and she sat opposite him, sipping
coffee. The meal was delicious. All of Barbara's meals were. There
was nothing she couldn't do, and everything she did, she did well.
When he finished, he pushed back his chair and stood up, "I'll
help you with the dishes, then we'll take the present down to the big
house."
She had been looking at him all the while he ate. Now, she looked
away. "Never mind the dishes. You take it down now, and I'll
join you later."
"All right. I think I'll use the pickup."
After placing the box in the truck bed, he climbed into the cab,
started up the motor, and drove down the winding lane that led to the
big house. Once, he had lived in the big house himself - before it
had grown too small. The shutters were closed, but some of them
didn't fit snugly, and in places crevices of yellow light warmed the
darkness. When he came opposite the portico, he turned the pickup
around and backed up to the front steps. He braked, turned off the
motor, and got out. The tailgate was on a level with the portico
floor. Shouldering the box, he walked over to the outsize doorway. He
felt proud when she opened the door. Her giant's beauty rained down
around him as he stepped across the threshold. He carried the box
across the outsize room and set it under the big pine tree that she
had trimmed. She was wearing the white dress that Barbara had made
for her out of one of the surplus parachutes he had bought. It was
caught around her waist in deft plaits and rose up
like filmy clouds around her Junoesque breasts and fell like
swirling snow around the columns of her lovely legs. The surprise and
pleasure on her face was like a sunrise.
"Merry Christmas, darling," he said. "Happy
Anniversary."
She knelt beside the box like a little girl. She tore away the
wrappings with gigantic girlish fingers. When she saw the shoes she
began to cry.
V
That spring, despite David's objections, Helen had begun swimming in
the lake as soon as the ice melted. The temperature of the water
didn't daunt her in the least, and he began to suspect that changes
other than those pertaining directly to her increase in size were
taking place in her. But he didn't have a chance to give the matter
much thought, for, late in April, an incident occurred that caused
him to decide overnight to sell the farm and to depart for the west
coast.
Thinking back later on, he realized that he had been a fool to think
that the citizens of Timberville would go on respecting his electric
fence and his no-trespassing signs forever. No doubt, most of them
would have, but it had been inevitable from the beginning that at
least one of them would not. The exception to the rule, whom Helen
described as "a gray-haired scarecrow of a man" when she
told the story afterward, got past the fence somehow (probably by
wriggling in under it), walked through the woods, and came out on the
shore of the lake just as she emerged from the water. When he saw
her, he turned into a real scarecrow, and his face went from dirty
white to white. Finally, it turned blue. Apparently, he had planned
on doing a little poaching, for there was a .22 rifle in the crook of
his right arm. But he did no poaching that day. The rifle fell to the
ground, and a moment later he was off through the woods, moving at a
pace that would have done credit to the little an
imals he had come to kill.
Helen had been more amused than embarrassed, but her unexpected
reaction didn't diminish the seriousness of the situation. It was a
foregone conclusion that the man would talk about what he had seen,
and, while it was also a foregone conclusion that no one would
believe him, curiosity would be sparked and the farm would be the
center of it. Sooner or later, others would manage to get past the
fence, and it would be only a matter of time before someone spotted
Helen's footprints or Helen herself. The ball would start rolling for
real then, and before long the newspapers would take up the story.
David had known all along that there was only one place that could
provide Helen with the privacy she needed - Bijou-de-mer, his island
in the Coral Sea. But he had put off taking her there because it
represented a place of no return. He knew now that he could put off
taking her there no longer.
He knew also that there was only one way the job could be
accomplished without betraying her secret.
On the morning after the incident, he drove the pickup into the city,
sold it, and bought a tractor and a thirty-foot trailer. He had never
let his chauffeur's license expire, so all he had to do to get the
job on the road was to get the necessary license plates and to take
out the necessary insurance. This done, he visited Gordon Rawley,
gave him the keys to the big and the small houses, and told him to
arrange for the sale of both farms. Then he gave Rawley a blank check
and asked him to get him a master's certificate, real or forged, and
to send it to him in care of the Tacoma ship-building concern of
Reese and Harrison, Inc. Rawley objected at first, but, at length he
gave in, and David departed, saying he would get in touch with him
later. His next stop was a public phone booth. Here, he put in a call
to Reese and Harrison, Inc., and by offering them a handsome bonus
got them to agree to make certain changes in the Nereid and to have
it ready and waiting for him a week h
ence. Then he climbed into the tractor and drove back to the farm.
He and Helen and Barbara spent the rest of the day loading the
supplies and the other items they would need into the trailer. They
piled boxes, trunks, and suitcases against the head and secured them
in place by means of heavy eyescrews and a stout clothesline. There
were eight mattresses available - the six that Helen slept on and the
ones on David's and Barbara's beds. They arranged them two abreast on
the floor of the trailer and covered them with blankets. In the
remaining space they stored the sewing machine and the bolts of dress
goods.
After the evening meal, David put up brackets on the trailer's inner
walls for the three 6-volt flash lamps they had on hand, and Barbara
began roasting the three large cuts of beef that remained in the
deepfreeze. The brackets finished, David installed the flashlamps;
then he cut several inconspicuous vents in each of the side walls.
Toward dawn, Barbara dyed her hair blond, and David and Helen went
down to the big house, hauled the outsize furniture outside, and
burned it. By sunrise, they were on the road.
A few miles west of Bayville, David pulled into a small filling
station and gassed up. Had he forgotten anything? He didn't think he
had. Barbara had faked a bill of lading showing a fictitious cargo of
furniture destined for a fictitious factory in Tacoma; he was
traveling under his own name, and she was traveling as his wife
Helen; he had a thousand dollars in cash and a check book in which he
could write five-figure amounts should the occasion arise; among the
supplies in the trailer was an easy-to-erect sportsman's tent in
which he could sleep nights while Barbara bedded down in the
commodious cab. No, he hadn't forgotten anything - he was sure he
hadn't.
Nevertheless, he had. He had forgotten that when people burn their
bridges behind them and take to the open road, the moral traces that
otherwise would have been strong enough to keep them in line
sometimes snap.
Owing to the nature of his cargo, David ruled out throughways and
stuck to the regular highways where it was possible, though seldom
easy to find secluded spots to spend the night. Invariably, this
involved turning off the main route and driving a considerable
distance down some unfrequented country road, but it enabled Helen to
get the exercise she needed.
On the third night, the road he chose wound through an extensive
woods to the shore of a small lake. The place was ideal, with no sign
of human habitations anywhere save for a few deserted cottages on the
opposite shore. After "spotting" the trailer in a clearing
some distance back from the beach, he pitched the sportsman's tent in
a grove of willows that came almost down to the water's edge. Despite
the time of the year Helen went for a swim, while Barbara busied
herself preparing supper on the small gasoline stove they had bought
on their second day on the road. They ate on the beach, in the chill
wind blowing in from the north. Helen, although still wet from her
swim, didn't seem to mind the cold at all; but the wind went right
through David, and he saw that Barbara was shivering.
It had been a bad day for both of them. Shortly before noon, one of
the inner rear tires of the trailer had blown, and he had put in a
grueling hour and a half changing it, with Barbara helping as best
she could. An hour later, the spare had gone, and he had done then
what he should have done in the first place - driven on to the
nearest truck stop. After a delay of another hour they had hit the
road again, with the original tire repaired and serving as a spare,
and a brand new one supplanting it. Then, less than an hour later,
one of the inner rear tires of the tractor had blown, and another
hour and a half had gone down the drain. Yes, it had been a very bad
day.
He wondered if Barbara was as tired as he was. As discouraged and as
depressed. He looked at her, but darkness had fallen and he could
barely see her face. Helen had returned to the trailer by this time,
and they were alone on the beach. "I think I'll build a
fire." he said.
She helped him gather the wood. They plied it in front of the tent,
and after the fire was going good they sat down in the door way and
warmed themselves before the flames. Glancing at her sideways, David
wondered whether he liked her better as a blond. He decided that he
didn't. "The first thing you're going to do when we reach
Bijou-de-mer," he said, "is to dye your hair back to its
natural color."
She stared at him. "Why am I going to do that?"
"Because you look better with it natural. Anyway, I don't like
the idea of my - my -" he paused, confused.
"Go on - finish what you were saying."
He forced himself to meet her cool gaze. "It doesn't mean
anything. It's just that I've gotten so used to living in the same
house with you and so used to having you cook my meals and wash my
clothes that I - I -"
"That you've come to think of me as your wife - is that it?"
Wretchedly, he stared into the fire. "It's crazy, isn't it?"
"Positively insane."
He continued to stare into the fire because he didn't want her to
find out what was in his eyes. But she didn't have to find out - she
already knew. He felt her cool fingers touch his cheek. "Poor
David. Poor virtuous, noble David. You did see me after all."
"See you? See you when?"
"When you climbed up on the raft. I thought you hadn't, and I
was furious. I've been furious ever since. Because I saw you."
There was a dam, and his body was its concrete and its reinforcing
steel and against him tons and tons of water pressed, seeking to
break him apart. "People like you are different from people like
me," Barbara went on. "Your idealism sets you apart from
us, and we know in our hearts that you're better than we are. And so
we try to drag you down to our own level. But we're not really trying
to drag you down - it only seems that way. What we're really trying
to do is to lift ourselves up."
Still, he did not look at her. But he no longer needed to. For she
was all around him in the night. His golden moment had been but
fool's gold. This was the way it had been meant to be all along.
When he finally turned toward her, her face was so close that he
could feel her warm breath on his lips. The dam broke then, and the
water raged around him. The stars dissolved in the sky and the sky
opened, and all was darkness; all was light. All was love.
After that, the trip to the coast had turned into a series of tense,
drawn-out days and eagerly awaited nights. From sunrise to sunset,
there would be Barbara riding at his side and his self-hatred riding
on his shoulders. Then there would come the time of terror - the
evening hours when they would watch Helen as she walked up and down
in some unfrequented canyon or gamboled in some deserted dale.
Surely, looking down - upon their faces she must descry their guilt,
must divine what would take place later on in the darkness of the
sportsman's tent while she slept in her ten-wheeled bed. But if she
either descried or divined, she gave no sign.
At last, they reached Tacoma. When David found that his master's
certificate had arrived, he wasted no time in getting started. After
settling up with Reese and Harrison, Inc and making arrangements with
them to store the tractor and trailer in one of their unused sheds,
he bought the additional supplies and equipment that would be needed
on Bijou-de-mer and had everything delivered to the private dock
where the Nereid was berthed. Late that same night when he was sure
the dock was deserted, he drove the tractor and trailer onto it and
he and Barbara and Helen loaded everything on board, including the
items they had brought with them from the farm. Among the new items
were two refrigerators, a deepfreeze, a washing machine, a new
generator, and twenty drums of gasoline. These, Helen handled like so
many toys. When the job was finished, she secreted herself in the
special below decks cabin that the ship-building concern had
converted the yacht's forward section into, and David
drove the tractor and trailer to the Reese and Harrison, Inc
shipyards. After turning the outfit over to the night watchman, he
returned to the dock, and by morning the Nereid was well on its way
down the sound.
The voyage to Bijou-de-mer proved to be even more nerve-racking than
the trip to the coast. David had a good grasp of navigation and he
was sufficiently familiar with the engine room to take care of the
necessary maintenance jobs, but he wasn't used to being at sea with
no one except himself to turn to should anything go wrong. And then
there was his omnipresent fear that Helen would find out what was
going on behind her back. All that made the long days and nights
tolerable were her ever longer absences from the yacht. At first she
contented herself with swimming along beside it, but as time passed
she swam farther and farther out into the sun-bright wastes,
sometimes so far that her golden hair blended with the sparkling
waves and she became invisible. David would relax then, for he knew
by this time that she belonged more to the sea than she did to the
land, and if it was his tour of duty, Barbara would come to him in
the pilot house, and if it was her tour, he would go to
her.
They raised Bijou-de-mer on the 20th of June. Unloading the supplies
and equipment was a simple enough operation with someone like Helen
around, but it took the better part of a week to get the bungalow
back into shape, to install the new generator, and to assemble the
Quonset hut he had bought her. After that, time faded into a
dreamlike sameness of days and nights interrupted only by the
periodic - and carefully prepared for - appearances of the supply
ship he had engaged to bring in fuel and fresh provisions from New
Caledonia.
Helen spent more and more time in the sea, and the changes that he
had suspected were taking place in her began to be visible. Weeks
lengthened into months; Christmas Eve came, and was duly celebrated
with champagne. David wished Helen a Happy Anniversary and she wished
him one back, he spent the night walking the shores of the island and
she spent it swimming far out to sea. New Year's Day came round, but
no one paid any attention to it, and after a while it went away.
At length, the rainy season began.
VI
It had seemed to David as he sat in the bungalow that day that the
rain had been falling for centuries. Raising his eyes from the book
he was reading, he looked through the window and out over the misted
rice paddies to where the Nereid lay at anchor in the harbor. Beyond
the yacht, the curtain of the rain became impenetrable, but in his
mind he could see through the curtain and out to sea - far, far out
to where Helen swam, her hair golden on the gray, pock-marked waves.
She was as much a part of the sea now as were the dolphins that
sometimes romped around her, as were the flying fish that sometimes
skimmed the waves of her wake; as was the plankton that now
constituted her only food. She had found her world, Helen had; but he
had yet to discover what kind of a world it was.
He returned his attention to his book. It was a book on giants and he
had brought it with him from the states, but for all the times he had
read it, it had told him next to nothing. The giants and the
giantesses it dealt with were mythological giants, and the giantess
he was concerned with was real.
According to history, there had been no giants at all, but according
to legend there had been many. There was Poseidon's son, Polyphemus,
whom Odysseus had blinded. There were the Titans, whom Zeus -
presumably at least - had hurled into the sunless abyss of Tartarus.
And there were the giants of the Asgard pantheon.
But in the last analysis, what was history? As far as the dim and
distant past was concerned, wasn't it a sophisticated interpretation
of the very legends it pretended to disdain? Who could say
categorically which elements of those legends were true and which of
them are not? Maybe there really had been a race of Titans, and maybe
the forces of nature, as symbolized by Zeus, had destroyed them in
some way. It was even possible that they hadn't been destroyed, but
had returned to the sea. If it was going to be argued that all life
originally came from the sea, then it could also be argued that all
life eventually returned to the sea.
But if Helen was a modern-day Titan who had somehow been washed
ashore as a child, how had she been able to survive on land?
"Why don't you give up, David? If she doesn't know what she is,
how do you expect to find out?"
He laid the book aside and looked over to the couch where Barbara was
lying on her side, watching him. "I suppose you're right."
"Of course I'm right." She sat up, swung her bare feet to
the floor, and slipped them into slender sandals. She was wearing a
white sunsuit that she had made herself. Her skin was dark from the
sun - coffee-colored almost - and her hair - dark brown once again -
was as recalcitrant as ever. "I feel like walking."
"In the rain?"
"Is there somewhere else to walk?"
He was silent. She came over and stood by his chair and looked down
into his eyes. "She's been gone a long while this time, hasn't
she?"
"Since yesterday morning."
"I wonder where she goes."
"God knows," David said.
"I think her mind is changing, too - don't you?"
"Why do you say that?"
"Because of the way she looks at us. So coldly. So
clinically." Barbara shuddered. "It's almost as though she
knows, and is trying to figure out what makes pygmies like us
tick."
"She doesn't know," he said angrily. "She doesn't'
even suspect!"
"No, I suppose not. But she frightens me just the same. I don't
think she's quite human any more. Those little slits she's developing
on the sides of her neck; that strange luster her skin is taking on;
the way she spends almost all her time in the sea..."
David stood up. "You said you felt like walking. Let's walk
then."
She went over to the door and stepped out onto the thatch-roofed
verandah. He got their raincoats and followed. The rain sound was
louder here. "I don't want a raincoat," she said. "I
get wetter with one on than I do with one off. Wear yours, if you
like."
She descended the verandah steps and stood in the rain. After a
moment's hesitation, he cast the raincoats aside and joined her. The
rain was warm. It soaked into his hair, penetrated his slacks and
shirt. It ran down his face and neck. He tasted it on his lips. Some
of the tautness he had known for days departed from him, and he felt
almost carefree.
They crossed a small bridge that spanned one of the many brooks that
wound down from the hills. The brook was a muddy torrent now, rushing
pell-mell to the sea, and the once-green hills had drawn gray sheets
of mist around their shoulders. Barbara rounded the Quonset hut and
started across the embankment toward the beach, David just behind
her. The paddies were riotous with rice gone wild, and in some places
the lush growth was so high that he could have reached out and
touched it. The fertility evoked by the rain was almost tangible.
Erosion had narrowed the once-wide walkway to a precarious path, and
when they were halfway across Barbara lost her footing. David grabbed
her to keep her from falling and in the process lost his footing too.
For a moment they clung together fighting to regain their balance;
then, the battle lost, they went tumbling down the steep slope into
the knee-deep muddy water. Gasping, soaked to the skin, they
struggled to their feet, Barbara began to laugh. Presently, he joined
her. It was the first time he had laughed for months.
There was a smear of mud on her cheek. He wiped it off, left a larger
one. Her hair clung in dark streaks to her face and neck, and her
once-immaculate sunsuit was unrecognizable. "You look like a
drowned rat," he told her.
"It's worth it to hear you laugh again. Besides which, you look
like one yourself."
They scrambled and clawed their way back up the slope and arrived on
the path muddier and more bedraggled than they had been before.
"It's me for a dip," Barbara cried when they reached the
beach, and running through the brief shallows, she plunged into the
water, clothes and all.
David followed. The water was warmer than the rain. He surfaced so
close to her that her wet hair clung to his face. He kissed her, and
they clung together with all their might, the rain pouring down upon
them and then the waters of the sea rising above them as their
interlocked bodies pulled them down. She broke free from his arms
then, and waded through the shallows to the shore and began running
along the beach in the foreground of one of the cocoanut groves. At
length, she plunged into the grove and disappeared.
Heart pounding, he stumbled after her. In the wet and dripping
underbrush that grew between the neglected rows of palms he looked
wildly around for her. He did not see her, but she had left a trail.
Her sandals first; then her sunsuit . . . her underthings last of
all. She was waiting for him in a little clearing in the brush. The
rain made pattering sounds on the palm fronds as they kissed. The wet
grass seemed to reach up and drag them down, and the sound of their
breathing submerged the sound of the rain.
A long while later, when her breathing seemed to cease, he raised his
head and looked down into her face. She was staring straight upward,
and her eyes were filled with terror. At first when he followed her
gaze he saw nothing but the palm fronds that canopied their bower
Then he saw that the fronds had been parted and that someone was
peering down through the opening. He saw the Brobdingnagian face
then, and the enormous azure eyes. The sky seemed to lower; the
thunder of the leitmotiv rolled awesomely in from the sea. And then
the fronds fell back into place and the face disappeared.
Night had fallen, by the time they got back to the hill. The Quonset
hut was empty, and they knew that Helen had swum back out to sea.
This time she did not return.
VII
The large and gigantic; though very compatible with the sublime, is
contrary to the beautiful. It is impossible to suppose a giant the
object of love. When we let our imaginations loose in romance, the
ideas we naturally annex to that size are those of tyranny, cruelty,
injustice, and everything horrid and abominable. We paint the giant
ravaging the country, plundering the innocent traveler, and
afterwards gorged with his half-living flesh; such are Polyphemus,
Cacus, and others, who make so great a figure in romance and heroic
poems. The event we attend to with the greatest satisfaction is their
defeat and death.
- Edmund Burke: On the Sublime and Beautiful
David looked down at his hands. The heat of the flames had dried
them, and the glistening drops were gone.
He remembered the cup of coffee he had poured and left forgotten on
the kitchen stove and he forced himself to return to the memoried
room. The coffee was cold now, but he didn't bother to pour another
cupful. Instead, he carried the cup into the living room and set it
on the mantle and promptly forgot it again.
He looked through the living room window, saw Barbara standing on the
cliff and gazing out to sea. Snow slanted down around her and the
wind whipped her coat. Even in the cottage he could hear the crashing
of the waves on the little beach at the cliff's base.
lnvoluntarily, his eyes moved from Barbara to the small howitzer that
crouched beside her.
And David chose him five smooth stones... and his sling was in his
hand . . .
He looked away from the window, looked down into the flames. He
resumed his painstaking search of his soul.
Had he been right in contacting the Pacific Fleet when he learned
that it was in the vicinity of Bijou-de-mer? Granted, the search that
he had asked the admiral to make would have been made anyway, but the
fact still remained that for the second time in the space of three
days he had betrayed the woman he loved.
He had expected to have a hard time convincing the admiral that she
even existed, but it turned out that the admiral already knew about
her. He showed David a picture after summoning him on board the
flagship and listening to his story. "Is this your wife, Mr.
Stuart?" he asked.
David stared at the picture. It was a blow-up of a high altitude
aerial photograph and it showed Helen lying on Bijou-de-mer's coral
beach clad in, one of the huge sunsuits Barbara had made for her.
"Where -?" he began.
"Several days ago one of our pilots took a number of
high-altitude shots while he was on a practice mission. That's a
blown up version of one of them. At first when I looked at it and saw
the woman lying on the beach, I didn't think too much about it. I
simply took it for granted that the island was covered with kunai and
that her dimensions were perfectly normal. Then I saw that what I'd
instinctively taken for grass wasn't grass at all, but trees, and it
dawned on me that I was looking at a photograph of a giant. I didn't
want to believe it, but photographs like that don't lie, and I had to
believe it. Now, you've told me that you think she's running away -
although you haven't told me why you think so - and you've asked me
to find her. Suppose I succeed - what then?"
"I'll see to it that she returns to Bijou-de-mer," David
said. "And you'll see to it, I hope, that the whole thing gets
as little publicity as possible."
"But what if she doesn't want to return to Bijou-de-mer?"
"I'll talk to her. I'm sure she'll understand that there's
nothing else she can do."
"And after she returns?"
"Why, she'll go on living there for the rest of her life. Where
else can she live? Where else can she find the privacy she has to
have?"
"I'm afraid 'it's not quite that simple any more, Mr. Stuart.
Even if I could guarantee you complete secrecy in the matter, which I
can't, it wouldn't do you much good. The cat's already out of the
bag. Just this morning I received a report that the crew of a New
Zealand freighter sighted a deep-sea monster which they described as
a giant mermaid with legs. You can be sure that the item will find
its way into the newspapers and you can also be sure that there'll be
other sightings - unless your wife returns to the unfrequented waters
in the neighborhood of your island. But in the long run, even that
may not help you. You may find yourself with more publicity on your
hands that the creators of the Cardiff Giant ever dreamed of, in
which case your island will provide your wife with about as much
privacy as Grand Central Station."
"Then I'll just have to find somewhere else for her to live. The
important thing now is to find her."
"If we do find her, you'll be notified immediately, of course.
But since there's no precedent for this sort of thing, I can't advise
you as to what will happen afterwards. But if she's your wife as you
claim, you certainly ought to have a lot to say in the matter."
The admiral leaned across his desk. "Mr. Stuart, if what you've
told me is true, you've lived with this situation for a long time. Do
you have any idea how your wife could have turned into a giant?"
David remembered his tentative theory about the Titans, but be didn't
voice it because to have done so would have been tantamount to
admitting that he didn't think Helen was completely human. "No
sir,'' he said, "I'm afraid I have no idea at all."
In the weeks and months that followed, Helen was sighted again and
again, and the secret that David had gone to such lengths to keep
came gradually into the public domain. The various specialists whom
he and Helen had consulted were ferreted out by newsmen and
interviewed again and again. One of them stated that Helen couldn't
possibly have grown as large as the reports indicated for the simple
reason that her bones would have been incapable of sustaining that
much additional weight. Another of them said that it was ridiculous
to suppose that her bones wouldn't have undergone compensatory
changes. The poacher who had seen her swimming in the little lake
stepped to the fore and told his version of the incident again and
again, adding a little to it each time. His ghosted story, "I
Saw the Sea Monster in a Lake" appeared in newspapers throughout
the world, and he himself appeared on "I Know A Secret",
"Truth To Tell", and, when it was discovered that he had an
eidetic memory an
d could recite the novels of Harold Bell Wright word for word, on
"Name Your Category".
Australia joined in the search. So did France, Holland, and Japan.
Helen was sighted off Koli Point as she swam between the Florida
Islands and Guadalcanal. She was sighted off the coast of Vella
Lavella. She was sighted in the Bismark Archipelago. She was sighted
between the Gilbert and Ellice Islands. But all of the sightings were
unofficial, and by the time the various search forces arrived on the
scene she was no longer in the vicinity.
Knowing how hopeless it would be to try to find her with nothing but
a yacht at his disposal, David remained on the island with Barbara
and followed the search on radio. At first there was no discernible
pattern in the sightings, but at length one became apparent. Even
after he spotted it, however, he didn't realize its implications
until, several weeks after she had been sighted south of Tuamotu, she
was seen in Drake Passage; and the real truth didn't dawn on him
until he heard that she had been seen in the Strait of Magellan.
Hating Bijou-de-mer and all it stood for, she was heading for the
only other home that was still accessible to her - the cottage on the
Connecticut coast. And she was letting herself he sighted so that he
would know. So that he would be there waiting for her when she swam
in from the sea.
He would not disappoint her.
In September, he and Barbara left Bijou-de-mer and set their course
for Santa Cruz. Arriving there, they hired a crew, and then they
began the voyage home. Again, David decided to go by way of Tacoma.
There was no hurry, for it would take Helen till December at least to
reach the cottage. Probably she wouldn't get there much before
Christmas. The whole truth dawned on him then, and left him stricken.
She wasn't making the fantastic journey just to meet him it the
cottage - she was making it to meet him there on their fourth wedding
anniversary.
He began to hate the ground he walked on.
The Nereid reached Tacoma early in October. On the same day it docked
a news story that climaxed all previous accounts of the
"sightings" appeared on the front page of every newspaper
in the country. An American whaling ship had sighted Helen in the
South Atlantic and dispatched a catcher to intercept her. She had
attacked the catcher and overturned it - entirely without provocation
according to the report - and when the factory ship had come to the
rescue she had surface dived and disappeared from sight. But that
wasn't the worst of it. Two of the catcher's crew were missing, and
as yet no trace of them had been found.
What had happened was quite clear - if you believed what everyone was
saying. "Goliatha" had carried the two men into the deep
with her and devoured them.
Yes, she had a giant's name now as well as a giant's reputation. And
a thrilled and delighted audience. Never had a nation's morale been
so high; never had neighbor felt kindlier toward neighbor. For now
there was a common enemy whom all could hate to their hearts' content
- a monster whose eventual "defeat and death" all could
"attend to with the greatest satisfaction."
As for David, he was horrified. He was doubly horrified when he
learned that Congress, anticipating Goliatha's capture, was
appropriating funds to build a special prison where she would be held
for trial and a special court house where justice would be meted out
to her. Once again society had been affronted, and once again society
was out to exact an eye for an eye. And in this instance, revenge
would be obtained whether the accused was convicted or not. The court
house would take on the overtones of a zoo and the trial would
destroy her as utterly as an atomic bomb would have. Society was a
far more fearsome giant than the giant whose blood is thirsted for.
There was only one thing to do. Like all men, David had to kill the
thing he loved.
He had not worn his scarlet cloak when he and Barbara traveled
incognito from Washington to Connecticut. He had not worn it when he
secretly arranged for the purchase and the emplacement of the
howitzer. He did not wear it now.
Had the wind spoken his name? He listened. "Da . . . vid! Da . .
. vid!''
He stepped over to the window and looked out. Barbara beckoned to him
frantically, then turned and pointed out to sea.
The moment had come.
Numbly, he got into his shoes and his galoshes. Then he donned his
mackinaw and plunged hatless into the windslanted snow. At the
cliff's edge, he stopped and looked out to sea.
He saw the gulls first - great clouds of them circling in the
lowering sky. Then he saw the dolphins leaping from the leaden waves.
Finally, he saw the golden kelp-beds of her hair.
He dropped to his knees beside the howitzer.
This day hath the Lord delivered thee into mine hand...
The leitmotiv sounded once again, grew in volume as she waded in from
the sea. She seemed made of shining gold, and golden garments that
matched her golden skin adorned her breasts and loins. A golden tiara
crowned her golden head, and her golden hair fell down around her
shoulders in glistening golden strands. She grew out of the water
till she stood lighthouse-tall in the morning -
fair as the moon, clear as the sun . . . terrible as an army with
banners.
She halted a dozen yards from the cliff. A trident gleamed in one of
her golden hands. Behind her, dolphins leaped. Above her circled the
gulls. David looked upon her face. It was different now. It was
frightening in a way. But her eyes still held the blueness of a
September sky and her mouth still knew the softness of a summer
night.
Her voice, too, was as gentle as he remembered it. "You needn't
worry about me any more, David - I've found my own kind."
His sling and stones forgotten, he straightened to his feet.
"Then the Titans did return to the sea!"
"It may have been the Titans. It all happened so long ago that
we aren't sure who our ancestors were ourselves. But we know that
originally they lived on land. When the waters began to rise probably
during one of the glacial retreats - they must have thought that
everything would be submerged. Anyway, they adapted themselves to
live beneath the sea, and once they'd done so, they couldn't re-adapt
themselves to live above it."
"Then how were you able to live on land?"
"I'm an atavism - a throwback to the days when my ancestors were
still in the process of adjusting themselves to their new way of
life. It took them centuries, and at first heredity didn't function.
Children had to be brought up on land and allowed to adapt themselves
gradually. Only when they reached adulthood were they ready to live
beneath the sea. Just as I'm ready now. I would have died the same
day I was born if my parents hadn't put me on land. They wrapped me
in seaweed and held me above the surface of the sea, and as soon as
they could do so without being seen they swam into shore and left me
where someone would be sure to find me. After that, all they could do
was hope that I'd survive till I reached maturity. I was less than a
day old when my foster father found me. Just a baby. We're different
from land people. We reach puberty two years after we're born,
adolescence four years later, and adulthood eight years later. And
the older we become, the faster we grow. I'
m the first atavism to crop up in thousands of years, but there used
to be lots of them. That's why your folklore is so full of
giants."
David looked out over the gray snow-pocked wastes that spread beyond
her golden shoulders. He shivered. "But the cold," he said.
"The darkness and the terrible pressure. How can you possibly
live at the bottom of the sea?"
"We don't live at the bottom. We live on the tops of guyots and
on continental shelves, and in caverns in the walls of the submarine
canyons that cut back in from the continental slopes. And it's not so
different from living on land as you might think. We have underwater
farms where we raise some kinds of algae for food, and underwater
factories where we process other kinds and make clothes out of it.
Most of us live in small communities, but on some of the larger
guyots there are regular cities. It's a good life, and a safe one. We
have two hereditary enemies - the white shark and the tiger whale -
but they're no match for us when we're armed, especially today. Our
ancestors used to make their tridents out of wooden masts or ribs,
and sometimes they broke, but we have much better materials to choose
from and ours never break."
David looked deep into the giant blue eyes, "Did you attack the
whaling crew?" he asked.
"Only because I had to, David. They were trying to harpoon me,
and they would have killed me if I hadn't upset their boat. When I
dived afterwards, two of them were caught in the suction and pulled
down. I've felt terrible about it ever since."
She reached into a golden pouch that hung at her side, withdrew a
tiny object, and laid it at Barbara's feet. Barbara picked it up. It
was Helen's wedding ring. "I was hurt at first," Helen
said, "and I wanted to get as far away from Bijou-de-mer as I
could. But after a while I got over it, and I saw that it was only
natural that the two of you should have fallen in love. So I came
here, hoping you'd guess where I was going and come to meet me."
She looked at Barbara. "Good by, little sister," she said.
The enormous azure eyes came softly to rest on David's face.
"Good by, sweet gentle David."
She turned, and the gulls circled higher. The dolphins leaped above
the waves. The waters rose around her as she waded into the sea.
''Don't go yet," David called. "Don't go yet - please!"
She did not pause. The waters rose higher, swirled around her waist.
He no longer loved her - he knew that now. Not in the way he had
loved her before. But he loved her in a different - perhaps a nobler
- way, and seeing her walk all alone into the vast and lonely wastes
of the sea was more than he could bear. So he called again:
"Don't go yet! Don't go yet - please!"
She turned then, and looked back at him. She smiled, and shook her
head. There was sadness in the smile, but there was happiness, too. A
strange, secret happiness . . . As he watched, the waters near her
swirled and eddied then they parted, and a great golden head
appeared. Golden shoals of shoulders, cyclopean arms . . . In a great
surge of foam, her new mate rose out of the sea beside her, and she
turned and looked up into his great blue eyes. His love for her and
her love for him shone through the slanting snow. Together, they
began swimming out to sea.
The dolphins leaped, the gulls wheeled. The wind doubled its strength
and the snow came down in wild and furious whiteness. Just before
they dived they rose high out of the waves, and a single ray of
sunlight stabbed down through a sudden chasm in the clouds and
burnished their gleaming bodies into blinding brightness; and then
the ray was gone and the brightness was no more, and nothing broke
the surface of the sea except the leaping dolphins and the pock-marks
of the falling snow.
Tears were running down Barbara's cheeks. David put his arm around
her shoulders. "It's all right now," he said. "Finally
she's free."
He looked out over the vastness, over the sweep of wave and trough.
He remembered the canvas she had painted in the heyday of their love
- the eerie palace and the slender towers, the strange rays and the
filmy phosphorescences and the piscine birds. It was like a line of
Shelley's almost. "In what cavern of the deep," he
whispered, "will thy pinions close now?"