Sturgeon is Alive and Well Read online

  Miss Brandt has a twisted smile. Her teeth are no better and no worse than the rest of her, and not to be compared with her lashes. "I've been told that before, but I don't think I am. This is for you—here!" and she gives me the book.

  Before or behind my eyes there's a flash, too bright; I think it's a hippogriff. Up here in the salt mines I stand and shiver until the crazy thing passes; I open my eyes slowly and secretively so that I can snatch a reality and make it real. And Miss Brandt is here (or still here, I forget which) and the meadow and the hippogriff become a memory again (or maybe a dream).

  "Are you all right?" Her voice and her hand touch me together.

  "Stay away from me! I'm crazy, don't you know that?" (Her lashes are up.) "You better get out of here. I'm liable to do practically anything. Look, you're already getting a black eye." I'm yelling again. "Aren't you afraid? Damn you, be afraid!"

  "No."

  It's a very puzzling thing, the way she should be dressed like a monk, and be holding a crooked stick; but that was a small blue book—that's right. I'm shaking my head, or is it a shudder; the girl and the wall and the door blur by me and my teeth are side-sliding, making a switch-frog sound. It can be halted by holding the heels of the hands on the halves of the head very hard . . . and slowly saliva is swallowed . . . libation, libration, liberation, and quiet at last. In that moment of stillness, when at last I am here altogether, I know that my . . . dream, the Rogero thing, whatever it is . . . takes no time at all. For she was at the phone when it began, that last time, and all those things had happened to Rogero while she hung up and took two steps behind me . . . yes, and I heard the steps. So when I become Rogero again, no matter what happens here, how many hours it takes, I shall see Atlantes and the vanquished maid, down and away below, and she fumbling the dry rough stick, blind, defeated destiny of mine.

  So open your eyes to here and the easel and Miss Brandt who is not afraid. Hold out the hand with the book. "What's this?"

  "Money."

  It's a checkbook, sky-green and very disciplined and trackless inside, and sturdy and blue outside. "Blank checks."

  "Cartes blanches." She smiles; and this is no place for smiling. So just wait, and the smile will go away. Ah. Unsmiling, she says, "It's money; all you want. Just fill in a check and sign it."

  "You're crazy." But she shakes her head gravely.

  So: "Why bring me money?"

  "You can do whatever you want now."

  "I can't paint. Do you think you can make me paint by giving me money?"

  When her tongue touches her lips, they are the same color. No one, no woman, should be like that. Such a mouth could taste nothing, take nothing. It says, "Not if you don't want to. But you can do all the other things you want to do—all you have ever wanted to do."

  What else have I ever wanted to do but paint? There must be something. Oh, there is, there is; I never had a chance to—to— and then my hand is crushing the book, the book of excellent quality which yields only slightly and, when my hand opens, is bland again. "It's just paper."

  "It's money. Don't you believe me? Come with me. Come to the bank. Write out a check and see."

  "Money. How much money?"

  Again: "All you want." She is so very certain.

  "What for?"

  "Whatever you like. Anything."

  "I didn't mean that." Things are becoming real as real now. "When you take money you give something; you always give something, a painting or a promise or—"

  Her head turns briefly, a little, right, left, right, her eyes steady on me, so sliding between the lashes. "Not this money."

  "Why are you giving me money?" (You know, Giles, you're frightened?) "What I can do for money mostly is paint. But not now. Not now."

  "You don't have to paint. Not unless you want to, and then not for me. Giles, maybe you can't paint because you want to do other things. Well, do them. Do them all; finish them until they're all done and there's only one thing left. Maybe then you can work again."

  "Then the money's for painting!"

  Oh, she is so patient; oh, how I hate anyone as patient as that. "No. It's just for you. Do whatever you want. I don't want the money and I don't ever want it back It isn't mine to begin with, so why should I care about it?"

  "But you'd care if I didn't paint again."

  The fringes fall, the lashes hide the ordinary eyes. "I care about that now. I'll always care." And now she has the door open. "Come to the bank. Come get your money. Then you'll believe me."

  "The bank, yes, and then what? Go with you, I suppose, and you'll tell me what to buy and where to go and how to—"

  "It's yours to do as you please. Now will you come? I'll leave you at the bank if you like."

  "Hike."

  But no, this doesn't hurt her, and no, she is not angry; there's only one thing that touches her, and that one thing reaches through the closed door as we walk in the corridor, stretches down the stairs and past the lintels and the newels and the curbs and cabs and garbage all the way down to the bank; and that one thing is my white, clean, blind square eye of canvas.

  I wonder if she knows; I wonder. Wondering under the polyglot columns corralling the bank (Doric they are, with Corinthian capitals, yes but the door is not Doric but arched and Byzantine, closed with a fanlight; I'd say from Virginia). "I wonder if you know."

  "If I know what?" she says, still patient. "Why I can't paint." "Oh yes," she says, "I know." "Well I don't, Miss Brandt. I really don't." "It's because you don't know why you can paint," she says, and her eyes are no longer patient, but waiting. It is very different.

  And when I shake my head (because that is no answer) her eyes are patient again. "Come," she says; and in we go from the portico, and wouldn't you know the ceiling is red with ropes of gilded plaster draped in altogether Moorish squares.

  And here in a low wall made of glazed marble, and flat-topped with marbleized glass, is a little black gate that swings both ways. On the other side is a polished desk and a polished pate bearing polished glasses: "Mr. Saffron," says Miss Brandt; Mr. Saffron says the chock-shaped sign on his desk, gold on black.

  Mr. Saffron's glittering glasses tilt up; then straight and slowly he rises, like the Lady of the Lake. When he stands, his glasses lose some highlights, and I can see his eyes. They are blue and shiny—not polished, but wet; turned to Miss Brandt they are so round they go pale; turned to me they are slits gone all dark, with a little eave of pink flesh all the way across over both of them. And here is a man who is astonished by Miss Brandt and repelled by me; what a wonderful way he has of showing it, over and over again: round-pale, slit-dark, the whole time. "This is Giles."

  Mr. Saffron gives his slits to my brush-wipe khaki pants, and to my yellow shirt with russet cuffs which is really the top of my ski pajamas, and to my face. "You're quite sure, Miss Brandt?" "Of course!" "If you say so," says Mr. Saffron, and sits. "We're quite ready. Will you sign this, Mr. Ahhh?" I hear a drawer move but I am sure he pulls the white card from his spotless stomach. With the shiny pen from his desk set I write Giles.

  "First name?" says Mr. Saffron to the card, another shiny pen in hand.

  "Yes."

  "Last name?"

  "Yes," I say again; and up come the glasses. "That's his name, just Giles," Miss Brandt says quickly. And then she recites my address. Mr. Saffron writes it, putting no more of his boiled-veal fingers on the card than he has to.

  Miss Brandt says, "You want to cash a check now?"

  "Oh sure." I fumble around and get the book. Miss Brandt comes close with a finger. "You write the date there, and the—" But I just sit there looking up at her until she goes away. What's the matter, does she think I don't know how to write a check? I write the check.

  Mr. Saffron takes the check by its two ends and it flips softly like a little trampolin. He turns it over with a brittle snap and does a squiggle with his pen. "Sixty-eight dollars. All right, the cashier will give you your money." From his drawer he takes a yello
w, ruled pad and curls down over it as if there were sudden fire in his watch pocket. Out we go through the little black gate, and when I look back he is not busy with his paper at all, but staring after us the round-pale way.

  "Is that all you want—sixty-eight dollars?"

  I look at her. "What would I do with more than sixty-eight dollars?"

  Patient, patient she says, "Anything, Giles. Anything."

  So we go to a cage and a fierce face says in a sweet voice, "How do you want it?"

  "Cash."

  "Any way at all," says Miss Brandt.

  So he gives me the money and we go to a marble table in the middle of the bank while I look at it. Miss Brandt says, "Is that right?"

  "What?"

  "Is it all there? Weren't you counting it?"

  "Oh no. I was just looking at it. It really is real money."

  "I told you."

  "Is there more?"

  Again she says, "All you want."

  "Okay, good. Well, Miss Brandt, you can stay here or go do whatever you want."

  "All right."

  I walk away and when I get to the big door with the fanlight I look back. Miss Brandt is standing there by the table, not exactly looking my way. I come walking back. I have a feeling inside that makes the base of my nose hurt. I stop by her and look at her while I wet my lips. She has a real sunset of a shiner by now but the lashes are all right. So I tell her, "You just don't care what happens to me now."

  "You know I do."

  "Well, why didn't you try to stop me if you cared so much?"

  She says, "You're not going to do anything important just now."

  "With all this money? How do you know?"

  She doesn't say.

  "I guess you want me to come running back to you so you can take care of me."

  "No, Giles, truly," she says in that absolutely certain way. "You don't understand. I'm not important. I'm not trying to be important. I just don't matter in any of this."

  "Not to me." Why does she make me so mad anyway? "So what is important?"

  "Why you could paint. Why you can't paint. That's all."

  "Well, the hell with that for now. Well—maybe I'll see you around."

  She sort of shrugs. I just go. Maybe I want to turn around but I don't. There's something in my head about how do I get in touch with her if I should want to, but the hell with that too.

  By all the paint pots of perdition, nobody's ever going to make Giles admit he's a part of the works, like she does. People like her, all they do is go around believing in something and trying to trap other people into believing it too. "I just don't matter in any of this." What kind of a way to get along is that, the silly bitch?

  I get out of line of the bank door and then go across the street and stand in a low areaway where I can watch her when she comes out. From now on by God my business is my business. Who does she think she's brushing off?

  It's getting chilly out, but who cares? I've got lots of time. Lots of money. Lots of patience. Miss Brandt, now, she's really got patience. On the other hand, all God's chillun got patience. Will you look at that bank, now; those big fat pillars are doing just what? Holding up a pseudo-Parthenonic frieze, that's what. That's really patience. Year in, year out they stand there holding it up and nobody knows it's there but the starlings. Patience—look at the work that went into carving all those figures, that fat, baggy nude in the middle clear down to the chow dogs or lions or whatever they are at the ends. Stiacciato, they call that work, the lowest form of relief, and that fat one in the center, she sure would be. So they in turn are patient, the hodgepodge of Hermes and Demeters and blind Justices, holding still for the starlings. And when it's cold the starlings freeze on the marble stool, and when it's warm they stool on the marble frieze, and the meek shall inhibit the earth.

  Oh holy Pete what's happening to my head . . . listen, Giles, hold on to this area rail and keep your wall eyes on that bank and don't go off into no magic mountains. Watch that clock over the door. Watch it? I can hear it! Well listen to it then and keep your head in the here and now and don't let yourself go splitting the definitive. That, now, is a sick clock, it must be three hours slow, and listen to it moan. Oh I know a bank where the wild time groans . . . Hang on, Giles boy; think of something else, like San Francisco where the second-story men from across the Bay are called berkelers, and the Golden G—no! Think of the statue down the block, the Mayor's father on a horse, that's in the papers every other day should they move it or not. . . My father's horse has many mentions . . . and in the bank, now, Miss Brandt is leaving, see the gate is open and agleam in the sun as she stumbles on stones; it is as if Atlantes' mirth alone were bending her down to be crushed like a tree in a thunder-wind. And across the street —but meadow, meadow's the word—the blue-black helmets of the beastly gnomes show as they watch this . . . could it be called a challenge? Ay; but a battle, no; only a defeat.

  All this in a flash of stern anger, and then—yea, she is sinking, twisting about as if to fall at his feet. . . then up she comes in a whirl, her crude staff invisible, lost in speed, and with a whip's crack, the staff . . . Aiee!

  For a moment I cling to the casement, scrabbling like a cat half-fallen from a wall; in that incredible moment I have leaned forward to shout and have all but pitched out through the window; and what of my destiny then?

  Back at last and looking outward:

  And the gate is lead, and shrunken, and the gnomes but a herd of goats; I stand not on a mighty parapet, but on the roof of a byre. Bone are the swan pools, the great gray halls, the soft-footed dancers and the grape-girls. Atlantes, mighty Atlantes, lies on his back with his eyes glazed and the bright blood flowing from his broken head . . . lying, aiee! like a goatherd after a bottle-fight on market day. And his steed—but horror itself! has she then turned the hippogriff into a milch cow? May the mandrake curdle her bowels if she's harmed my hippogriff!

  Ah but no; there he stands, the blazing beauty, and throws back his eagle's head, and hurls his joy away to the farthest mountains. I mingle my shout with his, leap free of the wall, and run and tumble down the meadow.

  In a transport I stretch myself against the unenchanted grass, and twist and turn in it until I can smell its sweet green ichor; and in just such a turning mine eyes fall upon her who stands meekly by, her two hands folded about the piece of her broken staff, her eyes downcast—but not so far they see me not.

  "But 'tis thee, my warrior-maid!" I roar. "Here to me lass, and I'll buss thee well for thy trouble!"

  But she stands where she is, so I must go to her. That at least I can do; has she not set me free?

  (Or is she here to imprison me again? Destiny, now, is not fragile; yonder's a fractured magician for proof. Still—) "How do they call thee, maid?"

  "Bradamante," says she; now, the Arabs breed a long-maned horse, and in the distance that silken banner on their necks looks like this maid's lashes close to.

  "Well, Bradamante, I owe thee my freedom if not my life. And should I pay the reckoning, what would thee do with them?"

  Up to me she looks, with a deep calm which destroys my reckless smile; and up past me she looks further; and she says gently, "I would do the Lord's will with them."

  "Call me not Lord!" I cry; this creature embarrasses me.

  "I did not." Quiet as ever, her voice, yet somehow she chides me. "I meant the Lord Whom I serve, Who is King of kings."

  "Is He now! And what would He have thee do with a belly-hungry, prison-broke hellion of a swordless knight?"

  "If thou wilt serve Him—"

  "Hold, lass. Yon wizard told me a tale of thee and me betrothed, and crawling the mud like worms among worms with never a jewel to our cloaks. He said 'twas my destiny to be freed by thee, and free me thee did. Though I can't say how."

  "I but struck him with my staff."

  "Na, lass. Even I could never do that; he could not be touched."

  She gives me her hand; I take it and then follow her gaze to
it. It wears a simple golden ring. Gently she frees herself and removes the ring. "The Lord sent this my way; who wears it is proof against all enchantments. I need it no longer." The ring flashes in the sun as she casts it aside; with my quick thumb and forefinger I pluck it out of the air.

  "But keep it, Bradamante! Thee cannot discard such a treasure!"

  "It was given me to free thee, and thou art free. As to the future—the Lord will provide."

  I slip the ring upon my smallest finger, and though it is thick as her thumb, the ring clasps me like mine own. (Even without it, girl, thee'd have better fortune with an angry basilisk than thee would with me, if thee would persuade me to join thee on thy rocky pilgrimages. But now—) "This much of my destiny is complete, then, Bradamante, and I am in thy debt. But surely the wizard was wrong about the rest of it."

  "It is in the hands of the Lord."

  "Thee doesn't expect me to cast aside my brocades for a scratchy gown like thine, and go with thee among the peasants!"

  "We do as the Lord directs. We do it freely and with all our hearts, and are saved, or we do it blindly until we end in darkness; but serve Him we shall."

  Such confidence is more unnerving than any magic. "I cannot believe that."

  "Will not," she corrects me calmly.

  "But I've choicel Here we stand, Bradamante, and in the next heartbeat I might slay thee or woo thee or bite thee or fall on the earth and gobble grass; and which of these things I do is for me to decide!"

  Slowly and so surely she shakes her head. "It is in thee to serve the Lord, else I should not have been sent to thee. Choice thee has: Thee may serve Him willingly or thee may serve Him blindly; and none has a third way."

  "Thee cannot force—"

  She puts up her hands. "We do not force. We do not kill. We need not. The Lord—"

  "Thy Lord let thee kill Atlantes!"

  "No, Rogero. He is not dead."

  I spring to the crumpled magician; and indeed, he is but stunned. I snatch out his own poniard, and instantly, under its point, Bradamante thrusts her firm brown arm. "The Lord will take him in his own time, Rogero. Spare him."