Crackpot, page 11
FOUR
There was a point, during the argument with Uncle, at which Danile lost touch with the words that were being uttered, and heard only bull cries of rage and treble screams of fear and defiance, his own voice wailing uncontrollably in unintelligible concert with theirs, the feelings working against the words, smashing at the formal combinations of sound which tried to give them shape, cries merging with unheard cries, emotions dissolving in a chaos of emotion, the three of them baying in deaf unison of distress. And it seemed to Danile that the three of them were no less helpless than those two other screamers whose anguish had obsessed his mind these past weeks. Why was it that both of the women who had loved and taken care of him in his lifetime had been taken screaming from him? How often since it had first appeared, unbidden in his mind, had the question recurred, its very persistence a denial of irrelevance. Screaming, why did they both have to scream so, each in her terrible way? What could there be behind such screams as theirs but a whole universe of pain? Such thoughts frightened him, for he knew he stood on dangerous ground for an ignorant man. But he could not help remembering those inhuman screams of his wife, echo or continuation of the anguish of his mother, could not help conjuring them up in his head, telling them over in his mind, reliving his helplessness.
What if he had listened to Rahel, had gone sooner to learn to make baskets? Would that have made any difference? Was that what her screams had been trying to communicate? An accusation? Almost, he wished it were so, to keep it personal, between himself and her, to deny the indifference. Over and over he forced himself to listen to those screams in his mind, until the sound of Rahel’s voice, so recently heard in life, began to fade away altogether. When he suddenly realized that he could hardly even conjure up the sound of her voice anymore, Danile became even more frightened than before, and forgot why he had been trying to summon up the memory in the first place. Could he then lose still more of her, who was already gone? Gentle Rahel who had girdled his life with warmth of sound and pleasure of touch; was he so leaky a vessel that he could not contain even her memory for long? Urgently Danile had turned to his daughter, had poured out to her once again in a fever of recall the memories of his life with Rahel, the large and the little miracles that proved, surely, that even though she was gone from them the largest miracle of all, the miracle of her existence, had really and significantly taken place. Yes, her existence must have meant something, though he could feel the death of all meaning implicit in the senselessness towards which their own screams and shouts and incomprehensible attempts at self-justification in this battle with Uncle appeared always to be striving, beneath all of those words, pushing always towards that long scream of terror and pain and indifference into which wife, mother, and now self as well seemed about to dissolve.
Long after Uncle had stormed out of the house, making a great clatter as he stumbled over the warped planks and was forced to descend precipitantly down the stairs with quick little steps in order to maintain his balance, the sound of which clumsiness elicited from Hoda a derisive snort through her tears, he sat and listened to the echoes of all their voices merging and emerging and merging again. Late in the night, still, long after Hoda had told him that it was time to go to bed, for nowadays if she didn’t tell him he was apt to simply sit on through the intenser stillness that she knew as night, when Hoda lay sleeping deeply after her struggle with Uncle, Danile listened, until his head grew empty of sound and his own long sigh seemed to sweep it through like the prairie wind. Then it was that memory stirred, of itself, and he remembered that Rahel had foreseen this. Rahel had warned him, and tried to prepare him. Rahel had tried in advance, wise, persistent Rahel, to fortify him against the worlds of screams and frightening silence. And he in his stupidity had resisted, had clamped his lips shut and turned his head this way and that, like a child trying to avoid a bitter mouthful that the doctor has prescribed, while its mother darts after his lips with the spoon, patiently coaxing. Blessed Rahel, had she foreseen it all? foreseen Uncle, foreseen even her own anguish, and sought to fortify him, in his ignorance, against this impotence of despair? If this was so, and he could not doubt it, as no other avenue opened itself to his mind, he knew what he must do.
It was not in Danile’s nature, once he felt that his path had been revealed to him, to cling to despair. Then and there he made the first move toward the time when he and Hoda would be able to reconstruct from the shambles of that visit the great myth of their heroic resistance to Uncle. Moving quietly, so as not to awaken the child, he slipped out of bed and made his way to the materials through which his wife had prepared their salvation. Lovingly, he ran the lengths of prepared straw through his fingers, felt, measured, twisted, plaited, worked, shaped, and before long had caught himself even beginning to hum. This would not do. He might awaken the child. He made several trips, gathered all his materials, transported them to his bedroom, shut the door carefully behind him, arranged himself comfortably, and set to work. For the first time in a long while he did not think of screams. In fact he had to check himself, occasionally, remembering that he must not sing too loudly, even here, for fear of waking the child. But he soon forgot, and Hoda, awakened, came thudding along the floor to ask, in a frightened voice, what was the matter? Why was he praying in the darkness when it wasn’t even today yet? She didn’t realize, that first night, that he was already shouldering his responsibilities. He assured her gently that all was well, and sleepy, she stumbled back to bed without having thought to turn on his light. But a night or two later, awakened again, she had come into his room and switched on his light to find her daddy fully dressed and sitting cross-legged, plaiting straw and singing to himself. It was such a shock to see him so, as though all sorts of things went on in the dark where only dreams and shadows were supposed to live, and you could never be sure what would happen if you turned on the light. But she got used to it, and before long she no longer even heard him singing in the night, but slept soundly as before, or perhaps even more soundly, at least for a little while, comforted as she was by the knowledge that Daddy really was going to show Uncle that he could take care of them by himself, even if he had to work day and night to do so.
Hoda helped her daddy as much as she could. She printed signs, “STRAW AND WICKER WORK,” “BAGS MADE” and “SEATS FIXED,” which she hammered onto big tree trunks in the yard, facing the street. She also made a little notice to put in the grocery window, and one which Yankl the butcher was glad to display in his window for her too. Yankl said that when her daddy had made enough baskets, he’d even take one or two and keep them for sale in the butcher shop. Yankl was always nice to her.
Uncle would find out they didn’t need him. God would help. Daddy said it and Hoda believed it. Hoda, however, was young enough to take future miracles for granted, while at the same time she was getting to be old enough to worry about everyday things. How did it work when God helped? Did the breadman, the grocer, the milkman, the butcher help? Of them all the butcher was the only one Hoda knew for sure would help, at least on a barter basis. Not that the others were mean; they had all liked Mamma. Yet they never indicated to her that they would like to make a trade like Yankl the butcher, though she watched for it pretty carefully and was nice to them. She was too shy to offer openly, because she really was not quite sure that it was completely all right, though Yankl always said “What’s a little feel, eh?” in his heartiest voice afterwards, as he threw piles of bones and bits and pieces of meat scraps into a paper for her, enough so she and Daddy would have meat and soup, and marrow to suck, for a week.
Yankl himself didn’t seem to think it mattered much afterwards, and when she was behind the counter with him he acted as though it was just something that happened to happen while something else important, like cleaning the counter top, was going on, even though he really showed he liked her when he was coaxing her. He didn’t even look at her when she did what he’d begged her for, and talked rapidly about all kinds of different things as though he were talking to himself, and rubbed vigorously at the hollowed-out wooden chipping block, and kept glancing angrily at the door, so that every now and then when he said “hard” in a sharper voice, if it weren’t for the particularly urgent sound of it she wouldn’t have known he was giving her an order. She never talked to anyone about it, of course, because Yankl said it was a secret. His wife wouldn’t like it if she knew he was giving meat scraps away, because she liked him to bring them home; but if someone had asked her Hoda couldn’t honestly have said that she minded the feel of it; on the contrary, though it disturbed her when it went down like that, suddenly, after all that. But Yankl liked it so it must be all right. Anyway it was worth it to have him for their friend. Besides, she felt sorry for him. Once, she saw him walking down the street, only he didn’t see her where she was, and she almost burst out laughing. Just from the expression on his face, his eyes looking around absently, angrily, and the way his hands were moving in the air, and the way he was walking, especially since he didn’t have his big apron on, she could tell he was in the same place he went when she was behind the counter with him. She even bet he wished she were there with him, and thought that maybe he really liked her a lot. But he was so old, and married, and even had big kids, to be one of her real sweethearts. So she forgot about it after she got home each time and washed her hands, and thought about cooking supper instead. If he liked it it was his business.
She had more important secrets to think about, especially all that about how a lot of the boys liked her better, sometimes anyway, even than they liked the girls who thought they were their girl friends, because she was nicer than them. And they didn’t care that she was fat, either, when they were liking her. Even though those three big boys from the dumb class, who followed her home sometimes, called her Fatso, they really liked her because they kept talking like that about her things that they couldn’t even see naked under her clothes, though she herself could feel them all separately swelling up when they talked that way. But she wasn’t going in the back lane with those boys like that dumb Seraphina in their own class used to do all the time before they took her away and put her in a nun’s school, and then the boys laughed about her and pretended they had never liked her even though they had all gone in the back lane with her, sometimes even five of them, and wanted to every day. Hoda knew it for a fact because Seraphina had told her herself and had showed her a nickel a man once gave her. Seraphina told her because Hoda was nice and talked to her when the other girls said she was awful and they wouldn’t have anything to do with her. They were jealous because the boys they liked did that with Seraphina. They all said it was a bad thing to do, even though they kept talking about it and who did it and read those poems the boys passed around and giggled and said they were awful even though they could make Hoda feel good for hours. Why did they say it was bad when it made you feel so good? Maybe because they weren’t as fat as she was they didn’t have room for as many good feelings all over them. But Seraphina was skinny. She was just too dumb to pretend something was bad when it felt good. Hoda could pretend; she was just as smart as they were. But she wasn’t going to pretend if she didn’t feel like it; why should she squeeze all her good feelings down and be left with only mean feelings instead?
When those big boys followed her home and they came to the corner where they usually turned off to go to their own houses, though they always said they would come with her all the way home if she would take them in her shed for a little while, Hoda usually slowed down a little so they wouldn’t go so soon. She wasn’t afraid, even that time when they rushed her and backed her into the fence, all three of them, and said they’d drag her in the back lane, and grabbed her all over with the big hands they all had except for the pale, thin one with the long fingers that she put her own hands on hopefully when he touched her; she tried to look deep into his eyes, because she knew that princes had long, slim fingers and he might even be the Prince of Wales himself disguised as a dumb yuk.
It always seemed funny to Hoda that you had to love each other in such strange disguises before everyone became nice and everything turned out all right. Wouldn’t it be nice if that mean, conceited boy Stanley, in her class, the one she really loved, really loved her too, secretly, and was just pretending to be mean until the time came when he could show it? Maybe he didn’t even know yet himself how nice he could be and how nice it would be if he were nice. What if Stanley were to follow her and put his hands on her that way? And what if he begged her to come to the shed? Well she wouldn’t! Not after the way he acted in school! Anyway if he were really nice he wouldn’t tell even if she did. Not that she cared what they’d say if they knew, all those girls who liked him, even if they were prettier and looked nice in their tunics and were always neat. She could do what she wanted. Some of the girls thought she did it with boys already just because she was friendly with Seraphina before she got sent away and hung around and kibitzed with those rough kids after school sometimes. So what, she wasn’t afraid of any of them. But she wasn’t going to be like Seraphina. She wasn’t going to give Uncle a chance to get her sent to the orphanage like they sent Seraphina to the nun’s home. Not that Uncle had to know about what she did. She’d fix anyone who squawked. Any way she was not like dumb Seraphina. Just let them try to send her anywhere and they’d find out.
Think of Stanley instead. Maybe she should try to clean out the shed a little so it wouldn’t smell so bad from dampness and rotting old stuff. No, why should she? If somebody really loved you they wouldn’t care. They’d know what you were really like. They’d see you weren’t really just fat and sloppy with holes in your stockings and stains on your tunic. Those other girls didn’t know how it was when you were so poor and didn’t have enough time in the day to do all those things you had to do, like keep the house clean and cook for Daddy and wash his stuff too, and sheets and things, and you never had enough mended clean blouses and pants to change to, and the ones you had kept coming apart because they were old and you were growing. They didn’t even know how to take care of their daddies, and even if they did, they’d want to play outside sometimes too.
What would happen if she were to let those big boys take her in the shed? She could if she felt like it. Then the boys would come and hang around her yard in the evenings maybe and she wouldn’t have to go for a walk just to pass by the house of one of the popular girls where the kids collected on the verandah in the evenings and they always laughed a lot and had fun. They never exactly invited her and Hoda had to pretend to be surprised to see them sitting there, and say “Hi!” as though she never expected to run into them though the way some of them looked at each other she could tell they thought she had really followed them. Well so what, they couldn’t prove it. It was a free sidewalk. She could stand there as long as she felt like it, and she did, trying to think of things to say to make them really notice her and keep them interested so maybe they might ask her to come and sit on the verandah too. She knew better than to ask right out if she could come up with them, because that would start all the jokes about the verandah collapsing. Sometimes, though, they were friendly, and let her come up, but mostly she stood on and on, moving her hands over the rough slats or paint-chipped wire offence or gate, laughing loudly in her strident voice if she happened to hear part of a conversation that was funny, never able to figure out how to trigger that gesture of friendliness that would bring her in among them for good.
She had things to do at home anyway. When they all pushed indoors like they did, suddenly, as though someone had given a secret signal, and disappeared to eat or play games in there, even though she had tried to keep them talking because she always had a feeling when it was going to happen, as if they were trying to get away from her, and they left her still standing there, without anyone saying anything to her so she could feel invited and come in too, she felt sorry for them. She wouldn’t act that way. And she knew who the ringleaders were too, the ones who didn’t want her, and the way the boys acted around them you’d think they were like that too. But Hoda knew better. They weren’t, not all the time. But one thing Hoda knew when they acted that way. She wasn’t going to clean up the shed for somebody who acted like that Stanley did. If they wanted you to have a clean shed they’d darn well come and help you clean it up, that’s what they’d do, if they wanted you to believe they really cared about you enough to get you to go in there with them in the first place. And just to test them out, when those boys asked her again if she’d take them in her shed she teased them right back, “Sure, if you guys want to clean up my stable it’s okay by me! I’ll come and inspect!” Of course if one of them really wanted to, she wouldn’t really make him do it, but then she’d know it was really he, and she’d clean up the shed herself just to show him she really loved him too.
And for a while it became the thing for any boy who wanted to get a quick and easy feel of Hoda, to banter with her in the loud, excited way he couldn’t help in spite of the fact that he thought he was whispering. “Hey, Hoda, come over here a sec, naw, a little closer, I want to ask you something in private.” And when she came, half pretending she didn’t know, half hoping for she didn’t quite know what, he would shout hotly in the general vicinity of her ear while his hands tried to rove and maintain a permanent grip at the same time, “Hey, you want me to clean out your stable for you?” And Hoda would tease, giving back chaff for chaff, with a hard-to-control feeling of exhilaration and even, when she got happy enough all over, patting the boy, as she pushed him away, in such a way as to make him spring right back again as though not of his own volition, a bouncing ball, over and over again. That was when they really liked her, and even begged her, and sometimes even offered to give her money, and that was how she knew for sure she really wasn’t like all those others; she didn’t like to say no. It really hurt her to be mean, even though they were mean to her sometimes. She didn’t like to see them look that way, when they really weren’t joking, their eyes soft and sick and miserable, as though it was all her fault. And it wasn’t, either; they started it. They didn’t have to come after her if they didn’t want to; and besides, they never even said they really loved her, anyway. Maybe they were waiting for the truly right time too, the time she knew must be coming soon, to make up for all those times when she felt so badly. With all her heart Hoda looked forward to those coming times when things would be all better and she would swim around in good feelings always and forever after, instead of feeling so badly so much of the time. She knew the time was coming, knew it even in her bad feelings, which were so awful you couldn’t hold still with them. But the good feelings were there too, right under them, struggling to get out. More and more she knew it had to happen soon, and those strong, dense, concentrated, persistent sensations of sweetness that waited to enwrap her with urge and promise through all those many less pleasing moments of her day, let her know, in their own way, that joyous events can commence in humble places, even a smelly old backyard shed for instance, just for instance, and it wouldn’t be bad, either, the way some people always said it would because somehow it would turn out all right and you’d get married and he’d be rich and noble and would take care of you and Daddy and get more people to buy Daddy’s baskets.
