Riders in the Chariot (14 page)

"The truth is always truest when other people call it lies," Mrs Jolley answered in her triumph.

"You are a wicked, evil woman!" Miss Hare accused. "I knew it! All along I knew it!"

"Who is not wicked and evil, waiting for chariots at sunset, as if they was taxis?"

"Oh, you are bad, bad!" Miss Hare confirmed.

"And you are sick. I was foolish not to have called a doctor, but did not, well, out of respect for feelings."

"You must never call a doctor. Never, never!"

"I will not be here," said Mrs Jolley, "long."

"You will be with your thoughts, and that will be worse."

"What do you know about my thoughts?"

"Only what you have told me."

Mrs Jolley had some difficulty in releasing the handfuls of her apron.

"If we are two of a kind," she mumbled.

Miss Hare could not accept the possibility of that, and was rootling in remote recesses for some evidence of her own election.

"What did I really say?" she coaxed. "That evening? On the terrace?"

But Mrs Jolley was sulking.

If Miss Hare had not felt so exhausted, she might have known more alarm. There was a hornet crying as it built its nest in a doorway. The housekeeper had evaporated in her usual manner. A windy desert, somewhere, could not have been emptier than the hornet's cry suggested.

Yet, it was one of the lusher mornings of spring, after the grass had taken over. The immediate world appeared to be living under grass. Light was no longer distributed by the sun in honest golden metal; it oozed, a greenish, steamy yellow, from the flesh of grass. As Miss Hare went out into the green prevalence, the arrowheads of grass pricked her; she was the target of thousands. But had experienced worse, of course. So she went on.

She went down, through the militant, sharp, clattering grass, and through patches of shade where the soft, indolent swathes lolled and stank. She went to where the orchard had once been, and which she had not visited, it seemed to her, for years. Neglect, however, had not cancelled celebration. The tangle of staggy trees paraded a fresh varnish, stuck by intermittent grace with virgin heads of blossom. There was the plum tree, too, the largest anyone had ever seen.

The plum had obviously reached the height of its glory for that year. Its crowded white dared the grass, brought the colour back to the sky. The sun had returned, moreover, in its own right, and hung a spangled banner on the tree.

Miss Hare went on pushing through the musky grass. She could have swum forever, on her wave, towards the island of her tree, holding out her hands, no longer begging for rescue, but in recognition.

And he came out from under the branches, from where he had been sitting, apparently.

"Oh," she said then, and stopped, knee-deep in the waves of grass.

He stood outside the tree waiting for her, though it was nobody she had ever seen.

"I came in here," said the man. "I saw the tree."

"Yes," she said. "It is mine. Isn't it lovely? And I have not noticed it for years."

She was making little grunting sounds, of happiness, and recognition.

The man appeared to recognize, or, at least, not to reject.

Which was comforting.

He was a very ugly man, and strange, she saw.

"Would you care to sit down, in the shade," she asked, "and enjoy the tree?"

She was filled with such a contentment of warmth and light she would not have cared if he had refused. She had been refused so regularly.

But the man did not reject her offer.

"I am Himmelfarb," he said, correctly, but oddly.

"Oh, yes?" she answered.

At the same time they stooped to negotiate the branches, which were to provide their canopy.

5

WHEN THEY were seated, on two stones which could have been put there for them at the roots of the tree, the two people ignored each other for a moment, staring back at the material world as if to take a last look at those familiar forms which further experience might soon remove from their lives. From inside their flowered tent, they could now observe how the masses of the orchard were broken by a hatching in grey wood. Only precariously alive, the trees were the greener for their sickliness, moodily defiant of the strong light, with little, wizened oranges radiating a feverish gold. All was most extraordinarily exposed to mind and view from beneath the plum, and could have appeared to challenge hope, if it had not been for the evidence of continuity: a bird cupped in the grey goblet of her nest, a litter of young rabbits moving by clockwork into grass, the eyelids of a lizard denying petrifaction by the sun. It was perfectly still, except that the branches of the plum tree hummed with life, increasing, and increasing, deafening, swallowing them up.

At that point Mary Hare turned to her companion, wondering whether he was the kind of person to whom apologies had to be made.

"This," she said, "is what I am really interested in." She wished her hands could have helped her out, but they would not. "All these things, I mean,"--making an awkward motion with her head--"are what I understand."

She realized she was at her most hopelessly inadequate. Her tongue was small, and round, and hard.

The man nodded, however. She saw he would take her seriously. So she eased her knees, in their ugly brown woollen stockings.

"It is still difficult for us to appreciate, except in theory," said the man. "Until so very recently, we were confined within ghettoes. Trees and flowers grew the other side of walls, the other side of our experience, in fact."

Miss Hare made rather a face for the difficulties she had begun already to encounter.

"I must tell you something," she said. "I did not receive much education. My father was impatient. And then," she confided--it was terribly hard, but necessary--"I was supposed to be simple. Still, there were always a great many things I was able to understand."

The man could not have been less surprised, or perhaps he was excessively grave.

"I mean," he continued, "I am a Jew, and centuries of history have accustomed one to look inward instead of outward."

"Oh," said Miss Hare, "there are others who do that!"

And paused.

"Sometimes it is quite horrible," she murmured.

A prickly stillness had fallen round them.

Then she reached forward and jerked off, clumsily but successfully, a twig from her tree.

"There," she said, showing him.

She was holding the blossom in her blunt grubs of fingers. Would he be disgusted by her as many people were?

He bent forward to look at the flower. She had never been so close to a man--even her father's moments of intimacy had been necessarily distant; he had always avoided any gesture that might have developed into an embrace--so, now it was natural that she should observe intently. She was looking into the little whorls of hair on his neck, just above the collar. The confusion and profusion of rather wiry, once-black hair excited her love for all living matter, while she felt as guilty as though she had discovered the secret a respected friend had not attempted to conceal.

The man was taking a somewhat exaggerated interest in the plum blossom.

"It is almost finished," he was saying.

"It is only beginning," she corrected. "After this there will be a period that a lot of people consider dull. Little pin-heads of green fruit. Before the fat, purple, powdered ones.

"But the worms come, too," she remembered. "The plums will be full of worms."

All the time she was examining the pores of his skin. His ugly face had not yet opened to her, although she could feel there was nothing such a person would willingly hide. His face was stone, but must have possessed the warmth of statues in summer, which retain the heat of the sun after it has withdrawn. She was particularly fascinated by his great nose. It should have been cruel, but, on the contrary, it appeared so gentle she would have liked to touch it.

"You investigate nature very thoroughly," the man said, and laughed.

"I do not have to investigate," she answered. "By now, I know!"

Then she blushed for what Peg might have called a boast.

He continued looking at the twig, although each knew the necessity had passed. Her hands took the blossom for granted, while continuing gently to hold, and he was reminded of some animals: dogs that have accepted the good faith of a master, cats resuming their suckling of a litter while a stranger looks on. In their freckled clumsiness, her hands appeared supremely trustful.

"I am afraid I did not catch your name," her voice had begun to say, in the accents of another, a mother, perhaps, or governess.

"Himmelfarb," he said.

"Oh, dear!" she protested. "That is something I shall never learn. Haven't you something easier?"

"Mordecai."

"Worse!" she cried. "Much worse!"

And looked helpless, but pleased.

"I have been called by a great variety of names. Many of them in the heat of the moment. But in the end, no name is necessary," he said. "Not even the rightful ones."

She looked down into her lap to avoid something she did not fully understand.

"Mine are very simple," she ventured, and was almost too ashamed to disclose them.

But, when finally she did, he appeared delighted, and asked with some enthusiasm, "Did you realize it is possible to distinguish the figure of a hare if one looks carefully at the moon?"

"No. I did not. But I am not at all surprised," she replied earnestly.

"The sacrificial animal."

"What is that?" she asked, or panted.

"In some parts of the world, they believe the hare offers itself for sacrifice."

"Oh, no!" she cried. "I do not like to believe that. One meets with too many knives by the way, without going deliberately in search of one."

"The concept of the willing hare is surely less painful than that of the scapegoat, dragged out, bleating, by its horns."

"Goats? Please, don't tell me! I really do not understand any of these things."

His natural and immediate silence calmed her, however, and she said, "I don't think I ever met a Jew. Perhaps one. An old man who was useful to my father. A piano tuner. Are Jews so very different?"

"There is all the difference in the world."

"Do you like it?"

"We have no alternative."

"I understand," she said. "I, too, am different."

He laughed, and picked up the twig of wilting plum blossom which she had let fall.

"That would appear, mathematically and morally, to make us equal," he said. "I am glad."

Without irony, though. So that she was glad in turn. This Jew would not be one to go laughing at her.

"In the factory where I work," the Jew told her, and he had returned inward, behind walls higher than those he had mentioned, "I am considered the most different of all human beings."

"Of course!" she cried. "
They
_ always behave like that. What do you make in your factory? Is it close? I cannot imagine it. Tell me," she said.

"It is at Barranugli. We do make other things, but our particular item is bicycle lamps."

"I should hate that!" she replied with great vehemence. "But do you live close? I do hope."

"At Sarsaparilla, " he said.

"Yes?"

"Below the post-office."

"In your own house?"

"So to speak."

"Yes, yes. I do know a little brown house. Oh, a house is better! One can hide in a house."

Until seeming to remember. Then she added, "Up to a point."

This mad, botched creature might subject him to thumbscrews, and touch him with feathers, at one and the same time, the Jew suspected.

"I have a house," she continued warily. "Down there. Beyond the orchard. Perhaps I shall show you some day. We shall see."

Because the Jew must understand the essential mystery and glory which Mrs Jolley and her like could never recognize. Yes, glory, because decay, even the putrid human kind, did not necessarily mean an end.

"I am not very often free."

The man seemed uneasy. He was not refusing. Rather, he was attempting to resist something which he might have desired.

"I know," said Miss Hare. "The factory. But you must breathe sometimes. Even a plant must breathe."

Her own breath had begun to sound spasmodic, though triumphant. She had never spoken like this before to any human being. Unexpected seeds of thought were germinating in her mind, and she had the impression she might shortly grasp things which had remained, hitherto, the secrets of others.

"Several times I have trespassed in your orchard," the Jew confessed, "and sat beneath your tree."

"That is a beginning," the woman suggested gently.

As a child she had learnt to help fledglings onto twigs, and maimed or frightened animals to walk.

"So you will come here again, won't you?" Now she was pleading, only this time it could have been in her own interests. "I want you to tell me things. About your life. Won't you?"

She was quite greedy. Her hands were helping to trap those words which eluded her.

"There are a great many details, incidents, which you could not hope to understand," the Jew replied, colder, it sounded. "Naturally."

"Oh, yes," she agreed. "There is always so much one does not understand. But it does not matter. Because some little thing, something quite unimportant, will show. So clearly. One is almost blinded by it," she gasped.

Suddenly she was choking with ideas and words. She did hope he would not consider her an imbecile.

With the result that the Jew was ashamed of the momentary feeling of repulsion she had roused in him. Nor was his remorse unrelated to a sensation experienced on somewhat similar occasions, when, for usually superficial reasons, his own feelings caused him to reject inwardly a member of his race.

"It is a long and involved story," he confessed, sinking down against the trunk of the tree, so that the bark scored the back of his neck, without his being aware. "Perhaps I shall tell you some of it," he said. "Another time."

But the strange part of it was: he began, there and then, whether he realized or not, and perhaps he did not, until fully launched, in giving the woman the most intimate, sometimes the most horrible details of all that had ever happened to him. But, of course, in that sultry, motionless air, it was like addressing some animal, or not even that. He remembered seeing fungi which suggested existence of the most passive order. And she could become perfectly still. It was only later that he recoiled from such an attitude, as if he had been guilty of treading on life.