The Loved One Page 6

  “No trouble with dogs and cats on the island. Dames is our headache, dames and guys in very considerable numbers come here to neck. I reckon they appreciate the privacy, too, same as cats.”

  While he spoke some young people had emerged from the bosky and stood waiting his summons to embark; oblivious Paolas and Francescas emerging from their nether world in an incandescent envelope of love. One girl blew bubbles of gum like a rutting camel but her eyes were wide and soft with remembered pleasure.

  In contrast to the ample sweep of surrounding parkland, the Lake Island was cozy. An almost continuous fringe of shrub screened its shores from observation. Paths of mown grass wandered between leafy clumps, opened out into enclosed funerary glades, and converged on a central space, where stood a wattle cabin, nine rows of haricots (which by a system of judicious transplantation were kept in perpetual scarlet flower) and some wicker hives. Here the sound of bees was like a dynamo, but elsewhere in the island it came as a gentle murmur hardly distinguishable from the genuine article.

  The graves nearest to the apiary were the most costly of all but no more conspicuous than those elsewhere in the park; simple bronze plaques, flush with the turf, bore the most august names in the commercial life of Los Angeles. Dennis looked into the hut and withdrew apologizing to the disturbed occupants. He looked into the hives and saw in the depths of each a tiny red eye which told that the sound-apparatus was working in good order.

  It was a warm afternoon; no breeze stirred the evergreens; peace came dropping slow, too slow for Dennis.

  He followed a divergent path and presently came to a little green cul-de-sac, the family burial plot, a plaque informed him, of a great fruiterer. Kaiser’s Stoneless Peaches raised their rosy flock cheeks from every greengrocer’s window in the land. Kaiser’s radio half-hour brought Wagner into every kitchen. Here already lay two Kaisers, wife and aunt. Here in the fullness of time would lie Kaiser himself. A gunnera spread a wide lowly shelter over the place. Dennis lay down in its dense shade. The apiary, at this distance, came near to verisimilitude. Peace came dropping rather more quickly.

  He had brought pencil and notebook with him. It was not thus that he wrote the poems which brought him fame and his present peculiar fortune. They had taken their shapes in frigid war-time railway journeys—the racks piled high with equipment, the dimmed lights falling on a dozen laps, the faces above invisible, cigarette-smoke mixing with frosty breath; the unexplained stops, the stations dark as the empty footways. He had written them in Nissen huts and in spring evenings, on a bare heath, a mile from the airfield, and on the metal benches of transport planes. It was not thus that one day he would write what had to be written; not here that the spirit would be appeased which now more faintly pressed its mysterious claim. This high hot afternoon was given for reminiscence rather than for composition. Rhythms from the anthologies moved softly through his mind.

  He wrote:

  Bury the great Knight

  With the studio’s valediction,

  Let us bury the great Knight

  Who was once the arbiter of popular fiction.

  And

  They told me, Francis Hinsley, they told me you were hung

  With red protruding eye-balls and black protruding tongue.

  I wept as I remembered how often you and I

  Had laughed about Los Angeles and now ’tis here you’ll lie;

  Here pickled in formaldehyde and painted like a whore,

  Shrimp-pink incorruptible, not lost nor gone before.

  He gazed up into the rhubarb roof. A peach without a stone. That was the metaphor for Frank Hinsley. Dennis recalled that he had once tried to eat one of Mr. Kaiser’s much advertised products and had discovered a ball of damp, sweet cotton-wool. Poor Frank Hinsley, it was very like him.

  This was no time for writing. The voice of inspiration was silent; the voice of duty muffled. The night would come when all men could work. Now was the time to watch the flamingoes and meditate on the life of Mr. Kaiser. Dennis turned on his face and studied on the bronze plaques the counterfeit handwriting of the women of the house. Not forceful characters it seemed. Kaiser owed nothing to women. The stoneless peach was his alone.

  Presently he heard steps approach and, without moving, could see that they were a woman’s. Feet, ankles, calves came progressively into view. Like every pair in the country they were slim and neatly covered. Which came first in this strange civilization, he wondered, the foot or the shoe, the leg or the nylon stocking? Or were these uniform elegant limbs, from the stocking-top down, marketed in one cellophane envelope at the neighborhood store? Did they clip by some labor-saving device to the sterilized rubber privacies above? Did they come from the same department as the light irrefragable plastic head? Did the entire article come off the assembly lines ready for immediate home-service?

  Dennis lay quite still and the girl came within a yard, knelt down in the same shade and prepared to recline beside him before she said, “Oh.”

  Dennis sat up and turning saw the girl from the mortuary. She was wearing very large, elliptical violet sunglasses which she now removed to stare the closer and recognize him.

  “Oh,” she said. “Pardon me. Aren’t you the friend of the strangulated Loved One in the Orchid Room? My memory’s very bad for live faces. You did startle me. I didn’t expect to find anyone here.”

  “Have I taken your place?”

  “Not really. I mean it’s Mr. Kaiser’s place, not mine or yours. But it’s usually deserted at this time so I’ve taken to coming here after work and I suppose I began to think of it as mine. I’ll go some other place.”

  “Certainly not. I’ll go. I only came here to write a poem.”

  “A poem?”

  He had said something. Until then she had treated him with that impersonal insensitive friendliness which takes the place of ceremony in that land of waifs and strays. Now her eyes widened. “Did you say a poem?”

  “Yes. I am a poet, you see.”

  “Why, but I think that’s wonderful. I’ve never seen a live poet before. Did you know Sophie Dalmeyer Krump?”

  “No.”

  “She’s in Poets’ Corner now. She came during my first month when I was only a novice cosmetician, so of course I wasn’t allowed to work on her. Besides, she passed on in a street-car accident and needed special treatment. But I took the chance to study her. She had very marked Soul. You might say I learned Soul from studying Sophie Dalmeyer Krump. Now whenever we have a treatment needing special Soul, Mr. Joyboy gives it to me.”

  “Would you have me, if I passed on?”

  “You’d be difficult,” she said, examining him with a professional eye. “You’re the wrong age for Soul. It seems to come more naturally in the very young or the very old. But I’d certainly do my best. I think it’s a very, very wonderful thing to be a poet.”

  “But you have a very poetic occupation here.”

  He spoke lightly, teasing, but she answered with great gravity. “Yes, I know. I know I have really. Only sometimes at the end of a day when I’m tired I feel as if it was all rather ephemeral. I mean you and Sophie Dalmeyer Krump write a poem and it’s printed and maybe read on the radio and millions of people hear it and maybe they’ll still be reading it in hundreds of years’ time. While my work is burned sometimes within a few hours. At the best it’s put in the mausoleum and even there it deteriorates, you know. I’ve seen painting there not ten years old that’s completely lost tonality. Do you think anything can be a great art which is so impermanent?”

  “You should regard it as being like acting or singing or playing an instrument.”

  “Yes, I do. But nowadays they can make a permanent record of them, too, can’t they?”

  “Is that what you brood about when you come here alone?”

  “Only lately. At first I used just to lie and think how lucky I was to be here.”

  “Don’t you think that anymore?”

  “Yes, of course I do really. Every morning
and all day while I am at work. It’s just in the evenings that something comes over me. A lot of artists are like that. I expect poets are, too, sometimes, aren’t they?”

  “I wish you’d tell me about your work,” said Dennis.

  “But you’ve seen it yesterday.”

  “I mean about yourself and your work. What made you take it up? Where did you learn? Were you interested in that sort of thing as a child? I’d really be awfully interested to know.”

  “I’ve always been Artistic,” she said. “I took Art at College as my second subject one semester. I’d have majored in it only Dad lost his money in religion so I had to learn a trade.”

  “He lost his money in religion?”

  “Yes, the Four Square Gospel. That’s why I’m called Aimée, after Aimée Macpherson. Dad wanted to change the name after he lost his money. I wanted to change it too but it kinda stuck. Mother always kept forgetting what we’d changed it to and then she’d find a new one. Once you start changing a name, you see, there’s no reason ever to stop. One always hears one that sounds better. Besides you see poor Mother was an alcoholic. But we always came back to Aimée between fancy names and in the end it was Aimée won through.”

  “And what else did you take at College?”

  “Just Psychology and Chinese. I didn’t get on so well with Chinese. But, of course, they were secondary subjects, too; for Cultural background.”

  “Yes. And what was your main subject?”

  “Beauticraft.”

  “Oh.”

  “You know—permanents, facials, wax—everything you get in a beauty parlor. Only, of course, we went in for history and theory too. I wrote my thesis on ‘Hairstyling in the Orient.’ That was why I took Chinese. I thought it would help, but it didn’t. But I got my diploma with special mention for Psychology and Art.”

  “And all this time between psychology and art and Chinese, you had the mortuary in view?”

  “Not at all. Do you really want to hear? I’ll tell you because it’s really rather a poetic story. You see I graduated in ’43 and lots of the girls of my class went to war work but I was never at all interested in that. It’s not that I’m unpatriotic. Wars simply don’t interest me. Everyone’s like that now. Well, I was like that in ’43. So I went to the Beverly-Waldorf and worked in the beauty parlor, but you couldn’t really get away from the war even there. The ladies didn’t seem to have a mind for anything higher than pattern-bombing. There was one lady who was worse than any of them, called Mrs. Komstock. She came every Saturday morning for a blue rinse and set and I seemed to take her fancy; she always asked for me; no one else would do, but she never tipped me more than a quarter. Mrs. Komstock had one son in Washington and one in Delhi, a grand-daughter in Italy and a nephew who was high in indoctrination and I had to hear everything about them all until it got so I dreaded Saturday mornings more than any day in the week. Then after a time Mrs. Komstock took sick but that wasn’t the end of her. She used to send for me to come up to her apartment every week and she still only gave me a quarter and she still talked about the war just as much only not so sensibly. Then imagine my surprise when one day Mr. Jebb, who was the manager, called me over and said: ‘Miss Thanatogenos, there’s a thing I hardly like to ask you. I don’t know exactly how you’ll feel about it, but it’s Mrs. Komstock who’s dead and her son from Washington is here and he’s very anxious to have you fix Mrs. Komstock’s hair just as it used to be. It seems there aren’t any recent photographs and no one at Whispering Glades knows the style and Colonel Komstock can’t exactly describe it. So, Miss Thanatogenos, I was wondering, would you mind very much to oblige Colonel Komstock going over to Whispering Glades and fix Mrs. Komstock like Colonel Komstock remembers?’

  “Well, I didn’t know quite what to think. I’d never seen a dead person before because Dad left Mother before he died, if he is dead, and Mother went East to look for him when I left college, and died there. And I had never been inside Whispering Glades as after we lost our money Mother took to New Thought and wouldn’t have it that there was such a thing as death. So I felt quite nervous coming here the first time. And then everything was so different from what I expected. Well, you’ve seen it and you know. Colonel Komstock shook hands and said: ‘Young lady, you are doing a truly fine and beautiful action’ and gave me fifty bucks.

  “Then they took me to the embalming-rooms and there was Mrs. Komstock lying on the table in her wedding dress. I shall never forget the sight of her. She was transfigured. That’s the only word for it. Since then I’ve had the pleasure of showing their Loved Ones to more people than I can count and more than half of them say: ‘Why, they’re quite transfigured.’ Of course there was no color in her yet and her hair was kinda wispy; she was pure white like wax, and so cool and silent. I hardly dared touch her at first. Then I gave her a shampoo and her blue rinse and a set just as she always had it, curly all over and kinda fluffed up where it was thin. Then while she was drying the cosmetician put the color on. She let me watch and I got talking with her and she told me how there was a vacancy for a novice cosmetician right at the moment so I went straight back and gave Mr. Jebb my notice. That was nearly two years ago and I’ve been here ever since.”

  “And you don’t regret it?”

  “Ah, never, never for a moment. What I said just now about being ephemeral every artist thinks sometimes of his work, doesn’t he? Don’t you yourself?”

  “And they pay you more than in the beauty parlor, I hope?”

  “Yes, a little. But then you see Loved Ones can’t tip so that it works out nearly the same. But it isn’t for the money I work. I’d gladly come for nothing only one has to eat and the Dreamer insists on our being turned out nicely. It’s only in the last year that I’ve come really to love the work. Before that I was just glad to serve people that couldn’t talk. Then I began to realize what a work of consolation it was. It’s a wonderful thing to start every day knowing that you are going to bring back joy into one aching heart. Of course mine is only a tiny part of it. I’m just a handmaid to the morticians but I have the satisfaction of showing the final result and seeing the reaction. I saw it with you, yesterday. You’re British and sort of inexpressive but I knew just what you were feeling.”

  “Sir Francis was transfigured certainly.”

  “It was when Mr. Joyboy came he sort of made me realize what an institution Whispering Glades really is. Mr. Joyboy’s kinda holy. From the day he came the whole tone of the mortuary became greatly elevated. I shall never forget how one morning Mr. Joyboy said to one of the younger morticians: ‘Mr. Parks, I must ask you to remember you are not at the Happier Hunting Ground.’ ”

  Dennis betrayed no recognition of that name but he felt a hypodermic stab of thankfulness that he had kept silence when, earlier in their acquaintance, he had considered forming a bond between them by lightly mentioning his trade. It would not have gone down. He merely looked blank and Aimée said: “I don’t suppose you’d ever have heard of that. It’s a dreadful place here where they bury animals.”

  “Not poetic?”

  “I was never there myself but I’ve heard about it. They try and do everything the same as us. It seems kinda blasphemous.”

  “And what do you think about when you come here alone in the evenings?”

  “Just Death and Art,” said Aimée Thanatogenos simply.

  “Half in love with easeful death.”

  “What was that you said?”

  “I was quoting a poem.

  “… For many a time

  I have been half in love with easeful death,

  Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme,

  To take into the air my quiet breath;

  Now more than ever seems it rich to die,

  To cease upon the midnight with no pain…”

  “Did you write that?”

  Dennis hesitated. “You like it?”

  “Why, it’s beautiful. It’s just what I’ve thought so often and haven’t been able
to express. ‘To make it rich to die’ and ‘To cease upon the midnight with no pain.’ That’s exactly what Whispering Glades exists for, isn’t it? I think it’s wonderful to be able to write like that. Did you write it after you came here first?”

  “It was written long before.”

  “Well, it couldn’t be more lovely if you’d written it in Whispering Glades—on the Lake Island itself. Was it something like that you were writing when I came along?”

  “Not exactly.”

  Across the water the carillon in the Belfry Beautiful musically announced the hour.

  “That’s six o’clock. I have to go early today.”

  “And I have a poem to finish.”

  “Will you stay and do it here?”

  “No. At home. I’ll come with you.”

  “I’d love to see the poem when it’s done.”

  “I’ll send it to you.”

  “Aimée Thanatogenos is my name. I live quite close but send it here, to Whispering Glades. This is my true home.”

  When they reached the ferry the waterman looked at Dennis with complicity. “So she turned up all right, bud,” he said.

  Six

  Mr. Joyboy was debonair in all his professional actions. He peeled off his rubber gloves like a hero of Ouida returning from stables, tossed them into a kidney bowl and assumed the clean pair which his assistant held ready for him. Next he took a visiting-card—one of a box of blanks supplied to the florist below—and a pair of surgical scissors. In one continuous movement he cut an ellipse, then snicked half an inch at either end along the greater axis. He bent over the corpse, tested the jaw and found it firm set; he drew back the lips and laid his card along the teeth and gums. Now was the moment; his assistant watched with never-failing admiration the deft flick of the thumbs with which he turned the upper corners of the card, the caress of the rubber fingertips with which he drew the dry and colorless lips into place. And, behold! where before had been a grim line of endurance, there was now a smile. It was masterly. It needed no other touch. Mr. Joyboy stood back from his work, removed the gloves and said: “For Miss Thanatogenos.”