Chapter II (2)

After a while Marah took off her hat and crushed it into her pocket. She thrust her hair back so that it curled in a soft panel for her face, against which the taut finely-modeled cheeks were more clearly defined. Swiftly her mood changed. Lying flat on her stomach, her feet waving in the air, she looked up at Levine ... at his glasses in which the sun made bright prisms that shifted themselves like a kaleidoscope whenever he moved. His serious stare she returned with equal solemnity, and spoke in a solemn manner.

"Your eyes behind your glasses," she began, "look for all the world like fish staring out of a bowl ... just as mournful. Tell me, what do fish think about when they stare out so mournfully?"

Levine picked up a twig that lay near him, and began to rub a thin rut into the earth. The twig broke under his hand and he threw it away. "Shall I tell you what I was thinking about?" he asked slowly. And in answer to her nod he said, "I was thinking, just then, that I first fell in love with you on account of your shoes."

Her eyes widened incredulously.

"It's the way you lie there," Levine continued earnestly, "that reminds me of the time when I found you asleep in my room. You were lying with your face to the wall, and I remember that as I stood there looking at you I noticed your shoes. They were very tiny, I remember, with very high heels, and I saw how they were fastened to your feet. I can't really explain the feeling I had at that moment, Marah. But then I saw how your feet were imprisoned, and it made me feel such tenderness for you, and pity..." He ignored her quick impudent laughter. "I think I began to love you from that moment."

Her laughter arrested by the constrained tone of his last words, Marah pondered this. She was about to speak when a party of ragged little boys appeared in the clearing, held an excited conference, and all but leaped over her as they continued on their flight. Later came a straggler, who stopped to say breathlessly, "Which way ... which way..." But before they could answer he too was off. Marah looked after him. "So ... you pitied me," she said.

"But not in the way you think," Levine answered quickly, his eyes pleading for respite from her mockery. "It was more understanding than pity, Marah. In that moment I understood how many things bound you ... how you were bound by your beauty. I saw then that you were two persons ... the Marah that thought and saw, and the Marah that men saw. And when I understood that I forgave you a great many things."

"Oh, what did you forgive me?" she asked lightly.

Levine pondered in his turn. "I don't know ... I don't know," he said slowly. "Perhaps," he added almost to himself, "I think there is something to forgive because..."

She caught him up sharply. "Because of what?"

He looked away, and an involuntary bitter smile curved his lips. "Because I feel hurt..." he said.

She did not answer and a long silence fell between them, in which only the occasional clash of their glances betrayed the interplay of their thoughts. In this silence they heard people talking and laughing on the other side of the boulders, and after a while they knew they were no longer thinking of each other, but only listening to the words and laughter that drifted toward them. Levine stood up without warning and spoke in a petulant whisper. "How many people do you think there are on the other side?"

Marah listened. "I can distinguish only three voices."

"And someone who laughs all the time."

"No, the laugh belongs to the man with the deep voice."

"No, it belongs to another person who doesn't talk at all, but only laughs."

She looked up at him wonderingly.

"I tell you there's someone there who laughs and doesn't do any talking," he insisted irritably. "Laughs in a way that nauseates me." He gathered their things and walked away, looking angrily in the direction of the voices. His face was red when he sat down and he did not look at her. "It wouldn't be so bad," he muttered, "if he said something once in a while." And he seemed so unhappy that she put her hand on his arm and tried to console him, patting it awkwardly. "I'm sorry, Joseph. Let's go away from here. We can go where it's altogether quiet."

"No, I'm quite all right here, thank you. It's fairly quiet here. Let me put my head in your lap instead."

"Do you know what I wish, Marah?" he said after a while, shutting his eyes against the bright blue of the sky. "I wish I could lie this way all day, with nothing to do but listen. I wish I could hear the wind at this moment. There would be something healthful in it...." He paused, observing thoughtfully the fluted brown trunk of the tree that shaded them, and the floating branches above it. "Sometimes I amuse myself," he continued and smiled a little at his own words, "by thinking of all the sounds that no one hears. When part of a glacier cracks and rumbles away by itself ... to be present at such a lonely sound. Or when it thunders, I should like to be alone in the hills, listening to it. But I would be satisfied at this moment if only I could hear the wind. It would be healthful for me. Or what do you say..." he looked up at her, smiling and shading his eyes. "Is it all because my head is in your lap?"

Though Marah touched his forehead and the arched line of his eyebrows lightly with her fingers, in her expression as she looked down at him, and in that gesture of her fingers, there was something wondering and remote, something puzzled. She did not speak ... only in answer to Levine's insistent look she smiled slowly. Then he shut his eyes and was silent for a long time, she thought he must have fallen asleep.

"Joseph ... Joseph," she called softly.

But he did not stir until a long time after, until the sun came suddenly through the leaves and touched his face, and he opened his eyes and looked up at her without surprise, as if she were part of his dream. "Do I tire you, Marah?" he asked.

"No, I'm all right."

"Strange for me to sleep in the day-time," he mused, "and out-of-doors too."

"I called to you."

"Did you? I thought I heard it from very far away, and I tried to struggle back to you. But it was better to sleep."

"It's quiet here..."

"Yes..." He closed his eyes and listened for the quiet, feeling it all about them, complete and authentic. On his face now was the expression of a small boy who is content. He reached his hands up to Marah and drew her face towards him, and kissed her gently. "_Now_ I am happy..."

"But this morning," he continued, frowning a little, "do you know what happened to me this morning, Marah? I was very unhappy, and I heard a ringing in my ears, and it seemed that the only way I could forget my unhappiness was to listen to that sound in my ears. But a voice warned me, 'Don't listen to it.' Because this was like one of the perils in the fairy-tale ... if you once listened to it, then you would have to spend your whole life listening to it." He looked up at her, and there was infinite fear in his eyes. "Marah," he cried in a low voice, and it seemed as though he were calling to her from a great distance ... "don't let me listen to it. Help me, Marah, not to hear it."

"Do you hear it now?" she asked softly.

He sighed, as though something that had been troubling him for a long time was settled at last. After a while he shut his eyes and spoke with low halting words, seeming to listen for each word first before he could say it aloud.

"When I was little, Marah," he said, "I had the dream of spending my whole life alone on a hill, from which I could see both the rising and the setting sun. Sometimes that dream comes back to me now ... the earliest thing I desired, before I knew there were people in the world. But now it seems sad to me, a little terrifying. And do you know why it seems that way now? Because your presence has come into the world ... because all that loneliness of nature that I used to desire, is now only the loneliness of your not being there. And so my earliest, my profoundest wish is lost to me ... the impersonal is lost to me. Do you understand that, Marah? Do you know what I have lost for you?"

"If you knew," he continued, looking up at her and smiling again at his own words, "you would see how humble I am, how dependent on your favor. Because there is this difference. I could have the other thing that I desired whenever I wanted it, at my own pleasure. But having you ... well that, you see, is entirely dependent on you. Marah, do you see my humility before you?" But when she did not answer again, he sat up and looked away from her. "You see, at any rate," he said bitterly, "that I am not ashamed to parade it."

With a motion that was awkward and swift as a boy's she reached to him; but Levine mistook the gesture, and she tried to ward him off with outstretched arms, her eyes averted in terror. But all her movements to release herself would not avail, and she shut her eyes against him, waiting passively until he had finished, her face rigid with its expression of secrecy and fear. He looked at her with troubled eyes. "What is it, Marah?" he cried. "Dear child of mine, can't you tell me what it is?"

But she sat for a long time with eyes half-shut and oblique, and sighed deeply as if she were trying to awaken herself. From this trance she turned to him at last, with a look in which there seemed to be a profound and final understanding of things. "Yes, I think I know what it is..." she said faintly. But seeing how Levine was brooding in his turn, his face haggard with displeasure at himself, she rallied and laughed lightly, and drew close to him with a penitent gesture.

"But it's only a superstition," she said, "that occurred to me this moment."

"Yes, tell me what it is..."

Marah folded her hands in her lap and looked before her, her eyes darkened with their burden of unwilling knowledge. "I believe," she said slowly, "in this: that nothing can happen to me unless I wished for it in my childhood ... that everything that does happen to me is in some way a fulfillment of a wish that I made as a child." She paused, musing for the right words. "And these wishes," she continued, "were made without my knowing it, and only by seeing what happens to me now can I tell what they were. It _seems_ to me so," she added, frowning a little. "I can't tell why I believe it ... yet it seems to me so, I think it must be so for everyone."

Pausing in his motion of feeling the blades of grass between his thumb and forefinger, Levine pondered her words.

"Why, that must be true," he nodded gravely. "It seems so to me, also. But tell me, Marah," he added smiling, "did you wish for me?"

"I don't know..." she smiled back to him.

"But it doesn't really matter," he retorted gaily, "because I know that I wished for you, Marah. I know that."

"But in a way I did," Marah continued thoughtfully, laying her hand on his arm and looking at him with steadfast eyes. "Because I remember that one day in my childhood I made a pact with myself ... that I must never forget myself, never lose myself in anything that happened to me. Though why ... _why_ I made the pact," she mused, "what happened that made me warn myself, that I can't seem to remember at all. But I remember saying to myself: always _know_ what is happening to you ... always be watchful..." She stopped and raised her eyes to him with a swift appealing glance. "Do you understand that, Joseph?" she asked sadly. "Do you see in what way I wished for you?"

He did understand, and to hide from her the completeness and bitterness of his knowledge, he turned away. Again he felt baffled by the perfect balance of her nature, that security which kept her apart from the world, content to be merely watchful. Though he remembered such a time in his own life, he had also the bitter knowledge of what followed ... how from being too watchful he had grown weary, and come to desire forgetfulness ... a way to forget himself the one thing he had never achieved. "It's not true, Marah," he said harshly. "It's not true that you don't want to forget yourself..."

But she did not answer, and they sat for a long time in silence, until, like the swift change of mood in a song, Levine's anger and bitterness left him, and a sudden happiness assailed him, in which he knew all their words for nonsense. "Marah..." he called from his happiness, "Marah..." But she watched him sprawling grotesquely over the earth, his hands caressing the grass, his lips pressed to the ground, and again there was something remote in her expression, something slightly puzzled. She saw him tearing the grass and cupping it in his hands, and lifting it to his lips as though he would drink it. And she discerned in it the pantomime of possessing her. For a moment there seemed to be in her body the gesture of submission, a feeling of paralysis before Levine's will ... simultaneously she felt disgust for what she saw.

"We'd better go," she said sharply, "it's late."

"Why ... what has happened, Marah? What have I done?"

"I don't like this ... this smelling under the armpits."

"Oh, I see..." Levine sat up and looked at her angrily. He gathered their things and they rose and walked for a long time without speaking.

* * * * * * *

They came at last to a place where there were many small birches standing as in a stockade, with the skeletons of large trees lying among them. Where one birch had started to grow along the ground ... its trunk horizontal with the earth ... and then turned sharply upwards, they sat down to rest. The place was very quiet. Once a large bird started from the ground with a snort of wings, and Marah looked for it with startled eyes. But otherwise nothing moved. When the sun broke through the leaves it was as if a group of dancers with one motion had turned up the bright side of their fans. When the sun went away it seemed that the fans were being slowly closed. Levine looked up at a large maple that stood near them, and saw through the leaves a dark lightning of branches. He noticed the dappled effect of the leaves and saw what made it ... because on the edge of each bright leaf there was a dark segment, where the shadow of another leaf showed through. He noticed, also, that one of the stones in the earth was glistening wet. "Spittle of snakes," he said to himself, and he was surprised that these words came to him. Things occurred to him to do. He thought of swinging on one of the branches of the maple tree, his knees curled up, and then jumping down and letting the branch rebound. He wanted to feel the smooth bark of the birch trees with his finger-tips ... or take a twig and probe the soft, damp-looking lumps of moss. Yet nothing of this was necessary. It was not necessary to talk, or to touch Marah in order to feel her nearness. All their words, he felt, had been spoken; and there was nothing left now but the drift of impressions ... the lazy backwash of his mood, like a wave that had broken in its full height. He felt this rhythm, he felt the recession of his troubled mood. He was at peace in this moment, and his peace would not be troubled again for all the time that he was with Marah. He turned to her. "Now I have you both," he said softly.

She was sitting with her chin on her hand, looking thoughtfully before her; but rousing herself once and glancing around she caught sight of a tree that had the first red leaves of autumn. Her gray eyes rested on it with startled delight, and she touched Levine's arm with a gesture as if the tree were swiftly moving away. "Do you know what I have to say to myself when the trees turn color?" She laughed to herself with sheer pleasure at the sight ... "I'm almost afraid of it ... and so I keep saying to myself: is it any different from their being green..." To see the childlike delight in her eyes, and to hear her laughter and words, was for Levine an exquisite moment of forgetfulness.

But now it was growing darker, and with one accord they rose and stood uncertainly confronting each other. "Are you tired, Marah?" he asked. She smiled to him, as if she had not understood the question, yet wished to show that she had heard. "Shall we lie in that little open space and look up at the sky?" and she nodded silently. They lay down where they could see a stretch of sky fretted at its edges with the dark silhouette of leaves, and listened for a long time to the silence gathering around them, to a distant and ominous murmur that seemed to come from a great distance.

"Trucks on the state road...." Levine observed drowsily. It seemed to him that he was sleeping. The patch of sky that he saw between the trees, the faint sprinkle of stars, the fantastic shape of the leaves against the sky ... here what seemed to be the head of a gigantic horse rearing up from the earth ... all this was a scene such as only a dream could put together. It was too perfect, he said to himself, too allegorical.... If only he could consciously will that the dream should continue, and that Marah should always be in it ... part of the allegory, the meaning and core of it. If only he could lie forever in his waking dream, that seemed to rest him more profoundly than sleep.

After a time Marah sat up and clasped her hands round her knees. In the dark she looked lonely and child-like, and she put her head down on her knees as if she was very tired. "I had such a strange feeling just this moment," she said. "I was looking up at the sky and I lost all sense of looking up. I had the feeling that I was on board ship, looking at very still blue water all around me. Is it true, do you think, that you can forget you're looking upwards, and think you're looking down on the sky?"

"But it should be true..." Levine said, speaking softly and reluctantly, unwilling to break his waking dream with speech ... "Yes ... why shouldn't we be able to look upward long enough, until all our senses are accustomed to it, and it seems no different from looking down?"

"And the sky is really all around the earth," Marah continued in a drowsy voice. "You see it going down to the horizon..."

She lay down again, sighing. The darkness moved closer about them, and a single mournful cry of some animal came from the woods ... a note hoarse and bird-like. A long time after, when the cry had been forgotten in the silence, Levine spoke. "Didn't it sound as if there was an idiot boy in the woods..."

"Because animals cry out that way," he mused to himself, "like idiot boys. They open their mouths and a sound comes out, and you can't tell whether there is joy or sorrow in their souls..."

The cry was repeated, and Marah drew closer to him. Now it was so dark that they could not see anything beyond the place where they lay, and only the white outline of Marah's arms circling her head in an attitude of complete relaxation relieved the shadow. Almost palpably they felt the silence and darkness deepening around them, like stealthy water in which they were being slowly trapped. They rose, knowing that this time they were not to part, and they looked into each other's faces and saw confirmation of it. Marah drew towards him with a quick confiding gesture, and he could only guess by her words at the sweet and child-like fear in her heart. "Oh, where shall we go now," she cried softly, "where shall we go now..."