All That Is

7


THE PRIESTESS



Eddins had found a house in Piermont, a small factory town up the Hudson, quiet and parochial, even neglected, about thirty minutes from the city. The traffic going in was never heavy. Trucks were not allowed on the parkway, just cars usually with a single occupant. It was a plain white house with soiled asbestos shingles on a street that sloped down to the paper mill and the river. There was a downstairs room and kitchen and on the second floor two bedrooms and a bath with old fixtures. There was a narrow strip of exhausted lawn and a garden. The front step, just off the street, was made of two large, irregular stones laid flat. The street went steeply downhill, almost directly to the liquor store that was owned by the ex-mayor, who still knew everything that was going on in town.

He had recognized the house as soon as he saw it. It was a house like those he had grown up among, small southern houses, not those of doctors or lawyers or even of his father, who had a seed business. Eddins had loved his father, too old for the war but went in anyway, coming home on leave in 1943 in his khakis with crossed rifles on the collar, imperishable image. Men came home that way in the south, in uniform, it was a heritage. This was in Ovid, South Carolina—Oh-vid, as they pronounced it—oyster shell driveways and tin advertising signs, churches, whiskey bottles in brown paper sacks, and white-skinned girls with wavy hair who worked in stores and offices, you were born to marry one. It was in his blood, hard-imprinted there like the bottle caps and bits of foil trampled into the flat, fairground earth. There was also the gift of talk, the history of everything, told and retold, until you knew it all, the families and names. They sat on shaded porches in the afternoon or evening and talked in slow, intriguing voices of things that had happened and to whom. Time, in his memory, went at a different rate in those years, largely unmoving as you walked everywhere or if it was a good ways, sometimes drove. Just past town was the river, not wide, and flowing slowly, almost unnoticeably, but flowing, faint streaks of foam lying on it undisturbed, the water rusted and cold. On either bank as far as one could see, nothing: trees, river bank, a stray dog trotting on the road alongside. In the parts yard, half-fenced, the bodies of wrecked cars and, further along the road, one that had been driven one night straight into a tree, the hollowed doors hanging open, the engine gone.

He had come from that and it was now behind him, but it still existed, like the impression on a sheet of paper beneath the one you are writing on. He retained the deep things, a sense of family, respect, and also a kind of honor in the end. His mother’s most valued possession had been an old dining table carved out of fiddleback mahogany that had been in her family since the 1700s. He also remembered the coast and the excitement of the road that led to it, though it was a long way away. They’d gone there when he was a boy, in the summer. The low sea islands, the great stretches of marsh grass, the beaches, and boats cocked as if to dry. The thing that appealed to him most about the house in Piermont was that it was like houses near the ocean. From it, he could look down at the vast river, wide and unmoving like slate, and at other times alive and dancing with light.

One night at a party he met a girl named Dena, tall, loose-limbed, with dark eyes and a space between her front teeth. She was from Texas and divorced, she told him, although that was not strictly true, from a man she described as a famed poet, Vernon Beseler, also from Texas—Eddins had never heard of him—who’d actually published poems, she said, and was friends with other poets. Intense but quick to laugh, she spoke with a drawl in a voice filled with life. She had a child, a little boy, who was staying at her parents’ at the moment. His name was Leon, she said, and gave a little shrug, as if to say she hadn’t chosen it. What is there about a woman who had fallen in love and gotten married and now stands before you in almost foolish friendliness, as a supplicant really, in high heels, alone and without a man? She was innocent, Eddins saw, in the real sense of the word. Also droll. She had a piece of scotch tape across her forehead when he came to pick her up the first time, she had put it there to prevent wrinkles and forgotten to take it off.

“What’s that?” he said.

She reached up.

“Oh, my God,” she said in embarrassment and confusion.

She told him about herself, stories of her life. She liked to sing, she said, she’d been in the choir. You weren’t allowed to wear lipstick in school, but in the choir you could wear it and even some makeup. What happened to their faces? the townspeople used to ask.

She’d gone to Vassar.

“You went to Vassar? Where is Vassar?”

“It’s in Poughkeepsie.”

“What made you pick Vassar?” he said.

“Actually, I’m supposed to be smart. Not supposed to be,” she said, “I actually am.”

She loved Vassar, she said, it was like an English park, the old brick buildings, the tall trees. They used to live as if it belonged to them, they came to class in their pajamas. For dinner though, you had to wear white gloves and pearls. There was a girl named Beth Ann Rigsby. She wouldn’t wear them, nobody could make her do anything. They wouldn’t let her go to dinner. You must wear your white gloves and pearls, they told her. So she came down in her pearls and white gloves and nothing else. Eddins was enthralled. He gazed at her.

“Are you looking at my teeth?” she said.

“Your teeth? No.”

“Are they too big? The dentist says I have a fabulous bite.”

“You’ve got wonderful teeth. What were you like as a kid?” he said.

“Oh, I was a good kid. I got good marks in school. I had this thing, I was mad about Egypt. I told everyone I was an Egyptian, my mother was furious. I had a sign on my door that said You Are Entering Egypt. You want to hear some Egyptian words?”

“Sure.”

“Alabaster,” she said. “Oasis.”

“Cairo,” he said.

“I suppose. They had the first great queen of history and the most famous, Nefertiti. When you died, your heart was weighed against a feather symbolizing truth, and if you passed judgment you took up eternal existence.”

She loved that he was listening to her.

“The pharaoh was a god,” she said.

“Of course.”

“When he died …”

“When God died?”

“It was just his way of leaving to join the other gods,” she said as if consoling him.

In September they went to Piermont for the day and ate lunch in the little, faded garden. The sun was still warm. She was wearing blue shorts and high heels. Her legs were bare and her heels had chafed spots on them. They talked and laughed. She wanted to be liked. Later they came into the kitchen and drank some wine. Eddins was sitting sideways to the table. Without a word she knelt in front of him and began, a little awkwardly because she was nearsighted, to unfasten his clothing. The zipper of his pants melted, tooth by tooth. She was a little nervous, but it was almost as she had pictured it, the Apis bull. Smooth and just swelling his cock almost fell into her mouth and gaining confidence she began. It was the act of a believer. She had never done it before, not with her husband, not with anyone. This was what it was like, to do things you had never done before, only imagined. The light was soft, late in the day. It just sort of flopped right out, she later wrote in her diary. He must of been thinking about it. It was ready. It was just so natural. Once, with her son, Leon, when he was a year and a half old, she had tied a piece of white string around his genitals, not to mean anything, just to set them off, they were so perfect. She had wanted to confess that, to tell someone, and to do this was like confessing, like telling Neil. It was like a boot just slipped onto a full calf and she went on doing it, gaining assurance, her mouth making only a faint sound. She did it as well as she could, she wanted it not to end, but then it was too late for that. She could tell from the movement he was making and then the cries and the great unexpected, it seemed a huge amount—she nearly choked. For a moment she was proud of her nerve. He was still in her mouth. She did not move. After a long time, she sat back.

Eddins didn’t speak or move. She was afraid to look at him, of having done the wrong thing. But she had wanted to. It had been because of her ka, the life force. Follow thy desire, they said, as long as thou shalt live, there is no coming back. She stood up and went to the sink to wash her face. There were brown rust stains under the faucets. She finished and walked into the living room and sat in a chair. Through the window, in the sunlight, she saw a white butterfly flying up and down in pure, ecstatic moves. After a few moments Eddins came and sat on the couch.

“Don’t sit over there,” he said quietly.

“All right. Then you didn’t mind?”

“Mind?”

“In Egypt I would be your slave.”

“Jesus, Dena.”

He wanted to say something but couldn’t decide what it would be.

“At the swimming meets …” she said.

“What swimming meets?”

“The swimming meets at school. The boys all wore these little, silky trunks and you could see some of them … were hard. They couldn’t help it. It made me think of that.”

“The little boys?”

“Not just them.”

“I wish I were all of them and you were looking at me.”

She knew he understood it all. She could feel the goddess in herself rising.

“No, I didn’t mind,” he said.

“I’ve never done it before.”

“I believe you.”

He realized she had misunderstood.

“I mean it was perfect, but I believe you.”

“I felt you were the one. Was it really good?”

In response he kissed her, slowly, full on the lips.

She was afraid of saying something foolish. She looked down at her hands, then at him, then down again. She felt embarrassed but not that much.

“I should probably marry you,” she said. She added, “I am married, though.”

For more than a month before her son came to live with her again—he had been with his grandparents in Texas until she and Vernon supposedly worked things out—she and Eddins lived on Olympus. They lay head to foot, for him it was like lying with a beautiful column of marble, a column that could quench desire. Her mound was fragrant, warm with a kind of invisible sun. The bold, Assyrian parts of him were brushing her lips, stifling her moans. Afterwards they slept like thieves. The sun was bathing the side of the house, the cold air of fall seeped beneath the windows.

They came home late, she on his arm, long-legged and unsteady, head down as she walked, as if from drinking. In bed he lay spent, like a soldier at the end of leave, and she was riding him like a horse, her hair blinding her. He loved everything, her small navel, her loose dark hair, her feet with their long, naked toes in the morning. Her buttocks were glorious, it was like being in a bakery, and when she cried out it was like a dying woman, one that had crawled to a shrine.

“When you f*ck me,” she said, “I get the feeling that I’m going so far I’ll go right through, I won’t be able to come back. I feel like my head’s going to give up, like I’m going crazy.”

With Leon in the house they couldn’t behave that way, but even going shopping with her, it was just the two of them then, Dena in a jacket and jeans leaning across the counter to see something, the worn blue fabric drawn across her seat tight as a glove.

At five, Leon was wearing glasses. He was not a boy who would be good at sports, but he had spirit. The resentment and hostility towards a strange man in his mother’s bedroom and life he showed only briefly by being reserved. He knew instinctively who Eddins was and what he meant, but he liked him and was in need of a father. Also a friend.

“Look,” he said by way of showing him his room, “here is where I keep books. This is my favorite book, this is about football. And in this book here, you can learn everything, you can learn about stars and what is the deepest hole in the sea, and about thunderstorms and how to stop them. This is my best book. And this!” he cried, “this is a story I wrote. All by myself, you can read it later. And this! This is about soldiers.”

He picked up another.

“Do you know that where your belly button is you were attached when you were in your momma’s … what is it again? Where women have hair down there … you know …”

Eddins hesitated, but Leon went on unconcerned.

“They tie a knot in it. They cut it off and it hurts. They tie a knot and stuff it inside you, really!”

He looked up through his glasses to see if he was believed.

He showed Eddins games in the yard, making up the rules as they went along.

“There!” he cried as he kicked the ball. “If it hits there, it’s a goal! I have one point!”

“If it goes where?”

“There!” he cried, kicking it to another spot. “Play fair.”

“Oh, all right,” Leon said but soon wanted to show Eddins something else.

Vernon Beseler was living another life near Tompkins Square with a woman poet named Marian. Only infrequently did he see his son. He was destined to be a father who would never disappear because of the way he did. One day he called and asked Dena to meet him, he was thinking of heading back to Texas and wanted to see her before he left.

“Do you want me to bring Leon?” she asked.

“How is Leon?”

“He’s fine.”

“No, don’t bring him,” Beseler said.

He asked her to meet him at the airport. Dena hardly recognized him, he seemed gaunt and distracted. Despite herself she wanted to help him. He was the rebel and poet she had fallen in love with, and so much of her life, she felt, belonged to him.

“This woman you’re living with, I don’t think she’s taking good care of you.”

“She doesn’t have to take care of me.”

“Well, somebody should.”

“What does that mean?”

“You don’t look good,” Dena told him.

He ignored it.

“Are you writing?” she asked.

That was the sacred thing. He had always been its apostle. Everything would be forgiven because of it.

“No,” he said, “not at the moment. I may go and teach for a while.”

“Where?”

“I’m not sure.”

He was silent. Then he said, “To be born a mole, ever think of that?”

“A mole?”

“To be born blind, with no eyes, eyes that are sealed. Everything is darkness. Living under the earth in narrow, cold passages, afraid of snakes, rats, anything that might be there, able to see. Seeking a mate, there underground, beyond all light.”

It was hard to look at him.

“No,” she said. “I’ve never thought of it. I was born with eyes.”

“Got to have mercy,” he said.

He was trying to light a cigarette with what seemed intense focus, putting it between his lips, then striking a match and applying it with great concentration, shaking it out and depositing it in an ashtray. He took the cigarette from his mouth with trembling fingers.

“It’s not from drinking,” he said.

“It isn’t?”

“I drink, but that’s not it. I’m just a little bit past the red line. Marian doesn’t drink. She’s a moonbather. She likes to undress and sit in the rays.”

“Where’s she doing that?”

“She can do it anywhere,” he said. “Vernon, why don’t we get a divorce?”

“Why would we get a divorce?”

“Because we’re not really married anymore.”

“We’ll always be married,” he said.

“I don’t think so. I mean I don’t think it makes sense.”

“They’ll be writing songs about us,” he said. “I could write a couple. How’s old Leon?”

“He’s a wonderful boy.”

“Yeah, I knew he would be.”

“What about our divorce?”

“Yeah,” Beseler said, smoking thoughtfully and saying nothing more.

Finally his flight was called.

“Well, I guess this is adios for a while,” he said.

He kissed her on the cheek. That was the last time she saw him. She was from Texas, though, where they were loyal, and in some disdainful way she remained loyal to him, to the boy who’d been her husband, carried her off, and whose destiny was to be a famous poet, maybe a singer. He had played the guitar and sung in a low voice to her.

A lawyer in Austin, hired by his family, took care of the divorce through some associate in New York. She was given child support of four hundred dollars a month—she’d asked for nothing for herself—and Eddins, in effect, had a son.


Great publishers were not always great readers, and good readers seldom made good publishers, but Bowman was somewhere in between. Often, in the city late at night when the sound of traffic had vanished, Bowman sat reading. Vivian had gone to bed. The only light was a standing lamp by his chair, near his elbow was a drink. He liked to read with the silence and the golden color of the whiskey as his companions. He liked food, people, talk, but reading was an inexhaustible pleasure. What the joys of music were to others, words on a page were to him.

In the morning, Vivian asked what time he had come to bed.

“Twelve-thirty. About then.”

“What were you reading?”

“I was reading about Ezra Pound in St. Elizabeths.”

Vivian knew about St. Elizabeths. It was a synonym for lunacy in Washington.

“What’s he there for?”

“Probably because they didn’t know what else to do with him.”

“I mean, what did he do?”

“You know who he is?”

“I know enough,” she said.

“Well, he’s a towering poet. He was an expatriate.”

She didn’t feel like asking what that was.

“He made some broadcasts for the fascists in Italy,” Bowman explained. “They were addressed to America at the start of the war. He had obsessions about the evils of bank interest, Jews, the provincialism of America, and he talked about them in his broadcasts. He was at dinner in Rome one night and heard the news that the Japanese had just bombed Pearl Harbor, and he said, my God, I’m a ruined man.”

“He doesn’t sound that crazy,” Vivian said.

“Exactly.”

He wanted to go on talking about Ezra Pound and introduce the subject of the Cantos, perhaps reading one or two of the most brilliant of them to her, but Vivian’s mind was elsewhere. He was not too curious about where that might be. He thought back instead to a lunch a few days before with one of his writers who had been to school only through the seventh grade though he didn’t explain why. His mother had given him a library card and told him, go and read the books.

“The books. That’s what she said. She’d wanted to be a teacher but she had these children. She was a disappointed woman. She said, you come from decent, hardworking people. Serious people.”

Serious was a word that had haunted his life.

“She was trying to tell me something. Like all proud people, she didn’t want to say it directly. If you didn’t understand, that was too bad, but she wanted to pass this thing on. It was a heritage. We didn’t have a heritage, but she believed in it.”

His name was Keith Crowley. He was a slight man who looked to the side when he talked. Bowman liked him and liked his writing, but his novel didn’t sell, two or three thousand copies was all. He wrote two more, one of which Bowman published, and then dropped from sight.