Part Two: Toni Plays

13. A Tiny Thought

A tiny thought crossed the street like a flash of lightning; it was an orange-hearted blue spark that would have been invisible on a sunny day but that day was going to be gray, all the gray of winter’s end, after being white and before being green, gray clouds and blankets on horses, a tiny thought round as a wish crashed against the dry facade when dawn came to Scheller Street. People might be sleeping behind closed windows, behind balconies blind as a mole or chrysalis, bodies might move in spite of themselves imprisoned by hindering blankets or a coat swimming in dark dreams, abandoned and vulnerable; there might be a single sigh made from all the air of all the breaths, mouths might slacken and eyelids tremble, cramps might grip the elderly and terror the children; and the entire sweet night slid toward the smooth river where dawn would come to this part of the world. What had been Mill Alley was still a ravine in the darkness down which flowed women dressed in mauve or sky blue or white, fat Hoenken sniffing the approaching rain, the most enchanting of hosts, servant women with wide hips who carried the change from purchases hidden in their apron pocket, Novalis in search of the primal fire that arises from the center of the earth. A tiny eagerly buoyant thought touched the favored foreheads and flourished in halberds, rockslides, and drumrolls: barely light, the overcast day barely born in cold dispersed the greetings of men, the measured steps of girls, the chatter of servants; morning hardly entered the mouth and ears of the perplexed merchant; softly at first and then louder, filling corridors and antechambers with echoes, the padding footsteps of the nursemaids and wet nurses on the wooden floors of their rooms. Breasts filled with milk ached, fingertips touched lips rough with sleep, hands reached for door handles and towels, the struggle ceased between legs in the folds of eiderdown tossed to the feet of beds, the scent of coffee rose; and with the first voice that established wakefulness, anguish and intrigue reinstated themselves. A tiny sinuous thought like a whim returned from the street to the interiors of the houses, reflected, multiplied, changed into a vision that flooded the eyes and tightened the throats; and mothers sighed and nursemaids knit their brows.

The houses on Scheller Street had moldings, weathervanes, balconies, alcoves, lightning rods, and wide carved polished doors that were varnished once a year. Storms that came from the north struck the facade of Madame Helena’s boarding house and her neighbors’ but the houses across the street received southern sunlight in winter and the easterly or mountain winds that made the panes in the windows shake. The hallways retained the outside chill, the rooms were wrapped in family intimacy and the smell of soup or tuberose; funeral processions left the doors, prodigal sons returned through them, messengers left, visitors entered hauling pride and errors, trying to hide the ragged ghosts they carried on their waistbands or hatbands, the fatigue, the acid breath of an argument. In contrast, the windows and especially the balconies announced the world: one could open the curtains, lean out, spy, return inside, leave them half-open, and illuminate rooms thanks to them, wait, call someone, secretly observe, and even be surprised. Prudent openings, the windows of the houses on Scheller Street eased themselves awake in the mornings with the flurry of cleaning girls, fulfilled by fringes, rosettes on the cushions, bedspreads, coats, and blankets folded over parapets and bannisters. Hurrying, collars warm, hands in gloves, boots shined, little eyes alert, through the processional doors polished once a year left the daughters and sons; the older ones alone and clumsy, helmet-like hats on their heads, straps across their chests under their coats held books hitting their hips at each step as they ran after someone or pretended to; the smallest ones with a nursemaid or servant; girls with headscarves and caps edged with lace, homework in a bag embroidered with initials; boys with a short hooded cape edged with leather, satchels with books: a tiny thought moved the singing feet, the trail of voices, the greetings of the maids or snubs behind the words, the intention, the haste, a tiny impatient thought evasive as a lie. At that moment Lola sits before the white table and Wulda pours a trickle of cream into a cup of thick chocolate that sinks and is lost, with two toasted marzipan rolls the color of grapes in the sun, dark, translucent, and frosted with pink, crunchy looking and rough to the taste, and she thinks of the mystery of stems, sap in veins, the water that feeds wood, the roots like wise tentacles although she would not use those words: strange things, she says, presences, as if they were little animals that cannot be heard and yet proper Christians, heads held high, saying no, not at all. Her creeper, for example, climbs immoderate and nimble, perhaps overwhelmed by snow and cold, vengeful now that the ice is melting and the river flows agitated and noisy, presumptuous as a rich man and arrogant as a boss, never caring at all for the coming sea, bursting its banks, lanced by yellow light and white fish; the change of season has brought her here and she has never felt like this, her arms useless, an enormous space opening in her head and pushing her palate down, ears out, hair falling from braids and buns while her entire queenly body, stomach and kidneys, belly and bladder, piles into a hardening heap and gives her this appetite, these desires, this impulse, this force that turns like a wheel at the end of the world and consumes itself in mere light, never in labor. At night sleep comes immediately and she stubbornly sleeps a couple of hours but then she suddenly awakes as if obliged to climb the walls of a well where she fell without knowing how or when, and light enters filtered by the shutters as consolation. She herself is like a whim of the plants: there are dishes she liked a year ago that now she will not taste and even dislikes preparing; big meals but without grace or elegance that she would never cook even for Café Netzel, and if she thinks about them they take over her thoughts and dance, making her mouth water until she frightens them away, irritated, ill humored, like the buzzes entering her head through her ears when a storm is coming from far away which at that moment only the body feels and it is time to put screens in the windows to keep out flies trapped in minuscule whirlwinds of dust and dirt. Perhaps she is sick, perhaps in fact death is courting her, perhaps what she needs is a man who will stay at her side a little longer, all her life, a week, two months, until the creeper grows and raps around the frame she has placed on the wall and reaches Miss Esther’s window up there and makes her life a little happier. Lola’s life is like a decoy, thunder, magic fire, sun on the windowsill: it would be a pity for it to end, if suddenly she were to ask herself but what is happening to me and discovered that she was dead and no more sputtering, no more reaching around to her back to let out her corset, laughing. But that should not be, why should it, who announced it to her, between what columns did she pass where she failed to see the angel of life. Golden marzipan, pink when baked, soft belly, voices of children in the street, thaw and flood, Lola thinks about Sunday and smiles to herself and tells Wulda to eat another roll, one more, she really needs it now that her poor mother has died and she is so sad, as transparent as a soul from holding back so many tears, come on, eat one, come on, one more.