CHAPTER IX

1

It was near morning when Lewis awoke. Still drowsy with heavy sleep he lay on the couch, aware of the morning light on the window, of the pleasant rumbling of wheels in the street below. As yet the light on the window was not the sun. Too still and pale, it was only the intimation of sunlight, and gave to his drowsy senses the feeling of the whole earth still asleep, yet stirring in its sleep with a mysterious premonition of morning. In a part of the room that was still in shadow he saw Levine. He sat with his head resting on his hand, perhaps asleep. Or, if he was not sleeping, it was the attitude of one who had come to the end of all his thoughts, and found there was nothing to do, nothing left but to remain motionless, keeping automatically the posture of thinking. Without turning his head, as if divining that Lewis was awake, Levine spoke to him. "You slept well," he said.

"And you?" Lewis asked softly.

Levine shook his head. He turned his face for the first time and his eyes showed dark and haggard. "I have forgotten how. For me," he added with a wry smile, "sleep is a lost art."

Scarcely hearing Levine's words, too preoccupied with the well-being of his own awakening, Lewis stretched himself and rubbed his eyes. It did not surprise him that he was fully dressed. He remembered now what had happened ... how, after hours of walking, they had come to Levine's apartment, and he had flung himself down on the couch, too exhausted to hope for sleep; and how, between one word and the next sleep had overtaken him ... so swiftly and skilfully, like a surgeon who has done with it in one quick pass of his hand. Now he lay awake remembering it, and in that wilfulness of his being that had betrayed him into sleep, he felt there was something to gladden him ... something that stirred in him an obscure sense of gratitude. Yes, he had slept well, and he had slept long. He had lived intensely in his sleep, living out part of his life in a profound symbolism. And though now there was nothing he remembered from it, he knew this part of his life was done with. Like actors whose gestures have too profound an import to be played before the audience, all the desires of his being had hidden themselves from him, and acted it out. And in this awakening there was also the strange sense of convalescence, a feeling of recovery from all the years which he had lived so intensely in his sleep. Lightly his body lay on the couch, scarcely aware of its own weight. And every movement that he made was strange with an unaccustomed lightness; and whatever he looked at showed with a brilliance of line, as if the edges were ablaze from their contact with light.

He lifted his hand before him, and studied his palm as though it was strange to him, and spread his fingers apart and closed them again. And what of Ruth? he asked himself.... What of his work? Strange that he did not feel anger for her, that in this moment he longed for her without reserve. At the thought of returning to her there was the old tumult in his heart, but now he understood its meaning ... it was revealed to him as the baffled speech of his body that had loved Ruth all the time. He would return to Ruth and he would be happy with her. As for his work, it was good that it had been destroyed. He was free from it. Henceforth the routine of his days would be sufficient, now he understood that it was possible to live without ecstasy. And though at this moment there was no cause for him to rejoice, yet a sense of well-being came over him, a strange and unreasonable happiness; and in this he recognized again the wilfulness of his being ... the wayward and laughing will, that like a perverse child, was not impressed by anything that had befallen him.

And for the future? It would be hard at first.... He would feel as if he were standing in an empty room, in which there is still the memory of things that have been there, and he would make painful, baffled gestures toward them ... but it was nothing he could not get used to. But here Levine's voice roused him, sounding thoughtfully in the quiet room. He had risen from his chair and was standing at the window, looking down into the city.

"But there is one thought," he was saying, "that you must not have when you lie awake ... the way the world is being re-arranged by those who are sleeping. Every night when I can't sleep, I think of the strange world that is being created by all the dreams of people who are sleeping. And I feel as if I were alone in a madhouse, the only sane person there. Only," he paused and shaded his eyes from the light, "I wish I could join them."

"It is too much to ask," he added, his voice trembling with suppressed bitterness, "that one should always be sane. It is too much to have only reality. I am sick of my reality. I wish I could tear it apart, wrench it ... distort it hideously. I wish I could enter their madhouse and dream something so filthy that it would turn my brain." He checked himself with an ugly laugh. "No, this won't do," he finished sharply. "This isn't the way to talk, Joseph Levine. You've been thinking too long..."

"I've been thinking too long," he continued, in a voice that was again calm and self-contained. "And besides," he added, a faint ironical smile hovering about his lips, "it isn't so bad. I've discovered at least that something is over for me. There isn't much else to believe, but I think this is left. We can always say..." the words were chanted in a grotesque sing-song, "something is over ... something is over."

To Lewis the words took up the burden of his own thoughts. "Something is over for me, too," he said softly. He raised himself on his elbow and leaned forward eagerly. "Do you remember that night I came to you when I left the hospital? Do you remember when I came bleating to you? Yes, that is the word," he insisted with a delighted involuntary laugh. "I came bleating to you. But I can't understand now why I did it. Will you forgive me?"

"If you wish it, yes," Levine said with ironical kindness.

"But it was wrong ... it was wrong," Lewis insisted. "I can't understand it. I can't understand what I wanted. I wanted to whistle for the world ... I thought the whole world would come to my hand if only I whistled for it. But now all that is over. I think that now," he continued musingly, "I am content. Perhaps I shall be able to live without ecstasy, without forgetfulness..."

Levine sat down again, resting his head on his hand and staring at the floor. "Content ... content..." he mimicked. "No ecstasy, no passion, no forgetfulness ... the negative litany of our day. Well, I too am content. Yes, why should I complain? Something is over. Why should one complain," he asked with bitter indifference, rapping his forehead, "if there is still enough resilience here to feel that something is over?"

Lewis did not answer and there was a long silence in the room. The light on the window grew brighter, and sounds of stirring came up from the street. Then he dozed off, a light and dreamless slumber, from which he was awakened by the sound of Levine's footsteps going back and forth on the carpet.

"There's news for both of us in the paper," Levine said gently, pausing near the window and nodding his head toward the paper that lay next to Lewis on the couch. Lazily Lewis turned to read. "So Konig confessed..." he said.

"Yes, it seems he was guilty." And Levine added with a constrained smile, "That makes me a fool."

After a while Lewis sat up, his eyes bright with their intuition.

"And Poldy?" he asked.

"Poldy is dead," Levine began in a low voice. "There's a suicide reported that corresponds to him."

Lewis lay down again, staring up at the ceiling. "It should have happened right away," he said slowly. "It was best." He took the paper to read, but the next moment put it away from him. "No, I won't read it now..."

They were silent, listening to the sounds that came up to them from the awakening street ... from a great distance they seemed to hear them ... the muffled beat of a hammer, the rumbling of wheels, footsteps ringing out on the pavement. And while they listened the sounds became for them a primitive language, speaking with a profound utterance that they heard and tried to understand.

2

The shadow of the wind running through the leaves was on the floor. Under the scraps that lay there ... silk and cotton and wool that were all colors ... it ran more swiftly than anything she had ever known. "What is swifter than the shadow of the wind running through the leaves?" she said to herself, and fell to wondering how it would look in a place where there were many trees instead of only one. Soon the sun came out. Then the sun and the leaves lay together on the floor in a still mosaic of gold and gray. Watching it, Mirelie forgot the machines and the coat she was sewing, and Anna's scolding voice ... she thought it was a very quiet spot in the woods. Meanwhile the tip of her needle looked up at her through the cloth, like the bright watchful eye of an insect ... and Anna began to scold her.

"Only look at her now ... staring at the floor," she said. "Three stitches and she's through." And, "Say, Mirelie, what have you lost?" someone else called.

"Go ... go to the door," Anna commanded. "Be busy. Look for David. Perhaps he will come."

So she went to the door and stood looking out. At first there was nothing to see ... only a boy and a girl jumping rope in a place where the sidewalk was clear, facing in the circling frame of the rope, looking at each other while their bodies went up and down. And an old man was standing near, who was stroking his cheeks all the time as if thin fine webs kept gathering around them. But soon she felt there was something swaying on the street. In and out of the people it went, bending to one side like part of a machine that has to move in a different way, walking behind its shadow that kept swinging wilfully away from it. Then her heart changed its step, but she was no longer ashamed of it ... she was no longer afraid of the old man who had said in her dream, "They are married."

"What is it that sways on the street and is not the shadow of a tree?" she riddled to herself, and looked eagerly among all the people to the place where she could see it again. And now she saw David clearly, walking very fast and looking toward the shop, and there was a faint smile on his face. She could tell, now, how it was: sideways for his long right leg, up again for the other ... so all the way down the street, until he had to stop at a place where it was too crowded to pass. So she added to her riddle: "And stands this way?" and she bent her body a little to one side, like the branch of a tree when it has a premonition of wind. And now David was near the shop, looking eagerly ahead to see whether Mirelie was waiting for him. And now he was at her side, touching her hand.

"Mirelie," he whispered, and he laughed softly to himself.