Stillness & Shadows John Gardner (nice books to read .txt) 📖

She looked at his arm, then up at his face, then laughed, shaking her head, shifted her books to her left arm, and with her right took the arm he held out to her. “Thank you, sir,” she said, and gave a curtsy.

“My pleasure, ma’am,” said Craine, and bowed.

They made a curious couple, an objective observer would perhaps have remarked: Elaine with thick ankles and blue, pointed shoes, on her square face the smile of a girl strangely happy, also nearsighted; as for Gerald B. Craine, he walked with his chin out, his hat tipped back, his dyed-black hair hanging down over his forehead, walking not at all like an old man, just now, or a half-crazy drunkard, though it was true, an objective observer would have noticed, that his coat hung low, something bulky in the lining, and his shoelaces were not well tied.

He thought of her weightless, long hand on his arm and pondered the image of her smile inside his mind. Exactly what he was thinking he could hardly have said: something about cancer, and murder, and his peculiar sense of peace.

Fragment Seven

The room was white. There was snow outside. That was a rare thing in Carbondale. Voices coming in were like muffled bells. There were faraway voices—children playing by the street—and nearer voices—those of the attendants at the end of the corridor. Here in the sunroom there was no sound at all, though the television was on—just the picture, sufficiently in shadow that he could just make it out. But what Craine was mainly aware of—seated on the cold gray plastic couch, magazines around him, the Bible in his lap—was the dazzling winter light, so brilliant, glancing off icicles and snow, that his eyes, however long he squinted, refused to adjust. He was like a man just emerged from imprisonment in some cellar, who takes in the world by cautious peeks, then squeezes his eyes shut and sees it all again, vermilion. He was alone this afternoon, except for an old woman in the chair by the television. She sat head down, as if fast asleep, though she was not asleep, merely wilted; when she slept, she snored. Each time Craine looked, for over an hour, she was exactly the same. Then once when he opened his eyes for a moment he saw that she was raising her head, slowly, and slowly turning it, like a ghostly sunflower, more or less looking in his direction. He realized now that there was someone beside him. He looked up: a young woman—early middle-aged—a fellow patient, though not in a hospital gown like his. She wore a clean, unwrinkled white robe, expensive. A shining haze of blond hair hung, brushed and electric, to just below her shoulders, carefully fastened with a clip that glittered like a diamond.

Craine nodded, timidly, or rather bowed, a gesture grotesquely exaggerated, an observer would have said, but plainly not meant to be ironic. He drew his large feet closer to the couch, meekly offering the stranger more space. She moved away a little. On her small, stockingless feet she had pale leather slippers. Craine wished he had a drink and reached to the pocket of his pajamas, then the pockets of his robe, hunting for his pipe, unaware that he was doing it until he realized that indeed he had no pipe, nothing in his pockets but some wadded-up Kleenex, no defense against the eyes of the stranger but the Bible in his lap. He looked at her again, trying to read her face, but the brightness made her a blur. Though her face was turned slightly to one side, she appeared to be watching him, neither friendly nor, so far as he could guess, openly hostile. Watching him, though, that was the thing. It was that, chiefly, that made him aware to the bottom of his slippers that this was a woman from a different world from his. Rich, probably. He smiled, almost fiercely, and bowed to her again, then opened the Bible in his lap and put his finger down at random, preparing to read, or, rather, pretend to.

As he lowered his head she said, “Good afternoon.” Distantly, coldly. A voice with an unnerving authority in it. He looked up once more, wondering in panic why she spoke to him.

“Which are you,” she asked, “alcoholic or mentally ill?” The question made his heart jerk—the terrible directness. She was a teacher, it came to him; a lady professor. He should have known by the glasses hanging down by a cord, the boyish yet severe way she stood. She waited, partly turned away from him, not meeting his eyes, but expecting him to answer; requiring him to.

“You might say both,” he said. Then, after a moment, making a bold leap. “Which are you?”

She turned away more and took a step toward the window as if the question annoyed her, too stupid to waste time on. Craine shrank inward. She had a cigarette in her hand, and she held it in a way that seemed to him disdainful. As she drew it toward her mouth it began to wobble violently. It struck him like a bolt of lightning that she was sick, miserably unhappy, for all her degrees or whatever, just a woman, a child. He doubted the insight; perhaps it was something else. Though she alarmed him, seemed clearly to blame him for something, he was conscious of watching her—that is, squinting blearily up in her direction—as Meakins would, full of helpless sorrow. Abruptly she changed her mind, turned to glance at him, then looked away. She stood now in front of the window, dead center, her bathrobe and hair like fire. In a voice bristling with hatred she said, “Someone committed me.” She gave a sort of laugh.

“I’m sorry,” Craine said.

For a long time she said nothing, ignoring him, smoking, her hand jittering like a machine. “I’m as sane as anyone,” she said suddenly,