208
PARTISAN REVIEW
Sunday school teaching and not calmed by a profound belief in the
possibility of salvation. The younger sister's image appeared to the
dreamer, the image of a girl who was healthy and real, athletic, a
reco;srnzable, warm type. What was there to fear? the dreamer asked,
remembering that the mother's eyes were always pink from sewing
and, crying.
The voices had vanished. The windows were open and a sum–
mer breeze blew through the rooms. The dreamer called out and was
not answered. Moving more quickly, the exploration of the house
began, the sensual rediscovery of
The Place
that was known and re–
membered as a unit. In the kitchen something boiled on the stove.
The odor-was it meat? vegetables? or just the kitchen itself reproduc–
ing its own living symbol? There was a soiled oilcloth on the table. The
dreamer opened the door of the pantry, remembered the dark, clut–
tered and crowded room and the feeling of
storage.
Behind the pan–
try door there should have been rat traps and darkness and mustiness,
but, instead, the opening revealed a wide room filled with the sunlight
of summer. A room that was comfortable and furnished with articles
that went together to make an undistinguished union, like the room
of
a
prostitute. The dreamer was conscious of the possibility of loving
the room under different circumstances, though now it was hateful
because it was unexpected and alien. Here,
in
this
house, it brought
only a sense of danger and fear. Above the silken couch there was an
old water-marked picture whose caption said,
Shakespeare and His
Friends.
The dreamer rushed toward it, experiencing a complete re–
lease from the past fear and a new exaltation. The picture had always
been in the house, a proud article the father purchased, or stole, from
a junk shop. Its bigness and remote meaning gave a temporary sense
of contentment. This is home, the dreamer said, only to turn back
to the strange, unremembered room with the city furniture. Fears
returned, little by little, like a play unfolding. The room led into an–
other, a bedroom of which one side was reserved for the mother and
girls, the other for the father and son. Here the rugless floors were
f<U11iliar. The iron beds came into view and there was the green
dresser with the faded cretonne skirt made during a moment of
adolescent yearning toward the attractive. It was a hopelessly clum–
sy reproduction of the decorations seen in ladies' magazines. The
dreamer sighed and then; under the spell of the discovery, began to
call out the name of the young sister. Mary Agnes! Mary Agnes!
There was no answer except the reassurance of the poor room. The
same old snapshots were still pasted against the edges of the mirror
over the dresser. Return! Return! The dreamer, feeling somewhat
