290
William Burford
NOT ONE BOWL OF TALLOW
As
long as I knew her, she kept a white taper burning,
in
the center of a small crystal bowl. Even during daylight the tallow
fed a flame, as if she wished to show the sun something more constant
than itself. When she no longer maintained her ritual, we ceased
to
know each other. I would pass her on the street and look at her, but
my eyes could not go deep. She wore an armor against wounds.
Her
n~e
was Margaret. She was a very brilliant girl. I met
her at a lecture entitled, What Can Be Learned From Imaginative
Literature. I was hungry for culture at that time of my life,
trying
to tum myself into an intellectual.
I saw her when I first entered the lecture room. There were not
many people present, but she would have stood out from a larger
audience. The faces were those of a northern land in the midst of
winter. Their human pallor was deeper than the snow on the ground
outside. They had not had a tanning sun for many months. But
her
face was of a whiteness that seemed to come not from the circum–
stance of latitude. I felt her skin would have the same
whiten~
in
the midst of summer. It was not pallor; it was whiteness. And her
black hair, eyebrows, and eyes, were as decisive as those of a char–
coal portrait. But this is more the way I remember her than the way I
saw her.
She caught my eye and held it until I became conscious of
staring and turned away quickly. It was the quick tum, she told me
later, that caused her to notice me, to become aware of my neck,
to
begin, when she would see me coming, to cross the street on some
imaginary shopping errand that would bring her close to me. But
all
this came later.
That night, the lecturer concluded that nothing of a way to live
