NOT ONE BOWL OF TALLOW
293
least your voice is .a change from that prima donna squealing. Not
much of a change, but a change nevertheless." I was thinking this
while I told her I liked her voice.
It was then that she, not speaking, raised herself from the deep
chair into which she had sunk, crossed the room to a low, filigreed,
black-lacquered opium table, and took from one of the table's thin
drawers a fresh white taper, and from the glimmering table top a
small crystal bowl. She walked to the window which overlooked the
walk I had to take to reach the house in which she lived. To free one
of her hands to draw the curtains from the window glass, she trans–
ferred the taper to the hand in which she held the bowl, no larger
than the cup that her palm made. She drew the curtains, flicked off
the light switch, and there, through the window glass, was the moon
in the vise of two black tree branches. She set the small crystal bowl
on the window sill, struck a match, lit the taper wick, and held the
long white taper so that the melting tallow dripped into the bottom
of the bowl where it formed a miniature pond, magnified through
the crystal to a lake that I saw from where I sat and thought her
mad, in an opium trance, the whiteness of her face the white liquid
make-up hardened to a shell on the faces of Japanese actresses who
perform in the frozen-faced No plays, her eyebrows the painted
ones of those professional women. She fixed the taper upright from
the hardening tallow and braced it between her thumb and index
finger until she felt that it would stand without leaning. Then she
returned to her deep chair and whispered to me, "Be silent, listen,
and the flame will speak to you."
I was silent for an uncomfortable five minutes. The flame, of
a tininess and an immensity such as a star has, spoke such things as,
"I am the flame of the taper in the hand of the man in the moon.
I am the flame that is burning the table top, and the branches of
the tree. And when the branches are burned through, the moon that
they hold
will
fall and collide with the earth at the exact spot where
you are." Then I left Margaret on the pretext of having to get some
sleep.
As
I walked away from her, on the walks the taper flame watched
until I turned a corner, I became very rational and said to myself,
"It was not an actual flame that was burning the table and the tree
branches, only the reflection of the flame by the lacquer, and the
