570
PARTISAN REVIEW
and curdled it and it clouds again. Then I blow my own breath upon
the mirror and wipe it clear for another instant. I seem old, I seem
unused, as these loft
things,
in the capture of some
thief.
The mirror
seems to say "Dance! Swagger with a cane and sequins! Atone for
all
our well and cellar and window agony!" I cry out "Folnerl" in
the loft. But only the rustle of startled creatures and the faint swinging
of webs respond.
I
think
he ate some kind of Glaukos bitterweed and suffered a
change for the eating and sprang away into a marvellous haunted
and haunting world and never could return-although they waited in
Charity for him-nor wanted to. Until he was washed, dead like
uprooted coral weed by some violence only the sea knows and only
the sea-depths suffer, upon the oil-rimed and sawdusted shingle of
Charity, and was claimed and buried there. They were
all
looking
for him, waiting and watching, and looking for some grass that might
take them to him-Granny Ganchion, Berryben, Malley Ganchion,
Aunty, Sue Emma-and even
1.
And I, having not waited but wan–
dered for him (calling "Draw me; I will follow thee!" but he mur–
mured "Whither I go thou mayest not follow me."), have come back
here where I think (because of a vision of memory I have had) I
might find the magic he found and ate among the bitterweeds that
liberated him and so myself be liberated into understanding and cruel
authenticity. For it seems clear to me now that we cannot bear to
be ourselves.
It
is too dangerous, it is too great a risk, we might not
survive.
"Love in the cotton gin, my dear. And once, very early in the
delicate watergreen shell of morning, in an old moored shellbarge
on Green's Bayou down around the Battlegrounds. We got tar on us.
- "The CCC Camp at Groveton didn't help. Ah the East Texas
woods in the fall, with flying red leaves like desires and the smell of
burning brush and that dangerous voluptuous wind of a norther that
stabbed the heart, so evil; like Spanish Fly on the soul. . . . Do I
shock you? Of course I say these
things,
which are absolutely true,
to shock you, you are so good, Boy, you and Berryben are so damned
sweet and good, such damned sweet kids." And you dazzled your opal
cufflinks at your white wrists.
"Something cursed me. There was that melancholy always over
me, brooding over me. Why?
As
far back as I can remember, lying
