DAY OF THE WEDDING
191
skirts that stick out and patent leather shoes should run after little
boys, with hot cheeks and words tumbling out.
"Weren't they a pretty pair."
"I did love her dress."
"It's such a perfect day for a wedding, and the flowers."
"The flowers were nice."
"They are a good pair don't you think?"
An abstract wedding would have merged into all the others and
disappeared into fine spring weather lost in the light blue haze of the
morning sun that rises from the unfreezing fields, hidden among the
other newly opened flowers and in the mass of color of the white
fruit trees touched with pink. It would have flowered out in its sec–
tion of the garden, been cut by the gardener for the house, clipped
and arranged in the latest manner to be put in. the best room to
match a chair and to brighten a particular corner where shadows
tend to fall too early in the afternoon. There it would have only
lasted a short time and a maid would finally have been to carry it
away. Or it might never have been cut and it would have stayed on
the stem and wilted there among all the others to be trampled on
the ground as it faded and fell; a short duration of color and form.
This day stinks of wet and the bog, of the generated gas that bub–
bles up to the top of the heaving mud, from the layers and layers of
decaying leaves and plants and dead animals, to pop with a foul
smell from the stagnant water and sear itself for ever into the oldest
of brains on which the rest folded itself.
Lunch is silent, a row of cloves left on each plate, the atmo–
sphere still dark. Even the cook has little to say; my preoccupation
is
effective.
The church is old, its gray stone covered by a dark red ivy, its
square tower squat and low.
It
sits in the bottom of a humid
valley, surrounded by trees, dripping with damp from the fogs and
mists that rise up from its pond which
is
black, bottomless and with–
out vegetation, where small boys fish without hope and bats cruise
in the evening to drink. Only in mid-summer with a hot sun and
clear sky when the pond appears blueish does one think of going
to that spot without some official function to attend.
"You are looking well today."
I smile at the usher and give him my arm so that he can lead
