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FILIPPA
ROLF
the weather had to be for this woman who was early a widow and
ran her estate herself: anyway - the grownups had better keep those
eyes in mind; she was wonderful with the smallest of grandchildren
but often vulgarly sarcastic and unjust in a heavy way with the rest
of the world; yet, she even
cheated at croquet once
when playing her
favorite game with us when we were ten-year-old girls.
She had many grandchildren, indeed, and my forced invitation
to Arvida, one of my cousins (on her father's side) from Ankarea, to
stay with me in New Oxford for as long as her study tour of Eastern
colleges might call for had been long ago mailed. The reason for
both of us being in this country - she temporarily - had something
to do with Socialism. She was sent by the Government, but I didn't
know what to do in Ankarea and had fallen back with a cry of
recognizing surprise on what I considered old
nineteenth-century
habits
here - almost in terms of
protected gentility
reliving my moth–
er's youth, an opportunity which was distasteful to her but insistently
interesting to me. And now I stood slightly bent forward by anticipa–
tion waiting for the door to her airplane to open and people to come
tumbling out. Separated from them by several layers of soiled glaS'l
with moist spring air on one side and stale tobacco smoke on the
other in the waiting room I witnessed the visual opposite to a cine–
matic arrival with its knee-to-hatbrim close-up. Namely I saw, in a
diminishing and very clear focus, beyond the two rows of ripped
chairs out of reach, and even beyond the vaguely reflecting pale ocher
floor, beyond the tarmac, my cousin's arm, rather plump and rounded
among the others, carrying a suitcase and trying to wave to me. In
the next minute I am hugged by all of it in gay distrust and suntan
(must be Florida) hat - her gay distrust no doubt is that of a child–
hood coeval rather than playmate upon meeting her opposite number
emigrated to America seventeen years ago, but also wafts something
from her "sad, young mother" in her paradise. My cousin from An–
karea tries to communicate her stewardess' directions in view of her
luggage to me - "to the immediate left of Exit D" - we were
in
Exit D with the sign above our heads which remain too obvious
to
be understood easily.
It has great power over me, the use of the primordial words: the
river, the boat, the lime tree. In addition I had been dreaming of
our summer home for a month in advance in not quite deep dreams;
