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PARTISAN REVIEW
room . He approached hi s wife and , running his open hands th rough
her hair, sa id :
" I always forget to bring a lens to have a good look a t the p lants in
the green of your eyes. But I know you get your skin color rubbin g
olives in it. "
She tweaked his nose aga in , then poked his cheek, till her fin ger
bent like a spiderleg, and answered:
"And I always forget to br ing scissors to trim your eyebrows. "
She sa t a t the table and seeing him leave the room asked:
" Did you forget something?"
"Who knows."
He came ri ght back and she decided he hadn 't had time to use the
phone.
"Won 't you tell me where you went?"
UNo."
"And I won 't tell you what the men did today."
He' d already started to answer:
" 0,
my dear olive, don 't tell me anything until after d inner. "
And he poured himself a glass of French wine.
But his wife's words had been like tiny pebbles dropped into the
pond of his reveries; and he cou ldn 't give u p the thought of wha t he
expected to see tha t ni ght. He coll ected dolls tha t were a bit ta ll er than
real women . He'd had three glass cases built in a large room . In the
bi gges t one were all the doll s waiting to be chosen to compose scenes in
the other cases. The arrangements were in the hands of several peopl e:
first o f all , the caption writers (who had to express the meanin g of each
scene in a few words). Other artists handl ed settings, cos tuming, music,
etc. T onight was the second shuw. He' d wa tch whil e a piani st, sea ted
with hi s back to him, across the room, played p rogrammed works.
Suddenl y the owner of the black house remembered he mustn 't think of
all this during dinner. So he took a pair of opera glasses out of his
pocket and tried to focus them on his wife's face.
''I'd like to know if the shadows under your eyes are a lso p lan ts."
She realized he' d been to hi s des k to fetch the opera glasses and
decided to make a jo ke of it. He saw a glass dome, which turned out to
be a bottle. So he put down the opera glasses and poured h imself some
more French wine. She wa tched the burbling drops fall into hi s glass,
spla ttering black tears on the crys tal walls as they ran to mee t the wine
on its way up. At tha t moment Alex-a White Russian with a pointed
beard-came in bowing at her and served her a pla te of ham and beans.
She used to say she'd never heard of a servant with a beard; and he used
to say it was the onl y condition Alex had set for accepting the job. Now
