Bernard Malamud
IN KEW GARDENS
Once as they walked in the gardens, Virginia felt her knick–
ers come loose and slip down her ankles. She grabbed at her maiden–
hair as the garment eluded her frantic grasp and formed a puddle of
cloth at her feet. Swooping up her underpants, with a cry of dismay
she plunged into the bushes, shrilly singing "The Last Rose of Sum–
mer." As she stood up, the elastic knot she had tied, snapped, and
the knickers again lay limp at her feet.
"Christ, Goddamn!"
Vanessa listened at the bushes.
"Don't be hysterical. No one will see through your dress ."
"How can you be certain?"
"No one would want to."
She shrieked slowly.
"Forgive me, dear goat," Vanessa told her. "I meant no harm."
"Oh, never, no, never."
Insofar as I was ever in love I loved Vanessa.
George Duckworth, affectionate step-brother, carried his tor–
mented amours from the parlor to the night nursery. He nuzzled, he
fondled, he fiddled with his finger. To his sisters he was obscenity in–
carnate. He touched without looking.
"I meant no harm. I meant to comfort you."
Virginia lost her underpants and wondered where she had
been.
Her erotic life rarely interested her.
It
seemed unimportant
compared with what went on in the world.
I was born in 1882 with rosy cheeks and green eyes. Not
enough was made of my coloring.
When her mother died she tore the pillow with her teeth. She
spat bleeding feathers.
Her father cried and raged. He beat his chest and groaned
aloud, "I am ruined."
The mother had said, "Everyone needed me but he needed me
most."
"Unquenchable seems to me such presence": H. James.
The father moaned, "Why won't my whiskers grow?"
As Virginia lay mourning her mother, dreadful voices cried in
