Friend of My Youth
strenuous egotism, and straightforward triumph, and, particularly in one verse, a childish sort of gloating:
My table Thou hast furnished
,
In Presence of my Foes
How blithely and securely and irrationally Averill’s head-voice sang these words, while she watched the captain pace in front of her, and later, when she herself walked safely down to the rail:
Goodness and Mercy all my Life
Shall surely follow me;
And in God’s House forevermore
My dwelling place shall be
.
Her silent singing wrapped around the story she was telling herself, which she extended further every night on the deck. (Averill often told herself stories—the activity seemed to her as unavoidable as dreaming.) Her singing was a barrier set between the world in her head and the world outside, between her body and the onslaught of the stars, the black mirror of the North Atlantic.
Bugs stopped going down to lunch. She still went to breakfast, and was lively then, and for an hour or so afterward. She said she didn’t feel any worse, she was tired of listening andtalking. She didn’t sing again, at least not when Averill could hear her.
On the ninth night, which was the last night out, before they were to dock at Tilbury, Jeanine gave a party in her cabin. Jeanine had the largest and best cabin on the boat deck. She provided champagne, which she had brought on board for this purpose, and whiskey and wine, along with caviar, grapes, heaps of smoked salmon and steak tartare and cheese and flatbread, from the unsuspected resources of the kitchen. “I’m squandering,” she said. “I’m flying high. I’ll be wandering around Europe with a knapsack on my back stealing eggs out of henhouses. I don’t care. I’ll take all your addresses and when I’m utterly broke I’ll come and stay with you. Don’t laugh!”
Bugs had meant to go to the party. She had stayed in bed all day, not even going to breakfast, in order to save her strength. She got up and washed, then propped herself back against the pillows to do her makeup. She did it beautifully, eyes and all. She brushed out and teased and sprayed her hair. She put on her grand soloist’s dress, which Averill had made—an almost straight-cut but ample long dress of dark-purple silk, its wide sleeves lined with more silk, of iridescent pink and silver.
“Aubergine,” said Bugs. She turned to make the dress flare out at the hem. The turn made her unsteady, and she had to sit down.
“I should do my nails,” she said. “I’ll wait a little, though. I’m too jittery.”
“I could do them,” Averill said. She was pinning up her hair.
“Could you? But I don’t think. I don’t think I’ll go. After all. I think I’d rather just stay here and rest. Tomorrow I have to be in good shape. Landing.”
Averill helped her take off the dress and wash her face and put her nightgown back on. She helped her into bed.
“It’s a crime about the dress,” Bugs said. “Not to go. It deserves to get out. You should wear it. You wear it. Please.”
Averill did not think that purple suited her, but she ended up discarding her own green dress and putting on Bugs’. She went down the hall to the party, feeling strange, defiant, and absurd. It was all right—everybody had dressed up, some to a remarkable extent. Even the men had decked themselves out somehow. The artist wore an old tuxedo jacket with his jeans, and the professor appeared in a white suit of rather floppy cut, looking like a plantation dandy. Jeanine’s dress was black and skimpy, worn with seamed black stockings and big chunks of gold jewelry. Leslie was swathed in taffeta, with red and pink roses on a creamy ground. Over her curvy bum the material was bunched out into one huge rose, whose petals the professor kept patting and tweaking and arranging to best advantage. It would seem that he was newly entranced with her. She was relieved and proud, shyly blooming.
“Your mother is not coming to the party?” said the professor to Averill.
“Parties bore her,” Averill said.
“I get the impression that many things bore her,” the professor said. “I have noticed that with performing artists, and it is understandable. They have to concentrate so much on themselves.”
“Who is this—the Statue of Liberty?” said the artist, brushing the silk of Averill’s dress. “Is there a woman inside there at all?”
Averill had heard that he had been discussing her with Jeanine lately, wondering if she was possibly a
Weitere Kostenlose Bücher