Lancelot

Served to, she waited in an easy crouch, shifting her weight to and fro.
    What I see even now when I think of her is the way she picked up the ball or rather did not pick it up but toed it onto her racket in a cunning little turning in of her white-shod foot. No, not thin was she but slim, because her joints, ankle, wrist, elbow did not show bone but were a simple articulation.
    Her face a brown study under her parted straight brown hair done up in back, the irises so contracted in her smiling brown eyes that she seemed both blind and fond. There was a tiny straight scar on her upper lip, diamonded with sweat, which gave the effect of a slight pout. It was more of a quirk I discovered later, the lip forever atremble, trembling on the very point of joke, irony, anger, deprecation.
    There was to be a dance that night out of doors under the stars and Japanese lanterns. How to ask her? Just ask her?
    What did I want? Just to dance with her, to hold that quick brown body in my arms not even close but lightly and away so I could see into her face and catch those brown eyes with mine.
    Then what to do? Go blundering into the four of them between sets and straight out ask her? Skulk behind a tree and waylay her on her way to her cottage? Without being introduced? What arcane Georgia-Carolina rule would that break?
    As it turned out, of course, yes I should have asked her, asked her any way at all, and of course there were no rules. And as it turned out, she had noticed me too, as girls do: seeing without looking and wondering who that tall boy was looking at her, hands in pockets under his tree. Why doesn’t he come over and state his business? Why doesn’t he ask me to the dance? She was direct: later when I showed up in her parents’ cottage and stood about smiling and watching her, uncharacteristically shy (what were the cottage rules?), she would even say it: Well? State your business.
    We were married, moved into Belle Isle, had two children. Then she died. I suppose her death was tragic. But to me it seemed simply curious. How curious that she should grow pale, thin, weak, and die in a few months! Her blood turned to milk—the white cells replaced the red cells. How curious to wake up one morning alone again in Belle Isle, just as I had been alone in my youth!
    Jesus, come in and sit down. You look awful. You look like the patient this morning, not me. Why so pale and sad? After all, you’re supposed to have the good news, not me. Knowing you, I think I know what ails you. You believe all right, but you’re thinking, Christ, what’s the use? Has your God turned his back on you? It was easier in Biafra, wasn’t it, than in plain old Louisiana, U.S.A.?
    Well, at least I have good news. The girl in the next room answered my knock! I knocked and she knocked back! She has not caught on that we might invent a new language. She just repeats the one knock, two knocks. That is a beginning, a communication of sorts, isn’t it? When I tried a sentence, not who are you but how are you (because h has only eight knocks against w’s twenty-three), she fell silent.
    How to simplify the code? Or what do you think of a note passed out my window and into hers? See how I’ve straightened out this coat hanger, but it’s not enough. Two coat hangers, perhaps.
    What? Why not just go around and see her?
    But she will not speak to anyone. Hm. You see that is the point. To make conversation in the old tongue, the old worn-out language. It can’t be done.
    On the other hand, I could go to her door and knock twice. She would know who it was and could knock or not knock.
    Then do what? Talk? Talk about what? Some years ago I discovered that I had nothing to say to anybody nor anybody to me, that is, anything worth listening to. There is nothing left to say. So I stopped talking. Until you showed up. I don’t know why I want to talk to you or what I need to tell you or need to hear from you. There is something … about that night … I discovered something. It’s strange: I have to tell you in order to know what I already know. I talk, you don’t. Perhaps you know even better than I that too much has been said already. Perhaps I talk to you because of your silence. Your silence is the only conversation I can listen to.
    Then what do I want of her, the woman next door?
    In some strange way she is like Lucy. Lucy was a virgin! and I did not want her otherwise. What I wanted was to