The Thanatos Syndrome

dissolve the sugar. There was always talk of politics during the stirring.
    Even here with the freshly polished furniture there is the old smell of the house, of scoured wood and bird dogs.
    It is not bad standing in the dark drinking.
    There is this to be said for drinking. It frees one from the necessities of time, like: now it is time to sit down, stand up. One would as soon do one thing as another.
    Time passes, but one need not tell oneself: take heed, time is passing.
    Lucy finds me either standing at the sideboard or sitting at the table.
    â€œAre you all right?”
    â€œSure.”
    She is wearing a heavy belted terry-cloth robe as short as a car coat. Her hair is wet.
    She turns on the light and looks up at me. I’m not sitting. I’m still standing at the sideboard.
    â€œYou are all right, aren’t you? I can tell.”
    â€œSure.”
    She looks at the decanter but she does not ask me: did you drink all that?
    â€œWell?” she asks after a moment.
    â€œWell what?”
    â€œWouldn’t you like to go to bed?”
    â€œSure.”
    I take another drink from Uncle Rylan’s child’s cup. It was the sugar of the toddy which made this lousy bourbon tolerable.
    â€œI’ll tell you what,” she says, looking down at me. I’m sitting.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œI’ll help you up.”
    â€œAll right.”
    I used to come here as a child for Christmas parties and blackberry hunts and later for the dove shoots at the opening of the season every November. It was a famous dove hunt.
    The tinkle of spoon against glass was the occasion of a certain kind of talk. The talk was of bad news, even of approaching disaster—what Roosevelt was doing at Yalta, what Truman was doing at Potsdam, what Kennedy was doing at Oxford (Mississippi)—but there was a conviviality and a certain pleasure to be taken in the doom talk. As a child I associated the pleasure of doom with the tinkle of silver against crystal.
    â€œI know how you feel,” says Lucy. “Did you ever know how I always felt about you?”
    â€œNo.”
    She’s wrong. I don’t feel anything but the bird-dog reek of memory.
    â€œI’ll tell you what,” says Lucy.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œPut your arm around my shoulders.” She puts my arm around her shoulders. “Put your weight on me. I’m a strong girl.”
    â€œAll right.” She is a strong girl.
    â€œGod, you’re heavy.”
    â€œThen I’ll not put my weight on you,” I say, not putting my weight on her.
    She laughs. “Come on. Up the stairs.”
    They, the English Lipscombs, must have spoken exactly the same way, with the same doomed conviviality and the same steady tinkle of silver against crystal, when the Americans came down the river two hundred years ago in 1796 and up the river with Silver Spoons Butler in 1862.
    In the bedroom Lucy says, “Do you need any help?”
    â€œNo, I’m fine.”
    â€œYou are, aren’t you?” She smiles, absently spits on her thumb, smooths my eyebrows. “But I’ll help you anyhow.”
    â€œAll right.”
    â€œWhat’s the matter?” asks Lucy.
    â€œNothing.”
    â€œYou look uncomfortable.”
    â€œIt’s this collar. No doubt it’s the newness.”
    We had to take pins out of the pajamas. “Maybe another pin.”
    â€œTch. My word. It’s the stupid price tag. Hold still.”
    â€œAll right.”
    The mattress is new and hard but not uncomfortable. It used to be a feather bed. The bottom sheet is fitted and snapped on tight as a drum. The top sheet harbors trapped cold air. But the patchwork quilt is old and warm. The pillow slip is new, but the pillow is old and goose down.
    The silence and darkness and smell of the house is like a presence.
    â€œYou’re okay,” says Lucy.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œYou seem all right but somewhat—distant.”
    â€œI’m not distant.”
    â€œYou’re not even drunk.”
    â€œThat’s true.”
    â€œYou’re shivering.”
    â€œI’m fine.”
    â€œI think I’ll stay here for a while, if you don’t mind.”
    â€œAll right.”
    In Freiburg they have feather beds too. But instead of a quilt comforter, they have something like a bolster, a long narrow pillow to cover the gap on top. I wake early in the morning to the sound of church bells, not like the solemn