Ilsa Read online

  She floated and I covered her face with my hands so that only her eyes showed. When I tried to imagine her face with her eyes upside down, it was awful, terrifying! “I don’t like it!” I wailed.

  She turned over and laughed. “Oh, Henny, I didn’t mean to scare you. Come on. Let’s go home. Father ought to have dinner ready. Look, Henny, see how small the waves are? I can float all the way into shore on one. Father showed me how to hit it just right no matter how small they are. Look!”

  She disappeared into the crest of a wave. I could see her naked tan body as it flashed in to shore. She tumbled onto the beach and shouted at me, but even though the wind was blowing hot from the land the sound was diffused and I couldn’t hear. I tried to throw myself into a wave as she had done, but it passed on without me. I knew she was laughing. I stayed for a minute in the cool salt water, letting it lap gently against my neck and shoulders. I wondered what it must feel like to be part of the beach and have the water caressing you daily. I thought a mother should caress the way the ocean did. But when Mamma tried to be affectionate it was like the touch of the dried-out rose leaves she kept in her bureau drawers.

  Ilsa stood on the shore and waved her arms at me. I waded in to her. “I wasn’t laughing at you,” she said, reading my thoughts. “It took me an awful long time to learn to come in on small waves like these. I was just laughing because I felt good. You act as though you keep expecting people to laugh at you. You ought to just laugh at them. I’ll bet they’re funnier than you are. I’m hungry. Come on. It’s going to be night soon.”

  At the beach the evenings are longer than anywhere else at home because the whiteness of the sand holds the light as long as it can. But even at the beach it comes as a surprise. One minute it’s bright daylight and the next minute you can’t see two feet in front of you. When we climbed up the ramp to the house, the beach and the quiet pools of water in the shallow sloughs at the ocean’s edge held all the gentle luminous colors of the mother-of-pearl shells that were washed up after a storm. But when we crossed the long room and looked out the back door where the ilex bushes, the myrtles, and the palmettos went into the pines, night was already coiled there, lying behind the house like a languid black snake. The chinaberry tree was a dark shadow from which Dr. Brandes emerged.

  “Did you have a good swim?” he asked, as he came into the room. We nodded. From one of the shelves he took two candles in blue-and-white china holders, which he gave us. We went upstairs to dress. I could feel the soft dry grains of sand under my feet as I climbed the stairs. I put the candle on the chest and went over to the window. There were still a few faint stains of day left on the water, and as these began to go, from the very edge of the horizon came a clear arm of light that swept over the sea, flickered and went out, then swung over the dark water again, and again, and again.

  Mamma had told us about the lightship. To be sent to the lightship was a threat even worse than the chain gang. Three men were out on that lightship, and they were there for six-month stretches with nothing to do but tend that light. Sometimes a boat would go out to bring them supplies. One night, long before I was born, the light had failed to go on, and a large sailing vessel had gone to the bottom. When the investigators went put to the lightship the following morning they found what was left of all three men lying on the deck in pools of blood. Around and around the ship sharks were swimming, their teeth and their white bellies gleaming, while buzzards were already at the bloody carcasses, occasionally dropping from their too-eager beaks something which the sharks would snatch up. It was because of this dreadful event, Mamma told my sister Silver and me, that the sharks still circled the boat, day and night, waiting for three more men to get in a fatal brawl, or perhaps for one of them to fall overboard. And a buzzard was always perched on the highest mast, the wind blowing his black, scraggly neck feathers, so that the livid flesh showed through. If Silver or I were especially wicked (only, of course, it would be me—Silver was never wicked, according to Mamma), we were told we would be taken out to the lightship and fed to the ancient witch of a buzzard and the avaricious, anticipating sharks.

  I was still standing naked by the window watching the lightship when Ilsa came in carrying her candle. She put it next to mine on the chest and came over to the window.

  “Father’s going to take me out to the lightship some day,” she said, as its finger appeared on the edge of the horizon and pointed across the ocean.

  “You mean you’d like to go?”

  “Oh, more than anything! Wouldn’t you?”

  “I—I don’t know,” I stammered, thinking of Mamma and the sharks, but nevertheless calmed by the bright strength of the light as it traveled across the water.

  “Hurry up and get your clothes on,” Ilsa said. “I’m hungry and I know Father won’t let me begin without you.” She took her candle and vanished.

  I stood by the window for a moment longer. I was comfortably cool for the first time in weeks. I was so cool, indeed, that I felt goose flesh come up in little ridges on my arms. As I turned from the window, the smell of dinner from downstairs fogged out the smell of salt and sea, and my stomach reminded me of how hungry I was. I pulled on my trousers and my blue cotton shirt, which were still damp from the perspiration of the afternoon, and remembered that I had left my sandals behind the palmetto clump where I had hidden while I watched Ilsa and the chain gang. I knew I would be punished for this, but on top of all my other naughtinesses it wouldn’t make my punishment much bigger, and, anyhow, I knew they would all be surprised by my sudden burst of independence, so I was glad, because I hated wearing shoes in summer. I wondered if Ilsa ever had to wear shoes in summer, and somehow I didn’t think she did.

  3

  When I went downstairs, Dr. Brandes no longer had on his shabby Palm Beach suit; he wore a pair of dark riding breeches. They were made of a handsome material I didn’t know, and had evidently once been very fine. The candlelight was reflected in the polish of his boots; his shirt was of silk, and, though it was frayed around the collar and the cuffs, he looked wonderfully rich and handsome. His goatee hid the fact that his chin was a little too small for the rest of his face. The odd thing at the moment about his costume was that instead of his riding jacket, which was folded over a chair, he wore a white chef’s apron. A small table was set for supper. Steam came from silver dishes. Hominy. Mullet. A bowl full of salad. Ilsa and I didn’t talk during supper. We ate. Then Ilsa cleared the table and we went out into the kitchen to wash up.

  Ilsa got a clean dish towel off the rack and handed it to me. “I’ll wash and you dry,” she said. “So you are one of the famous Porcher-Silverton-Woolf tribe.” Her lips curled scornfully.

  “What’s wrong with us?” I asked. People didn’t usually speak about our family that way. People kowtowed to us. We were important, partly because we had money, and partly because of our name.

  Our town was rather odd that way—too far south to be really southern in the old tradition, and yet not far south enough to be a resort. The residential section was roughly divided into two zones, the Southerners mostly on our side of the river. Although a few lived on some of the beautiful water-front property on the south side, it was mainly the hangout of the Northerners who had come down; and we looked askance at anyone who lived there whom we had not known always.

  Papa was the most looked-up-to man in town, and we were considered Southerners because, although Grandpa was born in Colorado, his people had emigrated from Kentucky, and Grandma came from Missouri.

  “Father says,” Ilsa went on, “that we’re still too close to the Civil War for you to have so much money, if your father and your grandfather were honest.”

  “Ilsa!”

  She swung around. Dr. Brandes was standing in the doorway.

  “What is it, Father?”

  “I am ashamed of you.”

  “I’m sorry, Father.”

  I could tell that she was indeed very sorry, but her voice did not falter as she looked at him. Hi
s eyes burned like very cold blue flames; they were like the inside of a flame that is never hot.

  “I will accept any punishment you say, Father. I will try not to be rude again. I don’t mean to keep being rude to Henry. I like him. I wish I could see him again, even if he is only ten and a half. How are you going to punish me, Father?”

  “I won’t punish you this time. I like you to learn without punishment,” he said, adding bitterly, “if it is possible for anybody to learn anything without punishment.… Hurry up with the dishes. We must take Henry Randolph Porcher home.”

  He left.

  “I don’t want to go home,” I said.

  “If Father has decided you are to go home, you will go. Don’t you like the town?”

  “I suppose so. I don’t know. I’ve never lived anywhere else. Do you like it?”

  “I’ve never been there.”

  “You haven’t!”

  “No.”

  “Have you always lived here at the beach?”

  “Yes.”

  “Just with your father?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is your mother dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “When did she die?”

  “When I was born. Now who’s being rude?”

  “Was I?”

  “Father says that asking personal questions is rude. Here, you’re awfully slow. I’ve all finished washing and you haven’t nearly finished drying. I’ll help you.” She took another dish towel. When Dr. Brandes looked in the door again she was folding the dish towels over the rack.

  “Have you finished?” he asked.

  “Yes, Father.”

  “You may go out and saddle Calypso. Saddle Henry’s pony, too.”

  I followed him from the kitchen. Ilsa banged happily out of the back door. I sat down on her magnolia-wood stool and watched Dr. Brandes as he took one of the candles and went upstairs. Then I fixed my gaze on the candle nearest me. It burned with a steady, warm flame; the sultry land breeze didn’t waver it as a sea breeze would have done. The tallow was fragrant and dripped down onto glass bobèches that protected the candlesticks. As I watched the candle flame, my eyes began to sting; I put my head on my knees and my mind seemed to merge with the sound of waves caressing the sand. I wasn’t sure which were my thoughts and which were the waves. I didn’t hear Dr. Brandes come downstairs. He put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Sleepy, child?”

  I raised my head and nodded. My eyes were so blurred with sleep that I didn’t see him clearly; he looked as he might have looked seen under water or through fog.

  Ilsa came in and stood in the doorway. “The horses are ready, Father.” She looked at him eagerly, silently, begging not to be left behind.

  “You had better ride the pony, Ilsa. Henry’s too sleepy to stay on. I’ll take him up with me.”

  I staggered to my feet.

  “Fill my pipe, Ilsa,” Dr. Brandes said. “I’ll have to use it to keep away mosquitoes. Rub lavender oil over your arms and legs and face.”

  “It’ll make me all shiny!”

  “You’ll look better all shiny than you would all covered with bites. Hurry up, now.”

  While she filled the pipe he put on his riding coat; then, as she began to smear herself with the heavy-scented lavender oil, he turned to me. “You, Henry, are the first, and probably the last, of the Porchers or any of their ilk to have crossed this threshold for over fifteen years. Do you feel sullied?”

  “No, sir.”

  “If your father tells you what dreadful creatures we are, perhaps you will remember what you have seen for yourself. I would like it if you and Ilsa could meet again.”

  “Yes, sir. Won’t we, please!”

  “I hope so.” He frowned a little and the straight up-and-down lines furrowed between his eyes were as clear-cut and definite as the rest of him. There wasn’t anything indefinite about his bone structure or the flesh which covered it. This was true of Ilsa, too. Looking at her firm tan body, you felt that the skeleton beneath it would be clean and exquisite, and that it was satisfied with its covering. But if you looked at my cousin Violetta Woolf, Monty’s twin sister, who was already a belle at not quite fifteen, with her soft plump body and her lustrous dark red hair, you had no idea what she would be like devoid of her outward trappings. As for me, I didn’t care. Edwin was the only one of the Woolfs I could bear.

  Dr. Brandes took the bottle of lavender oil and rubbed some over me. Then we went out. The night was black and heavy. You could almost put your hand out and feel it, warm and clinging like velvet. The low murmur of sea breaking on sand, of sea breathing quietly from shore to horizon, was augmented by the steady hum of insects. Frogs from back in the swamp. Mosquitoes. Locusts. Crickets. In spite of the lavender oil and Dr. Brandes’ pipe, insects swarmed around my ankles. Remembering what he had said to Ilsa, I didn’t dare bend down to scratch the bites, but concentrated on following with my eye the flashings of a firefly, until Dr. Brandes lifted me up on the saddle in front of him. Then I managed to scratch my itching legs against the horse.

  While the path was narrow, Ilsa and Billy rode behind Calypso. We rode this way for about an hour. Gradually I became accustomed to the insects that swirled constantly about us like smoke, and, leaning against Dr. Brandes, I slept. When I woke up we were on the beach road. Billy and Calypso were side by side. Dr. Brandes and Ilsa were looking intently at a hot red glare that stained the sky in the direction of town.

  “Is it a forest fire?” Ilsa asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “If it’s a forest fire, we might have to turn back, mightn’t we?”

  “Yes, ladybird.”

  “Do you think it could be as far off as the town?” she asked.

  “I can’t tell yet. You live in the biggest house on the river, don’t you, boy?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The closer we got to town the greater the red glare on the horizon became. When Dr. Brandes said, “I’m afraid it’s the town. And it’s not a small fire,” I began to tremble. I remembered the time Randolph Silverton’s house burned down. The flames shinnied up the water pipes like snakes, and when the roof shivered and collapsed it seemed that none of the houses near by were what they seemed, but had become perishable paper things that could vanish in a moment. Cousin Anna Silverton, after whom my sister Silver was named, was dreadfully burned saving one of the colored girls who was trapped in the servant’s quarters; and I remembered the terrified wailing that my cousin Dolph let out when she was carried away on a stretcher to the Woolfs’ house; and I remembered the look on old Cousin Randolph’s face as he stood there by Cousin Anna’s huge gold harp, clutching two silver candlesticks to him like a crucifix, listening to his wife moan as they carried her down the driveway, while he tried to quiet the animal terror of the boy.

  Dr. Brandes felt my trembling and his arm tightened around me. “It’s in the center of town,” he said. “If you’re on the river your house should be all right.”

  We rode for a long time in silence. When we had crossed the long wooden bridge we could see actual flames in the bloody glow ahead of us, and could feel the heat from the fire thrown like a heavy blanket over the already stifling night. The air was full of hot particles of dust, the way I imagined the air must feel after an earthquake or the eruption of a volcano. The roaring of the fire, although we could not as yet see what was burning, made the roar of the ocean during the mightiest storm seem like a whisper.

  As we got into town, and the horses’ hoofs began to clop on the pavement with the night sound they have, which is so different from the clopping they make by day, a group of Negroes came running past us. They were draped in sheets and their faces were distorted with terror. They were screaming, “Jedgment day, jedgment day, jedgment day,” in a kind of mad wail. Every once in a while they would flop to their knees, crying and sobbing, “Lord Jesus, wash me clean; Marse Jesus, wash me in the blood of the Lamb; Marse Jesus, forgive us, for we done sinned.” Then the
y would stumble to their feet again and run down the street, wailing ceaselessly, “Jedgment day, jedgment day!”

  Calypso reared, pawing the air frantically as she caught their fear. Billy whinnied nervously, but Ilsa bent close to him and petted him, whispering soothingly into his ear. Dr. Brandes held me firmly while he quieted Calypso; then he looked to see that Ilsa and Billy were all right.

  “Is it, Father?” Ilsa asked.

  “Is it what?”

  “Judgment day.”

  “I doubt it.”

  When we reached home it was almost like waking from a nightmare to see the house still standing, untouched by actual flame. But it was like a fragment of clear sleep set in the midst of horrible dreams, because the air surrounding it was a dirty, dusty red. I looked at Dr. Brandes and Ilsa, and their faces were covered with soot, although we had not yet actually seen the fire.

  Dr. Brandes hitched the horses to the post, and we ran up the broad white steps. Mamma met us at the door. In her hand she brandished a carving knife. I thought, for a moment, that she had gone stark, staring mad, that she must have set fire to the town.

  “Henry,” she said. “Get the silver and bury it under the big live Oak at the foot of the drive. Hurry, boy, or I’ll whip you.” She turned to Dr. Brandes without seeing him. “Who are you?”

  He bowed slightly. “John Brandes, at your service, Madam.”

  The excitement fled from her face. It became cold and icy, like marble, as her eyes suddenly focused on him. “Get out of this house,” she said quietly. “And take that—that unfortunate child beside you, with you.”

  Papa appeared behind her. “Cecilia, this is no time for words like these. I don’t know who you are, sir, but your help is desperately needed.…” Then he looked at Dr. Brandes and his face became as rigid as Mamma’s. But he went on talking, in a voice that was so calm that it was more frightening than hysteria. “The whole town is going. The water supply has run dry. There is no use trying to draw buckets from the river. The land breeze is carrying flaming brands for blocks, and dropping them like matches from house to house. One may fall here at any time. Cecilia, finish with the portraits and load them in the carriage. Brandes, if you will help me with my books. Child, if you will help Henry with the silver. There is no time to lose.”