A Firefly Hour

by Ana Teresa Pereira

Part 1 appears in this issue.

conclusion

“I can’t live here and inside the caves at the same time.”

I didn’t understand, but I didn’t understand so many of the things he said lately.

For one thing, he didn’t write at home anymore. He told me he had rented a cheap room in town, a table, a chair, a window, a bed. He went away in the morning, after breakfast, but breakfast was just a big cup of black coffee. I didn’t get up when he left, and he kissed my hair, my neck.

I felt betrayed. He had told me he wrote from me, from my presence there. I didn’t like the idea that now I was in his way. I was the same. Perhaps a little thinner, we were both a little thinner, a little paler. Feeding from each other was not healthy.

He left, and I had long days in front of me. There was the house, and I liked to take care of the house. But I couldn’t wash the curtains, dust the books or polish the stairs every day. I had ventured a few times into the woods, defiant as if I was exploring the other side of a painted scenery, and I walked for a while along the forgotten path, I sat on a log, and let myself become part of the place. There were presences around me, and I was attuned to them. Another state of mind.

I wondered if that was love. It was longing: the longing for his body was becoming a longing for everything else, a need to touch and be touched. And I was afraid.

And I was becoming obsessed with the other house. Sometimes there was an open window, and the paper disappeared every day when I was not looking. Sometimes I had the feeling there was only one house before the wood, traversed by the street as if by a small, dark river.

One day, I had the silly idea of baking a cake, put it in a wicker basket and cross the street. It was strange crossing the street. The wind chimes didn’t move; everything around me was still, attentive. There was no bell — there was no bell in our house either — and I pushed the gate. It opened easily; no signs of rust; the paint had no stains.

Inside, the wilderness seemed tamer, as if the first layer was a wall to hide the garden. The lavender and the daisies were blooming among the grass. I could hear music, very slow, Art Pepper, I think. But when I knocked at the door, the music stopped. I didn’t insist. I left the basket with the cake and the cheap bottle of wine on the doorstep and went home.

There was a warmth inside me, a kind of love. If he wanted to be alone — I felt it was a he — I would leave him alone. Perhaps he had watched me when I was putting up the curtains, cleaning the garden, reading on the porch.

I had bought some children’s books the last time I went to town. I was always a sucker for children’s books. Tom had a good library, many authors I’d heard about in high school, but I was not a great reader. I had grown up on children’s stories, love stories, cinema and fashion magazines. And if I had nothing else, I would end up with those pulp magazines, with his stories, and men who had claws and pretty girls who grew wings, and stuffed birds, and fishes wandering in the darkness.

The weather had been nice. In town there was rain, and puddles, and sad, forgotten violet bunches in the flower stalls. Here the drops of rain were like dew drops, and the leaves were changing to autumnal tones, even though it was summer.

* * *

One night I woke up with the rain and the wind entering the window. I had the feeling everything was moving inside the room.

I moaned.

I heard Tom’s voice, sharp, unpleasant. “What is it?”

I turned the bedside lamp on. Tom was smoking a cigarette by the window. His face had a distant expression and was scattered with rain.

I didn’t remember him coming home; he was still dressed, white shirt and grey flannel trousers. I reached to him, but he was far, so far.

“Did I wake you, baby?”

“You scared me... a little.”

He laughed. He threw the cigarette to the rain. “I’m sorry, baby.”

He was so far... and something else: he had become very heavy.

I passed my hand across my eyes. But when I looked at him again, nothing had changed. He was so heavy it was amazing how he could go on moving; he closed the window and came towards me.

“Tom,” I screamed.

His steps were heavy; he could barely lift his feet. “I’m here, baby.”

He sat on the bed, and I tried not to scream again.

“Did you just arrive?”

“A while ago.”

“Did your work go well?”

“I just finished a story.”

“You never finish your stories.”

“What’s the use of a story that is finished?”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

He reached to me, and I moved back.

His face hardened. “What’s wrong, baby?”

“I’m afraid of you.” I hadn’t intended to say those words.

He just smiled. “You’ve read too many of my stories, baby.”

“It’s as if they contaminated everything.”

“Reality is a very fragile thing.” He stood up. “Try to sleep, baby. I need a drink.”

“Yes.”

I tried to go back to sleep but couldn’t. I got up and went to the window. On the other side of the curtain of rain, the other house, like the shadow of something that wasn’t there. There was no light on. I had never seen the lights on.

I took my perfume bottle and put a little on my neck. It didn’t bring back memories of other men; it was my perfume when I was with him, wearing black stockings, with my hair loose.

I looked at myself in the mirror. My slim body under the almost transparent nightgown, my hair that was longer, messier. My nipples were hard; they almost hurt. I found myself pretty and I wanted to be loved. I went downstairs, turning the lights on in front of me.

He was sitting in the living-room, with a book and a cigarette. He looked up at me.

“I love you,” I said.

He closed the book. “It’s the first time you’ve said that.”

“When did you fall in love with me?”

“The first time I saw you in the Academy.”

“But you didn’t ask me to dance.”

“No.”

“Did you dance with any of the girls?”

“I just had a few drinks.”

“And you already loved me.”

“I loved you even before you saw me.”

* * *

I could see myself crossing the street, a girl in a blue skirt and white shirt, her hair tucked behind her ears, scattered with rain. And it took so long, how could it take so long to cross a narrow street? I didn’t even feel heavy, like him, he was so heavy...

The evening had started as usual. I had prepared a light meal, soup and salad, a bottle of wine. I didn’t feel like cooking anymore. I didn’t feel like working in the garden or waiting for a man who couldn’t write and seemed to hold me responsible for that.

It was that hour, the firefly hour, as I used to say. Tom had told me coldly that there were no fireflies in our part of the country, but I had seen them again.

He arrived late, tall, dark and sad, in his old trench coat, and kissed me absently. We sat at the table, but he didn’t touch the food, only drank a few glasses of wine. Then we sat in the living room, near each other, and finally I asked: “Is your story progressing?”

He looked at me as if he hadn’t seen me for a long time. “You’re still beautiful,” he said.

“I hope so.”

“I thought it would be so easy, having you near me...”

I shivered. I remembered a verse I had read somewhere: “She shivered in the summer.”

I told him: “You said I could feed you.”

“Not anymore.”

So, it was over. I felt a sudden relief.

“I might always go back to the Academy.”

“You still have the perfume.”

“And the stockings, yes.”

“White jasmine,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Sometimes I entered a room, and I didn’t know if you had been there or if it was the jasmine outside the window.”

“There is no jasmine outside the windows.”

For a moment, he seemed confused.

“That’s from some movie.”

“I don’t know.”

“Anyway, I won’t let you go back to that place. I remember those men, the blue tickets, the music...”

“Darling, that’s my nightmare.”

I would return to my hometown. I should have done it a long time ago. My mother would forgive me. Perhaps my room was still the same; or perhaps Liz had moved into it. It didn’t matter. I would have clean sheets, and safety. I would soon get a job, perhaps marry the boy next door. And go to the movies on Saturday nights and dream of being an actress.

“I don’t want you to go,” he said.

I looked at him, and my heart broke. My first love. That face, those eyes, no one else had that face, those eyes. Not even in the movies. Or perhaps, a French actor I had seen once. And our house, and the flowers, and the fireflies.

“It’s better for you.”

“Oh, baby, how can you say that? You are my poetry, you know. I remember you in that black dress, once the strap fell and I almost saw your breast. And you here, I watched you in the garden, cooking for me, waiting in bed for me.”

“It was those damn stories.”

He looked very tired. “You don’t understand. They are my poetry, too.”

“Your first book...”

“That was nothing. Anyone could have written that. But those stories are pieces of me.”

“I have given every piece of me to you.”

“No, you haven’t.”

I looked at him. Something had changed.

“Tom... don’t look at me that way.”

“How?”

“As if you were going to kill me.”

“You have read too many of my stories.”

We got up.

“You scare me,” I said.

“Baby, you’re the only thing standing between me and my stories.”

“That’s absurd.”

“I love you too much. And I must choose.”

I felt his hand on my waist, like a claw. As if he was going to hold me and force me to dance.

I pushed him away and ran out of the house. The fresh air, the scattered drops of rain. I took a deep breath.

There was only one place to go. I saw myself crossing the street, and it took me so long... I pushed the gate of the other house and saw the tiny yellow lights among the bushes. So many of them... I stopped for a moment. That’s where they came from.

I bumped at the door with clenched fists, but nobody appeared. I turned the knob.

The houses must be alike on the inside. I opened the door on the right and looked for the light switch.

For a moment, I had the impression of coming back to the place I had run away from. The chairs, the desk, the film posters. The bookshelves seemed familiar, too. Henry James, Freud, some dispersed volumes of Jung; detective novels by John Dickson Carr, S. S. Van Dine, Cornell Woolrich.

Hundreds of magazines, dark men and pretty girls in red dresses. And the light smell of white jasmine. I didn’t know if it came from the garden outside. But the window was closed.

I was so tired I just wanted to lie in bed and sleep, wake up the next morning, when the nightmare was over.

I climbed the stairs, light with the absence of wings.

“I just want to sleep,” I said aloud.

But when I entered the room, I didn’t find my bed. I had changed the sheets the day before, and they had a light smell of lavender, from drying in the garden; these ones were grey with dirt. And the bedcover was grey, too, not the beautiful blue and green I had bought. The curtains I had done myself were not there. Somebody had drawn back the old curtains. But the smell of jasmine was strong, as if I had just been there and was wearing as much perfume as I used to when I worked at the Dance Academy. I opened the dirty window, but no, the scent didn’t come from outside.

A girl in the mirror: her messy hair, her wet face, a white shirt, a blue skirt and pretty sandals. Instinctively, I approached the wardrobe. I opened the door and reached out to touch the familiar tissue of my clothes. But I touched something very different.

I screamed when I saw the black birds inside the wardrobe. There were layers of them, deeper shades of darkness; the shelves were bottomless. I held my hand with the other one as if it was burnt.

I went downstairs, slowly, holding to the banister. I needed a place to hide until the morning. If I could live through the night, perhaps the world would be changed in the morning, with the sun, and the paper boy coming on his bicycle. A street with a paper boy riding his bicycle is a safe place.

My eyes fixed on the door of the basement. I had been down there once or twice. There was some old furniture, some cardboard boxes and cobwebs in the corners. I groped the wall, looking for a switch.

The light was very weak, a simple dirty bulb. I went down the steep stairs, with the impression I was going to fall.

I felt the nauseating smell of the water even before I saw the reservoirs; white jasmine doesn’t protect you from anything. They were four or five and occupied almost the whole space. I came near one of them and saw the things that lived in there, the huge, viscous fishes, that swam in an endless night.

* * *

When I hear the entrance door close, I hold my body with my arms.

It is very cold; nocturnal creatures need cold. The light of the sun has never entered this place.

I stay motionless, my eyes caught in the forms that move inside the water. All the darkness in the world.

I hear him moving upstairs. He must know I am here.

What takes him so long?