Story: Inarticulate Hour

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This close-companioned inarticulate hour
When twofold silence was the song of love.

- Dante Gabriel Rossetti

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1

If someone had been watching him from above, he thought, he would appear as the only moving thing in the silent world he was walking through. In the direction he was moving at the moment, after turning one corner coming down the long hill from the university, there would be on the viewer's left the park rolling out from the grid-pattern of streets around it. There would be the hill above and the tops of the houses he was walking by, with their steep, shingled roofs ranged properly in their neat rows back from the gray lawns in front of them. The houses were pretty tall for just houses, two and often three stories, and if the one above was not looking at just the right angle, Jon himself would be hidden behind them. Except perhaps as he crossed the street.

He always walked along the same route, climbing up the hill in the mornings to keep office hours or to type something since he his typewriter at the university instead of at home, to check into the library, or attend a graduate seminar; and wandering back down again in the afternoons, just before it was late, after class. He taught two sections of freshman English and paid that way for his books and his apartment and his food. It was the third year he had done that.

"Perhaps she will call me," he thought.

He walked the same way everyday, enjoying the feel of being regular like that for no reason at all except it was fun; but in the mornings he found himself on one side of the street and then later crossed over, and in the afternoons, he would take the other side, sometimes even walking in the street.

By now he was proceeding along the street that touched the corner of the park. He walked the street on the park side, just beyond the soggy leaves that filled the gutter. He didn't like to get his feet wet because it ruined his shoes and because he refused to buy rubbers, as everyone else did, in a kind of denial that the weather was all that bad. It was all that bad anyway, of course, despite what he tried to make it by not buying them. His influence in such matters was not great.

"But why would she call?"

Among all the trees in the parkway at his side which stood there shivering above their dropped leaves like trembling virgins naked for the first time before a man, there was one old codger of a tree whose bark was thick and rough and which, now that the leaves are gone, attracted one's eye only to its trunk, stubby and stout, twisted slightly to one side and further deformed by huge lumps that bulged out of its sides in two or three places. That tree inspired him with confidence. Everyday when he went by he picked it out from the others and tried to absorb some of its sturdiness. Before all the birds had flown off to the South, they had crowded around those trees and hopped along the ground.

It was the time of day then, however, when everything was quiet. There happened to be no wind. It was late enough that all the children who lived around there were home already from school, and cold enough that they weren't playing outside. It was early enough that not too many people had started home yet from work, so that there wasn't any noise up by the park from the big boulevard at the bottom of the hill. He could hear nothing besides his own footsteps; and they, of course, weren't much.

But she might call, just the same," he was thinking.

He enjoyed teaching because it broke up his day, and he was not unpopular with the students. He graded hard (though of course he was fair) and besides, didn't expect them to do too much work. He always had a few students, every semester, who got very interested in the course and worked very hard. At the end of the term a few of them might come up to him when they handed in their exams and say something awkward about how much they had liked the course. He enjoyed it even more if they were really embarrassed and hesitated a little or stammered, because he thought that showed they were sincere. It was still early in this particular semester, however, and he had just gotten to know the students' names.

Beyond the corner of the park, a little farther down the hill, was a flight of steps, leading him down to a steep street slanting toward the boulevard and his "place" (as he thought of it) just beyond. He always bumped his briefcase on his knee or shin going down the steps, or behind him (as he just did again) on a step at the turning. The street way going so steeply down like that opened up the sky more to his view, and he could see quite far across the city where another hill rose, spotted with crummy frame houses that he thought must be as bad close up as the ones he was walking by.

It was Friday afternoon, the end of the month, and the weekend spread out before him like a great plain filled with cold and lifeless garbage he would have to pick his way through--but that would over-dramatizing it.

He crossed the street to the broken sidewalk there, swinging his briefcase out before him and back. It certainly was better going down than going up.

He imagined ahead of himself that when he would be opening the door--No, it would be some time later after he had settled down in his window niche on the comfortable chair with something to read, his Leconte de Lisle perhaps. The telephone would ring and he would wonder who it was, going over to see, letting it ring twice or so. He figured it all out as he walked along.

Hello. Is that Jon?"

He wouldn't know who it was, you know. He never had been much good at recognizing voices over the telephone even after hearing them several times. And this time he would have heard the voice only once before on the phone anyway. He would say that it was Jon, though, naturally.

This is Emily," she would say, and, sure enough, he would recognize the voice once he knew who it was.

Emily Lukas was his co-teacher in one class of freshmen. She had just come out from the Midwest that fall, four weeks before or so, and at the university now they were trying to "train" the new instructors by putting two classes together and having the new instructor and a "veteran," as they called him, teach the double-class together. It wasn't much of an idea, of course, and the sixty students or so they had in that class were already restless; but so far Jon was enjoying it.

Emily didn't have a telephone herself. She had called him not long before the semester began so that they could plan what they were going to do. She had come up to his apartment, in fact, because she had a car and he didn't, of course, to talk it over one night. They both seemed to have a good time and went on with it until late.

"Hiya kiddo." He might even say that back to her when she called again.

"Listen...," she would say in preface but would then fall silent. One thing you were conscious of talking on the phone was the warmth you somehow generated between your ear and the receiver. And then, just breathing over the mouthpiece that close to your lips, that too gave it a kind of intimacy.

He knew right away that Emily had some kind of trouble. But he didn't know what sort or what she wanted to do about it. That was all right (or would be, you know, if this thing really happened)--that was all right because he always had been able to get people to talk to him.

"I was thinking about you just now." He might as well boldly say that to her (which would be true, of course, since he was thinking of her at that very moment).

If he had wanted to think about it, he would have been struck again, as one is periodically, by the amazing speed of his mind. He was walking along all this time down the curving street toward the boulevard, which was not very far to go. Only about one block and a half or so compared to most streets. And yet he had already begun in his mind all this telephone story. He was even having time to sort through several possible things that could happen--for example, he almost had Emily say, "May I speak with Jon, please?" and almost just now had himself say, "What's up?"--and still confident of finishing the whole scene before he got to the stoplight at the bottom of the hill. You could go through a scene like that much more quickly in your mind than you could walk down the hill.

"You were?" Emily would really wonder about his thinking about her, but would add in a lower tone, "About the class?"

"Well, no, not really," Jon would say. "I was wondering what happened to you over weekends. Not really knowing too many people here yet."

"Oh... Listen," Emily would say again. "I wondered if I could come over and see you."

"Well, sure," Jon would say. "Would you rather I came over there? I could take the bus..."

At this point, he didn't even know which he wanted to happen... He was prepared to skip that part of the conservation.

Emily was small and girlish with delicate limbs and fine features. She wore her hair, just any-old brown, cut very short, lying flat on her head, barely fingering down onto her neck and wisping a little around her ears. She didn't wear make-up--as no insecure, intellectual, and "arty" girl from a Midwest college would--but her features were regular enough and lightly enough formed that one didn't even notice. She had brown eyes that didn't require punctuation, and her lips, though thin and her mouth small, were well-defined and yet not hard or cold. Her voice was low and musical.

She dressed what she must have called sensibly. Plain wool skirts, longer than the fashion, and simple blouses. She hadn't really made friends as far as anyone could tell, and didn't say much in her seminars. Some thought her an amazon of sorts, but most didn't notice.

Emily, you see, was the reason why Jon was enjoying the semester so far. He had begun to go over to her office more and more before class began because, as they got to know better what the course was going to do and what they could expect from each other and so talked less and less about classwork, they talked more about each other. Emily had been born and raised in Atlanta, for example.

But it wasn't what they talked about, you know, but how it happened to get said. He would be sitting on the desk across from hers in her office, swinging his legs a little and leaning on his hands at his sides on the edge of the desk; and she would be at her own before him. There was a little smile that kept getting mixed up in everything she was saying; it kept playing around her smooth cheeks and lips, and sometimes they would both laugh, more just because it was pleasant than for any reason.

That was the first weeks when she was happy.

By the time he had arrived at the stoplight, where he had to wait for several cars to pass, he had finished the scene. The last of it had to be pretty vague since he couldn't really invent anything definite to be bothering Emily. Or if he could, he didn't want to. It didn't really matter after all, or even interest him. And as he crossed the street and went on toward the house where his apartment was, he was filled with a sense of his own strength to face the difficulty and kindness and tact. She had come to him not to solve the problem or to wish it away, but for the quiet she needed to gain the strength to face the difficulty and perhaps to set about snuffing it out. He thought he could manage that.

She had even mentioned one time in the office how happy she was to be there and to be setting out anew again. As if she had to say it in words. She mentioned that it was especially good to be living alone again. Jon himself hadn't had a roommate since sophomore year.

The last week or so, however, had been slightly different for Emily, which had prompted Jon's most recent daydream. Emily had always received a good many letters--one couldn't help noticing since all the teacher's boxes were right next to each other and Jon and Emily most often went up to the office for mail together before class. Her mother was involved in a divorce suit; she had mentioned that but didn't seem to be very much concerned (it was not evidently her father involved). And there were letters from someone who wrote in a huge, scribbled hand on wide-line tablet paper, which came from the town where she had been to college. More of them had come recently.

When she and Jon talked together, she had a languid air about her--mostly because of her warm and mellifluous voice--but she smoked a lot and now and then her hands would flit nervously over the top of the desk in front of her. Sometimes too her movements as they walked to class would suddenly become angular and awkward, and her face would freeze for an instant at his side.

He didn't speculate much on what people did not tell him about their lives, perhaps because so many told him more than he was interested in knowing. But he expected vaguely that the letters from the Midwest came from a hopeless and sick lover she had been living with before moving East. He was a little glad to hear she was tired of that kind of living because that would have made it impossible for him who couldn't get that involved. But he was glad to think also that she had had that kind of experience.

2

He had moved into many other scenes by the time he reached the door of his little apartment. He had found a few in the fifty yards or so between the boulevard and his house, several more on the porch and in the red door there, and in his empty mailbox many others which he moved through incoherently as he climbed up the stairs. His apartment was fairly long and narrow; it was rounded on the end that faced the lawn before the house, where the roof just above made the ceiling slope down. At that end, there was a small window set into a niche of its own, just wide enough for a disreputable sofa chair with its slipcover falling off, which required an old pillow punched inside it because of the stuffing that had died within. At the other end was a microscopic kitchen and the bathroom.

But the room itself was filled with other lands and other times, crowded with people he had known or read about, and with new faces and scenes he met there everyday. All English graduate students have a lot of books. Jon's especial boast to himself was that he had read all the ones he had. Except for a few selections in anthologies, most of which he knew.

So he was sitting in the window niche, because natural light is so much easier on your eyes, and this time was strolling around the silent, sunlit fields outside of Paris with "pere Leconte"--when the telephone rang. He had only had a telephone for a few months, and it always startled him when it rang. He moved quickly across the room. He let it ring twice.

"Jon? This is Dr. Thompson." There were two striking things about that. First, Dr. Thompson, a Shakespeare instructor and the director of Freshman English and so Jon's immediate superior at the University, never spoke to him except addressing him as "Mr. Arcott". Second, and even more interesting perhaps, Jon had never spoken to Dr. Thompson on the telephone before, but he had immediately recognized his voice, just after "Jon?"

"Yes, sir. How are you?" He didn't like to speak on the phone because it seemed such a cold and distant way to communicate.

Dr. Thompson went on: "I wanted...Well," and he started over again. "Do you know where Ms. Lukas is?" he said.

Jon had wondered himself what happened to Emily on weekends and hadn't seen her since their class together early in the afternoon. He didn't notice anything peculiar in Dr. Thompson's calling to ask that. Perhaps it was a special-delivery letter, or just some administrative detail.

"Let me tell you why I have to ask," he said. "I have received a note from her--I just found it in my box this afternoon; no one knows when it was placed there--the note saying that Ms. Lukas is sorry but she just can't stay here any longer." He paused there for a moment to let Jon acknowledge his surprise. He did that because he knew Dr. Thompson was waiting, but he didn't bother to say anything, just making a nonverbal sound.

"She apologizes profusely and says she's sorry she didn't have enough nerve to come in and tell me in person. I don't mind about that, however."

Jon just wanted him to go on.

"She says that she has been very happy here, and especially she has some very good words to say about you, Jon. She says that she especially regrets that you will probably have more work to do now because of her leaving."

Jon wanted to speak then, about that was unimportant, but Dr. Thompson was going on.

"Now, I called to ask...I am sure that you realize that I am asking only to help get my bearings here. And I am still hoping I can catch Ms. Lukas before she leaves the city. But what I wanted...Do you know her at all personally?"

Jon couldn't really help much, of course, and Dr. Thompson said he was going to drive over to Emily's apartment, since she didn't have a telephone, and he would call Jon again if there was anything to report. Jon did mention her mother's divorce and tried to suggest too that Dr. Thompson should especially call if there was anything he, Jon, could do to help. And they hung up. Jon didn't know if he had made himself clear.

3

He went back to the sofa chair and sat down, turning it as he did so a little more toward the window. He thought that probably there was a note from Emily in his box, too, but the office would be closed before he could walk up and get it. He wouldn't see it until Monday. What could it say anyway? Perhaps she would tell him that she had enjoyed working with him and was sorry to have to leave. Maybe she would even tell him what it was that was making her go away. But that was just curiosity.

Would Dr. Thompson find her before she drove off? No, that would mean that she would really have wanted to be stopped, since she was not so unintelligent as to think no one would care. And if all she had wanted was sympathy, she would have called him instead. Or told him after class. She wasn't weak, anyway; he had known that all along.

What would become of him now?

His apartment was on the third floor and the house across the street was only two stories high, so that when he looked out his window, he saw above it into the quiet clouds moving slowly across what was left of the weak, orange glow on the sky. It was very quiet, the cars going home on the boulevard somehow distant and muted.

As he sat there watching the vague clouds, he began to wonder who those letters had been coming from that were written on the old tablet paper. She had broken away from all of it; she must have felt that firmly and confidently when she had arrived. Just buying new books and moving into a new apartment, and seeing a new campus even if it wasn't much, and even knowing him--even if he wasn't either. Just being new would have been enough. Jon knew what it was to break out and start again; he knew the joy of feeling old ties and old burdens slip away. One doesn't make all his burdens himself, after all, and sometimes you have to shrug them away. Jon had realized that before.

But old ties and burdens you haven't created yourself, perhaps one is responsible to them after all. Perhaps that doesn't even matter, because perhaps the old ties are not ever really broken.

Emily had flown whole and strong, though tiny and delicate, from the shells cracking around her and into a kind of ether she hadn't felt capable of breathing in. It must have been a great joy. In fact, he had seen her eyes cool and calm, and had heard her laughter. So he knew.

She must have had to fight herself free; perhaps in fact it was an old part of herself that she had been leaving behind, broken and falling from her. An old woman who had cheated her and hurt her and tied her to insane neurotics and irresponsible mental invalids in order to hurt herself, to bind her down.

And now, Jon saw, the frail and invisible arm that had thrown her into the air, the gossamer bond draped lightly about her foot, had reached out for her again, had pulled her inevitably back toppling blind into the depressions she had hollowed behind her in the past.

He would take over her other class, at least for a time; there was no doubt of that. He would make her going as easy for those left in place as one could. But it seemed an empty gesture.

Perhaps one day she would write to him to say what it was, or merely to invite a word from him, and he could show somehow that it wasn't her going...It was her having to go, that left him nodding solemnly in the window, watching, concerned, and resigned, in the shadows of the evening. Perhaps if he could say it right, she would know for certain what she surely must feel somewhat already, and perhaps even hope, that her going and the bother it left him in his work was not all, though that would be what he would say.

4

It might have been a telephone line that ran from the top of his house across the street, slanting down just over one corner of the frame the window made of his seeing. It was growing dark even behind the line now in the West, but Jon could see in darkened silhouette at least a sparrow, perhaps it was, or something else since he didn't know much about birds. It was sitting on the line just at the edge of the picture the window made him, turned toward him, he thought, but couldn't know for sure in that kind of light.

He wondered why that bird hadn't moved on to the South by then. It was cold enough by then, and the days were short. He said to the bird in his mind to fly away, to go on down where its instincts must be telling it to go. He didn't command, but coaxed in a sympathetic way as an experienced teacher will sometimes encourage a bashful child to speak.

Go on, he said.

But when he had settled back into his chair to gaze more into the wide, dimming sky, the bird had not flown away to the South, where the other birds would be nesting now, and making love.

***