Sleet: Selected Stories

She went out to the porch in her bare feet anyway, just to see what had caused the loud noise. A large white bundle was thrown on the floor. Startled, she stopped short before a stiff white wing with blood on its tips, a frozen mangled block of blood and feathers. The dead bird, the raw morning mist creeping through the yard, the threatening silence that hovered over the village, all of it flung her back inside the house, where she stopped before the mirror. She stood there looking into it, massaging the color back into her cheeks and feeling rather sorry for herself, so frightened, so alone.

Suddenly she thought, ‘I have to talk with him. Right now. He has to help me. He can’t leave me alone like this.’

She took the scarf down from the shelf and wrapped it around her head. Then she listened for a moment, and when she heard no sign of her husband stirring in the bedroom, she ran lightly up the stairs. She barely dared to touch the steps, she was so afraid of getting caught. And she didn’t knock on the forester’s door, because a knock would almost certainly wake her husband if he was still sleeping. So instead she just opened it, very slowly.

She opened it so slowly, in fact, that the forester was caught completely off guard. Standing there on the threshold, Alice felt a chill run through her body. Her first impulse was to turn and run back down the stairs, since what she saw filled her with a disgust so complete that she could not endure it without screaming. Or so she thought at first. There are certain situations we do not wish to see our loved ones in, as the unworthiness of their behavior damages our own pride. Their very pitifulness becomes in every sense our own. And in such situations, it is only by breaking from them that we can salvage some part of our own dignity.

The silence drew out to an exasperating length, but the forester did not yet notice Alice standing there in the doorway. Her eyes filled slowly with warm tears. Offended, abandoned, she absorbed every detail of the scene before her. The glass in the forester’s right hand was nearly full. What indulgence! “When he’s had enough of me,” she thought, “he switches to brandy.” She took in his profile, his swollen, red, drunken, sated profile. How could she have ever loved it? Or had she never really seen it before? And then the left hand. She stared particularly long at what he was doing with that hand, for this was what held her captive and filled her with such disgust.

In his lap rested a dead squirrel, a large splendid creature that he’d shot while out on the hunt. With his left hand he was caressing it, not so much tenderly as amiably, as one might do to a pet. His expression was not at all cruel, but rather pleased. “Just like he looks when women give themselves to him,” thought Alice. “A caresser who can only love with his hands.”

Of course, he was bound to notice her eventually. No one can be the object of such intense thoughts without somehow sensing it. A sharp thought scratched his cheek. He turned slowly toward the door, his caressing hand clenched in defense. The moment he set eyes on Alice he tried to stand up to put his dignity back on its feet, but with a motion of her hand she enjoined him to remain seated.

To be caught sitting! If only he’d been standing then at least he could have looked down at her. He felt himself diminishing before her eyes until his shoulders were little more than a hanger for his forester’s coat to dangle on.

“What are you doing here?” he asked in a dark voice. He tried to get rid of the glass as discreetly as possible.

“You don’t normally ask me that,” replied Alice. She could feel the rough wood of the threshold pressing against her bare feet. It hurt them, but right now that pleased her. It was all right for something to hurt as long as it reminded her of the obligations she had to her hate. Gently she untied the forester’s colored scarf and took it from her hair.

The forester maintained his calm, making no attempt to stop her. He didn’t jump up with a lover’s entreaties: “How could you be so cold? How could you reject something I gave from the heart?” No. And he made no move to charge forward, grasp her in his arms and conquer her, though he recognized this as one possible way of dealing with the situation. Instead he just sat there, calmly formulating his defense. She had caught him sitting down — caught him. And that’s just what he felt like, a captive. It was like being hauled before a judge, though she had accused him of nothing. He sat there devising a defense in any event, and what defense is more effective than that of toppling the very moral base on which your accuser stands?