“Oh yes,” the doctor said sadly. “He’s dead.”
She remembered a fragment of her religious training. She took one rough cool hand of the body in hers and said in Hebrew, “Hear O Israel, the Lord Our God is One God.” She turned to the others, still holding the hand. “That’s the last thing you’re supposed to say when you die. I don’t suppose he had a chance to say it.” She put the hand back, and covered the Uncle with the sheet.
Greech was wiping his eyes. “Marjorie, anything I can do for you—”
“Thanks, Mr. Greech, right now I have to call my mother.”
Noel went with her to the camp office. The loud-ticking wall clock read three-forty. It took the sleepy country operators fifteen minutes to get through to her mother. She sat with Noel by the light of one desk lamp, smoking, talking about a new novel he had loaned her. The warmth and calm of the sedative possessed her body. She felt quite equal to the ordeal of the next day or two. She thought over the dresses in her closet back home to select the darkest and plainest for the funeral.
Her mother’s voice sounded shrill and scared, “Yes, yes, operator—I tell you this is Mrs. Morgenstern, hello, hello, who’s calling me, who is it?”
“Mom, hello, it’s me.”
“Marjorie! Hello, Marjorie! What is it, darling, for heaven’s sake, four o’clock in the morning?”
“Mom, I’m sorry, I hate to tell you, it’s the Uncle.”
“What?”
“It’s the Uncle, Mom.”
There was a pause. Then, a hoarse cold tone, “How bad is it?”
“It’s over, Mom.”
She heard a gasp, and a sob. Then, crying, Mrs. Morgenstern said in Hebrew, “Blessed be the true Judge.” After another pause, “What was it? What happened?”
“Heart.”
“Heart?”
“Yes.”
“When? How? My God.”
“Just now, Mom. It just happened. Mom, come. Come here.”
“Did you call Geoffrey?”
“I don’t know his number.”
“I’ll call Geoffrey. I’ll call the family. How are you? Are you all right? My God, Samson-Aaron! I told him—Samson-Aaron—Marjorie, are you all right?”
“I’m all right.”
“Marjorie, don’t let them touch him or do anything, do you hear? Nothing. Sit by him. We’ll have to take him home.”
“All right, Mom. I won’t let them do anything.”
“That’s right, nothing. We’ll be there in a couple of hours. Samson-Aaron! Goodbye, Marjorie, I’ll call Geoffrey.”
Marjorie hung up, feeling with some shame that the conversation had been too trivial, too matter-of-fact, for the awful grandeur of the subject, the death of Samson-Aaron. It had been shorter than many telephone talks with her mother about having dinner at a friend’s home.
“How did she take it?” Noel said. “sounded all right at this end.”
“You don’t have to worry about my mother. I have to go sit with him, she says. Let me have another cigarette, please.” Noel followed her outside. She was quite uninterested in Noel now, except as an intelligent acquaintance, useful to have at hand until her mother arrived and took over the responsibility. She was abstractedly aware that they had been making love on the terrace when Samson-Aaron had fallen in the fountain and died. But it was something that had happened on the other side of a break in time. She was numb to all the past before the death of Samson-Aaron. The present was the death, and only the death. A few people were clustered chattering at the fountain, and a few more moved shadowily here and there on the lawn. When they saw her they dropped their voices and stared, and murmured to each other. The darkness, the moonlight, the sweet odor of mountain laurel in the breeze off the lake, were all exactly as they had been on twenty other nights when she had walked very late with Noel across the lawn. The strangest part of this new side of time was how unchanged everything was. The death of the Uncle made no more difference in the natural world than the death of a slapped mosquito.
In the one lamplit room of the dark infirmary, the death smell was now pervasive. The camp nurse sat beside the sheeted form, her face creased with sleep, her eyes puffy, her uniform partly unbuttoned. A bed lamp threw an amber glow on part of the sheet, leaving the rest in shadow. The nurse put her magazine aside guiltily. “Marjorie, I’m terribly sorry about your uncle—”
“Thanks, I’ll sit with him now.”
“But the doctor told me to.”
“No, I will.”
The nurse looked at Noel, obviously glad of the chance to be rid of the assignment. “Well, I don’t want to interfere with the wishes of a relative. But it is a strain—”
“She’s all right,” Noel said.
“I’ll be in the doctor’s office,” said the nurse, escaping, “if there’s anything you want.”
“All right.” Marjorie sat in the chair.
Noel whispered, “I’ll get a chair and sit with you.”
“You don’t have to, Noel.” She spoke in a natural offhand way. “Why don’t you get some sleep? You must be absolutely dead, after that fiesta and all. Gosh, it seems long ago, doesn’t it? And it’s only been a few hours.”
Noel glanced uneasily at the body. “I can’t leave you alone in here.”
“Don’t you understand?” she said wearily. “It’s over. It’s just that my mother wants me to be sure they don’t do anything to him that isn’t according to our religion.”
Noel took her hand and pressed it to his lips and then against his cheek. Her own was limp and warmly numb. The gesture made no impression on her. He stared at her face, and went out.
She resisted a temptation to lift the sheet. At this point, she thought, it would be morbid thrill-seeking; Samson-Aaron was dead, and he was entitled to the privacy of being dead. Marjorie was conscious that, for all the horror and the dread, the death was a marvelously exciting and dramatic experience; she felt, with a little shame, that she was taking too much pleasure in it, despite her real grief and pain. It was all too complex and new for her, and not in the least what she had ever expected of a death. It was, in a strange wretched way, fun; this was true, though she would never be able to explain it, nor would she even dare to mention it to anybody for the rest of her life. Wherever Samson-Aaron was—she felt that his spirit was somewhere around, not very far from his vacated body—he would not be angry with her for her queer and undignified reaction. Maybe it was due to the sedative; maybe she was no longer responsible for her thoughts.
Her nerves suddenly tightened, and she felt scared and sick. She picked up the magazine and flung it open in her lap.
“This won’t work, Marjorie.” Greech stood in the doorway, slapping his flashlight on his palm. “Somebody else has got to do this, not you. Where’s the nurse? I woke her up myself—”
She explained about her mother’s instructions.
“That’s all right,” Greech said. “I’ll give orders that nothing’s to be done till your mother comes.”
“I’d better be sure, Mr. Greech. I’d never forgive myself if—Really, I don’t mind—”
“Get out of that chair,” Greech said. Marjorie automatically obeyed, dropping the magazine. Greech sat, and put the flashlight on the bed table. “Nobody has done anything on these grounds without my permission in fifteen years, and nobody ever will. That means constables or anybody else. I swear that. I’ll sit with him till your mother comes. Now do exactly as I say. Get the nurse. Both of you go into one of these empty rooms, and you lie down.”
She hesitated, glanced once more at the covered dead Uncle, and left him with the little fat man in white knee pants.
But then it was all a dream, after all, because there was Samson-Aaron in lavender tights out on the grass in the sunlight in the middle of the cheering circle of guests on yellow chairs, capering with the bull, and her mother was saying to her, “What was all that foolishness about Samson-Aaron being sick or dead or what? He’s perfectly fine.”
&nbs
p; “Mom, it must have been a dream, but honestly it was so real, so vivid, I couldn’t help telephoning you—”
A hand was laid on her shoulder. She turned her head to look up, and all her nerves shrank with horror. Marsha stood behind her, with streaming greasy hair, wild eyes, and a pustular face. She held a sharp kitchen knife in her hand, and she plunged it straight at Marjorie’s throat, giggling.
Marjorie forced her eyes open. The hand was her mother’s. The window behind her was a dim rainy daylight blue. Mrs. Morgenstern said, “I’m sorry, darling, you’d better get up. Geoffrey just came.”
“Oh my Lord, did I fall asleep? What time is it?” She sat up, throwing aside the rough brown blanket, her spine still crawling from the nightmare, the recollection of the death flooding in on her.
“It’s seven-thirty. I’m glad you could sleep a little. You’ll need it.”
“How is Geoffrey?”
“Pretty good, considering.”
“Did you bring Seth?”
“No. Time enough for him to face these things later in life.”
Marjorie stumbled to the mirror of the cheap bureau and straightened her hair. Her evening dress, ridiculously inappropriate for the morning and for the grim occasion, was crumpled and stained. Her face was a smear of ruined cosmetics. She had long silver rings in her ears. It was impossible to be seen like this, a picture of wrecked frivolity, like a torn paper hat in a trash can. “Mom, look at me. Can’t I have five minutes to go to my cabin and fix myself up?”
“It’s raining.”
“I don’t care.” She turned away from the mirror. Her mother’s eyes were a little red, but otherwise she looked exactly as before, wearing the brown coat in which she had driven off yesterday afternoon. “Oh, Mom, it was so awful.” She embraced her mother.
Mrs. Morgenstern held her close, patting her shoulder. “Well, never mind now, Greech told me all about it.”
“Mom, he seemed perfectly all right when he left the party. A little tired but—I wanted to walk with him, he wouldn’t let me—”
“Darling, are you going to argue with God? It happened because his time came.” She cleared her throat. “Now there’s lots to do. I’ve got the undertaker coming, and the family knows about it. The funeral is in New York at eleven-thirty, so there’s not much time—”
“Eleven-thirty this morning?”
“The law is to bury them at the first possible moment.”
“Mom, I’ll be back in five minutes, I swear I will.”
As she ran past the room where the Uncle lay, she heard voices, and scuffling noises like the moving of furniture. Outside, the drizzle was so thick that she could see only the near trees. The social hall was a dim shape in the mist. She was running past the fountain unthinkingly when she noticed that it was drained and muddy; then she remembered, and turned her face away, horrified.
As she hastily washed and dressed, putting on a dull gray cotton dress, she was planning how best to have her luggage packed and sent home. She would have no time, she realized, to do it herself. She did not make a decision to leave South Wind. She simply knew that she was not coming back. For a moment she hesitated at the mirror. Her face looked yellowish without makeup, actually ugly, she thought. The dry pale lips were impossible. She touched them faintly with red.
A long black automobile materialized out of the mist as she ran back to the infirmary. It was standing in front of the camp office, and a man in black was sitting at the wheel.
“Oh God, it’s all going so fast,” she murmured.
Her first thought when she saw Geoffrey was that he must have put on sixty pounds since getting married. His face was puffed out, and his bulging lines were beginning to suggest the shape of the Uncle. He stood in the hall of the infirmary, talking in a knot of people, wiping his eyes with a handkerchief. The door of the room where Samson-Aaron lay was shut, and Geoffrey’s back was against it. He nodded mournfully when he saw Marjorie. She went through the others to him and embraced him. His tweed jacket was damp, and he wore no tie. “Geoffrey, I’m so sorry—”
“Thanks, Marjorie, I know you are. You loved him. I’m sorry you had to bear the brunt of it. Thank you for—”
“Oh, God in heaven, Geoffrey, don’t thank me!”
“This is my wife—Sylvia, this is Marjorie.”
The wife looked like her snapshots, a stranger, a blond thin-faced girl in a grossly distended maroon maternity dress, leaning against the wall with her hands behind her. She said, “Hello, Marjorie,” and Marjorie remembered not to smile, and returned a solemn-faced nod.
Her father and mother, with Greech and the doctor, were talking to the undertaker, a black-haired man in striped pants, gray spats, and wing collar. He looked rather like a shoe salesman in a Fifth Avenue department store, at once eager and grave. He was saying, “Naturally, Mrs. Morgenstern, I brought the plain box. We always defer to the relatives’ wishes. But really, it’s gone out, the plain box, really it has. And for the ceremony itself, if I may merely suggest it, a nice silver-trim mahogany casket should be substituted—”
“What’s gone out?” Mrs. Morgenstern said. “The law? The law doesn’t go out. The law says the plainest possible box. It’s not a question of expense. That’s the whole Jewish idea, a plain box. Dust to dust.”
“I assure you, madam, I’ve conducted several hundred Jewish funerals with the finest caskets, and only the most old-fashioned—”
Mr. Morgenstern took Marjorie’s arm, and led her a few steps away. His face was white and frightened. “Are you all right?”
“Certainly, Dad.”
“You don’t look good.”
“It was quite a night.”
“You’ll drive in with us.”
“Yes, Dad.”
“What’ll be afterward?”
“I’m not coming back here.”
“Good. Good.”
The undertaker was saying, “In the last analysis, madam, the son, rather than the sister-in-law, should decide. Really, Mr. Quill, I appreciate this isn’t the best time to talk of such things, but I’m sure you’ll want a casket. We’re using the box temporarily, but—”
“Do what my aunt says,” Geoffrey said tiredly, wiping his eyes.
The undertaker stared at him. “Very well, sir. Naturally your wish is ours, but the casket is really not costly when you consider—”
“A plain box,” said Mrs. Morgenstern.
Greech, dressed in a gray business suit, still holding the flashlight, was leaning against the other wall. Now he said, “And when it’s all done, send the bill here.”
The undertaker said doubtfully, “Here?”
“South Wind, Incorporated,” Greech said. “Maxwell Greech.”
Mrs. Morgenstern regarded him with astonishment. “Mr. Greech, that’s very decent of you, but we can very well take care of our own—”
“My grounds. My employee,” Greech said harshly, slapping the flashlight. “First death ever at South Wind. He was working for me. Send the bill to me.”
The undertaker brightened. “Well, sir, I think that’s admirable. A crisis brings out the finest in people. I’m in a position to observe that. Now, so long as South Wind is paying, why, perhaps the casket may be—”
“A plain box,” said Greech. “Everything exactly as Mrs. Morgenstern says.”
The undertaker now looked, for the first time, as sad as Marjorie had thought undertakers should look. “Very well, a plain box,” he said.
The door opened behind Geoffrey, and there emerged from the room a large long box of coarse yellow wood nailed together roughly, very like a crate except for the coffin shape. It was maneuvered into the hallway by a couple of strangers in undertaker garb, the doctor, two men from the kitchen staff, and—of all people—Wally Wronken. The box seemed to have nothing to do with Samson-Aaron, though Marjorie knew his body was inside it. The raw death, the real thing, so strange and horrifying and exciting, was over. This was a funeral. Greech, Mr. Morgenstern, and Geoffrey
put their hands to the burden. It went by Marjorie, and she could see fresh saw marks on the boards. Wally looked her in the face sombrely as he trudged by. The women followed the coffin outside.
The drizzle was breaking up. The sky was dazzling white. The far trees and the still lake were visible, and the air was much warmer. There were thirty or forty people in summer clothes gathered on the lawn near the hearse. They fell back and watched as the box was slid inside the automobile.
Noel Airman stepped out of the crowd, dressed as always in his black turtle-neck sweater, his blond hair gleaming in the morning light. She walked to him automatically, and he took her hand. “Marge, tell me anything I can do.”
“Thanks, it’s all over, I guess, Noel. We’re going.”
The pallbearers and mourners were in a group behind her, and the guests and staff were massed several paces behind him. She and Noel were alone in an empty middle space, like parleyers of opposed armies. She felt conspicuous; people were watching them, she knew, with inquisitive awareness of their romance. She said in a quiet voice, “I’m not coming back.”
He looked very surprised; then he nodded. “I can understand your feeling that way, Marge. But in a week or two, maybe—”
She shook her head. “I won’t come back.”
“I’ll come in to see you then, maybe Thursday—more likely Sunday—”
“Thanks. I hope you will.”
“I wanted to come along into town for the funeral, Marge, but it just isn’t possible. The show… I can’t get anyone to take over.”
“Of course you can’t leave, I know that. Excuse me, Noel.” She beckoned to her roommate Adele, who stood not far behind him. The singer came to her, white-faced except for a gash of lipstick, the sun showing her hair black at the roots under the red dye. Marjorie quickly arranged to have her things packed up and sent home. While they talked, cars were rattling the gravel of the driveway, rolling and backing to form a cortege: the hearse, then a black limousine, Geoffrey’s rusty little gray Chevrolet, a South Wind station wagon, and the old Morgenstern Buick.