The Blue Guitar

Stevens

chapter 1

one

THE CHILDREN—as they were called by their mother, even though they were no longer children—were playing on the beach when the lady came.

They could see and hear Mr. Potter’s taxi rattling along the road that ran parallel to the beach. They watched in silence, lying on their stomachs. Sygen did not have to tell her brother it was Mr. Potter’s taxi. Jean knew the sound of that venerable machine only too well. The rattling of its ancient fenders seemed to be the earliest sound in his life—except, of course, for the sea and the laughter of his sister. Every April, Jean would ask his sister what color Mr. Potter had painted the taxi this year. She would say green or blue or yellow and white, and then the picture in his mind would be complete for the remainder of the season.

As soon as the taxi stopped, Jean asked his sister who was getting out.

A lady, she said.

At our house?

Sygen laughed and kissed the side of her brother’s face. Silly, she said. Is there any other house?

What does she look like? Jean asked her. It’s much too late in the season for guests.

I can’t really see her, Sygen said. She has on a long fur coat.

Fur? Jean seemed surprised.

It’s a beautiful coat, Sygen said.

It’s not cold enough yet for fur, said Jean.

Sygen laughed again. She said, It’s always cold enough for fur if you have fur.

Women! Jean said, shaking his head.

And dogs and cats and horses and skunks and tigers, Sygen said. We all have fur.

But . . . what does she look like? Jean asked. He rolled over onto his back, placing his hands beneath his head as a pillow.

I told you I couldn’t really see her, Sygen answered. She watched her mother come to the porch, smiling, wiping her hands, as usual, on her white apron. Mr. Potter was taking several suitcases out of the trunk.

She’s wearing such a big hat I can’t really see her face, Sygen said, after a pause. But she has brown hair. Long brown hair. It reaches down to her shoulders.

Jean smiled. He liked long hair on women. He liked to feel long hair with his fingers. It was the softest thing he had ever touched.

And she has her luggage, Sygen said. It’s so late . . . the season’s over. Then she turned to her brother. There was a look of mild confusion in her green eyes that was like a shadow cast on the white sand. We’ve never had a guest in the winter, have we? she asked him.

Jean thought for a moment. Then he said. Not that I can remember.

two

After the lady had disappeared into the gray frame house, Mr. Potter turned his taxi around and came back down the road, roaring past them. Sygen waved gaily to him as he passed, and Mr. Potter waved back and cried out, I’ve brought you a guest. And then he disappeared into the white distance that was colored only by the sky.

Jean said, I’m sorry we’ve a guest.

Sygen, when she could no longer see Mr. Potter’s taxi, turned to her brother. She ran her fingers slowly through his blond hair and moved in closer to him so their bodies touched.

I’ve always liked the winters best, Jean said. When all the stupid guests have gone and we’ve the place to ourselves.

We’ve still hundreds and hundreds of miles to ourselves, Sygen said, letting her words carry on the wind as if she wanted them to remain suspended there like glittering ornaments to catch and hold the fleeting light.

Jean smiled. His sister’s face, when she would speak this way, was a bright image in his mind. There was joy in it and a kind of reaching out, as if one could be sure that the tips of fingers could find everything.

Jean reached up slowly, found his sister’s face, and placed his palm gently against her cheek.

What color is the sea today? he asked her.

Sygen looked out at the gray sea, at choppy whitecaps that rode in swiftly out of the distance to come crashing down upon the white sands.

Silver, Sygen said.

It was silver only the day before yesterday, Jean said. What about purple today?

Then purple, she said.

Like kings’ robes, said Jean, pleased.

Sygen looked at her brother. She bent slowly to kiss his mouth.

There’s rain in the wind, Jean said.

Sygen lay down beside her brother, resting her head on his shoulder.

Jean placed one arm around his sister and drew her in closer to him. He tangled his fingers in her long golden hair, bringing it to his lips, kissing it.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful, Sygen said, if one summer, suddenly, there were no more guests. We’d have the beach to ourselves, with the sun so hot you’d feel it burning inside you. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

Jean found his sister’s lips, tracing his own slowly across her cheek until he came to her mouth. Sygen turned as they kissed, and placed both arms around her brother. She could feel their legs twining together like strong vines that grow slowly up a barren wall.

The sun burned a cold flame in the October sky over their heads. Their bodies mingled as grains of sand do, as the rain does when it falls into the sea.

three

Mrs. Orlovski believed that God was there simply because no one else could have done the job. That was the sort of woman she was.

Mrs. Orlovski had a round soft face that was pink all winter and red all summer. She was tiny and quick and could hardly ever be seen without her white apron: it was her flag. Her fingers were stubby, but they moved always as if they were filled with tiny birds. As a girl she had been proud of her excellent figure, but when she had been married a year, she started to put on weight and there never really seemed to be time enough after that to take it off. She spoke in a voice that sounded as if it were accustomed to singing, and yet she never did sing.

The lady who had come in Mr. Potter’s taxi told Mrs. Orlovski her name was Miss Smith and she wished to spend the winter here. She spoke in a deep, soft voice that made everything sound like a secret.

Mrs. Orlovski said she would be happy to have her as a guest.

Actually, Mrs. Orlovski pointed out, we never have had a winter guest. How ever on earth did you hear of us?

I wanted to be close to the sea, Miss Smith said. I took a train to the village and then I asked someone if there was a place nearby.

Mrs. Orlovski nodded, smiling proudly. Yes, yes. Well, everyone in town knows about our place. We do a very nice business in the summer, she said. But no one wants to come to the beach in the winter.

It’s so restful, Miss Smith said slowly, looking out the wide window that faced the ocean. I love to hear the waves come in. I think it’s the most beautiful sound in the world.

Mrs. Orlovski found the register in the wide desk drawer. She placed it down on the desk, opened it to a fresh page, and handed Miss Smith a pen.

If you’ll just sign here, she said.

Miss Smith nodded, took the pen, and signed her name, Miss Smith, on the blank page. She put down no home address and Mrs. Orlovski did not bother to ask her for one.

I was in love with a sailor once, Mrs. Orlovski said, smiling brightly. That’s why I live by the sea.

four

The old man came walking slowly as he always did. He walked like a man with no sense of time or distance, like a man who had been lame for many years and now is not really sure he is completely cured.

Sygen could see his tiny figure making a lopsided shadow against the sky.

It’s old Pojo, she said, sitting up.

With a feather in his hat, said Jean.

Sygen laughed quietly. Yes, she said.

And birds in his belfry.

Do you really think he’s mad? Sygen asked her brother.

Jean shrugged. Perhaps, he said. To live the way he does, wouldn’t a man have to be mad?

They say he can do all sorts of marvelous things.

They say too he once worked for a circus and had to eat live toads and snakes and birds, Jean said.

Nobody eats snakes.

That’s what I’ve heard.

So have I, Sygen admitted. I just don’t like to believe it. Poor old man.

They call it a geek, Jean said. People pay to stand by the pit and watch him eat all sorts of things like that.

Well, I wouldn’t pay, Sygen said.

But I wonder how a man makes himself do it, Jean said. I mean eating a live snake. How does he make himself do something like that?

Why? Sygen asked. Are you looking for a job?

Jean laughed.

Then they were silent for a time. Sygen sat beside her brother and gazed out over the sea, over long rolling waves that could be seen gathering their final strength before crashing in upon the land to end their timeless journey this way in an instant.

Sygen remembered how, long ago, they had both feared the old man Pojo. There had been the day when he had come running after them and she had run so fast to escape, she had forgotten about Jean and when she saw him running down toward the sea she had called out to him and then she had raced back to take his arm again and, by some miracle, the old man had not caught them.

Sygen turned when she heard Jean say, We’d better be getting back to the house. He got to his feet. Sygen took his arm and slowly they started toward the house. I wonder what she’ll be like, Jean said after they had walked for a while in silence.

Who?

The guest, Jean said.

Like all the others, said Sygen.

Not if she comes in the wintertime.

The old man Pojo walked slowly in the distance. His trousers were rolled up just below his knees. His shoes were tied together and hung about his neck. He walked in the water so the waves glided up over his bare feet with the silent grace of reptiles. He was collecting stones and shellfish in a burlap bag.

five

Sygen, Jean, and Mrs. Orlovski sat around the long kitchen table, having their dinner. Mrs. Orlovski had put on the blue tablecloth. Sygen had joked with her mother that she had put it on only because the guest might come down to the kitchen. Her mother had said, Well, goodness sakes, can’t I put on a nice tablecloth if I want to? The children had laughed at this, and Mrs. Orlovski had sighed and then cut a slice of boiled beef for herself.

Mrs. Orlovski had already explained to her children that the guest, Miss Smith, had wanted her dinner in her room.

But she’s paying extra for that, Mrs. Orlovski added with an expression that seemed to say she was very pleased with herself for having been able to arrange this. I wouldn’t have asked her for anything extra, mind you, Mrs. Orlovski said. Heavens no. But she said she’d pay me ten dollars a week extra to have her meals in her room.

Very mysterious, Jean said in mock seriousness.

Sygen laughed and pushed her long ponytail back off her shoulder.

Perhaps we’re harboring a murderess, Jean said.

Now stop that kind of talk, said Mrs. Orlovski. She’s a perfectly lovely woman. She just wants her privacy, that’s all. And if she’s willing to pay extra, then she’s certainly entitled to it.

Will we be using tablecloths now all winter long? Sygen asked her mother.

That’ll be an expensive habit to get into, Jean said.

I just can’t for the life of me understand where you children get all this, Mrs. Orlovski said.

six

Jean waited in the living room until Sygen and his mother finished washing the dishes. Mrs. Orlovski had gone to Miss Smith’s room herself to fetch the dinner tray. She had asked Miss Smith if she wouldn’t like to join them in the living room, but Miss Smith said she was very tired. She was going to turn in early.

When Mrs. Orlovski came into the living room, wiping her hands on her apron, Jean asked her how long Miss Smith was going to be with them.

Mrs. Orlovski went directly to the phonograph in the corner of the room and put on an Offenbach waltz. The record was badly worn and the music, a thin sound coming from a great distance, could hardly be heard above the sound of the scratching, but the children by now were quite used to this and as for Mrs. Orlovski, she loved the music so, she never did hear any of the scratching sounds.

When she sat down on the sofa with a deep, restful sigh, Mrs. Orlovski said, She told me she might spend the entire winter with us.

Sygen frowned at this and said, We really shouldn’t have guests in the winter.

Mrs. Orlovski said, Hush now. That’s no way to talk. Miss Smith is a charming person and I’m sure we’ll all get on just fine.

Not in the winter, Sygen insisted, but in a soft voice, as if she had not meant to say the words out loud and Mrs. Orlovski asked her daughter what she had said. Nothing, Sygen answered.

Now you know I don’t like that, Mrs. Orlovski said.

But before her mother had a chance to continue, Sygen went to her brother and said, Dance?

Jean looked up at her. My pleasure, he said.

Sygen took his arm and they started to waltz around the room. As they did, Mrs. Orlovski watched them with a pleased smile, having forgotten completely what she had started to say to Sygen. She enjoyed watching her children dance together this way. They were very graceful. They reminded her of her own youth, of how graceful she herself had once been. And since they were always stirring up such warm memories in her, Mrs. Orlovski had long ago resigned herself to living in this strange world that was ruled by children.

As they danced, Jean asked his sister if she had seen the guest yet.

When we came in tonight, Sygen said.

Well, what does she look like? Jean asked her. But before she had a chance to answer, he said, "No, no . . . don’t tell me. This time I’ll find out for myself and then I’ll tell you. How will that be?"

It will take you a hundred years, Sygen said.

Sygen, don’t talk like that! said Mrs. Orlovski in a slightly hushed tone, as if she thought she could say something to Sygen that Jean would not hear. She could never understand how they could both make jokes about something as terrible as being blind, but they always did. She had long ago told herself not to be bothered, but she always was.

"Maybe even two hundred years," Sygen said.

Well, we’ve the time, Jean said. Winters are slow. There’ll be no other guests.

"But you must tell me exactly what she looks like."

Agreed, Jean said, nodding in a businesslike manner. Exactly!

Good, Sygen said. And if you really tell me, I’ll give you . . .

What?

Sygen thought for a moment. Even Mrs. Orlovski, seated on the sofa, seemed interested now in the game. Hands folded carefully in her lap, she was thinking, Now just what will she give him?

Finally Sygen said, Oh, I don’t know. But something very precious.

Mrs. Orlovski seemed disappointed with this answer.

Promise? Jean asked his sister.

You’ll see, she said.

Fine.

seven

Miss Smith ate her dinner on the round table that was set between the three windows at one end of her room. She did not have much of an appetite. Trains always tired her. Actually, any sort of travel tired her. It was always going from a place hardly known to a place completely unknown. She even felt this way when she visited a city, a village, or a house where she had been many times before.

Now she sat at the table. She leaned back in the wooden armchair and looked out at the darkening landscape. Her windows faced the sea. There was not more than forty or fifty yards between the house and the water. Miss Smith could remember so many other windows she had looked out of this way, all of them facing the sea and all of them, even though they had been very different, now seeming the same: it made her think for an instant of a person living his life in a hall of mirrors . . . in such a place you could journey a hundred, even a thousand, miles in a straight line and whenever you stopped, you would be standing at the point that had marked the beginning of your journey.

She sat there and watched the sky darken slowly. The hushed crashing of waves was an echo coming from a great, incomprehensible distance.

Soon stars began breaking out of the dark, first one by one, then clusters of them together, until finally the sky was covered with them as with a tattered sheet of light. The moon was new and a faint silver color.

She could hear the Offenbach waltz coming from the living room downstairs, but it did not disturb her. Nothing ever really disturbed her, as long as she was allowed to remain by herself.

Once, she had been staying in a small village on the French-Spanish border, in the hills. The Spanish Civil War was being fought in those days, but there had been no fighting anywhere near where she was.

On one morning, however, a group of Rebel soldiers, all of whom were drunk, apparently lost, had come to the village, riding horses whose sweated flanks were streaked with the red dust of the road. Thinking themselves to be in Spain, the soldiers had started to shoot at civilians in the streets, certain they were all Loyalists.

The shooting had lasted, sporadically, for almost an hour and she had been able to hear all of it from her hotel room.

But it had not frightened or disturbed her. She thought that the noise, even the shots, even the screams, was no more than the beginning of some sort of celebration, perhaps a saint’s day or a national holiday.

She had sat in bed after finishing her breakfast of rolls and coffee, reading an American movie magazine she had purchased in Nice.

She left the room only when it was time for dinner; there had been no answer when she had tried to get room service. The entire hotel staff, she told herself, would no doubt be drunk and dancing in the streets. She dressed, went downstairs to the dining room.

There she saw two hotel clerks lying dead, one behind the desk, the other in the middle of the lobby. Both had been shot. One of the waiters who had apparently been carrying a tray through the lobby had also been shot. His white jacket was spotted in many places with blood and his mouth was opened in a way that made her think he was about to speak. The tray had rolled across the worn tan carpet to the wall and stood leaning against it at a precarious angle, as if it were suspended in the middle of a trick that had not been completed.

There had been no one about to serve dinner, and she had been forced to return to her room and open a box of chocolates. She then waited for more than an hour, until finally a small boy dressed in a bellhop’s uniform that was much too big for him came, with tears dried on his cheeks, to tell her what the disturbance had been.

Now there was an Offenbach waltz in the parlor downstairs and the sound of waves to be heard from her windows.

Miss Smith got up, went to the closet where her suitcases were. She found a box of chocolates and placed it on the night table beside her bed.

eight

The sea this night was calm. Its black surface was covered with the reflections of a countless number of stars. Breakers fell in on the white sands, reached up as high as they could upon the beach as if they had crossed thousands of miles on some mission and were now only failing by a matter of inches to reach their final destination.

Shells that were older than continents were washed in haphazardly, tossed one way or the other, often sucked out again into the sea by the edge of a retreating wave.

Small pools formed on the beach in holes and gullies that had been left by footprints or a castle or a washed-out piece of driftwood.

Miss Smith took a sleeping pill, two chocolates, and then lay down in her four-poster bed, thinking how curious it was that whenever she came back to the sea it always took her several nights to become accustomed to its sound.

Sygen stood by her window and thought she heard a gull cry in the distance.

Jean slept easily, the first one in the house to fall asleep.

Mrs. Orlovski, wearing a white dressing gown, went down quietly to the kitchen. She closed the door before she turned on the light. She then went to the large refrigerator in the pantry. She shivered a bit as she stepped into the long room. She took a piece of boiled beef, an apple, and several slices of bread and put them in a paper bag. She folded the bag neatly across the top and placed it on the porch just outside the back door. She paused only a moment. The nights now were much too cold to remain outside. She looked across the long dunes that were colored dark gray by the moon’s light. She saw no sign of any movement. She sighed, pulled her gown in tighter around her, and returned to the kitchen, locking the door.

On her way upstairs to her room, Mrs. Orlovski thought that perhaps it was a good omen a winter guest had come. She believed in omens. That was why she always placed the bag of food on the back porch. She told herself she did not know who the food was for. But she did know that it was always gone in the morning.

She paused outside her daughter’s room and in a whisper said, Are you asleep? She waited a moment and when there was no answer she smiled and moved on to the door of her son’s room, where she asked the same question in the same voice, and again when she received no answer she knew he was asleep and so her day was done.

chapter 2

one

MISS SMITH saw the sun rising out of the green sea. It startled her. One might see