My heart and my flesh

by Elizabeth Madox Roberts

It was spring then, the beginning, a new beginning, she reflected. Infinities of springs were crouched back under the earth waiting to come out in their turns, a spring and then another, flowering momentarily, annually. “Who am I that I should know?” she asked. She walked out the Johntown pike in the mildness of sunset, the hills and the pastures faintly tinged with the first green, a mere wash of delicate light over the top of the pasture, and the color went with the setting of the sun. It is the beginning of the beginning, she reflected anew, the first of the first, the before that stands before itself, the quiver of a closed eyelid. The roads were drained now of their winter mud and slop. A stillness was settled over the creek where the frogs would cry later when the nights were warm. The thing would give birth to itself out of itself, the color of the picture would grow out of the picture, dawning up from within the thing itself. The streets of the town, when she had returned to them, had no sign of that which she had seen on the pastures in the light of sunset, but they had their own token. It was Sunday night, the night after the festival at the hall in Hill Street.

She could feel the tension of the street as it was left from the passion of the night before, as it centered now in the church, in small groups that gathered in doorways or moved swiftly by. There was little gayety left. The leavings of the night before were summed up now in unfinished and unappeased emotions. These were the first mild February nights when a soft balm sifted in from the south. The dim lights began to appear behind the stained windows of the church entry. She pushed open Lethe’s door, without knocking, and went quietly inside. Stig was there with them in the gloom. He was sitting on the bed beside Americy, and in a moment Theodosia saw that Americy was quite drunk, that she laughed and wept in turn, tears on her face.

“Where’s the light?” Theodosia asked. “Why not have the lamp?”

She lit a match and made a light in the small lamp on the shelf. Then she saw that Lethe was sitting beside the table that stood near the fireplace. On the table there was a small bit of food, untasted, but this had been swept back toward the farther edge of the board. Before Lethe’s hand lay a knife. It was sharpened to a keen edge and the point was well tapered. It was such a knife as was used to cut leather, to mend harness, and she knew that Stig had brought it to the cabin.

“What knife is that?” she asked.

“A good knife. A right good blade,” Stig said.

Americy was dressed in her best garments, a silk dress and a scarf brilliantly dyed. Her stockings were torn, the color faded and spotted with abuse, and her low shoes were defiled. Her clothing had not been changed since the day before and her hair had not been set in order since she had slept last.

“I wanted a drink,” Stig said, “but nobody wouldn’t give me none. Stingy.”

Stig was less ragged than he had formerly been, and Theodosia thought that Americy had probably given him the necktie he wore. He munched at something which he carried in his coat pocket, nuts or hard candy, and his hand would go to his pocket from time to time.