FIVE
Clara
FANNY sat in sun that was caressed and tamed by high blue curtains. She shadowed a mirror in her hand ... it gave her eyes her face ... with a sharp shoulder.—They used not to be sharp!... Wrist tiring with its tiny burden, arm taut and thin in the blue housegown Clara made her wear welded the silver glass with its sheer image to her face. Her eye, seeking its own secret, worked unaware through the medium of parched hand, spent wrist, peaked shoulder. No glamor was between her eye and its reflection.
Her face was overlaid with shadows: subtly, terribly it was increased beyond its natural buoyance as if sudden in that Night she had danced through all of life had made invasion of her large eyes, of her delicate nose, of her mouth quick like a young leaf, and forced its burden on them. She had brought from her home the face of a girl: she looked at a face branded her own and the world’s.
About this weighted face the room she sat in: cushioned, satined, a room of crude caresses. She alone was salient peering into this image of herself. She alone had mass and had dimension: and all of it upon her little features, drawing them, deforming them, making them ugly. Making them herself.
—I must face this! I have become a person.
She felt herself as a sharp weight set in softness. So she was upheld: but she was free. There was a bar between herself....—I am true!... and these warm falsehoods Clara had set her in.
—Saved me by them! I know that. You are all Lies about me, yet me who am true you have saved. Without you what could Clara’s naked love have done? Without you wouldn’t she be dead as I was? Your milk, your covers, your warmth ... lies: O my still bed, O sun that falls about the grey of my shoulders like a lawn of Spring upon an autumn earth—bless you, for there is quiet in you yet, and it has let me think.
... When I am at last all in thought, I am in the way of the end. To end is to be healed. I understand that. Life is a wound that only life can heal.