Seed on the Wind

This too would leave Lora totally unconcerned, except that she would be faintly amused at Albert’s idea of what it would take to make life not worth living. She knew well enough, she thought, what would make life not worth living for him: to suffer an amputation of either of two certain flexible members of his body, one of which was his tongue.

For herself the question did not arise. If contrary to all precedent she had elected to sport with an enigma that would have been the last one she would have chosen. She lived, after a fashion; that was her unconscious answer. There was nothing ecstatic about it, but neither was there any despair. She had sufficiently definite attitudes here and there, but they were unprovided with any intellectual foundation; it was merely that regarding certain things she knew how she felt. She was disposed to be friendly toward all women, for instance, but the ones she had known best — her mother, Anne, Leah — she despised for their weakness. Toward men her attitude was a mixture of fear, indifference and admiration — the proportion which each ingredient contributed to the combination depended on the man, but none was in any case wholly absent. Of these and similar phenomena within herself she was completely aware, and she enjoyed watching their development. When for example one Sunday morning Lewis Kane telephoned that his wife was seriously ill and that he would be unable to make his usual visit, and Lora found herself contemplating the possibility of marriage with him in case he should become a widower, it amused her to uncover the reasons why it was more nearly possible to consider him than any other man she knew as a husband. First, she decided, money. Second, the comfortable discipline of his emotions. Next, his practical competence. Fourth — well, money again, probably. But with all those advantages she preferred the present arrangement, should the choice present itself.

The problem remained academic, for Mrs. Kane speedily recovered.

She had one habit that she did not like: she dreamed of God. Or rather, of a god, for he did not at all resemble the insipid bearded Jehovah of the brightly colored Sunday School picture cards of her childhood. He was not young, nor yet old; of a friendly yet forbidding countenance, with his body of unimaginable grace clothed in a loose white shirt and loose white trousers which flapped about his legs in the breeze, he would suddenly appear from nowhere and stride toward her, where she lay in the center of a meadow surrounded by strange and lovely flowers nodding on long and elegant stems. As he approached her he would make a beckoning gesture with his hands, this way and then that, and hundreds of little figures — she could not call them dwarfs, for they did not look like men — would come bouncing up from all directions and begin plucking the flowers with their long stems and dropping them upon her. They would fall anywhere, on her legs, on her breasts, on her middle, even now and then on her face, and soon would pile up so that she could feel their weight. She would feel, without misgiving, that she was going to be suffocated — and would make no attempt to free herself from the increasing burden, though she could feel that she was being pressed into the carpet of the grass right against the ground and many of the sharp stems of the flowers were pricking her flesh. Still she would make no effort to move, until all at once, realizing that the face and figure of the god were now completely hid from her, and filled with a frantic desire to see him once more, she would impatiently push the blanket of flowers away, down from her face, and lift herself to look eagerly around...

She would be awake, in bed, in the night, sitting up or raised on her elbow, the covers pushed down, breathing quick and hard, feeling warm and disturbed and excited. Or half awake. After a moment her hand would reach up to grope for the light switch, and she would sit blinking in the sudden glare, getting back to reality by looking at the dressing-table, the chairs, the familiar pattern of the rug. Then she would go to the bathroom for a drink of cold water, and perhaps take a few puffs of a cigarette. After which she would sleep soundly till morning.

Sometimes she would not wake at all, but in the morning she would know the dream had come, for though she would not be able to remember any of the details there would be an unmistakable feeling about it. Her body knew. That feeling had a strange quality, an unnatural reconciliation of knowledge and disbelief, as though some new object had suddenly appeared in her room without having been brought there or having come.