The Self-Enchanted Read online

  Every night, when the workmen had quit work, he wandered over the site alone. Because it was feared that the twenty-foot snows of winter might weaken an ordinary foundation, the house was to be built on pylons shaped like those of a bridge. One of these was already finished. From its top sprang several armatures, like knotted arteries. The pylons were to lift the house fifteen feet into the air. Of course the whole design was mad, but then it was supposed to be. It was a grand design.

  On one of those solitary nights when twilight fell heavily around him, Curt saw the mountains and the first star. He shivered, for it was cold, and then heard a car approaching. As he stood still the lights of the car struck him forcibly, making him jump aside. He called out angrily, the car door slammed, and he heard quick footsteps as Christopher emerged from the shadows.

  “What the hell are you doing up here?” he wanted to know, and that put Curt’s back up at once. But the real argument between them was about the slowness of the work.

  “Can’t you hurry things up?” Barocco would ask. “The snows may start in October.”

  “Not unless you want the building to fall down. You can’t expect a man to work twenty-fours a day.”

  “Why not?”

  Curt didn’t answer that. It wasn’t worth answering, and he was angry. He knew he was ridiculous when he was angry, but he was angry all the same. “You’ve got to cut out this meddling,” he said. The word sounded silly even to him, but he was tired. He was also afraid to complain too much, for this was his first big job and he needed the money.

  “Oh la,” said Barocco and rolled his eyes. Even as a parody it was not kind.

  There were a lot of trivial storms like that, but the real blow-up came later, over Sam Carson. It had been blowing up for a long time.

  *

  It was a bright and gracious morning, cool and clear. Already August had turned the leaves red. Already the steel frame of the house rose crimson and garish into the sky, imbedded in the concrete casings of the pylons. Curt was in the building office. From its windows he could see the causeway which connected the house with the hillside behind it. He saw Christopher squatting down on his heels, playing with a shaving and talking to Sam Carson.

  Sam Carson was one of the few workmen Curt felt at ease with and therefore liked. He was also one of the few valley men who had been hired to work on the house, and this because he was a well-trained stonemason.

  Unwillingly Curt watched the two of them. They did not seem in the least put out at being watched. People who are sure of themselves don’t mind it, Curt thought bitterly. He could see Christopher’s stubby but well-proportioned back and his black hair glistening in the sun, as though it had been beaten out of lead. As he watched, he saw Christopher rise, dust off his knees, and start down the causeway.

  “Working hard?” he asked, coming into the shack and looking down at the drawing board. Curt had been doodling and didn’t want his drawing board looked at. That gave Barocco the advantage, as he fidgeted round the room.

  “I like that old man,” he said at last. “I like the way he does things. Did you know he was sixty-three? I wouldn’t mind being that strong at sixty-three.”

  “He’s got a daughter,” said Curt shortly. “He has to work hard.” For some reason he felt miserable. “Do you think it’s such a good idea to get chummy with the valley people?”

  “Why not?” Barocco seemed amused. “He says he’s going to teach me how to lay stone. I think I’ll like that.”

  “You’ll get tired of it in a day.”

  “Maybe.” Barocco looked wistful. “But I’d like to do something. After all, it’s my house.” He fiddled with a compass, patently seeking approval. “I like him,” he said again. “He understands me.”

  “Nobody understands you.”

  Barocco laughed. “Just the same, I’m going back and have lunch with him. He’s got boiled eggs and I haven’t had a boiled egg in years.”

  “It isn’t exactly a delicacy.”

  “It is to him,” said Barocco and left the shack, whistling off key and obviously pleased with himself.

  *

  When he was gone Curt sulked in the shed, doodling and watching through the window. Christopher gravely peeled an egg and held it up towards the shack. It glistened in the sun, a shiny white egg gone black at the tip. Irritably Curt took off his glasses and the scene shrank to a blur. He was extremely short-sighted.

  Christopher, his coat off and his sleeves rolled up, spent the afternoon talking to the old man. As a reward he was somewhat grudgingly allowed to put some mortar on a trowel. It went on like that until quitting time. Official quitting time was five-thirty, but the old man insisted upon leaving at five. Curt had had words with him about that, but Carson had won his point.

  When at last Curt looked up from his drawing board he saw the two of them coming down the causeway together. Christopher stepped into the shed, leaving Carson outside.

  “We’re driving him down,” he said. There was nothing Curt could do about that, so the three of them got into the cab of the pick-up. Old Man Carson sat in the middle. He smelled of earth and decaying turnips and garlic. His clothes were filthy. Curt huddled into himself and did not speak, and when they reached the valley drove straight to the Carsons’ farm.

  It was cluttered and its yard was full of debris. Curt halted the car abruptly, but Old Man Carson was not displeased.

  “Thanks for the lift,” he said to Barocco. “I guess I’m getting old. I appreciate the ride.” He looked at Barocco with piggy eyes. “Want to come in? My daughter’s wild to meet you.”

  “Some other time,” said Barocco, and when the old man looked disappointed, added, “I mean it. I’ll be seeing you.” There was some sort of understanding between them that Curt could not follow.

  “I’ve got some pretty good whisky,” the old man wheedled.

  “Later,” said Barocco. “Let it age.”

  Carson grinned and went towards the house. Curt reversed gears. Behind a curtain he caught a glimpse of a woman’s face as it stared coldly back at him. Turning the car, he raced down the hill and away from the farm.

  There was no more said about the Carsons, but that evening Barocco seemed oddly restive. He was clearly pleased with himself. After dinner he disappeared into his work-room, and in about an hour came out to ask Curt to go for another walk. Curt did not want to go, but he went.

  Outside the night was dark and confidential. Far above them the last daylight remained on the crests of the mountains, though the black sky was already clustered with stars.

  The woods were deep with bracken and with a luminous decaying wood that gave underfoot, turning to powder. They heard a cow-bell tinkling faintly in the darkness. The trees were slimy to the touch, like submarine stems. At last they came out into a mushy meadow scattered with sulphur licks for the cows, and through which a small stream rustled underneath the moonlight, falling gently over shallow stones. Barocco had been silent, but the meadow brought him to the surface again.

  “That old man got me thinking,” he said. “He seems so young.”

  “People keep younger up here.”

  “Yes,” said Barocco. “I know.” The emphasis seemed odd, but Barocco went on without noticing it. “I’m forty-three. It’s not a great age. Do you know Santa Barbara?”

  “I’ve been there.”

  “I was born there. My parents were Italian.” He seemed to think that over. “Europeans age faster than we do. I wonder why?”

  “Maybe they want to.”

  Christopher did not seem interested. “When I was young I had to work,” he said. “I worked in a call-house. Mamma was mad when she found out, but she didn’t make me quit. She just took what I made. I was a can-runner, the guy who brought in the beer. We got a lot of the southern crowd and they put on a lot of side. What I most wanted was a big black shiny car, like theirs. I learned a lot of things.” He shrugged and then, faintly puzzled, he gazed across the tree-tops to the cliff where his hou
se would soon be.

  “Up there nothing can touch you,” he said. “At least, that’s the idea.” He looked now not at the cliff, but up into the depthless black sky, where all the white stars danced in a chorus of completely impersonal derision. “I like power,” he said, and his voice was soft. “Like that old man. Nothing can move him. He knows what he wants, so he has what he wants, and the stink doesn’t matter. That’s where you make your mistake, for the stink doesn’t matter at all. Mamma’s like that: her skin feels like a raw turkey, but she has what she wants.”

  It was warm. He took off his shirt and tied it round his waist. His chest was big and wide and brown, and was covered with curling black hairs. The cold night air formed goose pimples, until his flesh looked like pigskin. Unfortunately it was the sagging body of a man of forty-three. His face looked blindly upward: and Curt felt uncomfortable. Nakedness in the dark disturbed him bitterly, and he did not like to be in the presence of anything he did not understand.

  “It’s pretty cold,” he said.

  But Christopher did not hear him. Christopher was lost in some muscular colloquy of his own.

  II

  For the next few days Barocco kept out of sight, so Curt concentrated on the house; which was a good thing, for it was getting out of hand. It was an enormity, a tensile box slung out across the cliffs on the edge of space, and with inhumanly proportioned rooms. The fun had gone out of the building of it. It was just work now. And in addition to this Curt had begun to hate Old Man Carson.

  For nowadays Christopher spent most of his time with Carson, slowly watching the central core of the house grow. He had himself taken to chipping away at the stones that were to face this core. It made him sweat: he walked in a cloud with a clogged, ruttish smell to it.

  As for Carson, since Christopher had taken him up he had grown more uppity than ever. But how far things had gone Curt learned only by accident.

  One evening he left the site late and on his way to his lodgings drove past the Carsons’ farm. He flashed up his lights and saw a girl walking up the dirt road. She was a slim blonde and she walked energetically. She was neatly dressed in a white print speckled with blue flowers. Her hair was carefully arranged. She turned a startled face towards the road and Curt got an impression of ashen pallor and of a certain haughtiness of manner. He drove on.

  That night he was disturbed and slept badly. The next morning he felt no better. In the afternoon he went for a walk in the woods and came out into a small meadow which connected with the Carsons’ place. He avoided the few cows standing hoof-deep in the mud of the marsh grasses and picked his way towards the farm.

  Once there he crossed the littered yard, cluttered with rusted iron chains, wheels and sprockets, with broken boards and some assorted table legs. There was also the ruin of a buggy, in which someone had planted purple asters. The farmhouse itself had blistered boards, but its sashes and trim had recently been coated with pale blue paint and the curtains looked clean. While he was staring at it, the kitchen door opened and the girl came out. Today she had her hair curled up into a bun. When she saw him she started and then looked at him more closely.

  “You must be Mr. Bolton,” she said. “You’re Mr. Barocco’s architect.”

  “I’m building his house, if that’s what you mean.” Curt felt his voice stiffen.

  To his surprise she caught herself up. “I’m sorry,” she told him. “But Dad always talks about Mr. Barocco, so somehow one thinks of him first. Won’t you come in?”

  Curt did not like her. There was something unexpected about her that made her seem to him dangerous. He was seldom at his ease with women, anyway.

  “Come in and have some coffee,” she said. “I just baked a cake. It’s not often you can get me to bake a cake, and it didn’t turn out too badly.”

  He stepped into the farmhouse, directly into the kitchen, and the screen door closed after him. It was like moving into hostile territory.

  Carson’s daughter busied herself around the kitchen. She was, as he could see, efficient, with a calculated indifference to housework that forced her to find ways of getting through it in the shortest possible time. They sat down to coffee and cake in five minutes. He saw she was very young. Her eyes had that lustre.

  “Well, now,” she said. “Tell me. Is Mr. Barocco mad?”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “I don’t think it. The valley people do.”

  “And what do you think?”

  She was careful. “I think he’s very strong and I don’t think I’d like to work for him. He must have a lot of power.”

  “He has a lot of money, if that’s what you mean.”

  “No, it isn’t.” She frowned. “Dad likes him,” she explained. “He doesn’t like many people, you know. But why would a man like that want to lay stones?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know.”

  “I think he really does like Dad.” She sounded almost eager and then laughed. “I’ve never seen anybody like him before.” She looked at him sideways. “Why have you never come here?”

  “I’ve never been asked.”

  “Oh!” She was silent.

  “Have you always lived here?” he said, to start the talk up again.

  “I go to Reno sometimes, and once I was in San Francisco. Is Mr. Barocco from San Francisco?”

  “I don’t know exactly.”

  “But I thought you and he were friends,” she said suddenly.

  It was, he thought, quite clear that she thought nothing of the sort; and he decided, once more, that he did not like her. He suspected that she was clever.

  “I doubt if anybody could be friends with him,” he told her. “He’s not a man who likes friends.” He contemplated her chances of hooking Christopher, decided they weren’t much, wondered if she had considered them, and got up to go. She seemed genuinely disappointed that he should leave.

  “You must come again,” she invited. It seemed a sincere remark, but he thought that neither of them would willingly set foot in the same room again. Feeling annoyed with everybody, because he was annoyed with himself, he went back to the house, and saw nobody but the workmen for the rest of the week. He realized that he would have to have his fight with Carson alone, without Barocco to back him up.

  The trouble was with the low stone sections which were to support the window-frames. Sam Carson’s assistant, a boy of seventeen, had so mislaid one section that it would have to be ripped out. This made Curt furious, for if Sam had not been so busy with Christopher, it would never have happened.

  In addition to this Curt had learned to dread any argument with Sam, for he had discovered that in exchanges of that kind he was the one who always lost. When he did have to speak, he therefore went up to the old man with a nervous diffidence which, as he knew, was the last attitude he should have displayed.

  “Sam,” he began tentatively.

  Carson scarcely looked up. “Yes, sir,” he said.

  The sir annoyed Curt deeply. It was not a mark of respect, but one of irony. “You’d better watch that boy of yours better,” he snapped. “Two feet of wall will have to come out.”

  Sam looked at him blandly. “It has come out,” he said.

  This deliberately cut the ground out from under Curt. “If you spent less time gabbing and more watching the job you might get more done.”

  “Mr. Barocco hasn’t complained.”

  “I’m in charge here,” said Curt and knew that it didn’t sound convincing. Sam did not answer. Patiently he chipped away at a block of granite between his knees. As usual, he had won. Curt snorted and walked off. It always went like that, and it made Curt boil.

  Matters were not improved three nights later. Curt decided to take a walk to cool down. He could not go to the village, because the workmen were in the village and he did not know how to mix with them, so he went the other way, towards the Carsons’ farm. It was a darker night than he had expected. Rather than turn his ankle on a snag, he went out past a desert
ed fishpond, following a driveway to the road. He had almost reached the gate when he heard someone walking briskly. He drew back, concealing himself behind a shrub. In the dim light he saw Mr. Carson, whistling on the night air in a key as sharp as starlight, striding confidently in the direction of the village. He was flipping a silver dollar in his hand and seemed pleased with himself. He came abreast of the shrub.

  “Good evening, Mr. Bolton,” he called cheerfully. “Out for a stroll?”

  Curt stepped from behind the shrub. “Yes,” he said.

  “I’d go with you, only I’m going the other way.” Sam explained. He nodded affably and his footsteps died out as he turned a bend in the road. His whistle lingered noisily on the anguished air.

  Curt shoved his hands into his pockets and went irritably on his way. The slight glow of the village faded out and the night was scary. He came out into the meadow abruptly. It looked like a grey sea. Ground mists undulated over it. In the distance, on the other side of the field, he saw the lights of the Carsons’ place among the trees.

  He skirted the edges of the meadow, found a path, and followed it. It meandered through the trees, which grew more dense. The path was overgrown with weeds. He hurried slightly, the branches meeting over his head, until he found himself on the edge of a small clearing. To one side of it was a streamlet, but what made him stop was not the stream, but the shock of finding an obelisk in such a place. It was about eight feet high, supported on four balls, the balls resting on a squat base, a funeral monument in the style of the late nineteenth century. It was highly polished and sparkled in the starlight. Behind it rose the cliffs, and in the opposite direction he saw Barocco’s house glittering on top of its bluff. For the first time Curt realized how that house contrived to dominate all the valley. In the night air it resembled nothing so much as a great gallows. The effect was disturbing. He looked away.