The Hothouse by the East River Read Free

window, staring out
over the East River. The late sunlight from the opposite window touches her
shoulders and hair, it casts the shadow of palm leaves across the carpet, over
her arm. The chair she sits in casts a shadow before her.
    There
is another shadow, hers. It falls behind her. Behind her, and cast by what
light? She is casting a shadow in the wrong direction. There’s no light shining
upon her from the east window, it comes from the west window. What is she
looking at?
    He
looks. Welfare Island. The borough of Queens across the river. The river moving
past a moored barge.
    She
says, without turning her head, ‘Why are you standing there? Why don’t you get
a drink?’
    Or she
says, ‘Pierre just left.’
    Or, ‘I
bought a pair of shoes today.’
    The day
is getting darker. He switches on the floor lamp, although the room is still
light enough.
    Her
shadow does not move. He comes and stands beside her, looking out. There is no
beam of light coming in from the East River or the sky. But she goes on looking
and receiving; perhaps she’s begun to smile. She casts a shadow behind her as
she moves her chair to make room for him. Today she began a new course of
analysis, or perhaps she began last week.
    She is
saying, ‘I bought a pair of shoes.’
    Or,
‘Pierre doesn’t know what to do.’
    Or,
‘Katerina ran out of deodorant in Castellam-mare.’
    Paul
turns to go to the kitchen for ice. At the door he turns again.
    His
heart thumps for help. ‘Help me! Help me!’ cries his heart, battering the sides
of the coffin. ‘The schizophrenic has imposed her will. Her delusion, her
figment, her nothing-there, has come to pass.’
     
    ‘Did
Kiel recognise you, Elsa?’
    ‘I
think so. I saw Garven today.’
    ‘I’m in
danger from Kiel, and all you can talk about is your own problem.’
    ‘I
don’t have a problem. It was your idea that I should go to Garven.’
    He is
dressing; she comes through from her bathroom into her bedroom.
    ‘Garven
has the problem anyway,’ she says. ‘The problem of me is his, not mine—’ The
light from his table falls upon her. Her shadow bends towards it.
    He
holds his breath — ‘Let me out! Let me out!’
    He will
not sleep beside her in bed any more. Never again, never again. No man can
sleep with a woman whose shadow falls wrong and who gets light or something
from elsewhere.
    He
watches her walk into her bedroom. The last time they dined out the hostess had
to fuss with the candles at the table, which was unaccountably darkened over.
Or was it the time before that? The last time, maybe, was when they were all
looking at the newly acquired Kandinsky: ‘Just stand aside a little, Elsa —
Paul — standing in the light? There’s a shadow… who?… how?’
    Nobody
has really noticed it, and yet everyone has noticed it. Pierre and Katerina —
perhaps they have talked of it between themselves:
    ‘Mother
is terrifying. Have you seen how her shadow falls?’ No, they wouldn’t say that.
Pierre would telephone to Garven, perhaps. No, Garven would think him crazy.
    Has
Garven noticed?
    No,
Garven is too busy with his problem.
    Paul
shouts into the bedroom, ‘You don’t care what happens to me! Can’t you realise
what it means, that Kiel is alive and has come here to New York?’
    ‘Have
him checked,’ she replies in a practical voice as if it were a question of a
cavity in a tooth.
    ‘I’ve
had him checked,’ he shouts. ‘He’s got every cover. There’s a Helmut Kiel,
deceased, on the prison records at Hamburg. He’s got a new name, obviously; new
papers, a job in a shoe store, everything. What do you care?’
    He
feels easier after this row. Helmut Kiel is a definite danger to his life, but
preferable to the torture of that something of Elsa’s out there on the river.
    ‘Are
you ready?’ he says.
    Or
perhaps he says, ‘Now, pull yourself together.’
    She
says, ‘I’m ready, are you? I don’t have a problem. Katerina…’
     
    Pierre’s
apartment in East