Lament for Julia by Susan Taubes

Author:Susan Taubes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2023-06-06T00:00:00+00:00

Part Five

SUDDENLY it’s over before it has ended, like a dream interrupted by the alarm.

She rises feeling her way along the wall. She moves with as little sensation of moving as an idol mounted on a cart while the shrubs file past in dense procession. Her past has been transposed into another tense, its episodes spaced like stone figures in an Italian garden, staring past each other indifferently.

No it is not Julia.

•

Julia standing on the bridge when the streetlights turned on—was that my last glimpse of her? I don’t know. The doors I open are picture doors.

•

Has Julia become a little girl once again? She skips into the room dangling her doll before me. Julia, I will explain, listen to me, child. But this is Jenny looking at me with such round eyes—have I said something to frighten her? Run along now child. How shall I tell her, tell Jenny, looking at me with Julia’s eyes?

•

She lured me on with her pleasure in a berry, a wandering gaze, a smile. Hasn’t it all been a mirage, the child tramping through the woods, the girl in silk stockings, the bride? I follow her through the thronged ballroom weaving in and out between the dancers to a room in a tavern and back into the night; I follow her into other rooms, other beds, other men murmuring her name in her ear in the dark. I look for Julia in the daylight. Somewhere in the tall humming grass a child crouches heedless of voices calling, Julia. I wander through the old Klopps house, up the winding stairs to the attic back to my first dreams of Julia.

I look for her sitting on a bench in the public gardens on a summer day. I don’t know which summer.

I don’t know where Julia ends or begins. I don’t know where she is. Lost. Out of time. Not in God’s timelessness but sunk to the depths of time. The debris of her days still sifting downward.

Or is Julia in the house, combing Jenny’s hair in the room flooded with sunlight, only I may not enter? This is Julia’s vengeance on me, to bury me alive in her past. I tried to put a hedge around her and I fenced myself in. She escaped me.

•

So she is gone. Well, good riddance, and forget about her. Go back to the house where there is a job to be done, the cupboards cleaned, the children fed. I like ironing their little ribbons, sewing doll’s dresses. Sweet Jenny, it’s a joy to brush her hair; the only true joy in life. Stand still, my darling, while I tie the ribbon around your head. I must stop talking to myself. Time to go back to the house. Say any agency sent me, a volunteer worker. I’ll turn into an angel, yet. Bring in the milk. Put on the kettle. Dress the children.

But what about Peter? What sort of a wife will I make? I can imagine a worse bedfellow. Women are such bitches after all.

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