Possessing the Secret of Joy - Alice Walker [19]
How much I would like to see you, to hold you, to hear your wise words. All night long I have not slept, and I am writing outside in the loggia by the light of a candle, just as the sun is rising over the lake. It is so beautiful here, and so peaceful! Sometimes Evelyn and I are able to enjoy it, along with the agreeable conversation of your charming uncle. At least the two of them get along. As you know, I had feared they would not; Evelyn does not take easily to doctors of any sort, and has, over the years, tended to leave her therapists prostrate in her wake.
As you suggested, the fact that I am here with her, and that this is an isolated, quiet and beautiful spot, seems to calm her. She seems also to like the fact that your uncle is old. She is sometimes merry just at the sight of him, and thinks of him, I believe, as a kind of Santa Claus. As such, he is another representative of the exotic Western and European culture she so adores.
But why, I can hear you wondering, am I up at this hour, and have been up all night? I will tell you. A few nights ago, while your uncle was showing some of his old films of his trip to East Africa—the ones that mesmerized you as a youngster and were the impetus behind your trip to Africa, where we met…! Anyway, he was showing these films to us after a day of picnicking and sailing as far south as Schmerikon and as far north as Kusnacht. We’d feasted, when we arrived back at the house, on a fine dinner of roast pork and potatoes that your uncle had managed to leave cooking for us in the old fireless cooker left to him by his grandmother—perhaps, this fireless cooker, the most intriguing example of his magic, as far as Evelyn is concerned! To be brief, near the end of one of these films, she fainted, her body rigid as death, her teeth clenched in a fierce grimace and, most strange of all, her eyes open. So of course we thought for a moment she’d died. When she came to later she tried to laugh the whole thing off and said she wasn’t used to so much activity—sailing and walking and eating—in the unfamiliar altitude.
Though we have a room in a hotel in Schmerikon, we sometimes spend the night with your uncle, especially when he and Evelyn are working particularly well together, and so we stayed the night in the guest bedroom the night this happened. Evelyn slept badly. In the morning she rose early and began, even before breakfast, to paint.
She began to paint a chicken. Over and over. On larger and larger paper. She grew frenzied as the size of the paper she held in her hand seemed to shrink in comparison to the monstrous bird she had in her mind. Then there was the question of how to blend the paints she had—which your uncle had kindly given her—to make something she called a black chromium green. She was frantic to manufacture this color, and this color alone, for the tail feathers of the beast. Her mood was impatient, foul, as she tore the smaller drawings into bits and tore her hair as well, all the while oblivious to the presence of your uncle, who sat on a canvas chair out by the lake, reading, or pretending to; or of my distracted attempts to repair a broken pot that I’d noticed tossed in a corner near the hearth. It looked pre-Columbian, and I handled the shards, and the glue, carefully.
Abruptly, she left us, taking her paints and brushes along. There was a loud snap as she closed the shutter of the upstairs bedroom. And then there was quiet. Only the lapping of the water, the chirping of birds, the rustle of wind in the trees. I fixed the pot, as well as I could do considering a third of it was missing. The Old Man’s book now rested on his knees; he was sound asleep.
When night came, I avoided going up to bed. All seemed quiet up there, and I did not want to cause any disturbance; I hoped Evelyn had yielded to exhaustion and drifted into one of her deep, coma-like sleeps that could last for days. But when I finally found myself on the stairs, I noticed a light underneath our door. Opening the door, I was confronted with Evelyn, still busily painting, after twelve