The Mirror of Gigantic Shadows

After They Parked the car, Eric and Carlotta walked across the tilted field in silence. Her heart was beating fast. Why had he hit her just because the bird flew away?

She hadn't seen the bird. Eric had, of course; he always saw them. But he hadn't seen the mountain laurel. Nothing special about it--only beautiful and unexpected--not like the bird, which was something special. Or unusual. Or it had a name. Names made them sacred, atleast to Eric.

"There won't be any view, Carlotta."

She looked at him, with his face turned toward her, with his beautiful and unexpected smile. There was no trace of rage on his face now. He turned away and they went on walking.

"I'm sorry," he said, "but I'm afraid you're going to have a black eye."

"I don't mind. You didn't really mean to hit me." She believed it. "It was a gesture--an involuntary reaction."

"We'll never see the river from the trail," he said. They were among trees--the trail led through them up the mountain. "I wouldn't have minded so much, Carlotta, if the bird hadn't been banded."

"I didn't know," she said. Banded: that was sacred to him. Eric had a Government permit to trap and put the little metal bracelets on wild birds--to find out where they went, or where they came from, or who'd seen them.

The trees (continued on page 222)Gigantic Shadows(continued from page 127) were getting thicker, and there was no view of the Hudson Valley because of them. Every now and then there was a level place and Eric and Carlotta would stop, but they could see only glimpses and patches of light in the distance. Finally Eric said, "Let's go back--this isn't any good."

"Come on, Eric. Just one more try. Maybe the trees will thin out beyond the next rise. I want to see what's over the next rise." She pointed up where the trail went, steep and overgrown with tall grass and midsummer daisies. "I'm sure there's a clearing!" Eric looked, and it did seem as if there was more light, and where the trail turned out of sight the trees were thinner. They could hear a waterfall.

"All right."

Halfway up, the girl stopped to look at a bush with flowers on it, and he walked ahead. "Wait for me!" she called, and picked one of the flowers. She put it in her hair and started after him. He glanced back and smiled, seeing the red flower in her dark hair. Then he turned and in a moment he was nearly at the place where it was lighter. She hurried to catch up, and saw that he was standing very still--looking toward the light place.

"Can you see any view?" she called, but he did not answer.

"What is it, Eric?" she called out, in her clear young voice.

He turned and came down toward her, and as he got closer she saw his face. It was white and his eyes were empty. For a moment she was afraid her shouting had scared away a bird--but he didn't look angry. "What's the matter?" she asked, and put her hand on his arm. "What's up there, Eric? What did you see?"

"Nothing," he said. "Nothing." He took her arm and started down the path, but she pulled free and turned toward the mountain.

"But I want to see what it was!" she said, but he caught her arm.

"You can't. You mustn't." He was shaking.

"But, Eric, why?" She tried to pull away. "You're hurting me!"

"I'm sorry. You mustn't go."

He was too strong for her and they went downhill. When they got to the car she was furious, and stamped and the red flower fell out of her hair. "Why, Eric? Why? What was it?" But he wouldn't answer, and they drove off in silence. When they got to their cottage she wouldn't get out of the car. "I'm not coming in unless you tell me what you saw, Eric." It was too much --she hadn't done anything wrong. Anyway, he wasn't angry.

"There's nothing to tell. I just wanted to go home."

"That's utter nonsense! You saw something--what was it? You looked--frightened, Eric. You never look frightened."

He shuddered and turned his face away. "Don't say that."

"Then tell me what it was. Was it something dead? Or hurt? You've got to tell me--you've no reason not to tell me."

He shook his head. "Nothing. Just some mental aberration."

They went into the cottage and she tried again, but he would say nothing more. After dinner he sat drinking whiskey, and when she questioned him again he just shook his head. They spent a silent evening for the first time in their short marriage. She lay sleepless for a long time that night. She had never seen him afraid.

She awoke very early--before he did--and dressed, and drove the car to the lane where they had left it the day before, but she could not find the beginning of the trail. Wh0en she got back, Eric was downstairs drinking coffee.

"Where have you been?" he asked her. She told him--a little defiantly. "For heaven's sake, Carlotta! There's nothing up there, I tell you! I just had a spell--a bilious attack."

"It wasn't a bilious attack--you pulled me away! And you won't tell me what it was you saw. Or thought you saw."

"I saw nothing."

"Well, was it a bird?"

"No, goddamnit! Shut up!" He went out and slammed the door, and she stood there with her heart beating fast. She went to the kitchen and saw he had fried some bacon, but he hadn't eaten any. Later he came in and said he was sorry. "This is the first holiday I've taken in years--I guess I'm overtired."

She decided to drop the subject, and kissed him, but it was like kissing a stranger. During the day he watched birds through his binoculars in the garden, and after dinner he went to bed without having spoken more than a few sentences, and again she lay awake--wondering what he had seen and wouldn't tell her.

The next morning he said without looking at her, "I have to go into town--to see Stuart. I've just remembered something."

Stuart was his partner.

"But, Eric, couldn't you call him long-distance?"

"No, I'm sorry, but I must go. I'll be back tomorrow."

She drove him to the station and then returned, sick at heart. He had not even said what train he'd come back on, and the next day she called him at the office. Stuart answered, and said that Eric had come in and gone out again. "Why don't you try your apartment?" he said. His tone was odd and reserved.

When she called their number, Eric was there. "Look, darling," he said. "I was going to call you. I'll have to stay over for a day or two--I'm awfully sorry, but you'll be OK, won't you?"

"But Eric, this was to be our honeymoon. We couldn't take one--go away for one--last year!"

"I know, but something's come up." He was no longer distant and resentful, but as though he loved her and was anxious on her account. "I'll...I miss you, Carlotta."

After they hung up she wrote him a letter. Perhaps, if he read it alone, he would see the justice of what she asked. "Eric, I am your wife and I love you--I am terribly worried. You know there is no reason for you to conceal anything from me--it makes no difference how unspeakable it was--you can tell me. It is far, far worse like this. Oh, darling--you must tell me!" And so on.

She waited for three days without hearing from him, and called the office again, and again Stuart answered. "He's hardly spoken to me," Stuart said. "He just stands there looking out of the window. You two haven't had----"

"No, it's nothing like that. But he told me he had to go to town to see you." Then she told him the whole story in detail. "You're his best friend, Stuart--can't you find out what it's all about? Or what he saw?"

"I'll try," Stuart said. "I'll call you."

His call came that evening as she ate a lonely dinner. "I think you ought to come down here, Carlotta. I know about his temper, but I always thought I could discuss things with him. I didn't get anywhere--he told me to go to hell. He won't tell me what he saw, either. It doesn't make sense."

She drove the hundred miles to New York and went straight to the apartment, but it was dark, and when she looked in the closet she saw that some of Eric's clothes were gone, and one of the suitcases. Stuart arrived, and neither of them knew what to do or say.

The next day Stuart heard from their lawyers--Eric had arranged to convey his interest in the firm to Carlotta, who could, if she chose, sell to Stuart. Eric had then left, but told no one where he was going. She closed the cottage upstate, and waited in New York. No word came. How was he living, she wondered; he must have a job somewhere, but where? She asked all their friends, and finally she went to the police, but Missing Persons was unable to find Eric Thorpe. She grew numb to her feeling of loss and abandonment, and then she had no feeling. She thought it was because of what he had done to her--to them both. What in all the universe had he seen to make him do this? And that he couldn't tell her?

The Second World War came and went, and she tried to find out through the Armed Forces, but without success, and then, 10 years after the War was over, she met a man at a cocktail party who said something about a man he knew that awakened her interest again.

He said he had a friend who lived alone up the Hudson Valley--a man called Eric Carver. Carver--she remembered--was her husband's mother's maiden name. "What does he look like?" she said. (What indeed? How do I look--at 46? He must be 50...)

"Well, he's a big man. Never says much--never sees people, either. We get along all right, we're both bird watchers, but you have to watch your step with him--he's rather unpredictable."

"Has he got very heavy black eyebrows?"

"White. Very bushy. Why? Do you think you know him?"

"I think I did, once. What does he do? How does he live?"

"He got into the Regular Army back in the Thirties--some years before the War, and I guess he lives on his pension. He was shaken up pretty badly during the North African campaign, I understand. Battle fatigue, you know. I'm afraid you'll find him changed."

She got Eric's address, and the next morning drove upstate. The village was a few miles north of where their summer cottage had been. She asked at the general store how to get to his place.

"Mr. Carver?" the clerk said, and exchanged a look with the cashier. "You know him, lady?" Carlotta said that she thought so. "Well, then I guess you know what to expect."

"What do you mean?"

"He's a queer one, lady. Don't go and argue with him. He don't like people to argue with him."

He was working in the garden when she got there, and it was cool for mid-summer. All he said was, "Good heavens!" and smiled and looked exactly the same as he had 20 years before, except that his hair was white and his face very brown. He took her inside. They didn't kiss or even shake hands. She couldn't tell what he felt, and she could think of nothing to say but, "How are you?"

He was all right: he liked living in the country. He did a little writing--nature stuff, mostly. He still liked watching birds--here was his camera, and he took pictures of them. How was she? Remarried, I suppose. Oh, no--nothing like that. Then she suddenly started to cry. "Why? Why did it happen, Eric?"

He took her in his arms and petted her--but it was not like the embrace of a lover--of her husband. And he seemed a little puzzled--but he did not ask how she had found him. It was more as if he were not quite sure who she was. "Come," he said after a while. "Let's go for a walk--I want to show you some birds."

They went out, and he led her through the woods and across an old field covered now with young trees, and up the side of the mountain by a trail thick with tall grasses and midsummer daisies. After a while there was the sound of a waterfall.

"Why...this is the trail we took. Eric! It's the same, isn't it?"

"Same? Same as what?"

"It's the same one we walked up--the ... the last time."

He frowned and looked around. "I haven't any idea what you're talking about. You and I have never been here--I only found it last fall. Come along, I want to show you the view. And there's a nest--and a pair of pileated woodpeckers, if we're lucky."

She was taken aback--how could he have possibly forgotten? He seemed changed, now, and curiously abrupt--but 20 years is a long time. He started up the steep slope again and she plodded after him--46 is not as good at hills as 26. After a moment she called to him to wait for her. He turned sharply and waited, glowering with annoyance.

"You'll frighten them! Their nest is up at the next clearing, and if you make sudden noises you'll frighten them!"

"But birds don't nest at this time of the year, do they?"

He did not answer her, but turned and she followed him up the trail to where it went around a corner and the trees seemed to thin out. "There's a good view of the whole valley from up here," he said, and smiled at her. How oddly his mood changed from minute to minute. How had he been 20 years ago? She couldn't remember. They came to the rise where the trail turned, and to their right, just out of sight from the path below, was a level place and a sweeping view of the Hudson Valley.

A large black-and-white bird with a red crest settled on a tree below them. Eric touched her hand, and nodded toward it, and she clapped her hands and exclaimed with pleasure and surprise. But the bird saw and heard her, and with another one just like it flew away, with a grating cry.

"Goddamn you! Look what you've done!"

She looked at Eric--his face was dark with fury. "But...but I didn't really frighten them, Eric. And what does it matter--you can see them again----"

She stopped in horror. Eric's face had turned white. He made a meaningless sound, and before she could move he took her by the throat, and squeezed with his enormous hands. In barely an instant she felt herself becoming unconscious, and the sunlight darkened. She tried to struggle but she was numb, and then she no longer cared. They staggered and swung around, and beyond Eric, at the head of the trail, a young man appeared and stood staring. He had thick black eyebrows.

Below him, out of sight, she heard her own clear young voice, calling, "What is it, Eric?"