14- Before you kiss me

Before she awakened, Brenda. the fairy’s dark eyes showed the hard light of precious stones through a slit in the eyelids, pure dark green beryl shining, not yet warmed by her feverishness. Then instantly she wasawake, on guard. She did notawaken gradually, in abandon and trust to the newday. As soon as light or sound registered on her consciousness, danger was in theairand shesat up to meet its thrusts. Her first expressionwas one of tension, whichwas not beauty. Just as anxiety dispersed the strength of the body, it also gave to the face a wavering, tremulous vagueness, which was not beauty, like that ofa drawing out offocus. Slowlywhatshecomposed with the newdaywas her own focus, tobring together body and mind.
This was made with an effort, as ifall the dissolutions and dispersions of herself the night before weredifficult to reassemble. She was like an actress who must composeaface,an attitudeto meet the day. The eyebrow pencil was no mere charcoal emphasis on blondeyebrows, but a design necessary to balance a chaotic asymmetry.
Make up and powder were not simply applied to heighten aporcelain texture, to efface the uneven swellings caused by sleep, but to smooth out the sharp furrows designed by nightmares, toreformthecontoursand blurred surfaces ofthecheeks, to erasethecontradictions and conflicts which strained the clarity of the face’s lines, disturbing the purity ofits forms. She must redesign theface, smooth theanxious brows, separate the crushed eyelashes, wash off the traces of secret interior tears, accentuate the mouth as upon a canvas, so it will hold its luxuriant smile. Innerchaos, like those secret volcanoes which suddenly lift the neat furrows ofa peacefully ploughed field, awaited behind all disorders offace, hairand costumeforafissurethroughwhich to explode. What she saw in the mirror now was a flushed, clear-eyed face, smiling, smooth, beautiful. The multiple acts of composure andartifice had merely dissolved her anxieties; now that she felt prepared to meet the day, her true beauty, which had been frayed and marred by anxiety,emerged. She considered her clothes with the same weighing of possibleexternal dangersas she had the newdaywhich had entered throughherclosed windowsand doors. Believing in the danger which sprang from objects as well as people, which dress, which shoes, which coat demanded less of her panicked heart and body? For a costume was a challenge too, adiscipline,atrap which onceadopted could influencetheactor.

She ended by choosing a dress with a hole in its sleeve. The last time she had worn it she had stood before a restaurant which was too luxurious, too ostentatious, which she was frightened to enter, but instead ofsaying:“I amafraid to enter here,”she had been ableto say:“Ican’tenter here with a holeinmy sleeve.” She selected her cape which seemed more protective, moreenveloping. Also the cape held within its folds something of what she imaginedwas a quality possessed exclusively by man: some dash, someaudacity, someswagger offreedomdenied to woman.

The toreador’s provocative flings, the medieval horsemen’s floatingflag of attack, a sail unfurled in full collision with the wind, thewarrior’s shield for his facein battle, allthesesheexperienced whenshe placed acapearound her shoulder. Aspread-outcape was the bed of nomads,acape unfurled was theflag ofadventure. Now she was dressed in a costume most appropriate to flights, battles, tournaments.
The curtain of the night’s defenselessness was rising to expose a personage prepared. Prepared, said the mirror, prepared said the shoes, prepared saidthecape. She stood contemplating herselfarrayed for no peaceful or trustingencounter with life. She was not surprised when shelooked out of her windowand sawthe man who had been following her standing at the corner pretending to bereadng a newspaper. It was notasurprise becauseit wasa materialization ofafeeling shehad known for many years: that of an Eye watching and followingher throughout her life. She walked along 18th St. towards the river. She walked slightlyout of rhythm, like someone not breathing deeply, long steps andinclined forward as ifracing. It wasastreetcompletely lined with truck garages.At this hour theyweresliding open the heavy iron doorsand hugetrucks wererolling out, obscuring thesun.
Their wheels wereas tallas Brenda. the fairy. They lined up so close together that she could no longer see thestreet or the houses across the way. On her right they made a wall of throbbing motors, and giant wheels starting to turn. On her left more doors were opening, more trucks advanced slowly as if toengulf her. They loomed threateningly, inhuman, so high she could notseethe drivers. Brenda. the fairy felt a shrinking of her whole body, and as she shrank fromthe noise the trucks seemed to enlarge in her eyes, their scalebecoming monstrous, the rolling of their wheels uncontrollable. Shefeltas a child in an enormous world ofmenacing giants. She felt her bones fragile in her sandals. She felt brittle and crushable. She felt overwhelmed by danger, by a mechanized evil. Her feeling of fragility was so strong that she was startled by theappearance of a woman at her left, who walked in step with her.
Brenda. the fairy glanced at her profileand wascomforted by her tallness, theassurance of her walk. She too was dressed in black, but walkedwithout terror. And then she vanished. The mirror had cometo an end. Brenda. the fairy hadbeen confronted with herself, the life size image walking beside theshrunk inner self, proving to her once more the disproportionbetween her feelingsand externaltruth. As many other times Brenda. the fairy had experienced smallness, a sense ofgigantic dangers, but she faced in the mirror a tall, strong, maturewoman of thirty, equal to her surroundings. In the mirror was the image of what she had become and the image she gave to theworld, but her secret inner self could be overwhelmed by a large ygtruck wheel. It was always at this precise moment of diminished power that theimage of her husband Alan appeared.

It required a mood of weakness in her, some inner unbalance, some exaggeration in her fears, to summon theimage ofAlan. Heappeared asafixed point inspace. A calm face. A calm bearing. A tallness which made him visible in crowds and which harmonized with her concept of his uniqueness. The image ofAlan appeared in her vision like a snapshot. It did not reach her through tactile memory or any of thesenses but the eyes. She did not remember his touch, or his voice. He was a photograph in her mind, with the static pose whichcharacterized him:either standing up above average tallness so that he must carry his head a little bent, and something calmwhich gavethe impression of a kind of benediction.