Concertina

by David Michael Conner

The two women sat at a small, round table, divided by a pot of Darjeeling tea, and other things.

“Really, Katherine, I don’t know why you hold back so,” said Virginia, dropping cream into her cup and offering it to the other woman, who waved it away.

“Too heavy for me,” said Katherine. “I don’t know what you mean, ‘hold back.’”

Virginia knocked the sides of her small cup with a silver spoon. “All I mean to say is that you have such—potential, I suppose. Your skill is quite good; I only wish you’d elevate it to art.”

“Well, thanks,” laughed Katherine. “I think I will always cherish such a compliment.”

“Oh, don’t be so sensitive. Look, here,” Virginia said as she pulled the pages of a small periodical apart where her bookmark lay. “The opening lines of ‘This flower’ are quite lovely. I mean, this really is what I am talking about. There is such passion. Listen: ‘She had yielded, yielded absolutely, down to every minutest pulse and nerve, and she had fallen into the bright bosom of the stream and it had borne her…She was part of the room…anemones’—Yes, Katherine, anemones!—‘…the high, shaking, quivering clamour, broken with little bells and crying voices…part of the leaves and the light.’ Oh, Katherine! Yes, that’s just lovely. And the fly, too! Oh, I quite like the fly.”

“Thanks, Virginia.”

“But then…you get to the practicality of it, and I feel pulled away.”

“I know what you mean, Virginia. We call that prose. You used to write it yourself.”

Virginia’s eyes darted left, then right, then back to Katherine. “I still write it. Of course I have my influences, Katherine, Dear—Joyce, yes, and Lawrence. And I suppose because of that, Hardy as well. And then what? Imitate them? I did that early on. As you do Lawrence.”

“Oh, Virginia!”

“Well, I’m sorry, but it’s true.”

“Yes—keep feeding me these compliments and I’ll never go away. Katherine the cat, is what I’ll become.”

“Compli—”

“And such beautiful poetry you write, these days, Virginia. I’ll return the compliment. But then I tell you all the time.”

“My, but you are catlike. Sheath the claws, Katherine, I’m only trying to help.”

“Your garden is quite lovely, Virginia. No—that’s not giving it its due. It’s really magnificent. I become lost there, or I become the snail. Each time I visit, something new. But it’s your story. And the lighthouse—poetry, Virginia—and that’s the highest compliment! But it’s not my lighthouse.”

“I am only saying to be yourself, be your own best muse.”

“I think you’re saying ‘be Virginia.’ The world already has one, who I am graced to be in the presence of. She wields a powerful pen—and a good thing, because she could never make her living serving people tea. The whistle means stop, Virginia. The contents of this cup are bitter.”

“I can’t get around the point of the fly,” said Virginia with a rather urgent carriage in her voice; but her manner was lighthearted. She placed her teacup in the inner ring of the saucer and bent forward just a bit. “A bit hasty.”

Katherine wheezed out a small laugh that sounded almost musical, like the sound a small squeezebox. She intended to speak but coughed instead, and leaned back into her seat and waved Virginia off.

“I am not arguing against your characterization, Katherine, you needn’t be sensitive about that.” Virginia paused to consider her words, then proceeded. “I do feel that you rushed it a bit, though, you know.”

At this, Katherine laughed and willed herself to speak over her static breath. “You and I both know that the fly’s death was not rushed.

“All right, then, too obvious. Take my snail, for example—”

“Oh, always with the snail!”

“It’s worth mentioning. The snail in ‘Kew Gardens,’ he’s not unlike your fly. A noble little thing, working so hard.”

“Yes, thank you for drawing it out for me, Virginia,” said Katherine, very carefully sipping from the edge of her cup. “Do go on. I might learn something.”

“Why sacrifice the fly and let the old man live? That seems weak to me.”

“Weak!” exploded Katherine, her air-infused voice now imitating a full accordion. “Must we always be so explicit?”

“Direct me to evidence of my own explicitness, Katherine.”

At this, Katherine was struck dumb for a moment. Her eyes diverted to the table, onto which a small fly had alighted. Her eyes met Virginia’s: The followed the creature together.

“Don’t even think about it,” said Virginia. They both laughed.

“You want me to let the fly live,” Katherine said.

“Which fly are we talking about now?”

“You choose. Perhaps one will live, one will die.”

“Oh! I take that as a threat.”

“You should,” said Katherine, her voice sharp and coiled upon itself like barbed wire. The fly carried itself to the brim of the pitcher of cream. It moved forward and around in little arches like a little electric thing, in little jolts of voltage, as if someone were flipping its switch on and off.

“Does this give you bliss?” asked Virginia. “The authority over a fly’s life?” She had called Katherine on her condition; there was no avoiding it now.

“If,” answered Katherine, “anyone—or anything—had authority over life, I would not need to make such decisions. But we all die, and we all think about dying, as you well know. Sometimes we kill, or are already dead. Or feel dead at times, and on other occasions feel life so acutely.”

“So you won’t kill it,” said Virginia. Katherine did not answer. “Use some restraint, Katherine. There are greater things to do with your life and time than to kill. Doesn’t life do that enough already?”

“What are we talking about now, Virginia?”

“You know I consider you a fully competent writer, of course,” Virginia answered directly. “But I won’t sit here and tell you that I don’t think you could be better if you would just commit to overcoming your…shortcomings. Tell me, why is it that you are so careful with subtleties and simply blow through other elements of your stories? Focus, Katherine, focus on the whole of the thing; your life betrays your art. You must be better than that.”

“My life is the reason I write.”

“You must be better than your life, then,” said Virginia Woolf. “I’m afraid your life is your handicap.”

“A snail,” said Katherine Mansfield, “can crawl through life at a snail’s pace, looking under leaves and lingering over the subjects looming over head. A fly is bound by its nervous, frenetic nature and disgusting habit of being. A snail is a snail, Virginia, and a fly is a fly. Perhaps sometimes, from their low vantage points, they both see the world similarly, but the lingering wetness of the snail and the dry hollowness of a fly cannot go unrecognized when assessing the creatures side by side. The only thing I can see in common between the two is that they both life hard lives, in very different ways, and that they both must die.”

“Well, then,” said Virginia, “they must be better than their death, if they hope to be anything but the lowly animals they are. Maybe your fly could have made it out of the dark blot alive and well if he had thought beyond his death.”