her lips and her whole body shift from cold to hot with the temptation to tell him the truth for once. She stepped away from him again, and he followed her again. She thought of her mother and Mrs. Early. The one so busy, the other so elegant. They had known what marriage was like. They had known what Andrew was like. That they had colluded in bringing this very moment about made her tremble with something unspeakable.
He stared at her. She was standing almost in the corner, and she had no idea what he wanted from her. He said, “I feel about Leonard that his mind is just a little common, you see. When we drive to my talks, he tells me all about the girls he has come to know in Vallejo, several girls, I can’t keep their names straight, but he thinks that I will be impressed by such conquests. How can he think that, I ask you, having interviewed me for all these months, having listened to me reveal my, my thoughts to him about all those things that happened in Chicago and Berlin? How can he think that of me?”
She had a passing revelation that what Len Scanlan lingered in California for was nothing so simple as money or scientific innovation, but she said, “What happened in Chicago, Andrew?”
He blinked, and she realized that she had spat this out. Her hands were trembling, too. She grasped the left one with the right one. It seemed to her that if he said the word “universe,” she really would scream. The universe, of course, was the very thing that circled around those chicks, vast and senseless.
Apparently, he decided to ignore this question, but his tone was conciliatory. “It’s just that even in my new book, which you have so kindly typed over and over, I get lost in the versions. Did I say this already? Have I cut that? What is the best way of formulating a thought?” Then his voice rose and he put his hands in his hair. “The ideas simply come as a torrent! I can’t describe it. When I spent time in Washington and Chicago, it was nearly—It was insupportable. I would be thinking one thing, and almost have it, almost understand it, some small thing, and then a thought, or even a word, dropped by a colleague, and that thing I was thinking simply lost shape utterly. It was a terrifying and frustrating feeling, I can’t describe—”
What this conversation felt like, it occurred to her, was the ringing of many bells, their mouths yawning, their clappers hammering relentlessly. But finally, after a very long moment, she managed to say, “Andrew, you are sixty-one years old. You must have accepted that you have to accommodate—”
“Possibly that is what other men do, but I can’t do that!”
“But what difference, in the end …” She trailed off, having said the most hurtful thing, but Andrew didn’t register it. He exclaimed, “And I have! I have settled for less! I have settled for nothing! Can you not see that?”
What Margaret saw was that he would dispatch Len back to the East if she were to say anything right then about Helen Branch, or her own suspicions concerning Len’s independent activities. All she had to do was confirm his doubts. Even a look might be enough. But she didn’t say any word at all, didn’t look at him.
Andrew said, “You will tell me that it’s best to make of it what we can.”
She remained silent, eyes down.
Now he sighed. Then, “If Leonard has been given me as the instrument, so be it.”
So he was transformed once again. He said, “So many have died thinking their work had come to nought. Galileo. All of them, really.” She lifted her eyes, no longer in danger. He smoothed down his mustache and then, almost jaunty, turned toward his study. He patted her arm. “Well, good night, my dear.”
Margaret emerged from her corner and fell into her chair.
Later, she heard him leave for the observatory.
When she next got to the pond, she realized at once that the slaughter had progressed. In an hour of looking about, she saw only three of the chicks, two rather large and one smaller. The three went about together, pecking up leaves and seeds and insects, swimming, tramping along the edge of the water. They still had their fluff, or most of it; had neither molted to actual feathers nor learned, as far as she could