The Snare

12. AND JAKE

12. AND JAKE And Jake. But it was not Jake but Dev whose head leaned to her out of a bougainvillea vine dark as wine or emperor's blood, who said once more as in days gone by: In a certain manner of speaking, we've none of us got anything outside our love. And she remembered the strong clean Negro scent of the house near Bayou St. John, the splash of water from the rocks in the enclosure behind. But it wasn't what was there he meant; she never thought so anyway. Now, she wondered, was it or not? Had he really loved the octoroon woman who had died that day they had both been there, a wet white handkerchief set chalklike over her dark face, like taking a death mask in plaster? She wondered at the old legend which put down roots wherever it could (and it could particularly among romantic Southerners), that you only "really" love once and no more. That was why she had assumed he did not "really" love anyone but the English girl from Jamaica , Uncle Maurice's mother. Yet decor is important and memories do not turn to dust. They live wild as young colts, powerful as floods, in the minds they have taken up with. Maybe love was what he really felt for that colored woman, which was why he'd gone into madness, seducing a child, immediately afterwards. Which was why he'd never gone to much trouble to correct it—nothing like quarreling or fighting—if somebody brought up the idea, seeing him in Julia's company, that she had a touch of the tar brush. In reality, neither Negro, nor French, she had 286 Elizabeth Spencer 287 got all her life's mileage from illusions. Jake was closer to the truth: he equated her with the city she had come to and grown into, its nerves at last like her own. And Jake. She dreamed her dream again, the white and gold one, white dress and gold sandals, down in Dev's house in the bayou country. Upstairs before a mirror with a gilt frame. Yellow Bavarian wine glasses on the table below, her elbows leaning on the plum-colored marble mantle piece, and a young man's step crisp on the flagstones, his knock at the door. Andher heart running, flying down the steps, in golden sandals. Jake was in jail; what was she doing here? Her life had doubled back on itself: like a symphony it was repeating its great theme. She bent to her work daily with such ease and accuracy, she wondered if she might not be a genius. How to fill up the great sensual image that life was to her, the life Dev had given her? It was like a great marble basin waiting to be filled to the swelling brim. Jake had filledit once, that much was certain. Would he again? "Oh Jake!" It was a whisper. He was there before her, in the visiting room at parish prison. They had brought him in and left him. All her hungry nights came back, all her missing time. Was he on the way back to her when he stopped off in Baton Rouge? Got a job for a while, got a girl pregnant? Had to marry her? Would there be time to ask him, now or ever? From the moment he entered, her senses woke and fled to him, nestling and close; he could walk in that splendor same as his skin. If he wanted to. With the wire mesh between them, he sat before her and then her knees' force disappeared to land her in the chair, level with his vision. She leaned her head down 2 8 8 T H E S N A R E low and his hand reached to her cheek. Through the screen she could feel the pressure of his touch. After a long while she said, "You should have left me a pet dog/' "I know. I should have." "Or a cat. I often thought about a cat even." He said nothing. She looked at his large hand which was the same as she remembered it. His eyes had been a clearer blue and could be again. What made them flash blue? Music and love. His blond hair was ruffled softly at the part. "This man's jail don't want to let...