VESTIARY
Jason Schwartz
The father summons the son. Thieves, thieves—it runs thus.
But this may strike the ear as exaggeration. We believe so, you and I. (More likely a single—but a single— thief.) Must we listen for some other species of mischief? No—let us please take this as the nature of the complaint.
The son indicates his fear. He does so politely, immaculately.
And, after a fashion, abundantly. Now we have the manner of the father, in a near corner of the house. Yet more common, possibly, were he to shield—nay, to hide—his eyes. If this should appear far too rude a conclusion, or, more lamentably, if it should fail to console, then let us, instead, struggle to remember something glad, a less foul hour, or even—at a loss—your platter of cored apples and my toile clothing on the nursery floor.
The father names the articles. Garment, raiment, vesture—that is the category.
But this may occasion a further—a greater—mistake, given such attention to the latch and spike—now falling—and to the son’s bare arm. Allow me to accompany you to the room. (Ours certainly does appear a reluctant, even a grave, arrangement.) Spot under spot—mousing by kneehole by dower. There is little here in the spirit of disease? Yes—let us please wish for an absence of ruin.
The son says his name. We cannot hear him
Or the door, in whose frame he now stands. Yet more worrisome a moment—nay, more gruesome a scene—were he to turn this way. If such a gesture should propose another figure, while neither your father nor mine, or if our story should appear, after all, rather disgracefully gray, rather overly decorous, rather—we shall be forthright—tediously patterned, then do look away—do study, instead, the white lines of your cuffs or the bunching and break in your skirt, a darker red in a better light.
THE FOREGOING
How much simpler to consider them from afar, to mark the son, in particular, according to a different form, puzzling as the current notion must be: this lonesome figure examining, all quite tirelessly and—as is a son’s wont—cheerlessly, handsome examples of locks, drawers, and so forth, unfolding and folding, uncovering and covering what objects may be unfolded and folded, uncovered and covered—there at the moment before he falls to the floor. Disguise comes to mind, preferable as it is to mask, though the history of the first word, given its reliance upon, in my indelicate reading, certain ungainly Latinate constructions— addressing, variously, cattle husk and the role of midden in the naming of goat parts; cropped collars among the manservant class; the choke smocks of ailing wives; and, mallet and love excised, a glance into a maiden’s empty chambers—implies something more distant from the parameters of the foregoing narrative than, say, body, which, notwithstanding its association with the family plot, names—in my mother’s description—a diagram of red wounds and—much later—a son wearing his father’s garments, departing.
THE FOLLOWING
How much lovelier had she worn, for our author, that other item, which was white, far whiter than, even, the spot at the mouth or the lines of the fellow’s cuffs: the rest of his things, woolen by the look of them, trousers and the like, and then an odd portion of cloth, folded over my father’s chair. If, as I have been led to understand, sad indicates shroud and groom—the latter deriving from the former, or vice versa, and, in the early German sense, implying wounded boys—rather than dagger and bridegroom—the former evidently without connection to dowager, and the latter, in the later German sense, implying—but how I regret such a grisly, inexpert approximation—a band of gagged boys—then, again, notwithstanding its association with elegant rows of elegant corpses, whether yours or mine, body may imply, say, the spine of a hornbook or the shape of a nuptial bed—or it may, simply, fall.
HER ERMINE COLLAR
The husband returns. The wife’s name—probably this.
But must we listen for some mention of a gentleman? Yes—lest he think ill of us. (Never mind, for the moment, a more common—if not a happier—appellation.) Allow me to accompany you through the rooms, enamored, as I am, of this doorframe and that headboard, and of—I ask your forbearance—your hands.
The wife disarranges the articles. She does so with great address.
Holding each one to the throat. Warp, weft, and so forth—something of the sort I once called, in an unfortunate, unduly gloomy phrase, black flannel. Now we have the manner of the fellow, in the husband’s bedclothes. If this grants much too narrow a view, absent—nay, innocent—of further preamble and less than appropriate in disposition—the light, as ever, not just right—then let us, instead, regret the color of the apples, of the cracks in the letters, the platter there at the foot of the chair.
The husband stands here. Window, wall, door—in this vein.
But at the hem of the room? No—better to correct such excesses. (More likely, for that matter, pears in a bowl—with pleasing configurations of animals, even a graven face, at its border.) Red follows red—the edges of some item, hers or his, or theirs, just another object and its description, this gewgaw, evidence of which should neither surprise nor perplex him.
The wife sees the husband. We see the wife.
Lying here like so. Yet more common, it is safe to suppose, were she to favor him with an unfavorable reply. Surely you recall. If the collar suggests rather too lavish a wish, given, not least, the measure of flesh, which occurs to me with more than a sensible portion of alarm—nay, fear, if such an admission will not offend you or sully the discussion—then do wait, instead, for the latch and white, and for the stagger at the door, coming to our end.