The Doll and the Cave

"There's just—something—missing—"

"Dewberries?" I swallowed it warmed down my throat smooth, like summer mud. There were walnuts in it.

"A friend from out west gave 'em to me. Just cooked it up last night."

I laughed. "Come on, Mary—what's the occasion?"

"Eh?"

"Dewberry jam, walnut bread—what's all this for?"

No answer she was running fingers up the knife again sifting shifting it about on the table.

"Dan. It's not that."

"But it is something," I tested dipped my head inquiringly.

She seemed to open her lips a crevice but her eyes trailed upward and locked on something behind above me I waited a few seconds. I turned, exasperated with Marianne's social gracelessness I found only the peeling windowsill, wide and deep. Perched upon it was a book, an ornate hardcover book; a doll. The doll was sitting comatose upon the cover of the book.

"What's this? Been reading?"

"Yes."

I rose, slid aside the chair took down the book, shaking the doll onto the sill. I scanned the binding "Since when have you been reading Plato?"

"He was a very smart man," replied Marianne. Again evading the question, always evading I needed to get her to

"Good for you," I said, "reading and all. Reading's good. Interesting book, isn't it?"

She smiled gaunt not a pleasant smile but it was a smile, seemed pleased at my interest. "I have a whole bookshelf, I do, down in my room. I read every night."

"What other authors have you got?" I turned it open and flipped to the page she had bookmarked, a scrap of paper in the corner. The page was headed "The Analogy of the Cave;" text was nearly unintelligible for the notes scrawled piled up along the edges. 

"Plato."

I glanced up. "Only Plato?"

"I have everything of his. He was very smart, you know."

"Quite smart. But, you know, it may be healthy to experiment with some other—"

Interrupted alarmed. "Oh, I wouldn't dare! No—Plato knows things. He's the only thing that keeps me alive, sometimes."

 "Only thing that—what?" I glanced up from the book she was twitching it again, the knife. Only thing that 

"You know, Edna, I've learned much about the world from him. More than you know, I'm sure. And I was right, Edna—that's what Plato's taught me. I was right, all those years ago. They should never have—what are you doing?" 

I had took up the doll the doll legs dangling like grandfather pendulums, fleshless legs. "And—this?" I said holding it by the hair Marianne she looked perturbed.

 "That—I—read, to it. I read to it, every night. It's a sort of—key."

"What? What are you going on about?" She seemed to be holding back something, something vital an inscrutable miasma had been settling into the pigment of her eyes ever since she had laid eyes on the book, the doll what? Marianne leaned frail across the table, whispered like secret, eyes gibboused lips shadowed crescent arm outstretched,

"We're in a cave, Edna. Look around you."

Her unintelligibility her delirium frightened me was this what it was all about? What was she trying to I kept on. "What do you read to your doll, then?"

She seemed disappointed at my failure to see daylight, but drawing back satisfied my inquiry. "That," she said, gesturing toward The Republic the page, open to the chapter.

"The Analogy?"

"Yes."

"Only—?"

"Only that, only ever that."

I paused, drew back my lips laid the book upon the table and Marianne was quick to abduct it. "What about everything else?"

Marianne creaked to her feet back, legs like hard stale. She had the book cradled in her arm. "Let me show you something, Edna," she said wriggled the chair backward she led me shadowed hair through the kitchen down the flight of stairs that led to her room. At the end of the hall, the door was already open she took me inside along the bedraggled carpet, tinted yellow as if the damp-infused air here had sapped it of its complexion. Marianne had the doll limp in her palm I must have dropped it on the table, sometime. I didn't see her take it.

"Listen, Mary—it really is getting late—"

Marianne quieted me with her finger, shouldered shut the door. It clicked submissively. Like a sleepwalker she was walking, she was sitting the doll, twisted light out of the lamp dripped into the room like firelight, shedding a sort of network of bright and shadowed the doll's face, drooping. And when Marianne pulled out the bookmark and began to read, her face seemed to darken like waning moonlight.