Chapter 8
(William Sidney Porter)
In a little district west of Washington Square the streets have run crazy and broken themselves into small stripes called “places”.
These “places” make strange angles and curves. One street crosses itself a time or two. An artist once discovered a valuable possibility for a painting in this street. He painted it and the district became famous.
So, to quaint old Greenwich Village the art people soon came hunting for north windows and eighteenth century gables and Dutch attics and low rents.
At the top of a three-story brick building Sue and Johnsy had their studio. “Johnsy” was a nickname for Joanna. One was from Maine, the other from California. They had met at a restaurant in Eight Street and found they had many tastes in common from art to the chicory salad they were eating. The two young women soon decided to join together and rent a studio.
That was in May.
In November a cold illness that the doctors called pneumonia stalked the art colony in Greenwich Village, touching one here and there with its icy fingers. Johnsy became ill. She lay scarcely moving on her bed looking through the small window of their studio at the brick house next door.
One morning the doctor asked Sue to come into the hallway.
“She is gravely ill,” he said. “She has one chance in ten to live,” he said as he shook down the thermometer. “And that chance is for her to want to live. But I think your little lady has made up her mind that she’s not going to get well. She seems to have given up. Has she anything on her mind? ”
“ She, she wanted to paint the Bay of Naples some day,” said Sue.
“Paint? – bosh! Has she anything on her mind worth thinking about twice – a man for instance?”
“A man?” said Sue, “No, doctor; there’s nothing of the kind.”
“Well, it is a weakness, then,” said the doctor. “I will do what I can. But whenever a patient begins to think she is going to die, the chances are much less that any medicine I give her will help. However, if you can get her to ask one question about the new winter styles in clothes, I will promise you a better chance for her than one in ten.”
When the doctor had gone, Sue went into the workroom and cried for a long time, after which she went into Johnsy’s room whistling a ragtime tune.
Johnsy lay unmoving under the bedclothes with her face toward the window. Sue stopped whistling, thinking she was asleep.
She arranged her board and began a pen-and-ink drawing to illustrate a magazine story. As Sue was drawing a pair of trousers on the figure of the hero, she heard a low sound, several times repeated. She went quickly to the bedside.
Johnsy’s eyes were open wide. She was looking out of the window and counting – counting backward.
“Twelve,” she said, and a little later “eleven”: and then “ten” and “nine”; and “eight” and “seven”, almost together.
Sue looked out of the window. What was there to count? There was only a bare yard to be seen, and the blank side of the brick house twenty feet away. An old, ivy vine climbed half way up the brick wall. The cold breath of autumn had stricken its leaves from the vine until its skeleton branches clung, almost bare, to the crumbling bricks.
“What is it, dear? ” asked Sue.
“Six,” said Johnsy, in almost a whisper. “They’re falling faster now. Three days ago there were almost a hundred. It made my head ache to count them. But now it’s easy. There goes another one. There are only five left now.”
“Five what, dear? Tell me.”
“Leaves. On the ivy vine. When the last one falls, I must go too. I’ve known that for three days. Didn’t the doctor tell you? ”
“Oh, I never heard such nonsense,” complained Sue. “What have old ivy leaves to do with your getting well? And you used to love that wine so. Don’t be silly. Why, the doctor told me this morning that your chances for getting well real soon were – let’s see exactly what he said – he said the chances were ten to one.
Why, that’s almost as good a chance as we have in New York when we ride on the street cars or walk past a new building. Try to take some broth now, and let me get back to my drawing, so I can sell it to the editor and buy you some port wine and pork chops for when you’re feeling better.”
“You needn’t get any more wine,” said Johnsy, keeping her eyes fixed out the window. “There goes another. No, I don’t want any broth. That leaves just four. I want to see the last one fall before it gets dark. Then I’ll go, too.”
“Johnsy, dear,” said Sue, bending over her, “will you promise me to keep your eyes closed, and not look out the window until I am done working? I must hand those drawings in by tomorrow. I need the light, or I would pull the shade down.”
“Couldn’t you draw in another room? ” asked Johnsy, coldly.
“I’d rather be here with you,” said Sue. “Besides, I don’t want you to keep looking at those ivy leaves.”
“Tell me as soon as you have finished,” said Johnsy, closing her eyes, and lying white and still, “because I want to see the last one fall. I’m tired of waiting. I’m tired of thinking. I want to turn loose my hold on everything, and go sailing down, down, just like one of those poor, tired leaves.”
“Try to sleep,” said Sue. “I must call Behrman up to be my model for the old hermit miner. I’ll not be gone a minute. Don’t try to move ‘till I come back.”
Old Behrman was a painter who lived on the ground floor beneath them. He was past sixty and, though now and then he did some drawings for an advertising agency, he was a failure at art. Forty years he had painted without ever actually accomplishing anything. He had always been about to paint a masterpiece, but had never yet begun it. For several years he had painted nothing. He earned a little money by serving as a model to young artists in the Village who could not pay the price of a professional. He drank too much gin and still talked of his coming masterpiece.
Sue found Behrman smelling strongly of gin in his dimly lighted room. In one corner was a blank canvas on an easel that had been waiting there for twenty –five years for his masterpiece. She told him of Johnsy’s fancy, and how she feared that she would indeed, like the leaves on the vine, float away when her slight hold on the world grew weaker.
“Vass! ” Behrman cried, “Is dere people in de world mit der foolishness to die because leafs dey drop off from a vine? I haf not heard of such a thing. Vy do you allow dot silly business to come in der brain of her? Ach, dot poor leetle Miss Yohnsy.”
“She is very ill and weak,” said Sue, “ and the fever has left her mind full of strange fancies.”
“Go on. I come mit you. Gott! Dis is not any place in which one so goot as Mis Yohnsy shall lie sick. Some day I will paint a masterpiece, and ve shall all go away. Gott! Yes.”
Johnsy was sleeping when they went upstairs. Sue pulled the shade down to the window-sill and asked Behrman to go into the other room. In there they looked out the window at the ivy wine. Then they looked at each other without speaking. A cold rain was falling, mingled with snow. Behrman, in his old blue shirt, took his seat and began to pose as the old hermit miner.
When Sue awoke the next morning, she found Johnsy with dull, wide–open eyes staring at the green shade.
“Pull it up; I want to see,” she ordered, in a whisper.
Wearily Sue obeyed.
But, lo! Even after the rain and wind that had lasted through the night, there yet stood out against the brick wall one ivy leaf. It was the last on the vine. Still dark green near its stem, but with its yellow edges, it hung bravely from a branch twenty feet from the ground.
“It is the last one,” said Johnsy, “ I thought it would surely fall during the night. I heard the wind. It will fall today, and I shall die at the same time.”
“Johnsy,” said Sue, leaning her worn face down to the pillow, “think of me, if you won’t think of yourself. What would I do? ”
But Johnsy did not answer. The lonesomest thing in all the world is a soul when it is making ready to go on its mysterious far journey. The fancy seemed to possess her more strongly as one by one the ties that bound her to friendship and to earth were loosened.
The day wore away, and even through the twilight they could see the lone ivy leaf clinging to its stem against the wall. And then with the coming of the night the north wind again blew, while the rain still beat against the windows.
When it was light enough, Johnsy commanded that the shade be raised.
The ivy leaf was still there.
Johnsy lay for a long time looking at it. And then she called to Sue, who was stirring her chicken broth over the gas stove.
“I’ve been stupid, Sue,” said Johnsy. “Something has made that last leaf stay there to show me how wicked I was. It was wrong to want to die. Bring me a little broth now, will you? And some milk with a little port in it, and – no; bring me a hand mirror first, and then pack some pillows around me, and I will sit up and watch you cook. Sue, some day I hope to paint the Bay of Naples.”
The doctor came in the afternoon, and Sue went with him into the hallway as he left.
“There’s a good chance that she’ll live,” said the doctor shaking Sue by the hand. “With good nursing you’ll win. And now I must see another case I have downstairs. Behrman, his name is – some kind of an artist, I believe. Pneumonia too. He is an old, weak man. There is no hope for him; but he goes to the hospital today to be made more comfortable.”
The next day the doctor said to Sue: “She’s out of danger. You’ve won. Good food and care now – that’s all.”
And that afternoon Sue came to the bed where Johnsy lay, knitting a blue woolen scarf, and put one arm around her.
“I have something to tell you,” she said. “Mr Behrman died of pneumonia today at the hospital. He was ill only two days. The janitor found him on the morning of the first day in his room downstairs helpless with pain. His shoes and clothing were wet through and icy cold. They couldn’t imagine where he had been on such a dreadful night. And then they found a lantern, still lighted, and a ladder and some brushes and a palette with green and yellow colors mixed on it, and – look out the window at the last ivy leaf on the wall. Didn’t you ever wonder why it never moved when the wind blew? Ah, Johnsy, it’s Behrman’s masterpiece – he painted it there the night the last leaf fell. (adapted)