Another Country (31 page)

“Do you want gin or vodka or bourbon or Scotch or beer? or tequila?” She looked up, smiling. Though the smile was genuine, it was weary. It did not contain the mischievous delight that he remembered. And there were tiny lines now around her neck, which he had never noticed before.

We’re getting old, he thought, and it damn sure didn’t take long.

“I think I’d better stick to whiskey. I get too drunk too fast on gin— and I don’t know what this evening holds.”

“Ah,” she said, “farsighted Eric! And what
kind
of whiskey?”

“In Paris, when we order whiskey— which, for a very long time, I didn’t dare to do— we always mean Scotch.”

“You loved Paris, didn’t you? You must have, you were gone so long. Tell me about it.”

She made two drinks and came and sat beside him. From far away, he heard the muffled
cling!
of a typewriter bell.

It’s a long old road,
Bessie sang,
but I’m going to find an end.

“It doesn’t seem so long,” he said, “now that I’m back.” He felt very shy now, for when Cass said
You loved Paris
he at once thought, Yves is there. “It’s a great city, Paris, a beautiful city— and— it was very good for me.”

“I see that. You seem much happier. There’s a kind of light around you.”

She said this very directly, with a rueful, conspiratorial smile: as though she knew the cause of his happiness, and rejoiced for him.

He dropped his eyes, but raised them again. “It’s just the sun,” he said, and they both laughed. Then, irrepressibly, “I
was
very happy there, though.”

“Well, you didn’t leave because you weren’t happy there any more?”

“No.”
And when I get there, I’m going to shake hands with a friend
. “A guy I know who thinks he has great psychic powers”— he sipped his whiskey, smiling— “Frenchman, persuaded me that I’d become a great star if I came home and did this play. And I just haven’t got the guts to go against the stars, to say nothing of arguing with a Frenchman. So.”

She laughed. “I didn’t know the French went in for things like that. I thought they were very logical.”

“French logic is very simple. Whatever the French do is logical because the French are doing it. That’s the really unbeatable advantage French logic has over all others.”

“I see,” she said, and laughed again. “I hope you read the play before your friend consulted the stars. Is it a good part?”

“It’s the best part,” he said, after a moment, “that I’ve ever had.”

Again, briefly, he heard the typewriter bell. Cass lit a cigarette, offered one to Eric, and lit it for him. “Are you going to settle here now, or are you planning to go back, or what?”

“I don’t,” he said, quickly, “have any plans for going back, a lot— maybe everything— depends on what happens with this play.”

She sensed his retreat, and took her tone from him. “Oh. I’d love to come and watch rehearsals. I’d run out and get coffee for you, and things like that. It would make me feel that I’d contributed to your triumph.”

“Because you’re sure it’s going to be a triumph,” he said, smiling. “Wonderful Cass. I guess it’s a habit great men’s wives get into.”

Weeping and crying, tears falling on the ground.

The atmosphere between them stiffened a little, nevertheless, with their knowledge of why he had allowed his career in New York to lapse for so long. Then he allowed himself to think of opening night, and he thought, Yves will be here. This thought exalted him and made him feel safe. He did not feel safe now, sitting here alone with Cass; he had not felt safe since stepping off the boat. His ears ached for the sound of Yves’ footfalls beside him: until he heard this rhythm, all other sounds were meaningless.
Weeping and crying, tears falling on the ground
. All other faces were obliterated for him by the blinding glare of Yves’ absence. He looked over at Cass, longing to tell her about Yves, but not daring, not knowing how to begin.

“Great men’s wives, indeed!” said Cass. “How I’d love to explode
that
literary myth.” She looked at him, gravely sipping her whiskey, without seeming to taste it.
When I got to the end, I was so worried down
. “You seem very sure of yourself,” she said.

“I do?” He was profoundly astonished and pleased. “I don’t
feel
very sure of myself.”

“I remember you before you went away. You were miserable then. We all wondered—
I
wondered— what would become of you. But you aren’t miserable now.”

“No,” he said, and, under her scrutiny, blushed. “I’m not miserable any more. But I still don’t know what’s going to become of me.”

“Growth,” she said, “is what will become of you. It’s what
has
become of you.” And she gave him again her oddly intimate, rueful smile. “It’s very nice to see, it’s very— enviable. I don’t envy many people. I haven’t found myself envying
anyone
for a long, long time.”

“It’s mighty funny,” he said, “that you should envy me.” He rose from the sofa, and walked to the window. Behind him, beneath the mighty lament of the music, a heavy silence gathered: Cass, also, had something to talk about, but he did not want to know what it was.
You can’t trust nobody, you might as well be alone
. Staring out over the water, he asked, “What was Rufus like— near the end?”

After a moment, he turned and looked at her. “I hadn’t meant to ask you that— but I guess I really want to know.”

Her face, despite the softening bangs, grew spare and contemplative. Her lips twisted. “I told you a little of it,” she said, “in my letter. But I didn’t know how you felt by that time and I didn’t see any point in burdening you.” She put out her cigarette and lit another one. “He was very unhappy, as— as you know.” She paused. “Actually, we never got very close to him. Vivaldo knew him better than— than
we
did, anyway.” He felt a curious throb of jealousy:
Vivaldo!
“We didn’t see much of him. He became very involved with a Southern girl, a girl from Georgia—”

Found my long lost friend, and I might as well stayed at home!

“You didn’t tell me that,” he said.

“No. He wasn’t very nice to her. He beat her up a lot—”

He stared at her, feeling himself grow pale, remembering more than he wanted to remember, feeling his hope and his hope of safety threatened by invincible, unnamed forces within himself. He remembered Rufus’ face, his hands, his body, and his voice, and the constant humiliation. “Beat her up? What for?”

“Well— who knows? Because she was Southern, because she was white. I don’t know. Because he was Rufus. It was very ugly. She was a nice girl, maybe a little pathetic—”

“Did she like to be beaten up? I mean— did something in her like it, did she like to be— debased?”

“No, I don’t think so. I really don’t think so. Well, maybe there’s something in everybody that likes to be debased, but I don’t think life’s that simple. I don’t trust all these formulas.” She paused. “To tell the truth, I think she probably loved Rufus, really loved him, and wanted Rufus to love her.”

“How abnormal,” he said, “can you get!” He finished his drink.

A very faint, wry amusement crossed her face. “Anyway, their affair dragged on from bad to worse and she was finally committed to an institution—”

“You mean, a madhouse?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“In the South. Her family came and got her.”

“My God,” he said. “Go on.”

“Well, then, Rufus disappeared— for quite a long time, that’s when I met his sister, she came to see us, looking for him— and came back once, and—
died
.” Helplessly, she opened one bony hand, then closed it into a fist.

Eric turned back to the window. “A Southern girl,” he said. He felt a very dull, very distant pain. It all seemed very long ago, that gasping and trembling, freezing and burning time. The pain was distant now because it had scarcely been bearable then. It could not really be recollected because it had become a part of him. Yet, the power of this pain, though diminished, was not dead: Rufus’ face again appeared before him, that dark face, with those dark eyes and curving, heavy lips. It was the face of Rufus when he had looked with love on Eric. Then, out of hiding, leapt his other faces, the crafty, cajoling face of desire, the remote face of desire achieved. Then, for a second, he saw Rufus’ face as he stared on death, and saw his body hurtling downward through the air: into that water, the water which stretched before him now. The old pain receded into the home it had made in him. But another pain, homeless as yet, began knocking at his heart— not for the first time: it would force an entry one day, and remain with him forever.
Catch them. Don’t let them blues in here. They shakes me in my bed, can’t sit down in my chair
.

“Let me fix you a fresh drink,” Cass said.

“Okay.” She took his glass. As she walked to the bar, he said, “You knew about us, I guess? I guess everybody knew— though we thought we were being so smart, and all. And, of course, he always had a lot of girls around.”

“Well, so did you,” she said. “In fact, I vaguely remember that you were thinking of getting married at one point.”

He took his drink from the bar, and paced the room. “Yes. I haven’t thought of her in a long time, either.” He paused and grimaced sourly. “That’s right, I certainly did have a few girls hanging around. I hardly even remember their names.” As he said this, the names of two or three old girl friends flashed into his mind. “I haven’t thought about them for years.” He came back to the sofa, and sat down. Cass watched him from the bar. “I might,” he said, painfully, “have had them around just on account of Rufus— trying to prove something, maybe, to him and to myself.”

The room was growing darker. Bessie sang,
The blues has got me on the go. They runs around my house, in and out of my front door
. Then the needle scratched aimlessly for a second, and the record player clicked itself off. Eric’s attention had painfully snagged itself on the memory of those unloved, but not wholly undesired, girls. Their texture and their odor floated back to him: and it was abruptly astonishing that he had not thought of that side of himself for so long. It had been because of Yves. This thought filled him with a hideous, unwilling resentment: he remembered Yves’ hostile adventures with the girls of the Latin Quarter and St. Germain-des-Près. These adventures had not touched Eric because they so clearly had not touched Yves. But now, superbly, like a diver coming to the surface, his terror bobbed, naked, to the surface of his mind: he would lose Yves, here. It would happen here. And he, he would have no woman, and he would have no Yves. His flesh began to itch, he felt himself beginning to sweat.

He turned and smiled at Cass, who had moved to the sofa, and sat very still beside him in the gloom. She was not watching him. She sat with her hands folded in her lap, busy with thoughts of her own.

“This is one hell of a party,” he said.

She rose, smiling, and shook herself a little. “It is, isn’t it? I was beginning to wonder where the children are— they should be home by now. And maybe I’d better turn on some lights.” She switched on a lamp near the bar. Now, the water and the lights along the water glowed more softly, suggesting the imminent night. Everything was pearl gray, shot with gold. “I’d better go and rouse Richard.”

“I didn’t know,” he said, “that it would be so easy to feel at home again.”

She looked at him quickly, and grinned. “Is that good?”

“I don’t know yet.” He was about to say something more, something about Yves, but he heard Richard’s study door open and close. He turned to face Richard as he came into the room; he looked very handsome and boyish and big.

“So we finally got you back here! I’m told it took every penny Shubert Alley could scrape together. How are you, you old bastard?”

“I’m fine, Richard, it’s good to see you.” They clung together, briefly, in the oddly truncated, shrinking, American embrace, and stepped back to look at one another. “I hear that you’re selling more books than Frank Yerby.”

“Better,” said Richard, “but not more.” He looked over at Cass. “How are you, chicken? How’s the headache?”

“Eric started telling me about Paris, and I forgot all about it. Why don’t
we
go to Paris? I think it would do wonders for us.”

“Do wonders for our bank account, too. Don’t you let this lousy ex-expatriate come here and turn your head.” He walked over to the bar and poured himself a drink. “Did you leave many broken hearts over there?”

“They were very restrained about it. Those centuries of breeding mean something, you know.”

“That’s what they kept telling me when I was over there. It didn’t seem to mean much, though, beyond poverty and corruption and disease. How did you find it?”

“I had a ball. I loved it. Of course, I wasn’t in the Army—

“Did you like the French? I couldn’t stand them; I thought they were as ugly and as phony as they come.”

“I didn’t feel that. They can be pretty damn exasperating— but, hell, I liked them.”

“Well. Of course, you’re a far more patient sort than I’ve ever been.” He grinned. “How’s your French?”

“
Du trottoir
— of the sidewalk. But fluent.”

“You learn it in bed?”

He blushed. Richard watched him and laughed.

“Yes. As a matter of fact.”

Richard carried his drink to the sofa and sat down. “I can see that traveling hasn’t improved your morals any. You going to be around awhile?”

Eric sat down in the armchair across the room from Richard. “Well, I’ve got to be here at least until the play opens. But after that— who knows?”

“Well,” said Richard, and raised his glass, “here’s hoping. May it run longer than
Tobacco Road
.”

Eric shuddered. “Not with me in it, bud.” He drank, he lit a cigarette; a certain familiar fear and anger began to stir in him. “Tell me about yourself, bring me up to date.”

But, as he said this, he realized that he did not care what Richard had been doing. He was merely being polite because Richard was married to Cass. He wondered if he had always felt this way. Perhaps he had never been able to admit it to himself. Perhaps Richard had changed— but
did
people change? He wondered what he would think of Richard if he were meeting him for the first time. Then he wondered what Yves would think of these people and what these people would think of Yves.