Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Illustrated) (161 page)

“It was just in place of babies.”

“You could teach your babies,” he said.

“Could I?”

“Sure you could. You could give it to them while they were young. When I want to know anything I’ve got to ask some drunken writer. Don’t throw it away.”

“All right,” she said getting up, “I’ll tell it to my children. But it’s so endless — the more you know the more there is just beyond and it keeps on coming. This man could have been anything if he hadn’t been a coward and a fool.”

“But you were in love with him.”

“Oh yes — with all my heart.” She looked through the window, shading her eyes. “It’s light out there. Let’s go down to the beach.”

He jumped up exclaiming:

“Why, I think it’s the grunion!”

“What?”

“It’s tonight. It’s in all the papers.” He hurried out the door and she heard him open the door of the car. Presently he returned with a newspaper.

“It’s at ten-sixteen. That’s five minutes.”

“An eclipse or something?”

“Very punctual fish,” he said. “Leave your shoes and stockings and come with me.”

It was a fine blue night. The tide was at the turn and the little silver fish rocked off shore waiting for 10: 16. A few seconds after the time they came swarming in with the tide and Stahr and Kathleen stepped over them barefoot as they flicked slip-slop in the sand. A Negro man came along the shore toward them collecting the grunion quickly like twigs into two pails. They came in twos and threes and platoons and companies, relentless and exalted and scornful around the great bare feet of the intruders, as they had come before Sir Francis Drake had nailed his plaque to the boulder on the shore.

“I wish for another pail,” the Negro man said, resting a moment.

“You’ve come a long way out,” said Stahr.

“I used to go to Malibu but they don’t like it those moving picture people.”

A wave came in and forced them back, receded swiftly leaving the sand alive again.

“Is it worth the trip?” Stahr asked.

“I don’t figure it that way. I really come out to read some Emerson. Have you ever read him?”

“I have,” said Kathleen. “Some.”

“I’ve got him inside my shirt. I got some Rosicrucian literature with me too but I’m fed up with them.”

The wind had changed a little — the waves were stronger further down and they walked along the foaming edge of the water.

“What’s your work?” the Negro asked Stahr.

“I work for the pictures.”

“Oh.” After a moment he added, “I never go to movies.”

“Why not?” asked Stahr sharply.

“There’s no profit. I never let my children go.”

Stahr watched him and Kathleen watched Stahr protectively.

“Some of them are good,” she said, against a wave of spray, but he did not hear her. She felt she could contradict him and said it again and this time he looked at her indifferently.

“Are the Rosicrucian brotherhood against pictures?” asked Stahr.

“Seems as if they don’t know what they are for. One week they for one thing and next week for another.”

Only the little fish were certain. Half an hour had gone and still they came. The Negro’s two pails were full and finally he went off over the beach toward the road, unaware that he had rocked an industry.

Stahr and Kathleen walked back to the house and she thought how to drive his momentary blues away.

“Poor old Sambo,” she said.

“What?”

“Don’t you call them poor old Sambo?”

“We don’t call them anything especially.” After a moment he said, “They have pictures of their own.”

In the house she drew on her shoes and stockings before the heater.

“I like California better,” she said deliberately. “I think I was a bit sex-starved.”

“That wasn’t quite all was it?”

“You know it wasn’t.”

“It’s nice to be near you.”

She gave a little sigh as she stood up so small that he did not notice it.

“I don’t want to lose you now,” he said. “I don’t know what you think of me or whether you think of me at all. As you’ve probably guessed my heart’s in the grave — “ He hesitated, wondering if this was quite true, “ — but you’re the most attractive woman I’ve met since I don’t know when. I can’t stop looking at you. I don’t know now exactly the color of your eyes but they make me sorry for everyone in the world — “

“Stop it, stop it!” she cried laughing. “You’ll have me looking in the mirror for weeks. My eyes aren’t any color — they’re just eyes to see with and I’m just as ordinary as I can be. I have nice teeth for an English girl — “

“You have beautiful teeth.”

“ — but I couldn’t hold a candle to these girls I see here — “ “You stop it,” he said. “What I said is true and I’m a cautious man.”

She stood motionless a moment — thinking. She looked at him, then she looked back into herself, then at him again — then she gave up her thought.

“We must go,” she said.

Now they were different people as they started back. Four times they had driven along the shore road today, each time a different pair. Curiosity, sadness and desire were behind them now; this was a true returning — to themselves and all their past and future and the encroaching presence of tomorrow. He asked her to sit close in the car and she did but they did not seem close because for that you have to seem to be growing closer. Nothing stands still. It was on his tongue to ask her to come to the house he rented and sleep there tonight — but he felt that it would make him sound lonely. As the car climbed the hill to her house Kathleen looked for something behind the seat cushion. “What have you lost?”

“It might have fallen out,” she said, feeling through her purse in the darkness. “What was it?” “An envelope.” “Was it important?” “No.”

But when they got to her house and Stahr turned on the dashboard light she helped take the cushions out and look again.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said as they walked to the door. “What’s your address where you really live?” “Just Bel-Air. There’s no number.” “Where is Bel-Air?”

“It’s a sort of development near Santa Monica. But you’d better call me at the studio.”

“All right… good night, Mr. Stahr.” “Mister Stahr,” he repeated, astonished. She corrected herself gently. “Well then, good night, Stahr. Is that better?” He felt as though he had been pushed away a little. “As you like,” he said. He refused to let the aloofness communicate itself. He kept looking at her and moved his head from side to side in her own gesture, saying without words “you know what’s happened to me.” She sighed. Then she came into his arms and for a moment was his again completely. Before anything could change Stahr whispered good night and turned away and went to his car.

Winding down the hill he listened inside himself as if something by an unknown composer, powerful and strange and strong, was about to be played for the first time. The theme would be stated presently but because the composer was always new, he would not recognize it as the theme right away. It would come in some such guise as the auto-horns from the technicolor boulevards below or be barely audible, a tattoo on the muffled drum of the moon. He strained to hear it, knowing only that music was beginning, new music that he liked and did not understand. It was hard to react to what one could entirely compass — this was new and confusing, nothing one could shut off in the middle and supply the rest from an old score.

Also, and persistently, and bound up with the other, there was the Negro on the sand. He was waiting at home for Stahr with his pails of silver fish, and he would be waiting at the studio in the morning. He had said that he did not allow his children to listen to Stahr’s story. He was prejudiced and wrong and he must be shown somehow, some way. A picture, many pictures, a decade of pictures, must be made to show him he was wrong. Since he had spoken, Stahr had thrown four pictures out of his plans — one that was going into production this week. They were borderline pictures in point of interest but at least he submitted the borderline pictures to the Negro and found them trash. And he put back on his list a difficult picture that he had tossed to the wolves, to Brady and Marcus and the rest, to get his way on something else. He rescued it for the Negro man.

When he drove up to his door the porch lights went on and his Filipino came down the steps to put away the car. In the library Stahr found a list of phone calls.

La Borwits
Marcus
Harlow
Rienmund
Fairbanks
Brady
Colman
Skouras
Flieshacker

The Filipino came into the room with a letter. “This fell out of the car,” he said.

“Thanks,” said Stahr, “I was looking for it.”

“Will you be running a picture tonight, Mr. Stahr?”

“No thanks — you can go to bed.”

The letter, to his surprise, was addressed to Monroe Stahr, Esq. He started to open it — then it occurred to him that she had wanted to recapture it, and possibly to withdraw it. If she had had a phone he would have called her for permission before opening it. He held it for a moment. It had been written before they met — it was odd to think that whatever it said was now invalidated; it possessed the interest of a souvenir by representing a mood that was gone.

Still he did not like to read it without asking her. He put it down beside a pile of scripts and sat down with the top script in his lap. He was proud of resisting his first impulse to open the letter. It seemed to prove that he was not “losing his head.” He had never lost his head about Minna even in the beginning — it had been the most appropriate and regal match imaginable. She had loved him always and just before she died all unwilling and surprised his tenderness had burst and surged toward her and he had been in love with her. In love with Minna and death together — with the world into which she looked so alone that he wanted to go with her there.

But “falling for dames” had never been an obsession — his brother had gone to pieces over a dame, or rather over dame after dame after dame. But Stahr, in his younger days, had them once and never more than once — like one drink. He had quite another sort of adventure reserved for his mind — something better than a series of emotional sprees. Like many brilliant men he had grown up dead cold. Beginning at about twelve probably with the total rejection common to those of extraordinary mental powers, the “see here — this is all wrong — a mess — all a lie — and a sham — “ he swept it all away, everything, as men of his type do and then instead of being a son-of-a-bitch as most of them are he looked around at the barrenness that was left and said to himself “This will never do.” And so he had learned tolerance, kindness, forbearance, and even affection like lessons.

The Filipino boy brought in a carafe of water and bowls of nuts and fruit and said good night. Stahr opened the first script and began to read.

He read for three hours — stopping from time to time, editing without a pencil. Sometimes he looked up, warm from some vague happy thought that was not in the script, and it took him a minute each time to remember what it was. Then he knew it was Kathleen and looked at the letter — it was nice to have a letter.

It was three o’clock when a vein began to bump in the back of his hand signalling that it was time to quit. Kathleen was really far away now with the waning night — the different aspects of her telescoped into the memory of a single thrilling stranger bound to him only by a few slender hours. It seemed perfectly all right to open the letter.

Dear Mr. Stahr:

In half an hour I will be keeping my date with you. When we say good bye I will hand you this letter. It is to tell you that I am to be married soon and that I won’t be able to see you after today.

I should have told you last night but it didn’t seem to concern you. And it would seem silly to spend this beautiful afternoon telling you about it and watching your interest fade. Let it fade all at once — now. I will have told you enough to convince you that I am Nobody’s Prize Potato. (I have] just learned that expression — from my hostess of last night who called and stayed an hour. She seems to believe that everyone is Nobody’s Prize Potato — except you. I think I am supposed to tell you she thinks this, so give her a job if you can.)

I am very flattered that anyone who sees so many lovely women I can’t finish this sentence but you know what I mean. And I will be late if I don’t go to meet you right now.

With All Good Wishes Kathleen Moore.

Stahr’s first feeling was like fear; his first thought was that the letter was invalidated — she had even tried to retrieve it. But then he remembered “Mister Stahr” just at the end, and that she had asked him his address — she had probably already written him another letter, which would also say good bye. Illogically he was shocked by the letter’s indifference to what had happened later. He read it again realizing that it foresaw nothing. Yet in front of the house she had decided to let it stand, belittling everything that had happened, curving her mind away from the fact that there had been no other man in her consciousness that afternoon. But he could not even believe this now and the whole adventure began to peel away even as he recapitulated it searchingly to himself. The car, the hill, the hat, the music, the letter itself blew off like the scraps of tar paper from the rubble of his house. And Kathleen departed, packing up her remembered gestures, her softly moving head, her sturdy eager body, her bare feet in the wet swirling sand. The skies paled and faded — the wind and rain turned dreary, washing the silver fish back to sea. It was only one more day, and nothing was left except the pile of scripts upon the table.

He went upstairs. Minna died again on the first landing and he forgot her lingeringly and miserably again, step by step to the top. The empty floor stretched around him — the doors with no one sleeping behind. In his room Stahr took off his tie, untied his shoes and sat on the side of his bed. It was all closed out except for something that he could not remember; then he remembered, her car was still down in the parking lot of the hotel. He set his clock to give him six hours’ sleep.

Section 15

This is Cecelia taking up the story. I think it would be most interesting to follow my own movements at this point, as this is a time in my life that I am ashamed of. What people are ashamed of usually makes a good story.