Nowhere City (2 page)

When Paul’s acquaintances called him a southern California type, they were probably thinking of his love of the beach and other outdoor pleasures, and of the pleasure he took in movies, and even TV. No doubt they referred also to his occasional enthusiasm for such things as surf-casting, surrealist poetry, hypnotism, and the repair of his own household appliances—and his readiness for small adventures. They knew of enthusiasm mainly as an interesting phenomenon of eighteenth-century cultural history; not the characteristic of a serious historian—and yet, most of them would admit, Paul Cattleman was a serious historian. He was certainly not the standard graduate school product, though. He was too healthy and played games too well, for example, and he did not wear horn-rimmed spectacles. He did not wear spectacles at all; at large academic gatherings his brown eyes stood out oddly in a sea of glass goggles and refracting lenses, as if he were a man among Martians.

Paul walked up the narrow cement drive past his house to the back yard. Though the grass had begun to go brown in patches (he must water it again) flowers grew tall against the cinder-block walls, and there was a real peach tree, still hung with peaches.

Yes, he thought, leaning against the rough trunk of the tree, this city suited him: it suggested a kind of relaxed energy, the sense of infinite possibilities. Since his arrival, he had sometimes entertained himself by imagining that he saw parallels between Los Angeles and his “own” period of English history, the late sixteenth century. Here was the same tremendous expansion of trade, building, and manufacture; the flowering of new art forms; the discovery of new worlds. And still the city remained a city of walled gardens like the imaginary gardens in late medieval romances, full of allegorical blooms—fruit and flowers ripe at the same time. Perhaps here, too, he might find other paraphernalia of courtly love: the impenetrable castles, the opening-night pageants and tournaments, the elaborate ceremonies of public praise, the worship from afar of the beloved movie starlet.

“You’ll end up in bed with some starlet,” had been the jocose prediction of one of his friends. Paul had allowed himself to play with this fantasy a little. After all, there were plenty of starlets in Los Angeles, and some of them must get tired of the fat producers and vain, effeminate actors who surrounded them.

Of course he would never leave Katherine. He was in love with her; he had never seen a girl who moved him so deeply. On the other hand, in the three years since his marriage there had already been several episodes. It was Paul’s belief, verified by experience, that among the people one meets every day there is an informal, unrecognized secret society—a confederacy of those who, though they may appear to sustain the conventional code in public, subvert it in private. These members of what he liked to call “the underground” were able to recognize each other upon meeting by indefinable signs, rare in academic life: half a smile, a preference in fiction, a look of erotic aptitude and calculation.

Katherine was not, and would never be, a member of the underground. Cool, shy, affectionate but almost passive, she knew nothing of that side of life; love for her was an emotional, not a physical event. She was still very much the isolated country child, brought up in semi-rural New England by sickly parents whom it was impossible to imagine engaging in sexual relations. Maybe they had only tried it once, for Katherine was an only child. It seemed likely that their temperament had been hereditary.

As far as he could manage, Paul tried to be honest with himself; he was one of those fortunate people who, when they lift the lid of a dream or an
acte gratuit,
find mainly forgivable, if embarrassing, impulses. Besides, as an historian, he considered it his job to remember his own history. He therefore admitted now that it was just this shy, rural, even sylvan aspect which had first attracted him to Katherine. He had been moved to passion not only by her pale beauty, her white arms and long brown hair, but by something in her manner which recalled the unsophisticated, almost mute spirit of a tree or stream. She had the grace and tint of a Botticelli—and almost exactly the profile of the nymph who holds out a flowered robe to cover Venus as she rises from the sea. And she was all his; no one else had ever known her, in either sense.

Reaching up into the tree, Paul pulled down the largest, reddest peach he could see. After all, it had been stupid expecting Katherine to appreciate those plaster cows and artificial flowers. The thick stalks of the heliconia snapped readily, and soon he had a whole armload of them, brilliantly red and yellow and green.

Coming into the kitchen out of the sun, Paul could see nothing for a moment. Blinking, he opened cupboards, looking for a vase for the flowers, but could not find one, though he had unpacked the crates himself. Katherine would solve all that soon, but meanwhile—Impatiently he slammed the doors shut, took the mop out of the tin pail by the back door, and crammed the flowers into the pail (forgetting, in his hurry, to add any water).

Holding his offerings, he went into the bedroom. Here again he could not see at first; he had the blind sensation that comes when one enters a darkened movie theater.

“Katherine?” His eyes adjusted; she lay looking at him, speechless and sleepless. “Katherine, look what I brought you to eat: a peach off our own tree in the back yard.”

“No thank you, darling. I’m not hungry.”

“But look how beautiful it is. Don’t you just want to taste it?”

Katherine shut her beautiful pale lips more firmly, and shook her head: the face of Persephone, he thought, offered food in hell.

“Katherine, darling.” Holding the pail, he sat down on the edge of the bed.

“You picked all those flowers,” Katherine said accusingly; she was by nature a conservationist.

“No I didn’t; there’s lots more. The yard’s full of them. Besides, what good are they doing out there? I want them in here, where you can see them.” He laid his hand on her lank, silky hair, stroking it down.

“That was a nice thought,” Katherine said. She turned her head and looked at the pail of flowers, which Paul had put on the bedside table.

“I’m a nice guy,” he replied, stroking her hair.

“My head hurts so, so much.”

“I know.”

Katherine sighed, and stretched out; Paul continued to smooth down her hair, across her neck and shoulders.

“Oh, that’s nice. So relaxing ... Mm ... I think I could go to sleep now,” she murmured presently. “I’m very tired. Paul; you know, Paul, I couldn’t sleep at all on the plane.”

Paul did not feel tired. “Let me put you to sleep,” he said meaningfully. He felt Katherine’s shoulders first stiffen, then go passive under his fingers. “You know I haven’t seen you for six months,” he added. “I mean, six weeks. I guess it feels like six months,” he explained.

“I know.” Katherine smiled a faintly acquiescent little smile from under her arm. Paul began rapidly taking off his clothes.

“I love you so much, Katherine,” he apologized.

“Yes.” Katherine reached up and touched his arm. He put his hand on hers; their eyes met for a second. Then, burning, with one sock still on, he flung himself on top of her.

“Thank you,” he said after a while, and rolled over. It was darker in the room now. Night falls quickly in Los Angeles, as in the desert which it once was.

“That’s all right,” Katherine replied in a small voice. “I mean, you’re welcome. Really.” She paused, and went on, “But I’m sick. You know.” There was a silence. Paul did not admit that he knew.

“It was the altitude,” Katherine continued. “When I decided to take the jet, I didn’t realize that the difference in altitude would be so much greater. I think that’s why I feel it so much, because of course jets fly so much higher than ordinary planes.”

“That doesn’t make any difference; the cabin is always pressurized,” Paul said.

“Pressurized?”

“Mm.” He yawned, sleepy himself now. “Well, see, the air in the cabin of a jet, or any big plane, is maintained at constant pressure after it leaves the ground. Has to be, or you couldn’t breathe at all. The atmosphere is too thin up there.” He yawned again.

Katherine gave Paul a look which, even in the dim room, he recognized. “You mean that I shouldn’t be having a sinus attack now at all,” she said. “It’s all imaginary.”

“I didn’t say that. I—” He sighed. Somehow whenever Katherine was sick she always managed to put him in the wrong, to make him feel guilty. It was Paul’s belief that one of the causes of his wife’s sinusitis was his wife’s imagination, but he knew from experience that all hell broke loose when he expressed this view. “I know it really hurts,” he said. “You always get sick when you go on a plane.”

“I suppose in a way it’s partly psychological,” Katherine said; she would sometimes admit this if she were not accused of it. “I mean, even though I do have the kind of bone structure that predisposes me to get sinus infections—” (she ran her long, delicate forefinger down the bridge of her long, delicate, turned-up nose)—“still and all, I don’t
always
have them. I mean, I do always have some postnasal drainage, but there usually isn’t much pain. It gets worse when I’m overtired or upset about something, because of course my resistance is lowered when I’m tired, or frightened.”

“Frightened of planes?” Paul asked sleepily, looking up at his wife as she bent towards him in the darkening room. He deeply disliked being reminded that from behind that calm, lovely face, down into the round, lovely white throat, damp mucus was continually dripping.

“Of course not. Well, I suppose there is some natural anxiety. Travelling always makes me nervous. I don’t like new places. Paul, you know, I don’t like Los Angeles. It’s going to be awful.” Katherine’s voice rose higher.

“Kathy,” Paul said, reaching up and putting his arms around her. He pulled her down on to his chest. “Don’t worry so. It’s only another city.”

“No, it’s not. It’s more peculiar. Look at all those weird freak people we saw at the airport, those dressed-up little girls, and that old woman with the orange hair, and that man who had practically nothing on but bathing-trunks. And the houses. Everything’s so exaggerated, so unnatural. I don’t like lilies or whatever they are growing at this time of year, or peaches. I’d be afraid to eat one, really.” She laughed.

“Silly. You’ve only just come,” Paul protested. “You’ve hardly seen anything of Los Angeles. Really, you mustn’t be so prejudiced. You mustn’t be put off by its reputation back East. This is a city like any other city. Thousands of people live here and work here at ordinary jobs.”

“Well, I’m afraid of them too,” she said, half seriously now. “I think how I’ll have to meet them and they’ll all look at me and say, ‘Who’s she? What’s her excuse for existing?’ It’s all very well for you. You have a reason for being here; you have a job and an office and something to do. But I’m just nothing here. Nobody knows me or wants me around, and I’m really rather nervous.” Katherine laughed again, but not happily; it was too dark now for Paul to see her face.

“I want you.” As he said this, it occurred to Paul that he also did so in another sense.

“Yes. But that isn’t it. ... I don’t want to depend on somebody else’s emotions. I need—”

“Katherine,” Paul whispered. He rolled over on to his side, pulling her with him, pulling at her nightgown. “I’ve missed you so much, you know.”

“Mm.” Her arms lay slack around him; for some moments there was no further response. Then Katherine gave a faint moan, or croak, like something dying at the bottom of a well.

“Am I hurting you?” Paul said, pausing.

“A little. Never mind.”

At these words, and the tone in which they were said, Paul felt all desire leave him, to be replaced by something like despair. “You should have told me,” he said, falling back on the bed away from Katherine.

“I didn’t want to spoil your fun.”

“When you don’t like it, it spoils it for me anyway,” he said flatly.

“Oh, Paul. I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry,” Paul said simultaneously. He reflected that this had happened before with Katherine, many, many times, and felt: Oh, the hell with it. He swung his feet over the side of the bed and sat up.

“I guess I’m just out of practice,” Katherine added.

No reply. Paul continued to sit on the edge of the bed, his back to her. “What time is it really?” she asked. “It feels dreadfully late.” She held up her wrist, squinting at the luminous dots of the little gold watch which she never removed except to wash. “My watch says—good heavens—ten-twenty.”

“Uh. That’s Boston time. It’s three hours earlier here.”

“That seems so strange. Seven-twenty, then.” In the dark, she adjusted the luminous dots.

“I’m hungry,” Paul said. “Are you hungry yet?”

“I don’t know. I suppose I should try to eat something.”

“Let’s get up.”

Paul put on the light. The tiny room appeared around them: bare walls, bare floor, Katherine’s outsize Victorian furniture. Here was the elaborate marble-topped chest of drawers and bedside stand her parents had used, and their massive mahogany bed, carved with wooden fruit. Beside the bed stood the mop pail, full of wilted leafage—leaves sagging, and scarlet and golden flowers wilting for lack of water; collapsed on their stems, or fallen on to the marble tabletop.

P
AUL SAT IN THE
Publications Department of the Nutting Research and Development Corporation, surrounded by frosted glass. Actually only three sides of his office were frosted, but the view through his window, of smog-blurred roofs and smog-filled sky, gave much the same effect. The Nutting offices were on a hill a few miles from Paul’s house, and his window looked east over the city. On very clear days they said you could see the mountains, but there had been no such day since Paul’s arrival. It was half-past twelve, and he was hungry. He was waiting to go to lunch with his friend Fred Skinner, who occupied the adjoining office, but was now in conference with the head of the Publications Department, a man named Howard Leon.

For five weeks Paul had sat at his desk (of extreme modern design with an indestructible surface) in this office, with nothing to read except a few advertising brochures, personnel memos, and some more or less out-dated histories of California. His
Secret
clearance had not yet come through, and so hardly any Nutting publications had been available to Paul, nor had anyone been permitted to discuss Nutting matters with him. He read his books, and made notes on cards to the effect that the land on which the plant now stood was formerly part of a ranch owned by the Parducci family, or that forty-five per cent of the area of downtown Los Angeles was presently occupied by road surfaces. Sometimes he gazed out the window, or wrote letters. He described to his friends the speed and excitement of the city: the towers of apartments and oil-wells above swamps where the tyrannosaurus had leapt upon the brontosaurus in battles now petrified in rock for tourists; the tennis courts never muddied by rain; the pretty, tanned girls; the warm sea stroking the long, sandy beaches.