Old Acquaintance (19 page)

SHE
remembered a story Charlie had written, which she had read once in a woman’s magazine because she was mildly curious, its being by him, and to pass the time. It wasn’t much of a story, but it had stuck in her head. A Mrs. Elstir, a divorced lady of old family, and of some wealth, goes
every year to a ski resort built by her grandfather. She has the lodge at the top of the glen. There she sits every morning on her balcony, watching the skiers and drinking too much coffee. Each year it is one particular, though different, skier she watches. After a while she asks him to the house. They go for runs together. He is always much younger than she is. He tries to take advantage of the situation, so does she, but nothing ever comes of it. Instead, she sends him gifts and never sees him again. The story is told by Samivel, one of her previous young men, who has come out of season, not expecting to see her there. But as she grows older, she stays longer. He sees the whole charade played out again.

Aware of this, she asks him up. She even enjoys seeing him again. “We must meet again next year, Samivel,” she says. “We’ll ski up to Badger Pass. I’ve never been there. Would you like that?”

It is exactly what she said to him when he was an adolescent, that marvelous year he knew her. It is what she says every year. Of course they will never go. It is just a promise she makes to herself, and never keeps, so it may never be broken.

If they come back, like Samivel, she is always a little uncomfortable. The badger is a neat and tidy animal. Whether there really was such a place as Badger Pass, Lotte did not know. But she had kept a firm vision of Mrs. Elstir, bundled up in shabby nutria furs, on her balcony, with her silver coffee set, waiting.

The story had puzzled her at the time. It didn’t puzzle her now.

T
HERE
was no word from Unne. Nor would there be, she supposed.

She had come to say good-bye.

Charlie was busy putting a seventeenth-century Nepalese Kuan-Yin into its plastic traveling bag. The pictures were already down and in their carrying cases.

“You’ll be going on to Berlin, I expect,” he said. “Enjoy yourself. It’s the only booby trap in the world with a population of over two million.”

She recognized that for what it was, the endless conversation starting up again. She was glad. She’d missed it.

“And you?”

“Go to England for the summer, I think. If it’s sunny, I might even stay all day.”

“You planted that.”

Charlie looked abashed.

“Did it ever occur to you,” he said, “that in the really good Russian novelists, which is to say, Turgenev, and perhaps Sologub, who suffered from brevity, and Tchekov, but Tchekov’s longest efficient reach was the novelette, and Goncharov, there’s nothing wrong with Goncharov, and, of course, Gogol, the books always begin in the same set way:

“‘On a certain morning in March, 18—, a Mr. Y——walked up the steps of No. — C—— Street, in the City of G——’; and instead of being annoyed, you couldn’t feel that the world was more comfortable. You know right where you are.”

“No, it hadn’t, Charlie.”

“It’s something I’ve been thinking about all week,” he said, knowing now he would never write it down. He had told it to her instead. “I don’t know why. I shall miss you, I expect.”

“I’ll miss you, Charlie. We’ll run into each other. We always do.”

“It would be nice to have a definite date.”

“The better Russians never specify a date, Charlie.”

He stared at his carrying cases. “No, I suppose not.”

She was sorry if she had hurt him. She
would
miss him. She had tried to be gentle. But what else could she say? It did no good to linger. Nothing was possible. If we are to survive in this world, nothing is.

“See me down to the car, then, will you?” It seemed a casual request.

“Of course, Charlie.”

Immediately he looked boyish again, for the first time since her arrival. She understood. That was all that had been bothering him: he hadn’t wanted to be seen leaving alone. That was the one thing he always found it difficult to face. So she had been of some help after all.

“In that case, I’d like to take a nice long bath,” he said. “Can you wait?”

Yes, she could wait.

After he had gone, she looked down at the garden below her. The day was cold, but she did not mind that. She was not taken in by her own griefs, and never had been. Everything would be all right now. The world was wound up again. Fabergé was back in his heaven, or if he wasn’t, he soon would be; the apple trees had the soft odor of freshly laundered linen; and from somewhere offstage came the smell of new-mown grass. It had been such a late spring.

But then, it is true, as we get older, we move farther north. We follow the spring.

Turning away, she heard the water running, and went inside to wait for Charlie.

Penis Rock.

Berlin-Grunewald

April-July
1961