HE SWOOPED down on the Caravan at dinner hour. The ceremony with which he was received embarrassed him. They insisted on waiting on him together. Such deference they paid him! One would think he was a celebrity who had chosen to dine in this humble place for the express purpose of shedding over these two devoted creatures the aura of his august personage. They even went through the farce of creating a little scene, pretended to be jealous of each other because he was distributing his favors unevenly.
He deliberately prolonged his stay. Already Hildred was betraying evidences of impatience, though with admirable and unwonted restraint. It was obvious that there were plans afoot for the evening. They were simply marking time.
He lingered over the dessert, ordered a second cup of coffee, fiddled around with his notebook, jotted down a few meaningless phrases. Hildred was on the verge of exasperation. She sat down beside him and began to plead with him to go. Vanya stood behind her, taking in every word, yet managing somehow to preserve a dreamy, rapt expression as if it were all of no consequence to her.
“Don’t you think it’s silly,” Hildred was saying, “to come here and spy on me? Do you think you’ll learn anything by hanging on here?”
“But I haven’t come to spy on you,” he said. “I’ve come to take you out.”
Hildred frowned, then shot a quick glance at Vanya that said: “For Christ’s sake, get me out of this!”
But to the amazement of both of them Vanya responded promptly: “He’s right, Hildred . . . I think it’s your duty to go with him tonight.”
“But we had an appointment. . . .”
“Oh, I’ll take care of that,” said Vanya. “Forget about it.”
“Can’t you come along with us?” said Hildred, a sulky, pouty look on her face.
No, Vanya couldn’t. She was resolute about it. Moreover, she simply couldn’t bring herself to intrude upon their pleasure. She spoke so sincerely that for a moment Tony Bring actually felt grateful to her. Meanwhile his resentment toward Hildred was growing to such proportions that it was only by summoning all his powers of will that he managed to persuade himself to see the thing through. He wondered what fresh excuses would rise to her lips. And, at the same time, there grew in him a stronger and stronger determination to impose his will.
Finally, after she had gulped down a cup of black coffee and lit a fresh cigarette, Hildred gave in. At the door she pulled Vanya aside. A prolonged, agitated conversation went on in whispers. At the conclusion of it Vanya was beaming.
The very way she held her cigarette, the way she puffed at it silently, vengefully, galled him. He had a mad desire to tear it from her mouth, to fling it in the gutter. The next moment, however, he found himself searching feverishly for some word that would dissolve this feud, some gesture that would bring her close to him.
“Well?” Her voice sang out with renewed insolence. “Where are we going?”
They were standing outside the subway entrance to Sheridan Square. Opposite was the cafeteria frequented by the Village freaks. It was in the show window here that Willie Hyslop sometimes sat, looking for all the world like John the Baptist.
“You’re not taking me there, I hope?” she said, observing the direction of his glance.
Savagely he grasped her arm and pulled her down the steps.
THEY WERE in a Chinese garden, an orchestra playing softly in a rose-colored light, lovers voluptuously squeezed into a tiny rectangle roped off by heavy velvet cords strung through shiny brass posts. The expression on Hildred’s face which had irritated him so only a while ago had disappeared completely. It was almost gratitude that showed itself now. She looked at once for the little booth on the Broadway side where the huge electric sign blazed. It was here they had come to know each other, here in this very booth that she had begun to build up that fiction about herself which she clung to still, which she elaborated, in fact, as time went on.
They trembled as their knees touched. When the music started up and they heard again that melody which had once run through their veins like liquid fire the tears came to their eyes. Arm in arm they moved toward the floor where, in the tiny rose-colored rectangle, the amorous and the bewitched were voluptuously squeezed together. Clasping each other in a warm embrace, they floated blissfully with the others, everything forgotten now except the memory of that night when they had come together and had remained together for days without end. It was like a fragment of a dream which, by an effort scarcely calculable, is revived again and again in the fraction of a second, is revived without a change, vivid, naked, complete. Softly she sang the words in his ear; the touch of her cheek like a burn, her voice a drug, her breasts, soft and full, swelling with the melody. It was a song that Vanya had never heard—he marked that well. If the day ever came . . . He checked himself. Why should he think of that? Why not drink, drink to the full from this cup of happiness?
Seated at the table they exchanged pensive glances. Was she too thinking of all that had come between them? Was she too thinking of that bliss which they had sworn could never be destroyed? Or was that faraway look in her eyes born of some sudden remembrance . . . the last few words with Vanya . . . that whispered consultation at the door of the Caravan? His gaze rested on her lips and hung there timidly. The least word about Vanya now and the spell would be broken. . . .
No, thank God, her first words were not cruel. Little words they were, of no account, but laden with reminders of a distant enchantment. He watched her lips closely, her mouth so soft and promising, her tongue that seemed to caress each word as if it were flesh fragrant and yearning. Her smile was like the sun coming out after a shower, like the sun beaming upon a strange and lovely city. There flashed through his mind a vision of Paris, of its colored walls, its gray skies that changed from milk to pearl, the wet green of the gardens, the reflections in the Seine. . . . He looked at her intently, steadfastly. One could hardly call it a smile, this weird, supernatural glow. The flame burned too steadily, the features remained illuminated, like a statue leaping out of the altarplace when darkness envelops the church.
Paris! His head was full of Paris. In the last few days they had been singing nothing but Paris, Paris, Paris. . . . What memories the name evoked! Sundays on the butte at Montmartre, picnics in the Bois de Boulogne, the carousels in the Tuileries, the lake in the Luxembourg where the youngsters sailed their boats. He thought of the lovers who pressed against each other in the Métro, the lovers who embraced in public, in the parks, on the streets, everywhere. Christ, how they made love in Paris! And the twilight hour—that eerie, metallic glow in the sky, as if it were a piece of metal played on by vivid lights, streaked with hasty daubs by an enormous, unseen hand. A different sky altogether, the Paris sky. A northern sky.
Held now by the fanatical brilliance of her eyes, he felt again the sensual, tangible beauty of soft-black roofs that glistened in the sun after a warm rain. The most beautiful tones of black there were in these roofs—like certain warm, utterly indescribable values of charcoal.
As the evening wore on it seemed impossible that his cup of happiness could hold another drop.
And then a wretched, a most disagreeable thing occurred. As she was fumbling for change to hand the waiter, an envelope dropped from Hildred’s bag. She looked at it with a start, was about to snatch it up when, observing that he made no attempt to intercept her, she suddenly altered her decision and allowed the envelope to remain where it had fallen, exposed to full view.
Tony Bring recognized the childish scrawl at once. “Let me read it,” he was about to say, but Hildred had already closed her hand over it and was stuffing it away in her bag. The panic and the fear expressed by this gesture sickened him.
“Believe me,” said Hildred, “I can’t let you see it. . . . I really can’t, I have no right to.”
Never in her life had she spoken more sincerely, more earnestly.
“It has nothing to do with us at all,” she said. “Not a thing!” She used the word sacred. There was someth
ing in the letter which was sacred to Vanya, which she couldn’t reveal even to him. A struggle went on in him; now, more than ever, he wanted to believe in her. It was imperative to believe in her, he told himself. She was a liar, that he knew, that he forgave; but this was not a question of a lie. Again, as when he had waited for her in the furnished room overlooking the harbor, he had a sense of impending evil, a wild, uncontrollable fear that everything would be taken from him. Nevertheless, he allowed the incident to pass over; he said not another word about the letter.
On the way home Hildred’s tongue wagged incessantly. She seemed to have lost control of herself. She didn’t seem to care what she said; it was as though she were trying to drown the incident. But the more she opened the dikes the higher it rose; it floated there on the ocean of her words like a cork that will not be submerged.
“You say you love us both?” he interrupted, breaking the long silence he had maintained.
“Yes,” said Hildred, “I love you both, though my love for you is different than my love for Vanya.”
“Think what you are saying, Hildred!” he said. There was neither hostility nor irritation in his voice; he had that feeling of calm, mingled with a profound curiosity, which comes to us at times in moments of great danger. “Think, Hildred, is it love you have for her? People don’t use the word love as loosely as all that. . . .”
But Hildred wasn’t in the least deflected by this. Though she didn’t quite know how to put it, there was this much to it, she wanted him to know: men were different. It was impossible to compare the affection between two men and the affection which might exist between two women. With women it was something normal, spontaneous, and in full accord with their instincts. But when a man avowed his love for another man it was unnatural. She amended this by saying that there had been cases, to be sure, where men loved each other in a purely Platonic way.
Platonic! It was one of those words which had been bandied about frequently during their nightly discussions, one of the words which were underlined with a red pencil.
“Listen,” she said, “could I lie in your arms and give myself to you the way I do if . . . ?”
“If what?”
“Oh, this is all so stupid! You make things complex, you make them ugly. You do! You see things only in your narrow, masculine way. You make everything a matter of sex, and it isn’t that at all . . . it’s something rare and beautiful.”
This thought carried her away. “And then to think,” she added, “that you harbor all these nasty thoughts about me when I have nothing in me but love for you . . . love and gratitude . . . because I owe everything to you, I was nothing at all, just a silly child, and you made something of me. You’re almost a god to me, don’t you know that, don’t you believe me?”
IT WAS very late when they got home, and Vanya had apparently retired. They were amazed, when they turned on the lights, to observe the transformation that had been wrought in their absence. The place had been dusted, the floor polished, the furniture neatly arranged. The table in the middle room was covered with a piece of tapestry, and in the center of it stood a vase filled with gardenias. They noticed, too, that the light above the table had been fitted with a shade, one of those parchment affairs on which the map of the ancient world is stamped.
“You see!” Hildred exclaimed. “You see how thoughtful she can be?” She lounged through the rooms, examining everything carefully, giving vent at the same time to eager murmurs, extreme and rapturously prolonged.
As for Tony Bring, his enthusiasm was tepid. In the first place, it was so obviously a gesture, to use one of Vanya’s own expressions; secondly, as often as he had performed this task himself (not with quite this finesse, admittedly) there had never been even the slightest reverberation of approval, or of thanks. Never before had Vanya given a thought to straightening the house; the dishes might lie in the sink for a week, for all it mattered to her. She didn’t even bother to pick up her clothes when they fell on the floor. It was so much easier to step over things.
Hildred was unable to restrain her thanksgiving until the morning. “I must go in and see if she is awake,” she said.
Gently he tried to hold her back. “Please, Hildred, not tonight. . . . Tonight you . . .” And he finished it by catching her up in a passionate embrace.
“But just let me see if she’s awake. I’ll be right back.”
The moment he relaxed his hold she slipped out of his grasp. Instead of going directly to Vanya’s room she flew to the bathroom.
His thoughts traveled at top speed. He strode back and forth, or stood stock-still in front of Vanya’s sea cows and looked straight through them without even noticing the sunsets they were painting with their tails. Mechanically he pulled up a chair, straddled it, his arms resting on its back, his head hanging down loosely, ready to roll off. The floor was spotless, it shone like a pair of patent-leather boots. Vanya had done this. She had gotten down on her hands and knees. Vanya. . . .
There was a window in the bathroom and the window was barred. They were probably talking through the bars, talking rapidly because soon the warden would come and the visitor would have to leave. Then she would be alone again in her little cell, the cell with the wooden box from which the music gurgled. And the pen would hiss and scratch again, flies walking upside down, sandy arms hacking away at space, give me back the sockets in my eyes. . . . He raised his head for a moment and he saw a urinal plastered with warnings against venereal infection. He thought of the Chinese garden and the song she had sung in his ear, and the conversation later over the syrupy black coffee. The spoons were very dull . . . washed too many times. And as he recalled the dull hue of the spoons and what she had said about the love between man and man he noticed her bag lying there on the table. It had been lying there all the time, almost within his grasp. She must have laid it there when she came in, flung it down without thinking in order to dance about the house admiring Vanya’s loving industry.
He opened it and rummaged through it quickly. He dumped the contents on the table and searched and searched. It was gone. He looked under the table. No letter there. He went to the bed and felt in the pockets of her cape, looked under the pillows. It was gone.
It was not just amazement or disappointment that showed on his face—he was shocked . . . profoundly shocked. He spoke to himself quietly, as if he were talking in his sleep. . . . After the wonderful way she spoke to me . . . almost a god . . . worship you . . . but just the same she had remembered to remove it from her bag, to hide it somewhere. He recalled how she had stuffed it away, frantically, it seemed. He remembered it vividly. And after that not another word had passed between them about the letter. . . .
A moment or two later Hildred returned. She was smiling tenderly, her face as beautiful and innocent as a child’s.
“And now,” she said, approaching closely and offering herself like a rare sacrifice, “my great big lover wants to . . .” She offered him her warm lips, her heavy, tropical breasts; her hands fell to her sides and she hung there in his arms, limp and warm.
As he carried her to the bed he thought to himself, What now? What now?
“Do you remember,” she said, “what you did to me that first night? Do you remember the way . . . ?” The words died out like a warm breeze. They gazed at each other silently, the blood churning with whales and swans, the room a void twanging to their broken harps. He sank his teeth into her warm lips, buried them in her throat, bit a dull red stain in her shoulder. “Ah!” she breathed, and as they separated for a moment to fire each other again the walls seemed to heave, and their breath, coming short and heavy, filled the room with a dry, withering exhalation.
She was speaking to him with that low, vibrant voice of hers, darker now, more exotic than ever. In the subdued light of the room her flesh gleamed white and milky, her torso rose and fell like a sea, and her breath coming to him with heavy fragrance invaded his senses like a narcotic. Her language had become weirdly transformed: they were not word
s any longer that impinged on his mind but the carnal, vital essence, the propulsive, elemental force which projects itself beyond our words and flames there at the frontiers of thought dyeing our blood and instincts. Listening to her now he recalled the distinctions with which she had embroidered her remarks on love. Her whole being seemed nothing more than a vehicle to express the omnipresence of love, body and soul were united in proclaiming it. How ridiculous, he thought, that a word like Platonic should ever cross her lips: it was like saying that a live wire should always be held in the naked hand. Lingeringly he bent over her, kissed her moist, fragrant mouth. Her tongue slid between his teeth, they lay there trembling and panting. She submitted to his fondling, encouraged him with low murmurs, took his hand in hers and with her burning touch directed its fugitive pursuit. And as they lay thus he questioned her—about others whom she had gone with, about the functioning of her body, about the most intimate details of her emotional life. She made no attempt to withhold anything, nor did she seek to idealize her sentiments. Naked as her flesh were the responses she made him. Nor did he ask her whether she had loved each one in turn. He asked her instead to describe her feelings, to make comparisons, to give him the fullest picture of her desires, her thoughts, her impulses and reactions.
When in turn she questioned him he found it difficult to respond; he became so involved in his narrations that she was compelled to disbelieve him. Moreover, her sensations proved far less gratifying than she had imagined. It was easier to become roused through one’s own confessions.
They grew silent again. Nothing could be heard any longer but the beating of their hearts and their breath coming heavy and irregularly. And at last that too ceased and their bodies lay prone upon the bed, inert, drugged, only the muscles twitching under the moist envelope of flesh.