by Gore Vidal
“I’ll bet you were wild!”
“We all change,” he said.
She wasn’t interested in how he’d changed, though: she was interested in Jim Trebling. “I don’t suppose he’s engaged or anything like that?” She was casual.
Holton laughed. “No, you can get him if you want to.”
“I didn’t mean that at all. What do you mean by saying that?”
“Not a thing.”
She went on talking for several moments, trying to be indignant. Then they crossed another street and she stopped talking.
They walked with the current of people, walked uncomfortably but deliberately over the sidewalk ventilators of the subway beneath. As they walked they could feel the thunder of a subway train under their feet, vibrating upward, like a great emotion, into their stomachs.
Then they came to the opening of the subway. With a deep breath they descended into the pit. Like lemmings dashing seaward the people pushed down the steps and into already crowded trains.
Caroline and Holton were separated. A sudden push of the crowd threw her into the train just before the door closed. He caught a last glimpse of her serene beauty being crushed between a large Negress and a tall white man. The train gave a rumble and pulled away.
Holton stood on the concrete platform with a hundred others who had missed this train and were waiting for the next.
He walked up and down between the concrete pillars, looking at the broken machines which were supposed to sell gum and peanuts and, from habit, he put his finger into one of the slots to see if anything was there: nothing was there however.
He admired the advertisements. His favorite one, the girl advertising beer, was not in this station but there were others. Two very excellent ones of movie actresses, young women hauntingly attractive with red lips. He admired these even though the most beautiful actress of all had had her front teeth blacked out and a crude phallic image drawn over her passionate face. There were people in the world who would do those things, of course, and he was not annoyed.
The other advertisements were less interesting and he didn’t look at them very long.
Another train roared through the tunnel, stopping with great noise; the doors opened and people flowed out; then another rush to get on the train. Robert Holton allowed himself to be carried into the hot stale car.
He liked to walk in the Park. In the evenings the Park was the most peaceful place in the city. A few people would be sitting on the benches and a few couples would be walking between trees but there were never many people here in the early evening and the ones that were there were always quiet.
As Robert Holton walked the miracle of the street lamps took place, white light filling the bulbs and changing the early evening, the twilight period, to a premature night.
He walked quickly now because it was almost six o'clock. Mrs Raymond Stevanson’s cocktail parties often went on until nine or ten o'clock and occasionally they lasted all night but he couldn’t know this for certain and he didn’t want to be late.
Robert Holton thought sadly about Jim Trebling as he walked, breathing the cool air. A short time had made a lot of difference and he was aware of this difference.
Trebling was apt to be impractical. It was a likeable quality in the army; he himself hadn’t made much sense in those days, but things had changed now. This was the time to be practical and Jim Trebling was not.
A couple were embracing beside a large rock. He watched them with interest as he went by.
He had tried to pretend to be the same but the effort, or the change, had been too great. It made him unhappy to think that he and Trebling had really been so different, had always been so different, even in those days. He was shocked to think that Trebling remembered the army as a pleasant period of his life. There had been times, of course....
Another couple came out of the woods, walked to the pathway and looked uncertainly about them, as though unsure of themselves. When he glanced at them they looked at him angrily, as if he had been spying. He walked away.
Robert Holton was not sure why he had changed toward Trebling. He wanted to be the same. He wanted to take up the friendship where it had been broken but he could not. He was not going to change again.
A nurse with a baby carriage was hurrying streetward. It was late, probably much too late for her to be out with the baby. As she passed him he caught a glimpse of the child and saw that it was staring vacantly ahead, concentrating upon growth.
He followed the nurse and the carriage toward the street. Robert Holton smiled to himself when he thought of Caroline and Jim Trebling going out together. It was always interesting when people out of different periods of his life came to know each other. He had never associated Trebling with Caroline before.
He took a last deep breath of air before he left the Park. He wished vaguely that he might have more time to walk in the Park and straighten out certain things.
The uptown streets were not crowded. A few people were coming home from work; most of the people were already home by now. Children played together in the streets, shouting at one another in sharp hoarse voices. A smell of cooking was in the streets.
There was no mail for him.
This was not a good day. On the good days there was mail; days could be bad when there wasn’t any. Not that there was anyone Robert Holton wanted to hear from in particular but he was less alone when he had letters to read.
“Been a nice day,” said the person behind the desk.
“It certainly has,” said Robert Holton.
“Won’t be long until it’s winter,” said the person behind the desk.
“It won’t be long,” said Holton. He turned then and walked through the dingy lobby to the elevator.
He and the elevator boy discussed the kind of day it had been. They also decided that it would be winter soon.
His room looked no more cheerful than usual. Robert Holton sat down on the bed, leaving the room dark. It gave him a feeling of power to think that, when he chose, he could turn on a light and dispel the darkness.
He started to think of Trebling but stopped himself. There was nothing to be done now. The old friendship was gone.
Trebling had mentioned a girl named Carla. He remembered her well. She had been pretty and intense and wealthy. He had not thought about her for a long time. She had been a strange girl, gentle and understanding. He had been greatly attracted to her and she to him.
They had walked around Florence and Fiesole. She had taken him to old palaces and churches although he hadn’t wanted to go. When he had objected she told him that she was trying to show him something. He never knew what it was she wanted to show him. When he left Florence he told her that he would write: he didn’t, though, and he had not thought of her again until today.
The thing he had liked most about Carla, the thing he could remember now, was her way of understanding him. She once told him that it wasn’t necessary to finish sentences when they talked; that she knew what he would say and that he should know what she would say.
Sitting in the dark of his hotel room, Robert Holton thought of all the women he had known and liked; some he had slept with and some he hadn’t. Most of them he had forgotten. Now he only thought of them when someone else recalled them to him.
And he did remember about Paris. He remembered the picnic outside Versailles, although he could not remember the faces of the two girls.
In Europe there had been so many women. He often was surprised now when he thought of how many he had known. There were periods when he had been never satisfied. Both Trebling and he had gone about it like hunters. Trebling was probably still hunting, thought Holton suddenly, and he wondered if he was, too. No, that was behind him. He had to live and act in a different way now. He had to be a different person.
Robert Holton turned on the light beside his bed. He blinked in the yellow light and suddenly he was dissatisfied with the room. He wished for the first time that he were somewhere else; it didn’t mat
ter where, just somewhere else. He was a person of great logic, though, and he asked himself what he would rather be doing and he couldn’t think of anything else to do. He didn’t want to travel. He had no desire to escape. There was no place to escape to anyway and Robert Holton who had a kind of wisdom knew that.
Then he took his clothes off and got under the shower. This was usually the happiest part of his day. The warm water gave him a feeling of security, relaxing him; the world fell into a genial perspective. He finished bathing reluctantly and dressed quickly.
Finally he stood in front of the mirror again and combed his hair. He was glad to see that he wasn’t losing his hair. Sometimes he thought he was; at other times he knew he wasn’t.
He wasn’t displeased with himself. He wasn’t pleased either but he knew that he was acceptable. There was no use in worrying, anyway. He wished sometimes that his nose could have been more aquiline. He would like to look more impressive. Perhaps his face would get that way as he grew older. He turned away from the mirror.
He looked at the picture on the wall and wondered for the hundredth time why the painter had made everything look so blue. The painter had made one of the apples almost sky-blue and Robert Holton had never seen an apple that color before and he found it hard to believe that there was much advantage in so misrepresenting things. Perhaps in certain parts of France the apples were blue.
He was dressed and ready now. He looked at his watch and saw that it was a quarter to seven: he would have to hurry. Robert Holton looked around the room to see if there was anything he wanted to take with him. There wasn’t. He put on his trench coat, turned out the light, and left the room.
The elevator boy wanted to know if he was going to a party.
“Sure, I’m going to a big party.”
“Lots of girls, I bet.” The pale thin elevator boy was interested.
“A whole lot of them.”
“Boy, I wish I was going out to something like that. This night work is getting me down. I ain’t getting much relaxation.” He winked to show what he meant by relaxation and Holton smiled sympathetically.
Robert Holton stopped by the desk.
“I’ll be back pretty early,” he said to the clerk. He always told them when to expect him, told them from force of habit because no one ever wanted to know.
“Yes, sir,” said the clerk. “Nice night tonight,” he added.
“Nice fall night,” agreed Robert Holton.
They discussed the evening politely. Then Robert Holton left the hotel.
It was darker now and cooler. The night was refreshing and he felt suddenly strong and contented. The depression of the office left him and he was becoming alive. He prepared himself for the party and for the evening ahead. He walked briskly down the street and, to emphasize his mood of sudden power, he hailed a taxi and rode in it happily, without regret for the money he was spending.
2—NIGHT
Chapter Nine
THE PARTY SEEMED TO BE GOING WELL. ALTHOUGH MRS RAYMOND Stevanson hated cocktail parties, finding her own almost as bad as other people’s, she still felt she had to give them and she worked very hard to make them outstanding.
Several hundred well-dressed people wandered about her large apartment, looking at the furniture, each other, and the five different paintings of Mrs Stevanson. There were no traces of Mr. Stevanson in the apartment. He had died early in her career, leaving her his money and four race horses. She had sold the horses and she had saved quite a bit of the money. Now, at fifty-five, she was a famous hostess and somewhat overweight.
“Good evening, Helena.” Mrs Stevanson turned around and saw the thin malicious face of Beatrice Jordan. They were contemporaries.
“Beatrice! How marvelous!” They touched cheeks with slight frowns, then came apart again with affectionate smiles.
Beatrice stood back a moment and looked at Mrs Stevanson. Beatrice was extremely near-sighted but much too vain to wear glasses. To see clearly she was forced to tuck her chin down and look upward, a habit which had given her an undeserved reputation as a coquette. She did this now.
“Helena, you’ve lost weight! How?”
Mrs Stevanson was pleased. “Does it really show?” She patted her cement-hard corseted buttock.
“Not so much around there,” said Beatrice, thinking for a moment. “More around here.” She touched her own meager breasts.
“You think so?” Mrs Stevanson was irritated and angry with herself for allowing Beatrice Jordan to say such a thing. Mrs Stevanson was proud of her breasts. Several of the famous painters had called her voluptuous.
“It’s been lovely seeing you, Helena darling. I’ve got to join my escort now. I came with Clyde.”
Beatrice said this triumphantly but gained no victory.
“You came with Clyde. How wonderful! I’m dining with him tomorrow.”
“Indeed?”
“Is he here now?”
“He’s in the other room.”
“Do tell him to see me before he leaves. There are so many people here.”
“I will, darling. Lovely to see you.” Beatrice smiled, showing her artful white false teeth and Mrs Stevanson smiled back showing her own artful white false teeth. The two women parted.
Mrs Stevanson was annoyed but she had found that the older she got the less interested she was in what people said. It was well-known anyway that Beatrice Jordan was a cat.
Mrs Stevanson walked now from group to group. The groups unfolded for her like flowers before the sun. She would disappear for a moment into the heart of one and then it would unfold again, release her and become tight and compact once more.
Certain groups contained people more important than other groups. In these she lingered longest, smiling the most attractively, saying her superlatives.
In the dining room a buffet had been set on a long table. Three footmen (hired for the evening only) guarded it from the hungry-looking guests, betrayed it to the superior ones who were not hungry.
Twenty or thirty people were gathered here and they looked rather self-conscious as she approached. Somehow everyone felt rather guilty to be caught eating heavily (they were eating heavily, she noticed) at a cocktail party.
She moved heartily about the dining room, demanding that they eat more, suggesting they try something they had not already tried. And then, to show she was mortal, she ate a piece of white bread with Virginia ham on it.
The dining room under control, Mrs Stevanson marched back through the drawing room, accepted greetings and homage with a tiny smile that one of her lovers (he was dead now) had said reminded him of La Gioconda.
Mrs Stevanson, among other things, believed in art. Tonight she had invited several writers, a few painters, one sculptor whose name she couldn’t remember, and a half-dozen actors whose names everyone knew.
She had also invited George Robert Lewis. For some obscure reason his middle name was always Gallicized, legitimatizing the Lewis. He had been born and raised in Alabama. Unfortunately for his family he had very early shown a passion for the artistic as well as a marked tendency toward Socratic love. When he decided that the thing he most wanted was to go to Paris and become an artist, his family did not object; in fact, his father had suggested that if he wanted to live the rest of his life in Paris it was all right with him. Lewis lived there in the Nineteen-Thirties. He returned in the Forties.
Mrs Stevanson thought him cute and she was in the habit of telling her friends that, although his habits were shocking, he was still quite charming and so advanced. And then he was marvelously decadent and the decadent was becoming popular now that the artificial virility of war was safely past.
George Robert Lewis was also an interesting person to know because he was the editor of Regarde, a magazine which had been called avant garde before that phrase became old-fashioned. Under his editorship the magazine had advanced all new things in the hope that one of the new things thus championed would be a success. So far none had but he still was champion
ing and, though Mrs Stevanson seldom understood a word he said, she felt he was awfully brave to say the dreadful things he did about people and morals, especially people.
Lewis was talking to a small brown man whom she didn’t remember inviting.
“Dear Helena,” said Lewis as she approached, “you look wonderfully well-preserved.”
“George, you’re a devil,” said Mrs Stevanson, secretly pleased.
Lewis embraced her in much the same way Beatrice Jordan had. “What mad things have you been doing, Helena? Something naughty, I’m sure.” His innocent blue eyes sparkled as he spoke. He had the expressions of a child.
“Nothing that you couldn’t equal. It was delightful of you to come.”
“I was so bored, darling, I felt that if I stayed home another moment I should go completely out of my mind.”
“Poor thing.” They talked this way with each other, talked with the casual rudeness of people who have met each other at many parties. He was an amazing person, thought Mrs Stevanson, looking at him carefully. He was slim and not very tall, with a pretty feminine face and, except for the small bitter lines about his mouth, he looked as if he were still in his twenties. His actual age was unknown. Mrs Stevanson thought he was forty.
“And whom have we here?” asked Mrs Stevanson, turning to face the small brown man beside him, a social smile on her face.
“Why, don’t you know...this is....” He said the name quickly. It was something foreign and difficult. She would have to call Lewis up the next day and ask him. She shook hands with the little man and saw that he was impressed with her. She smiled as George Robert Lewis explained him. He was a Greek and a professor and he knew a lot about poetry.
“But Helena, he has the most fabulous philosophy. I really think it’s never been done before. What was it again, Timon?” Mrs Stevanson knew his first name now.
“I’m sure Mrs Stevanson wouldn’t be interested.” As a matter of fact Mrs Stevanson wasn’t interested but she encouraged him.
“I should love to know,” she said. How like an earthenware pot he looks, she thought as he began to tell her his theory.