by Gore Vidal
“Isn’t this charming?” asked Lewis. “I think it has a wonderful atmosphere.” He grinned at Carla. She nodded.
“It’s not too garish,” she said. “So many American places are too light.”
“Do they have a floor show?” asked Holton.
“A very unusual one,” said Lewis, giggling. “I’m sure you’ll think it great fun. Hermes de Bianca is the star of the show and his dance is perfectly magnificent. He is one of the great artists, great interpretive artists, I mean.”
“Is that right?”
A waiter came to take their order. He was a curious-looking waiter, a type which Carla recognized but Holton did not. He wore no uniform. She looked around the room and found that none of the others wore uniforms. They were dressed casually. This waiter’s hair was long, unpleasantly long and the front of it had been carefully bleached. He was thin and moved stiffly, self-consciously, like a woman thinking of rape. On one of his fingers he wore a large ring with a bizarre stone in it.
“What do you people want?” His voice was irritable and high. He was looking interestedly at Holton who was looking just as interestedly at him.
“I’d love something to drink,” said Lewis. “How about the rest of you?”
The waiter looked at Lewis for the first time. His face brightened. “George, it’s you! How lovely to see you! You haven’t been here in such a long time.”
“I’ve been dreadfully busy,” said Lewis coldly, disengaging himself from the waiter’s assumed relationship.
“I think,” said Holton, “that I’d like a highball.” They all decided to have the same thing and the waiter, with a slight toss of his head, walked away.
The small band was playing loudly and eagerly. One sentimental modern song after another was catapulted into the room. Fortunately, after several minutes the band stopped playing and the musicians departed.
“I’m glad they’re gone,” said Carla. “They make too much music.”
“They aren’t very delicate.” Lewis turned suddenly to Holton. “And you, what do you do?”
Holton flushed. “Well, I work in a brokerage house.”
Lewis’s eyebrows went up and he elaborately showed surprise and disbelief. “But how remarkable! You’re not an artist! Surely you must do something wonderful. You have the hands of an artist. You’re just working there because you have to. That’s it, isn’t it?”
“No, that’s not it.” Carla admired his courage. “I don’t mind working there and it’s probably going to be my career.” His jaw got very firm. She liked him this way.
“How marvelous!” exclaimed Lewis. “A contented Babbitt.” He stopped. “What a dreadful thing to say: that’s such a Nineteen-Twenty phrase. Really, I sometimes wonder if art is the answer to our problems.”
“I think it might be to the artist,” said Carla softly.
Lewis bowed. “Touché, my dear. Let’s say the dedication to art, the freedom from conventions. Perhaps this young man’s view is the saner: to accept the pattern.” He was mocking now but he did not show it in his face.
“Some things you have to accept,” said Holton, aware of Lewis’s mockery. “Sometimes there is nothing else.”
“There is always something else,” said Lewis decidedly.
“I think that’s right,” said Carla.
“What?” asked Holton. “What else can you do but that?”
“Run away,” said Lewis.
“Fall in love,” said Carla.
But neither solution was convincing to Holton and Carla could think of no way to explain herself. There seemed, at the moment, no words to record her meaning, no bridge to reach him. They were all three quiet, thinking of questions and answers.
Finally their silence killed the problem and they began to notice the room they were in and the other people. The people at the different tables were not, generally, mixed. Several women would sit at one table and several men would sit at another. Around the room were small tables for two and here men sat with men and women with women. This was puzzling to Holton, she could see. He said nothing, though, and she had a great sudden ache of tenderness for him, a desire to protect his innocence. But this she could not do. She was a stranger to him and he had forgotten.
Cigarette smoke veiled the room bluely and everything seemed tenuous and unreal. The sound of voices and ice clattering, of forks striking plates and of many people moving and breathing together made an ocean-like roar in Carla’s ears. The room was hot and the smell of perfume was strong.
The band returned and began to play. They played much more softly than they had before and she was grateful. Conversation was not difficult when the music was soft. In fact, the music seemed to underline many things, made emotional statements dramatic. Unfortunately, with George Robert Lewis sitting at the table there was no opportunity to make emotional statements. He would have to leave. She began to concentrate on this as they talked now of trivial things. Finally he received her subconscious message. He stood up.
“I hope you’ll excuse me a moment but I have to go backstage. I’ll only be gone a minute.” He left quickly, going around the stage and behind the crimson curtain.
“He’s a funny little queer, isn’t he?” commented Holton.
“He’s one of the great aesthetes. You’re glad you came tonight?”
“It’s interesting,” he said. He was defending himself now.
“This is a very...” she paused, trying to think of the right word, “trivial world. I don’t think you’ll like it.”
“Perhaps I will. I used to be something of a sculptor.” He said this laughing, and she could see that he was quite serious.
“Then why don’t you do it?”
“I wasn’t good enough. I haven’t done any since I was in college.”
“Would you like to do it?”
“I don’t think so.” She couldn’t tell whether he meant this or not.
The waiter came and put their glasses down on the table with a look of boredom; in fact, he yawned slightly as he did it. He tried to catch Holton’s eye but failed. Sulkily he walked away.
“I don’t want this,” said Carla, pointing to the glass.
“I’ll take it,” said Holton and he began to drink his own, his teeth making clicking sounds as the ice bobbed against them.
“You like what you’re doing now?” asked Carla.
He put the glass down and frowned. “I suppose I do. I have to do it and so I figure I might as well like it.”
“Perhaps you might find something you like better.”
“What?”
“You might be a sculptor again.”
He laughed. “I’m really no good. I can’t do anything else but this. I don’t see anything wrong with what I’m doing, anyway.”
“There’s nothing wrong with it if you’re happy; are you?”
He didn’t answer for a moment. Then he said, “I suppose I am.”
“But you’re not in love?”
“What has that to do with it?”
“So many things,” said Carla and she did not look at him; she avoided his eyes. He did not understand. She could see that now. The desire, however, to make him destroy his barriers, to come alive, was becoming an obsession with her. And then, of course, he had been the first man she had known and that made him important to her. She had never lost her feeling for him and she was sad to see him confused; Carla thought of herself as Joan of Arc: helping the king to his throne. She was not yet sure, however, that the king wished to reign.
The music was becoming soft and sentimental. Full round chords gushed around them and people danced on the stage. Men danced with women and women with men for there was not really much courage among these people.
“Would you like to dance?” asked Holton.
“Not right now.”
He was not disappointed. She watched him as he watched the other people in the room. This was something new for him. She guessed that he was shocked by the people he saw at the different
tables. He showed nothing in his face, though. Perhaps he did not recognize them, did not know them the way she did: she who had married one of them.
“It’s been quite a while, hasn’t it?” said Holton finally.
“Yes, but I haven’t forgotten any of it, have you?”
“Of course not. Naturally I didn’t know whether you wanted to talk about it. I figured that...well, after you married Bankton you wouldn’t want to think about what we did.”
“I don’t,” said Carla, “love Bankton.”
He was shocked and she knew that she had said the right thing if in the wrong manner.
“But you got married,” said Holton.
She nodded. “I’m afraid I didn’t know very much about him then. I went to London after the war was over and I stayed with some artists there. I met him and he made love to me. I thought he was very wonderful. I had heard stories about him: that he was...was like these people here.” She gestured to include the room. “I didn’t believe the stories. I married him. I found he wanted me for camouflage.”
“Why don’t you divorce him then?”
“Perhaps I shall someday. It seems so much trouble, though. He’s really a very nice person.”
Holton shook his head, confused. “I don’t see...I don’t see why he married you in the first place if he was....”
“He could still like me, Bob.”
“I don’t see how.”
She smiled. “It is hard to explain but anyway you know now that I don’t feel too deeply about him. You understand this?”
“I suppose so,” said Robert Holton. He is beginning to understand, thought Carla, happy now: her words had begun to build the bridge between them. Soon they would meet again.
“You’ve certainly had a funny life,” said Holton, smiling.
“Sometimes I think so but then the most important thing is making a freedom for oneself. When that’s done nothing is strange because everything is natural. You know what I mean?”
He nodded. “Sometimes I know.”
She picked up a fork and drew pictures on the white tablecloth. “I want you to be free,” she said.
“Free from what?”
“You know. From your routine and morals: the things you don’t want.”
He laughed. “You know pretty well what my set of morals is and I don’t mind the routine so much.”
“I think you do.”
“Why?”
“Why did you want to come here with Lewis tonight? Why are you with me now?”
He smiled. “Perhaps you’re partly right. I was curious and I do get bored and....”
“And you’re alone.” She spoke for him.
He finished his drink and did not answer her; there was no need to answer her.
“Are you glad,” she asked at last, “are you glad to see me again?”
He said that he was. He declared that he was. He made an issue of it. He was still not at ease with her and she felt desperate. It was like a battle between them; first one side retreating and the other advancing....Or perhaps a hunt. She was the hunter and her memories the pursued. She knew that beneath his many assumed faces there was the person she had known in Florence. Deliberately Carla began to smash the faces.
George Robert Lewis had a very pleasant interview with de Bianca, the star; after a half-hour, though, he was beginning to get restless. Dancers seldom talked about anything interesting. Finally he excused himself, saying that his guests were waiting for him.
They were talking quietly and intimately when he got back to the table. He took a secret pleasure in interrupting them. Lewis had already decided that they were lovers.
“I’m so dreadfully sorry that I went off and left you the way I did. It was stupid of me but I got so involved with Hermes and his amours: he tells me all about them and though they’re really quite dull I have to be polite and listen. Have you ordered yet?”
They said that they had not. Lewis immediately became noisily efficient. He ordered the languid waiter about, gave him careful instructions and ignored his glances and meaningful gestures. Lewis never had liked this type at all. The ones like this waiter never seemed to have any respect for him. They couldn’t understand the principles for which he stood. They were not artists.
The dinner finally ordered, he turned toward his guests, a white-toothed smile on his slightly rouged lips (Hermes had lent him rouge).
“Are you adoring the atmosphere, my dear Mrs Bankton? It’s nothing to compare with Paris, of course, but you must admit that it’s a lot gayer than Rome. I love Rome and usually have a marvelous time there but somehow one never seems to find the same easy atmosphere that we have here.”
“No, it is not like Rome,” agreed Carla. What wonderful golden skin she has, thought Lewis, enjoying her aesthetically. He didn’t dislike women the way many of his friends did. He felt, in fact, most compatible with them.
“Are there many places like this in New York?” asked Holton. Lewis was pleased that he had caught on. Lewis, always optimistic, wondered if it might not be possible to make some sort of an arrangement....It was not impossible, certainly.
“Oh, quite a few, quite a few. They are rather charming from time to time. I enjoy visiting them and I do feel that the atmosphere is not uncongenial.” He wondered if perhaps he hadn’t been using the word “atmosphere” too much.
“I’ve heard about these places,” said Holton without much expression.
“Surely you don’t disapprove?” Lewis was intent on discovering this now. He could see that Carla was uneasy. Holton was unsatisfactory, though.
“I don’t care much one way or the other,” he said and he turned to Carla and began to talk to her again. Lewis, disappointed, listened to them as they talked of Fiesole.
Lewis was not quite sure what their relationship was. As they talked he gathered that she was more interested than he in continuing it. That was usually the case, however. Young men like Holton were apt to be a little unfeeling, a little stuffy. George Robert Lewis thought pleasantly of young men.
When he felt that they had talked too long without him, he interrupted. “When were you last in Fiesole?” He looked at Carla, intending the question for her; it was difficult not having a name to call her.
She looked at him as though she had forgotten him completely. “In Fiesole? I was there just a year ago.”
“I suppose it’s pretty well recovered from the war. I told you how I used to love visiting there before the war. I hope it will always be pleasant.”
“I think it will,” said Carla.
“Europe must’ve been very nice before the war,” said Holton.
George Robert Lewis made an elaborate motion to show just what it had been before the war; as he was finishing his movement the waiter brought them their dinner: a number of dishes with filet of sole at the center.
“I hope you enjoy it,” said the waiter spitefully, putting the dishes down loudly and angrily. He walked away, his duty done.
Lewis sighed. “These dreadful waiters, they presume so. I suppose that it’s all a part of the American dream. Shall we begin?” Like a priest of a pagan cult he began to perform the ritual of arranging plates, of removing covers, of neatly moving food from plate to plate, and finally of eating. The others imitated him.
“When,” asked Robert Holton, after the main part of the dinner had been eaten, “will the show start?”
Lewis put down his fork carefully, swallowed, and said, “Very soon, I think. What time is it?” There was an examination of watches: ten-fifteen. “The show starts at ten-thirty. I hope you’re not impatient. The audience is very often as interesting as the show. But I must say that de Bianca’s dance is in another world and that we mustn’t miss it. I’ll be very curious to know how you react.”
“There used to be a place in Paris like this where they had a wonderful dancer of the same type. I suppose he’s the type of dancer I think he is?” said Carla.
“He is quite probably the sort of dancer
you think he is,” said Lewis, smiling, excluding Holton from his words. “The only difference is that he is a great artist, interpretive artist, I mean. I know you’ll appreciate him.”
A group of people who knew Lewis came over to their table. They acted most respectfully and he hoped that Carla and Holton were noticing what an important person he was. He spoke nicely to them, shook hands with them, and let them know that he was busy. They left him then, smiling. Smiling himself, he turned to Carla and Holton and he was disappointed to find them talking together again. Holton had taken Carla’s hand in his and Lewis felt a strange anguish, felt an inward betrayal. He did not know what had been betrayed, however.
“I’m sorry, my dear, that I didn’t introduce you to those people. It was rude of me because they all admire your husband’s work.”
“That’s perfectly all right,” said Carla. “I know so little about his work. I’m only a layman, you know.”
“I can hardly believe that. You must’ve been an artist yourself at one time.”
She shook her head. “No, I was never an artist at anything. Except at living, perhaps.” Trumpets sounded loudly from the band, giving her statement an absurd grandeur. She sensed this and laughed. “I wish to say that I try to make my life a complete thing.”
“But what a marvelous thing to want to do! All of us try that but when we fail at it (and alas we most of us fail) then we must find ourselves a medium to guard our egos, to protect our fears.”
“That’s for the talented Mr. Lewis but for the rest of us, the majority, only our lives count. We must make them natural.”
“And that,” said Robert Holton suddenly, “is for the rich to do. The rest of us can’t even do that.”
“How delightful!” exclaimed Lewis. “We have here the three representatives of humanity: the rich and...free? the poor and trapped, and the artist who is finding both freedom and an opiate. But how wonderfully symbolic! We’re practically an allegory. I suppose we can reach some understanding.”
“How?” asked Holton and Lewis could see that he was asking Carla, not him. “How can you get what you want without money? I don’t see how you can ever do what you want if you aren’t free.”