Those Who Walk Away

by Patricia Highsmith

“Why don’t you leave Venice then?”

  Ray did not answer for a moment, and he could see his silence tip the scales of the girl’s mind. She didn’t believe him.

  “You are telling me another story. Why do you tell me lies?” Now the lips smiled. “You do not need to tell me lies. Or even the truth,” she added with a gesture, lifting her left hand from the table. “Do you think you have to explain everything? At least make up better stories when you do!” She laughed.

  Ray looked at her, at her round, strong shoulders, yet without really seeing her. He could not decide if she was something he had to deal with, or something he should let alone.

  “Why don’t you get your valise from the railway station?” she asked. “You know what I think? I think you did something wrong.” She leaned forward and whispered. “Maybe you stole something. Maybe jewellery. Meanwhile—maybe you have a big bill at an hotel where you cannot pay. So you leave the hotel and you hide. There.”

  “There,” Ray repeated, for want of anything else to say.

  “I think you stole something, and you are worried,” Elisabetta said, and began to eat her dessert.

  “Do I look like a thief?”

  She lifted her eyes to his. Her eyes looked golden now. “I do in truth think you look guilty about something.” She looked a little afraid of him after she had said it.

  Culpa. Mea culpa. Ray resented it and felt embarrassed also, as if she had told him that he had some unattractive trait such as B.O., halitosis, or a hunchback, something he couldn’t get rid of. “In this case, you’re wrong,” he said, but he saw he had made no impression on her.

  She watched him with gleaming, mischievous eyes. “Of course you do not have to tell what it is you did, if you do not want to. I do not think you look like a real criminal. Not professional.”

  Just an amateur, Ray supposed. A mistake-maker. The jazz music of the barbershop went through his head. Sweet Lorraine distorted almost beyond recognition, a trumpet cavorting above the piano. In Mallorca, the constant jazz had prevented him from reading, painting, even thinking. Peggy had wanted L.P.s on all the time, stacks of them, all morning, all afternoon, and the damned jangling jazz was one of the things, a major thing, that had driven him out of the house the noon of the afternoon she died. But yesterday in the barbershop he had enjoyed the same kind of music, or had at least been tolerant of it. He could not come to any conclusion about this, but he had been glad yesterday that he felt tolerant and even enjoyed the music. Had he been anaesthetized by fever? He was not going to tell the girl the most important thing about his relationship with his father-in-law, Ray thought, and that was that his father-in-law probably thought he was dead. Elisabetta wouldn’t believe it, anyway, and it was a dark and precious secret to Ray, not one to waste, even unbelieved. Then his mental rejection of her brought a feeling of guilt, a surge in the opposite direction, towards her.

  “Do you like dancing?” he asked.

  She cocked her head, smiling. “You are very strange. Always changing the subject.”

  They went to a night-club some distance away, through a dozen streets, around corners, a dark maze away from the Graspo di Ua. The girl knew the way exactly, and filled Ray with wonder at her sense of direction. Without a thread, she led him through a labyrinth and brought him before an open red door from which steps led down.

  Ray ordered champagne, because it seemed the thing to do. The lights were dim, the place small, and only half filled. Two or three of the girls who were dancing obviously worked there. The orchestra had four men.

  “I was here only once before,” Elisabetta confided to Ray as they were dancing. “With an officer in the Italian Navy.”

  The girl was pleasant to hold, but he did not like her perfume. And he felt extraordinarily tired. Tomorrow he would look up Coleman, he thought, and give him a surprise. He did not yet know how or where, but an idea would come to him. And if Coleman had left the city, he would track him down.

  The orchestra stopped for a few seconds, then began a samba. Ray did not want to dance any longer.

  “You are tired,” Elisabetta said. “Let’s sit down. I think you still have fever.”

  It was difficult to talk over the music. Elisabetta did not want any more champagne. Ray poured for himself. He looked at the doorway, where the steps descended, and imagined Inez coming down them, followed by Coleman. Inez must know by now, Ray thought. She must have tried to ring him at the Seguso, probably not telling Coleman that she had tried, and the Seguso might well have said that Signor Garrett had not come in for two nights. The girl at the Seguso would say it in a tone of some alarm, Ray was sure. Inez would question Coleman, and Coleman would say he had put him off at Accademia or at the Zattere quay, but Inez might not believe him. Yes, probably a great deal was going on between Inez and Coleman now, and what would Inez’s reaction be? What would she do? What would anybody do? That was a question, a problem, and perhaps different people would behave in different ways.

  “What are you worried about?” asked Elisabetta. She was smiling, a little merry on the champagne.

  “I don’t know. Nothing.” He felt faint, blank, dead or perhaps dying. Distant, high-pitched bells rang in his ears. The girl was saying something that he could not hear, looking off to one side now, and her unconcern at his condition made him feel quite alone. He breathed deeply, one deep breath after another of the tobacco-laden air. The girl did not notice. The faintness passed.

  A few moments later, they were out on the street, walking. The girl said it was not far back to where they lived, and there was no boat that could be of any help. The lanes were moist under their shoes. The girl held his arm and chattered on about her last summer’s vacation. She had gone to visit relatives in the Ticino. They had cows and a big house. They had taken her to Zurich. She thought Zurich was much cleaner than Venice. Ray could feel the warmth of the girl’s arm next to his. He did not feel faint now, but he felt alone and lost, without purpose, without identity. Wouldn’t it be strange, he thought, if he really were dead, if he were dreaming all of this, or if by some strange process—which was the assumption on which nearly all ghost stories were based—he was a ghost visible to a few people, like this girl, a ghost who tomorrow would not be in the room at Signora Calliuoli’s, would have left not even an unmade bed behind him, only a strange memory in the minds of the few who had seen him, the few whom other people might not believe when they spoke of him?

  But the dark canals were very real, and so was the rat that crossed their path twenty feet ahead, running from a hole in a house wall to a hole in the stone parapet that bordered the canal, where a barge stirred sleepily against its rope mooring, making a piggish sound like schlurp. The girl had seen the rat, but had interrupted what she was saying by only a brief “Ooh!” and gone on. A light, fixed on the corner of a house so it would illuminate four streets, seemed to burn with patience, waiting for persons not yet arrived, persons who would carry out some action below it.

  “How long are you really going to be here?” asked Elisabetta.

  Ray saw that they had entered their street. “Three or four days.”

  “Thank you for this evening,” Elisabetta said in her doorway. She looked quickly at her watch, but Ray doubted if she could see the time on it. “I think it’s before eleven. We are very good.”

  He had reached a state of not hearing what she said, and yet he did not want to leave her.

  “Something worries you, Filipo. Or are you just very tired?” She whispered now, as if in her own street she did not want to disturb the neighbours because she knew them.

  “Not very tired. Good night, Elisabetta.” He squeezed her left hand in his for an instant, had no desire to kiss her or to try to, yet he felt that he loved her. “You’ve got your key?”

  “Oh, but certainly.” She opened the door softly, and waved him good-bye before she closed it.

  An old woman in black, whom Ray had never seen before, opened the door for him. Ray murmured an apology for h
is lateness, and she assured him cheerfully that she never slept, so it was no trouble to her. Ray climbed the stairs quietly. Never slept? Never undressed then? The mother of Signora Calliuoli? Ray leaned over the stairwell at his floor. The light below was extinguished now, and he heard not a sound.

  7

  At a quarter past ten the next morning, Ray entered the Calle San Moise, the street of the Hotel Bauer-Gruenwald. He felt it was the ripe time of the morning, when most likely Coleman and Inez would be setting forth for their morning’s activities—shopping, a bit of tourism, or simply a walk. Ray walked with his head a little down, as tautly as if he expected a gunshot, a bullet in his body, at any second. He waited at the door of a shop across the street from the hotel’s entrance and some thirty feet to one side of it. It was Sunday, and only a few shops were open. And for twenty minutes, nothing happened, except that ten or fifteen people, including bellhops, went in and out of the hotel. Ray did not know exactly what he wanted or intended to do, but he wanted to see Coleman, or Inez, and see the way they acted. When they did not appear, he pictured them arguing upstairs in one of the rooms about whether he was alive or dead, though he knew this was irrational. They might be still breakfasting, or chatting casually as Coleman stood in the bathroom shaving.

  Ray walked on and found a bar with a telephone. He looked up the Bauer-Gruenwald number and dialled it. “Signor Col-e-man, per favore,” Ray said.

  “‘Allo?” said Inez’s voice. “‘Allo?”

  Ray did not answer.

  “Is this Ray?—Ray? Is it you—Edward, come here!”

  Ray hung up.

  Yes, Inez was upset. Coleman would be more upset, Ray thought. Coleman—if he knew Ray had not gone back to the Seguso, and Ray had not much doubt Coleman did know that—would assume he had drowned. Coleman would think, therefore, the silent telephone call was an accident, that the hotel switchboard had made a mistake, or cut someone off. But Coleman would suffer a little doubt, too. And whatever Coleman had told Inez, the telephone call would stir up the mystery again in her mind. Had it been Ray telephoning? If not, then where was Ray? Could Coleman tell her? Ray walked slowly past the Bauer-Gruenwald, and jumped slightly as he saw Inez in a black fur coat coming out the glass doors. Ray stepped into a narrow street to his left.

  Inez walked briskly past him, only twenty feet away.

  Ray followed her at a distance. She turned right into the Calle Vallaresso, which led to Harry’s Bar on the corner and to the vaporetto dock at its end. Ray saw that she was going to take a boat. There were several people on the dock, waiting. Ray walked to the right side of the dock and turned his back on the crowd, facing the water. Inez did not take the first boat. She was going in the other direction then. Ray wanted very much to see her face, but was afraid to look lest his eyes attract hers. He had not been able to see her face clearly when she came out of the hotel.

  Another boat arrived, and Inez boarded it, as did most of the people on the dock. Ray got on among the last, and stood at the rear of the boat. They stopped at Santa Maria della Salute on the other side of the canal. Inez did not get off. Ray could see her through the stem window of the boat, seated on one of the bench seats, her back to him. She wore the yellow-feathered hat. The boat rushed on.

  “Giglio!” called the conductor.

  A creak of dock as the boat touched.

  Inez did not move.

  “Accademia the next stop!” shouted the conductor.

  They chugged smoothly towards the arched wooden bridge at Accademia. Inez stood up, moved forward and to the left where the boat’s door was. Ray walked along the port deck, keeping behind the ten or twelve debarking passengers. Inez, on the pavement in front of the Accademia di Belle Arti, looked all around her as if she did not know her way, and stopped a passerby. The man pointed to the broad street that went across the island.

  Ray followed her slowly. No need to rush now, to watch her turnings, because he knew where she was going. In the wide courtlike area behind the Seguso, Ray walked left, a direction that would bring him to the canal that went along the side of the pensione, but which was also a dead end, because no pavement bordered the canal just here. Inez also disappeared in the sottoporto which led to the Ruskin house. Ray retraced his steps quickly, crossed the open area diagonally, found another street which led to the little canal, but here, he knew, were pavements and also a bridge. He crossed the bridge over the canal, and turned right on the pavement. Now the Seguso lay on his right, across the canal from him. An arched stone bridge spanned the canal on the Zattere quay. Ray remained at the foot of the bridge, the end away from the Seguso.

  Inez was not in view. Was she still talking inside the pensione, or had she left already? He could not see her on the quay. Ray rested his arms on the bridge parapet, and looked over his shoulder at the Seguso’s entrance. He looked up at the Seguso’s windows, at the fourth window from the bottom which had been his, giving on the little canal, and just then, Inez’s light hat, dark coat appeared in its greyness, and Ray looked away, out towards the length of Giudecca.

  Inez had asked to see his room. They had not yet packed up his things, Ray supposed. He was sorry he had a bill there, but at least they had his suitcase. What was Inez telling them? Not, surely, that he might be dead. What was she asking them? That could be any number of things, what he had said to them, if he had said anything, if he had telephoned—questions that were quickly answered, leaving the mystery still there. Ray had disappeared. Ray felt an instant’s shame at his behaviour, at his silent telephone call less than an hour earlier, and the shame almost immediately became anger, anger against Coleman.

  Well I’m not going to his hotel. I don’t give a damn, Ray could hear Coleman saying. Why do you think somethings happened to him? He’s probably run off, chucked everything and run off You know damned well he’s got Peggy on his conscience.

  Would Inez believe that? No. Would she question Coleman until he told her the truth? Ray could not imagine Coleman telling the truth about that night to anyone. Was Coleman expecting daily that the body would be reported. Washed up somewhere? Probably.

  Inez was coming out of the pensione.

  Ray grew tense, hoping she would not turn in his direction because she was walking forward from the hotel, past the Ruskin turn, more slowly and thoughtfully than she had walked from Accademia. She turned right on the Zattere quay, so that her back was to him. Ray followed her, but at such a safe distance now, the following was purposeless for observing her. He observed the black spot that was her fur coat. She passed the Zattere boat stop and turned right.

  He followed her back to Accademia, where she crossed the bridge. She walked at a moderate pace, though the air was nippy and most people on the street hurried. She stopped now and then to look into a shop-window—a closed stationery shop, a fancy goods shop—completely demolishing Ray’s fantasy that she was thinking about him, and making Ray feel slightly hurt and also absurd for feeling so. After all, what was he to Inez? Just someone she’d known for a few days, son-in-law of her current lover, and the legal relationship had been erased, in fact, by the death of her lover’s daughter.

  Inez looked as if she were passing time because she had an appointment somewhere later. It was a quarter past eleven. Ray watched her enter a bar-restaurant, in front of which tables and chairs stood out on the pavement, chairs tipped in and leaning on the tables as if they were cold also. Ray realized that his teeth were chattering, and reproached himself for not having yet bought the obvious, a sweater. He walked past the restaurant, and saw Inez standing at the cash register. Unfortunately, no shop was open near by in which to take shelter. Ray hovered round a corner, stamping his feet, ducking his chin into the upturned collar of his coat. He stared down a narrow street whose curving perspective was cut off by vertical reddish sides of houses. Used houses. Laundry stretched across the street appeared frozen stiff—men’s shirts, dishtowels, shorts, white bras. He was going to become ill again after yesterday’s improvement, he
thought, but he did not want to turn loose of Inez. He saw a tobacconist’s shop, and went in. He bought cigarettes and lit one, and examined postcards on racks, at the same time keeping an eye on the street in case Inez walked past. Ray was afraid to step out lest he run straight into Inez.

  But at last he did go out as a stream of five or six young men went by the door, heading left. As Ray passed the bar-restaurant he saw that Inez had entered; she was having a coffee and writing something at one of the little tables inside. The sight of her in the dim interior, framed in the rhomboid of the bar’s front window, suggested a Cezanne painting. He took up his vigil in front of a little shop whose windows were full of ribbons, dress fasteners, boxes of wool, and woollen underclothing for babies. Five minutes passed. When Inez came out and turned in his direction, Ray, taken by surprise, entered a grocery-and-wine shop where there were several customers, so no one paid him any attention. After Inez went by, Ray walked out into the street again.

  Another pause, as Inez gazed into a sweet shop’s window. She looked over her shoulder, once to the right, once to the left. She was probably looking ft)r him, perhaps without much hope, but still anyone would look, Ray thought, under the circumstances. Inez walked on, came to San Marco and walked its length. She appeared to be going back to her hotel. But at Calle Vallaresso, she turned left. Harry’s Bar, Ray thought, which was disappointing, as he could not enter the small place without being seen, and it was impossible to see into it from the outside. But Inez turned right, and went into the Hotel Monaco directly across the street from Harry’s. Hadn’t the Smith-Peters been staying at the Monaco?

  Perhaps she had a date with Coleman here; he had better watch out for him, Ray thought, and looked behind him in the narrow street. The only place to run would be into Harry’s Bar or on to the boat dock. His watch said twelve-thirty five. Ray walked past the hotel entrance, quite close to it, and did not see Inez in the lobby; but the lobby had a section to the right, and she might have been in its far corner. He passed five uneasy minutes, feeling he had lost Inez and that Coleman might appear and see him at any moment. Ray decided to go into the hotel. He walked coolly towards the sign straight ahead that said bar, past the lounge on his left, and he had almost reached the bar, when he saw Inez in the left corner of the lounge near the door, and she was apparently looking straight at him. She was cut off from his view in the next instant by the door-jamb of the lounge. He stopped, waiting. He was in a short, wide corridor which was now empty, and he watched the door of the lounge for Inez’s figure.