The Merry Month of May

by James Jones

  “For whom?”

  “For youm, that’s whom.”

  “You may not find it such good news in a few minutes,” Harry said.

  “Now, look,” I said. “You go out there and sit down. Let me finish shaving without cutting my throat. Make yourself another drink or something. Then we’ll talk about your suspicions and everything, when I don’t have to concentrate on two things at once. Or do you want to lose one of your best friends?”

  Without a word he turned and strode out away from the bathroom door and out of the bedroom, still holding his glass as if it were a cracked egg.

  When I came out into the living room after applying my cologne water and having put on my kimono, he was standing with one foot up on the sill of the open double-doored window and staring out at the noontime river. A barge was passing, and we could hear as though through a megaphone the steady throb and beat of its diesel as it made its way up-current toward the Pont de la Tournelle. He had clearly made himself another drink because when he stalked out of the bedroom his glass was nearly empty and now it was a little more than half full.

  “I think I’ll have a drink myself,” I said. “Now, what is all this tripe?”

  Harry turned to face me, and at the same time took a long draught from his glass.

  24

  IT APPEARED HE HAD COME home the night before somewhat early. He had been out shooting some more demonstration stuff, with his two “principals”, in order to try and pick up some more backlog film to help the Cinema Committee kids fill out what they had lost and what they had done so badly. But the demonstration had fizzled out, and they had knocked off early. So he had come home early.

  Well, he let himself in (it was about one-thirty) and shut the door carefully, and then took off his shoes just inside the door. He always did that when he got in after midnight, in order to avoid waking Louisa. This time, as he usually did, he went in through the entryway into the living room salon, to make himself a nightcap, but this time as he stepped through the doorway in his stocking-feet he became aware of two silent figures lying under the night light on the couch in the small-salon part, to his left. They had an ancient wrought-iron stand-up floorlamp there which they kept lit all night every night, and this stood at the head of the couch in the corner. It was easy enough to see the two silent figures lying there.

  It was clear enough to him that they were Louisa and Sam. They were lying there together on the couch, fully clothed, necking. He himself had not made a sound. They weren’t making any sounds either, not even an occasional rustle. It could not actually be said that one of them was on top of the other. They were lying side by side, though Samantha had one leg thrown across Louisa’s thighs in a rather possessive way, thus hiking up her own skirt to expose her cute little bottom in its panties, which she clearly was still wearing. She was kissing Louisa deeply on the mouth, soul-kissing was the phrase he used, I believe. Louisa’s eyes were closed. Her hands were not visible but it appeared from her position that they were lying along her sides. He had a number of seconds to take this all in, in a kind of frozen film shot. Then he turned and tiptoed out again, and silently left the apartment. He put his shoes on outside, in the hall.

  He had been so startled, shocked, in a way, if you will, that he had not known what else to do. Mainly in his mind was the thought that he did not want to catch Louisa and thus embarrass her. He had gone up to his studio and double-locked the door with the key left in the lock, and then had lain on the bed a while. He was not sure whether he dreamt or not. If he hadn’t dreamt, then he had thought about them, envisioning it, imagining it, seeing in his mind’s eye them making it, taking as his jumpoff point the way he had seen them on the couch. The slow taking off of the clothes, the languorous disrobing, the kissing of each other’s breasts, the further necking, soul-kissing, nude, the whole lot.

  I interrupted him here. “How did you see them doing it, Harry? In your dream. —Or in your envisioning.”

  “Oh,” he said, “sixty-nineing, of course. Or at least, Sam going down on Louisa. I’m not sure I even remember. But it was that.”

  It was his fantasy, his Super-Fantasy, of course, as he had told me a number of times, he pointed out. But he had never envisioned it with his wife as one of the participants. That was very upsetting. It was like that thing about not going to one of those undress places with your wife. You could take somebody you didn’t love, take somebody you weren’t in love with, but not somebody you were. He had certainly never meant for his wife to get involved in things like this. He had lain there in his studio, dreaming or imagining, he could not be sure which, for some time. A couple of hours? Three? Then he had gotten up and gone out, leaving whatever was happening up there in the living room salon to handle itself, take care of itself. He had looked up once at the lighted window, from the quai.

  He had wandered around, sitting in one all-night café for a while, then in another. He had gone home around nine-thirty in the morning, his eyes feeling scorched and burning. He had waited there, in the curséd damned living room until he knew I would be up and then had called me. He had had four Scotches, not counting the two he had had at my joint, and he felt considerably better. He was preparing to leave for Rome today.

  He stopped and a kind of awful silence, waiting for me to respond, hung over the apartment.

  “Harry, you know, I just don’t believe Louisa could be having, could have, an affair with any girl. Samantha or anybody else. I just can’t believe it,” I said. “I think you thought you saw something you didn’t see. After all, it is your fantasy, you know.”

  “Fantasy, yes,” Harry said, his eyes blazing suddenly. “But I don’t hallucinate. I don’t have waking hallucinations. I know what I saw.”

  “Well,” I said. “I just can’t believe it. I suppose, I don’t want to believe it.”

  “Possibly,” Harry said. “But you’ve got to take my word.”

  “I’ll accept it,” I said. “But I find it very hard to believe. Did you, uh, talk to her about it?”

  “Of course not.”

  “I think you should,” I said. “Maybe she’ll have some reasonable explanation.”

  “What reasonable explanation is there?”

  “Maybe she’ll deny it.”

  “Of course she’ll deny it. That changes nothing.”

  I thought, God damn. Men. They certainly were peculiar. They would go around screwing everything they could get their hands on. And then if their wives did something of the same sort of thing they would scream like wounded baboons.

  “Well, I think you should talk to her,” I said trying to keep my voice equable. “About both.”

  “What both?” he said.

  “About what you saw,” I said. “Maybe she’ll have some explanation. And also about your decision to go to Rome.”

  Suddenly, I had a peculiar feeling of déjà vu. All this same damned scene had happened to me before. And, of course, I immediately realized it was with Louisa, the time she had come to see me in September of ’59. About leaving Harry. My God, I thought, now they’ll have another child, for which I shall have to be Godfather also.

  Harry was looking out the window. As I stood grinning idiotically at his back under the stress of my sudden revelation, he turned back toward me.

  I tried to compose my face, and succeeded. “At least you owe her that,” I said reasonably.

  “I don’t owe anybody anything,” Harry said evenly. “Particularly now, I don’t owe anybody anything. I’m going to Rome. After Sam. And I’m going on to Israel with her.”

  “Well, at least go and talk to Louisa first,” I said. Then something hit me. “Say, how did you know it was Louisa who suggested Sam’s leaving, if you haven’t talked to Louisa?”

  “Sam told me. I saw her this morning at nine o’clock before I went on home. She had her bags already packed, and was just preparing to get a taxi out to Orly. She wasn’t even going to say goodby. ‘I figured you’d know where to find me,’ she said, �
�if you wanted me.’ Want her? I’ve never had anything like her in my life.”

  It was useless to keep on saying to him that he was losing his mind. Even if it might be true, there was no point in keeping on repeating it. Then something else struck me. “Say. Tell me. Will you answer a personal question? Did you have sex with her at the hotel this morning?”

  “Of course I had sex with her at the hotel this morning,” Harry said.

  “You really must be going out of your mind, Harry,” I said, I suppose in a kind of wondering voice. I couldn’t help it. “But what about the other girl?”

  “We don’t always have to have another girl,” he said, and suddenly he grinned. “There are other things.”

  I was suddenly reminded of that “punishment” routine she had used with me, when she masturbated herself. I guessed there were other things. “I can’t imagine it,” I said, in a feeble way.

  “Don’t try,” Harry said. “I don’t think you’ve got the imagination for it.” He set down his empty glass. His eyes were looking red and scratchy, and I remembered he had not been to bed last night at all. Then he said, with it exploding out of him, “But, God damn it, why would she leave like that and take off on me like that?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. But I thought I did know, after all he had told me. She had said several times to all of us that it was really Louisa she was after. “I know I’ve been counseling her to leave but she always refused to.”

  “You? You!” Harry said. “You’ve been trying to get her to leave, too?”

  “I’ve been hoping to get her on her way before some kind of horrible catastrophe occurred,” I said.

  “But I guess it’s too late for that now.”

  “It sure is,” Harry said. “Only it’s not such a catastrophe.”

  “Please do talk to Louisa before you cut out,” I said. I grinned. “You do owe me that, for our many years of friendship. Anyway, you have to go home to pack, don’t you?”

  “All right, I’ll do that,” he said. “I do have to pack.” “You didn’t see Louisa at all this morning?”

  “No. She was still asleep. Or at least she was still in the bedroom. I didn’t go in there and she didn’t come out.”

  “Please do talk to Louisa.”

  “Damn it, I said I would, didn’t I?” Suddenly he yanked the Scotch bottle off my bar with a kind of furious gesture and poured some in his glass. He did not even bother with ice or soda. “Damn it, I can’t understand why she would cut out like that, and not even tell me good-bye.”

  I did not answer. He drained off the straight Scotch and straightened up and looked at me with his hard, haggard eyes, and turned on his heel and walked to the door. From the door he said, “I’ll stop back by on my way out of town.”

  “Okay, Harry,” I said, and kept my mouth shut for the rest.

  Well, it didn’t work. It didn’t work at all this time. He was back in about two hours and when he rang and I opened my door, I heard him set down two heavy suitcases on the ancient hexagonal tile that covers the entry on the ground floor.

  “This stuff’ll be all right here, won’t it?” he called up.

  “Sure, Harry,” I said.

  I went back inside and waited for him. I had been having a rather rough time. I certainly did not feel like eating anything. Especially since if I went out, I might miss Harry if he called or came back. There was some sliced ham in the refrigerator, and a baguette of bread from yesterday that was not yet stale, and there was mustard. But though my stomach was a little bit hungry, the rest of me wasn’t. So I just sort of paced back and forth across the apartment, or looked out the windows at the river, and tried hard not to drink too much. I am not used to early in the day drinking. In spite of that I had at least three Scotches while I waited. I was expecting him to call, and tell me everything was all right, not for him to come back, and certainly not to come back with two loaded suitcases.

  Well, he came up the stairs and into the place, in a kind of flood of energy, and availed himself of the bar. This time he did it quite calmly, carefully pouring himself a normal Scotch, adding ice from the bucket, adding soda. He did not say anything at all. Neither did I. I was not about to question him at this point,

  “Well,” he said finally, sipping from his drink and looking at me. “It was quite an experience.”

  I chose not to answer.

  After a minute he began to talk. I looked away, out the window at the river, as I listened. I thought that might help. Louisa had been sitting in the living room, the salon, having her normal breakfast of coffee, juice and buttered toast. Normally, she was an early riser. She was wearing one of those sheer nightgowns of hers, with an even flimsier robe thrown over her shoulders over it, and her rather heavy breasts were both visible and excitingly noticeable through the stuff. Her eyes had that wide, stary look they had had the night of the Bobby-Kennedy-killing TV program.

  “I came home last night,” Harry said he said to her. “But then I left.”

  “Oh?” she said. Her lips sort of writhed at him, like two whipping snakes, in the exact same way I remembered them moving that other night, with me. “Why was that?”

  “Because I didn’t want to disturb you,” Harry said.

  “Disturb me?” Louisa said.

  “At whatever it was you were doing. Whatever it was you and Samantha were doing,” Harry said.

  “Oh? Yes?”

  “On the couch there.” He waved his hand at it. “In the corner. The night light was still on, even.”

  “Ah, yes. I was trying to comfort the poor girl. It’s strange I didn’t hear you. But you could have come on in. The poor thing. She’s never had a mother, you know, really.” And she had looked at him with that wide, stary look, her lips writhing as she spoke.

  “Comfort!”

  Harry said it exploded out of him, but then he tried to get hold of himself, and smiled. “It didn’t look much like comfort to me.”

  “Well, that was what it was,” Louisa said calmly. “Why didn’t you come on in? Oh, incidentally, she told me you had been sleeping with her. Is that true?”

  “Yes, it’s true,” Harry said. “Or at least I was. She left Paris this morning for Rome, on her way to Israel. So I’m not sleeping with her any more.”

  “She did? Oh, good,” Louisa said. “I advised her, to do that. And she agreed with me. I thought she might get into a sort of insoluble situation, if she stayed around here and around you.”

  “Well, she left. She took your advice,” Harry said.

  “I’m glad,” Louisa said calmly.

  That was when he wanted to hit her, Harry said. Of course, he didn’t. “Well, it may interest you to know that I’m going to Rome after her. If I don’t catch her there, I’ll follow her on to Tel Aviv and catch her there.”

  “Well, of course, that’s your decision to make, isn’t it?” Louisa said calmly, looking at him with that wide, stary look. She turned to go back to her breakfast.

  “It sure is,” Harry said with some heat. “Now, listen! Do you mean to try and tell me that you were comforting that girl when you were lying on that couch necking with her? You mean to tell me you didn’t have sex with her?”

  “You must be going out of your mind, Harry,” Louisa answered calmly, looking up at him. She picked up a piece of buttered toast. “What’s wrong with you? I always knew you had a dirty mind. Are you?”

  “Am I what?”

  “Going out of your mind?” She bit into the buttered toast daintily, then picked up her coffee cup. Over it she stared at him calmly, with that wide-eyed, stary look. Then, looking away from him, she calmly went on with her breakfast.

  He had stalked out of the room then. In the bedroom he threw some clothes in the two valises, and then carted them out into the hall. Louisa had not moved from her breakfast. He left. And here he was.

  It was a pretty dismal tale, all the way around. I stood looking out the window a moment longer. I simply couldn’t imagine Louisa, poor,
dear, darling Louisa, having sex with that little girl, or any girl, particularly in the way Harry had said.

  And yet, I thought, and yet. I was suddenly reminded of all those old New England and San Francisco ladies, who had all come over to Paris in the early 1900s. It wasn’t only Gertrude Stein and Sylvia Beach and the other famous ones. There had been a whole exodus of them. And, whether from San Francisco or Boston, they had all had the same sort of background Louisa had had: liberal thinking, political, politically liberal, with a strong sense of public service and duty, and sexually repressed. And what had happened to them? What had they come for, to Paris, in fact? Because they were lesbians, down to the last one on the list. Lately, in the past three years, I had kept meeting nephews of theirs at parties, usually law graduates at some very good school, all come over to settle up some maiden aunt’s estate, after her recent death. Always they looked apologetic. The old gals always had lived with “companions”. Always they had bought themselves, out of their family’s wealth, a quite nice if now old-fashioned apartment on the Left Bank, usually between the river and Boulevard St.-Germain. Always they had excellent English-language libraries.

  It was the libraries that interested me. That was how I got into the whole thing. These nephews, all law graduates, were about as interested in books as they were in rugby. Sometimes less. They were always just about to give them to the American Library, which would be a chore. They didn’t want to take the time to try and sell them. They certainly didn’t want to have to pay to have them all packed up and shipped back to the States for sale. But their New England consciences wouldn’t let them just leave them, in the apartments, which were all always going to be sold. My response was always, “Well, let me have a look at them. If there’s anything there I want, I’ll take care of the whole thing for you,” All of them were always more than eager that I should do that for them. As I said, none of these young lawyers gave a damn about books. I guessed that in the past three years I had taken care of at least six libraries of maiden ladies from New England or San Francisco or from both. I found a number of marvelous rare books. There were at least three first editions of Joyce’s Ulysses, the 1922 edition published by Sylvia Beach’s Shakespeare & Co., two of them autographed by the great man to the maiden lady in question. And once I found a complete set of first editions of Vachel Lindsay, a little musty and moldy perhaps, but four of them were autographed by the author to the maiden lady who had them, or to her “friend”. The rest, the things I didn’t want, as I had promised, I packed up in my small car and carted over to the American Library for a donation given in the name of the lady. The young lawyers were always pleased to get rid of that chore.