It is awfully nice having her in the car asleep, he thought. She is good company even when she is asleep. You are a strange and lucky bastard, he thought. You are having much better luck than you deserve. You just thought you had learned something about being alone and you really worked at it and you did learn something. You got right to the edge of something. Then you backslid and ran with those worthless people, not quite as worthless as the other batch, but worthless enough and to spare. Probably they were even more worthless. You certainly were worthless with them. Then you got through that and got in fine shape with Tom and the kids and you knew you couldn’t be happier and that there was nothing coming up except to be lonely again and then along comes this girl and you go right into happiness as though it were a country you were the biggest landowner in. Happiness is pre-war Hungary and you are Count Károlyi. Maybe not the biggest landowner but raised the most pheasant anyway. I wonder if she will like to shoot pheasant. Maybe she will. I can still shoot them. They don’t bother me. I never asked her if she could shoot. Her mother shot quite well in that wonderful dope-head trance she had. She wasn’t a wicked woman at the start. She was a very nice woman, pleasant and kind and successful in bed and I think she meant all the things she said to all the people. I really think she meant them. That is probably what made it so dangerous. It always sounded as though she meant them anyway. I suppose, though, it finally becomes a social defect to be unable to believe any marriage has not really been consummated until the husband has committed suicide. Things all ended so violently that started so pleasantly. But I suppose that is always the way with drugs. Though I suppose among those spiders who eat their mates some of the mate eaters are remarkably attractive. My dear she has never, really never, looked better. Dear Henry was just a bonne bouche. Henry was nice too. You know how much we all liked him.
None of those spiders take drugs either, he thought. Of course that’s what I should remember about this child, exactly as you should remember the stalling speed of a plane, that her mother was her mother.
That’s all very simple, he thought. But you know your own mother was a bitch. But you also know you are a bastard in quite different ways from her ways. So why should her stalling speed be the same as her mother’s? Yours isn’t.
No one had ever said it was. Hers I mean. What you said was that you should remember her mother as you would remember and so forth.
That’s dirty too, he thought. For nothing, for no reason, when you need it most you have this girl, freely and of her own will, lovely, loving and full of illusions about you, and with her asleep beside you on the seat you start destroying her and denying her without any formalities of cocks crowing, twice nor thrice nor even on the radio.
You are a bastard, he thought and looked down at the girl asleep on the seat by him.
I suppose you start to destroy it for fear you will lose it, or that it will take too great a hold on you, or in case it shouldn’t be true, but it is not very good to do. I would like to see you have something besides your kids you did not destroy sometime. This girl’s mother was and is a bitch and your mother was a bitch. That ought to bring you closer to her and make you understand her. That doesn’t mean she has to be a bitch any more than you have to be a heel. She thinks you are a much better guy than you are and maybe that will make you a better guy than you are. You’ve been good for a long time now and maybe you can be good. As far as I know you haven’t done anything cruel since that night on the dock with that citizen with the wife and the dog. You haven’t been drunk. You haven’t been wicked. It’s a shame you’re not still in the church because you could make such a good confession.
She sees you the way you are now and you are a good guy as of the last few weeks and she probably thinks that is the way you have been all the time and that people just maligned you.
You really can start it all over now. You really can. Please don’t be silly, another part of him said. You really can, he said to himself. You can be just as good a guy as she thinks you are and as you are at this moment. There is such a thing as starting it all over and you’ve been given a chance to and you can do it and you will do it. Will you make all the promises again? Yes. If necessary I will make all the promises and I will keep them. Not all the promises? Knowing you have broken them? He could not say anything to that. You mustn’t be a crook before you start. No. I mustn’t. Say what you can truly do each day and then do it. Each day. Do it a day at a time and keep each day’s promises to her and to yourself. That way I can start it all new, he thought, and still be straight.
You’re getting to be an awful moralist, he thought. If you don’t watch out you will bore her. When weren’t you always a moralist? At different times. Don’t fool yourself. Well, at different places then. Don’t fool yourself.
All right, Conscience, he said. Only don’t be so solemn and didactic. Get a load of this, Conscience old friend, I know how useful and important you are and how you could have kept me out of all the trouble I have been in but couldn’t you have a little lighter touch about it? I know that conscience speaks in italics but sometimes you seem to speak in very boldfaced Gothic script. I would take it just as well from you, Conscience, if you did not try to scare me; just as I would consider the Ten Commandments just as seriously if they were not presented as graven on stone tablets. You know. Conscience, it has been a long time since we were frightened by the thunder. Now with the lightning: There you have something. But the thunder doesn’t impress us so much any more. I’m trying to help you, you son of a bitch, his conscience said.
The girl was still sleeping and they were coming up the hill into Tallahassee. She will probably wake when we stop at the first light, he thought. But she did not and he drove through the old town and turned off to the left on U.S. 319 straight south and into the beautiful wooded country that ran down toward the Gulf Coast.
There’s one thing about you, daughter, he thought. Not only can you outsleep anybody I’ve ever known and have the best appetite I’ve ever seen linked with a build like yours but you have an absolutely heaven-given ability to not have to go to the bathroom.
Their room was on the fourteenth floor and it was not very cool. But with the fans on and the windows open it was better and when the bellboy had gone out Helena said, “Don’t be disappointed, darling. Please. It’s lovely.”
“I thought I could get you an air-conditioned one.”
“They’re awful to sleep in really. Like being in a vault. This will be fine.”
“We could have tried the other two. But they know me there.”
“They’ll know us both here now. What’s our name?”
“Mr. and Mrs. Robert Harris.”
“That’s a splendid name. We must try to live up to it. Do you want to bathe first?”
“No. You.”
“All right. I’m going to really bathe though.”
“Go ahead. Go to sleep in the tub if you want.”
“I may. I didn’t sleep all day did I?”
“You were wonderful. There was some pretty dull going too.”
“It wasn’t bad. Lots of it was lovely. But New Orleans isn’t really the way I thought it would be. Did you always know it was so flat and dull? I don’t know what I expected. Marseilles I suppose. And to see the river.”
“It’s only to eat and drink in. The part right around here doesn’t look so bad at night. It’s really sort of nice.”
“Let’s not go out until it’s dark. It’s all right around here. Some of it is lovely.”
“We’ll have that and then, in the morning, we’ll be on our way.”
“That only leaves time for one meal.”
“That’s all right. We’ll come back in cold weather when we can really eat. Darling,” she said. “This is the first sort of letdown we’ve had. So let’s not let it let us down. We’ll have long baths and some drinks and a meal twice as expensive as we can afford and we’ll go to bed and make wonderful love.”
“The hell with New Orleans in
the movies,” Roger said. “We’ll have New Orleans in bed.”
“Eat first. Didn’t you order some White Rock and ice?”
“Yes. Do you want a drink?”
“No. I was just worried about you.”
“It will be along,” Roger said. There was a knock at the door. “Here it is. You get started on the tub.”
“It’s going to be wonderful,” she said. “There will just be my nose out of water and the tips of my breasts maybe and my toes and I’m going to have it just as cold as it will run.”
The bellboy brought the pitcher of ice, the bottled water and the papers, took his tip and went out.
Roger made a drink and settled down to read. He was tired and it felt good to lie back on the bed with two pillows folded under his neck and read the evening and the morning papers. Things were not so good in Spain but it had not really taken shape yet. He read all the Spanish news carefully in the three papers and then read the other cable news and then the local news.
“Are you all right, darling?” Helena called from the bathroom.
“I’m wonderful.”
“Have you undressed?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have anything on?”
“No.”
“Are you very brown?”
“Still.”
“Do you know where we swam this morning was the loveliest beach I’ve ever seen.”
“I wonder how it can get so white and so floury.”
“Darling are you very, very brown?”
“Why?”
“I was just thinking about you.”
“Being in cold water’s supposed to be good for that.’
“I’m brown under the water. You’d like it.”
“I like it.”
“You keep on reading,” she said. “You are reading aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Is Spain all right?”
“No.”
“I’m so sorry. Is it very bad?”
“No. Not yet. Really.”
“Roger?”
“Yes.”
“Do you love me?”
“Yes, daughter.”
“You go back and read now. I’ll think about that here underwater.”
Roger lay back and listened to the noises that came up from the street below and read the papers and drank his drink. This was almost the best hour of the day. It was the hour he had always gone to the café alone when he had lived in Paris, to read the evening papers and have his aperitif. This town was nothing like Paris nor was it like Orleans either. Orleans wasn’t much of a town either. It was pleasant enough though. Probably a better town to live in than this one. He didn’t know the environs of this town though and he knew he was stupid about it.
He had always liked New Orleans, the little that he knew of it, but it was a letdown to anyone who expected very much. And this certainly was not the month to hit it in.
The best time he had ever hit it was with Andy one time in the winter and another time driving through with David. The time going north with Andy they had not come through New Orleans. They had bypassed it to the north to save time and driven north of Lake Pontchartrain and across through Hammond to Baton Rouge on a new road that was being built so they made many detours and then they had gone north through Mississippi in the southern edge of the blizzard that was coming down from the north. When they had hit New Orleans was coming south again. But it was still cold and they had a wonderful time eating and drinking and the city had seemed gay and sharp with cold, instead of moist and damp and Andy had roamed all the antique shops and bought a sword with his Christmas money. He kept the sword in the luggage compartment behind the seat in the car and slept with it in his bed at night.
When he and David had come through it had been in the winter and they had made their headquarters in that restaurant he would have to try to find, the non-tourist one. He remembered it as in a cellar and having teakwood tables and chairs or else they sat on benches. It was probably not like that and was like a dream and he did not remember its name nor where it was located except he thought it was in the opposite direction from Antoine’s, on an east and west, not a north and south street, and he and David had stayed in there two days. He probably had it mixed up with some other place. There was a place in Lyons and another near the Parc Monceau that always were merged in his dreams. That was one of the things about being drunk when you were young. You made places in your mind that afterwards you could never find and they were better than any places could ever be. He knew he hadn’t been to this place with Andy though.
“I’m coming out,” she said.
“Feel how cool,” she said on the bed. “Feel how cool all the way down. No don’t go away. I like you.”
“No. Let me take a shower.”
“If you want. But I’d rather not. You don’t wash the pickled onions do you before you put them in the cocktail? You don’t wash the vermouth do you?”
“I wash the glass and the ice.”
“It’s different. You’re not the glass and the ice. Roger, please do that again. Isn’t again a nice word?”
“Again and again,” he said.
So tly he felt the lovely curve from her hip bone up under her ribs and the apple slope of her breasts.
“I it a good curve?”
He kissed her breasts and she said, “Be awfully careful when they’re so cold. Be very careful and kind. Do you know about them aching?”
“Yes,” he said. “I know about aching.”
Then she said, “The other one is jealous.”
Later she said, “They didn’t plan things right for me to have two breasts and you only one way to kiss. They made everything so far apart.”
His hand covered the other, the pressure between the fingers barely touching and then his lips wandered up over all the lovely coolness and met hers. They met and brushed very lightly, sweeping from side to side, losing nothing of the lovely outer screen and then he kissed her.
“Oh darling,” she said. “Oh please darling. My dearest kind lovely love. Oh please, please, please my dear love.”
After quite a long time she said, “I’m so sorry if I was selfish about your bath. But when I came out of mine I was selfish.”
“You weren’t selfish.”
“Roger, do you still love me?”
“Yes, daughter.”
“Do you change how you feel afterwards?”
“No,” he lied.
“I don’t at all. I just feel better afterwards. I mustn’t tell you.”
“You tell me.”
“No. I won’t tell you too much. But we do have a lovely time don’t we?”
“Yes,” he said very truthfully.
“After we bathe we can go out.”
“I’ll go now.”
“You know maybe we ought to stay tomorrow. I ought to have my nails done and my hair washed. I can do it all myself but you might like it better done properly. That way we could sleep late and then have part of one day in town and then leave the next morning.”
“That would be good.”
“I like New Orleans now. Don’t you?”
“New Orleans is wonderful. It’s changed a lot since we came here.”
“I’ll go in. I’ll only be a minute. Then you can bathe.”
“I only want a shower.”
Afterwards they went down in the elevator. There were Negro girls who ran the elevators and they were pretty. The elevator was full with a party from the floor above so they went down fast. Going down in the elevator made him feel hollower than ever inside. He felt Helena against him where they were crowded.
“If you ever get so that you don’t feel anything when you see flying fish go out of water or when an elevator drops you better turn in your suit,” he said to her.
“I feel it still,” she said. “Are those the only things you have to turn in your suit for?”
The door had opened and they were crossing the old-fashioned marble lobby crowde
d at this hour with people waiting for other people, people waiting to go to dinner, people just waiting, and Roger said, “Walk ahead and let me see you.”
“Where do I walk to?”
“Straight toward the door of the air-conditioned bar.”
He caught her at the door.
“You’re beautiful. You walk wonderfully and if I were here and saw you now for the first time I’d be in love with you.”
“If I saw you across the room I’d be in love with you.”
“If I saw you for the first time everything would turn over inside of me and I’d ache right through my chest.”
“That’s the way I feel all of the time.”
“You can’t feel that way all of the time.”
“Maybe not. But I can feel that way an awfully big part of the time.”
“Daughter, isn’t New Orleans a fine place?”
“Weren’t we lucky to come here?”
It felt very cold in the big high-ceilinged, pleasant, dark-wood panelled bar room and Helena, sitting beside Roger at a table, said, “Look,” and showed him the tiny prickles of gooseflesh on her brown arm. “You can do that to me too,” she said. “But this time it’s air conditioning.”
“It’s really cold. It feels wonderful.”
“What should we drink?”
“Should we get tight?”
“Let’s gel a little tight.”
“I’ll drink absinthe then.”
“Do you think I should?”
“Why don’t you try it. Didn’t you ever?”
“No. I was saving it to drink with you.”
“Don’t make up things.”
“It’s not made up. I truly did.”
“Daughter, don’t make up a lot of things.”
“It’s not made up. I didn’t save my maidenly state because I thought it would bore you and besides I gave you up for a while. But I did save absinthe. Truly.”
“Do you have any real absinthe?” Roger asked the bar waiter.
“It’s not supposed to be,” the waiter said. “But I have some.”
“The real Couvet Pontarlier sixty-eighth-degree? Not the Tarragova?”
“Yes, sir,” the waiter said. “I can’t bring you the bottle. It will be in an ordinary Pernod bottle.”
The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway Page 81