Small G: A Summer Idyll

by Patricia Highsmith

  At last she came, from his right, under the tree leaves that overhung the pavement, head up and with quick steps. She looked for his house number, then noticed him on the balcony and raised an arm. He did the same. She came in the iron gate, looked up again, and at the steps up to the balcony.

  “This way?” she asked.

  “Well—you could,” said Rickie, smiling.

  She climbed the cement steps that were partially covered with ivy. “Funny way to enter an apartment!”

  “Welcome!” Rickie opened his french windows, and let her precede him. She had not been here, Rickie was sure. “Yes, and this doesn’t even close. Well, it closes but it doesn’t lock.” He pushed the two sections together, without the bar across, and they parted slightly.

  Luisa was staring at a nearly life-size photo of Petey from waist up, suntanned, in a white shirt, blue-sky background, his eyes nearly closed as he gazed at the photographer—Rickie.

  “Of course I have quite a lot of Petey,” Rickie said on an apologetic note. “It’s only natural.”

  “Yes—of course.”

  “And your famous little present! But first, can I offer you something? A Dubonnet, Coca-Cola, fruit juice—tea?”

  “I can’t stay long.”

  Dismal words. “Now, who says so? Half an hour? Have you a date?”

  “Oh no.” She had opened her jacket. “I said to Renate I was going out just to walk for a few minutes. I’ve been sitting.”

  “But—sit again, and I’ll bring you—well—” Rickie fetched the yellow package. “Only if you sit.”

  Smiling, she sat on a straight chair near the table.

  “Open it. It’s so simple—for all this fuss.”

  Luisa opened the package, took out the long scarf and held it up. “Petey’s.”

  “Yes, he left it here. I thought you might like it.”

  “Of course I like it.” She pressed it to her nose, then looked at Rickie. “Thank you. Thanks for thinking of me.”

  Rickie looked at the floor. “Now I’m going to have a cool beer—and if you change your mind—” He got a small Pilsner Urquell from his fridge. A beer, anything in his hand, would make him appear more relaxed, he thought. “Why is it,” he began, addressing the girl who was in a corner of the room, looking at a smaller photo of Petey and him in Ascona.

  “Why is what?”

  Were the girl’s eyes moist? Rickie hoped not. “Why is it this Renate keeps such a tight rein on you? Is she jealous of your boyfriends?”

  “Ha! I haven’t any boyfriends—just now.”

  “But she makes you come home at a certain hour? Eat with her too?”

  “Supper? Yes—usually.” Luisa looked embarrassed by his questions. “She’s a good cook—and by then it’s just the two of us.”

  Rickie sipped his beer. “But for instance, if I asked you to have dinner with me this evening. Out somewhere. You’d telephone her—”

  “Oh sure, telephone her. But I wouldn’t tell her I was with you.” Luisa smiled, amused.

  “No.” Rickie understood that, of course. “She bosses all the girls around like that?” He was sure Renate didn’t.

  “No. But the others don’t sleep there, you know. They live with their family.”

  Rickie hesitated. “I remembered Petey told me you’d run away from home.”

  “Yes, my family, well. I don’t want to talk about that.”

  Rickie watched her brown eyes move from one object to the next, not evasively, but as if she sought something to help her collect her thoughts. “My parents quarreled. My real parents. Then there was a divorce. Then my stepfather—I was about twelve. Then—I suppose not so many quarrels but my stepfather would hit my mother and sometimes me.” Here came an attempt at a shrug and a smile. “So finally I ran off. Took a train to Zurich—last October. I even washed dishes for a while. Don’t ask me where I slept!”

  “I won’t!” Rickie managed a smile.

  “Not the railway station.” Now she smiled. “I met a girl where I was washing dishes. She was a waitress living with her mother. They let me sleep in the living room. Maybe I will have a Coke.”

  Rickie went to his fridge and returned with bottle and glass.

  “Thank you,” Again she seemed to struggle to organize what she wanted to say. “Then I got very depressed. I went to the railway station, not knowing where I should go with just a few francs. That was worse, the sight of young people sleeping—you know, some of them drugged. So I started walking—through the Langstrasse tunnel, you know?”

  Rickie knew, under the railway line of the main station, the Langstrasse was for cars and pedestrians and led to the district of Aussersihl.

  “I was having a coffee somewhere—with not enough money to eat, really, and I got to talking with a girl on the stool next to me. I asked her if she knew of any jobs—anything, like a salesgirl, I thought. She asked if I had any skills. Some people make it sound like a Doktorat. So I said I’d done nearly two years as an apprentice seamstress, and this girl said she knew of a woman in the neighborhood who employed seamstresses. And she gave me Renate’s name but not the exact address.” Luisa gave a big sigh and drank some Coke. “Anyway, I finally got to Frau Hagnauer’s house—and I thought it was the luckiest thing that ever happened to me—a job and a place to sleep.”

  Rickie could understand. “But why is she so strict—with you? Just because you’re alone?” And because on an apprentice’s salary, Luisa couldn’t afford a Zurich apartment, Rickie was thinking. It was sadism, of a sort.

  “Y-yes,” Luisa said thoughtfully, “and also she’s teaching me all the time. She wants to make me a designer and—she thinks I have talent.” She spoke with a pride and amusement combined.

  “And you? You like that idea?”

  “Yes. I like inventing clothes. It’s fun. I sketch a lot. New ideas. Renate has stacks of cheap paper everywhere in the workroom. I do as much of that as sewing!” Luisa laughed, and finished her drink with a gulp. “Now I must go.” She stood up and her smile went away, as if she imagined facing Renate.

  “Are the other girls jealous of you?”

  “No. Because I can help them in little ways. They know I’m not conceited about special attention from Renate!”

  “She’s not married, is she—Renate?”

  “She was—for about seven years. She’s divorced.” Luisa shifted. “Rickie—I have a question.”

  “Yes?”

  She curled the red-and-blue muffler gently around both hands. “It was here—wasn’t it—that Petey—in the bedroom, I mean.”

  Anger and frustration surged in Rickie, hot and confusing. “He was stabbed to death when he came out of a cinema. He took a shortcut toward home—a dark street.” With effort, Rickie kept his voice steady and low. “I can’t understand why people think—he died here, when the stabbing was reported in the newspapers, the Tages-Anzeiger, Neue Zürcher, even the street name.” Rickie felt warm in the face. “Maybe Renate said he was murdered here.”

  “Yes. She did. She said by someone Petey had brought here one night when you were working in your studio.”

  “She hates homosexuals. I don’t think I have to tell you.” Rickie was inwardly boiling. “Funny, she goes nearly every day to Jakob’s, when she could go to that little tearoom nearer her—espresso machine, brioches—such a nice clientele.”

  Luisa’s lips gave a twitch of a smile. “I know. She loves to make remarks about people.”

  “Whole stories, it would seem!”

  Luisa looked embarrassed, unsure of herself. She went to the french windows, which were partly open, and looked cautiously out, stooped to see past the tree branches.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I don’t want to bump into Willi. I’ll go out the front door, Rickie.
Thank you!”

  “A pleasure! Come again, Luisa.” He opened the apartment door for her.

  “G’bye!” She opened the front door herself and fled down the front steps.

  5

  Some three streets away from Rickie’s flat, Renate Hagnauer waited nervously for Luisa. Had she started talking with someone, given in to an offer of another coffee? Renate clumped into the kitchen—clump, scrape, clump, scrape, dragging her right foot—to check the potatoes—still in their water with the gas ring off, all right. Clump, scrape. Renate didn’t care how she clumped when she was alone, and if the couple below didn’t like it, they could lump it. The nerve of them once, complaining about a handicapped person! Renate had given them a piece of her mind, made them feel wretched, she hoped.

  Luisa deserved a strong word. Not even the courtesy to telephone to say she’d be late!

  At last Renate heard the key in the lock.

  Frowning, Renate entered the high-ceilinged hall. Coat hooks sprouted all along one wall, as if a regiment had dwelt here, though the hooks were useful for the girls during the workweek.

  “What happened to you?” Renate asked sharply.

  “Nothing. I’m sorry if I’m a little late.”

  “A little? You could have telephoned.”

  Luisa calmly hung her jacket on a book.

  “What is this, you’re getting fat? What’s under your shirt?”

  “It’s nothing. I lowered my vest because it was hot. Let me go and wash, all right?” Luisa turned right in the workroom, then entered a small room which had a toilet and washbasin, washed her hands quickly, and with the water still running pulled her shirttails out and extricated the muffler. She folded it small, and hearing nothing outside, exited, intending to make a dash for her room.

  But Renate stood in the hall. “What’s that in your hand? You bought something?”

  “Yes. Not important.”

  Renate followed her to the doorway of her room. “Well, what is it?” She was always curious about clothes.

  Luisa shrugged. “Just a scarf.” She tossed it on to her bed, and walked toward the door.

  But Renate advanced. “A long muffler? This time of year?”

  “In a sale. I liked it. Can I do something to help with dinner?”

  “Was this what you had under your shirt? What is this, you are shoplifting now?” Her accent, German-Romanian-Jewish, a potpourri of Mitteleuropa, had come to the fore. “Come on, or we ruin the dinner.”

  The meal interval was cool. Renate suspected something, but wasn’t sure what. Had Luisa met a boy? Had a beer or a Coca-Cola with him just now at Jakob’s? Or at some other place, because too many people knew Luisa at Jakob’s, and might report it to her, Renate?

  “Another little scaloppini Good for you.” Renate had got up and was bringing the iron pan in her mitted hand, lifting a tasty length of veal with a wooden spatula onto Luisa’s plate.

  “It does taste good,” replied Luisa pleasantly.

  “It’s good meat. It pays to buy the best—in everything, material, thread, machines. Don’t forget that.”

  Several minutes later, when Luisa had removed the dinner plates and set the table for dessert—Renate’s own lemon mousse—Renate said, “Your hair looks lovely. That shampoo I bought you is good, no? Makes a gloss.”

  Renate ate, savoring her mousse, her eyes fixed on Luisa. Renate fancied that Luisa had a slight crush on her, that Luisa would appreciate, enjoy, a quick embrace before bedtime, a kiss on the cheek, the pressure of her hand in both Renate’s, for instance. Renate was aware that she took the place of Luisa’s mother, to some extent, that selfish mother who was plainly wrapped up in her second husband (a good-looking bully, Renate gathered) and in her son by him, a child who would be nearly six by now. Poor Luisa had been shoved out in the cold, emotionally speaking. Just as well for her, Renate thought, and indeed had said more than once. Luisa had not replied to Renate’s compliment on her hair. She was unusually pensive this evening.

  “You didn’t meet a new boy,” Renate began on a light, teasing note, as she served them both a little more mousse. “Had a Coke with him maybe?”

  “No,” Luisa said firmly, looking Renate in the eye.

  “I don’t mind if you do, you know. Why should I mind? A nice boy. It’s these homos everywhere that are the problem! So many—you’d think AIDS didn’t exist!” She forced a titter. “They are the silly ones. Always changing partners. They have no partners, just sex en masse, you know. At the same time they flirt. They think they are handsome.” Renate glanced at Luisa who was still looking straight at her, and fitted a cigarette into her long holder, reached for her silver lighter.

  “They certainly don’t flirt with me,” Luisa said, and drank the last of her red wine. “They don’t bother me. What’re you worried about?”

  “I’m not worried!” Renate retorted at once. “Worried about homos? Hah!” Her right hand played with her silver napkin ring, turning it over and over, and realizing this, she banged the ring down on the tablecloth. She went on, aware that she had made the same speech before, but unable to stop herself: “You see, don’t you, what happened with this Petey you were infatuated with. He teased you. Oh, they love to be the center—”

  “He did not tease me,” Luisa interrupted. “Ever. Petey was very serious. And honest.”

  “You see what happened, though. Stabbed to death in the bedroom of this overaged man friend. It’s the company they keep! What else can you—”

  “He was stabbed in a street.” Luisa’s voice shook on the last word. “It was in the newspapers. It’s only a few people like you, maybe, who say—”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Told me? Now I remember Ursie and Andreas saying it. Petey went to a film that night. He took a shortcut home, a dark street.” Luisa went on, determined, sure of herself. Her words tore at the picture Renate and a few others had created, even Willi Biber, maybe, that Petey had been stabbed by a pickup of Petey’s, “I didn’t read it in the newspapers. I was so shocked to hear about him—from you. I thought you had real information—the truth, I thought. Maybe from Rickie even. But it wasn’t true. He was killed in a street.”

  “Luisa, who are you to say that I and my neighbors are wrong?” Renate rapped out the question.

  “I’m sure I could find it in the newspapers. Mid-January.”

  “Luisa, you are recently arrived here. What do you know about the neighborhood, the people who live here? Stop scowling and stop mooning over this worthless—homo boy!” Renate stirred, about to get up to signify her disgust at all the emotion. “A kept and worthless homo!”

  “Petey was not kept. He was living with his parents and going to school. He wasn’t poor.”

  “You’ve been talking to this Rickie Mark—something—or one of his entourage. I don’t want to hear about Petey again, do you understand? Not in this house!” Renate stood up.

  Luisa stood up too.

  “Let’s have coffee, Luisa. It’s silly to—”

  “No coffee. I’ll come back in a minute, help you with—”

  “Never mind the dishes. Where’re you going?”

  “Just to my room!”

  Renate stomped after her, clump, scrape, not caring. “The last episode of Hit Squad is on—in twenty minutes!”

  “I don’t care! Thank you!”

  Then Luisa appeared, carrying a summer jacket.

  “What’s all this?”

  “All what? It’s eight-forty, not even dark. I’m going out for a walk.”

  Renate had an impulse to seize her arm as the girl swept past her. Luisa was stronger, taller, and never had they come to a struggle. “Where’re you going?”

  Luisa took a breath and it sounded like a gasp. “For a walk! Do I have to say where? Nowhere!”
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br />   The apartment door slammed.

  Renate went and opened it. “You may find it bolted when you come back!”

  Luisa’s quick steps kept on, downward.

  Renate ducked back into the flat, and locked and bolted the door. How she would have loved to follow Luisa, see where she went, what kind of stranger she decided to talk with, even if—after a walk to cool her temper, she only stopped for a glass of wine somewhere. Renate’s bad foot prevented that: she was both conspicuous and slow. But as she often reminded herself, there were compensations, too—she got special privileges from strangers.

  Willi Biber. See if he was at Jakob’s, Renate thought, give him a small task: to see if Luisa was there this evening and remember whom she was talking to. Renate hesitated, however. Sometimes she disguised her voice when ringing Jakob’s, and she considered herself good at that. But too often was too often. She suspected that Andy might know that it was she on the phone, though sometimes Ursie answered, and Ursie was always in such a hurry, all she wanted to know was what or whom the caller wanted. Willi? If he was there, Ursie went and got him.

  But who in the name of God wanted to talk with the dunce except Renate? They had to meet and talk on the sly, almost, like star-crossed lovers. Her small, rather ugly face wrinkled, her eyes nearly closed, as she yielded to a few seconds of nervous amusement.

  She could have convinced Willi Biber that he’d stabbed this Petey to death in Rickie’s apartment. That balcony door was broken, Willi had so informed Renate months ago at the height of the Luisa-Petey infatuation—last December. That information hadn’t interested Renate then, but after Petey’s death, she had indulged in a little fantasy. Willi had a stout Swiss army knife. By now he looked on homos with almost as much revulsion as did Renate herself. She had convinced him that he’d served in the Foreign Legion; why not that he was the murderer of Petey too? But she had confined herself to telling Willi that she had inside information that a third man had come into the apartment, one night when Rickie had been working in his studio—invited or not by Petey, no one would ever know—and had likely made his exit via the balcony. Willi had passed this story on to a few in Jakob’s, Renate knew, maybe to his employers the Wengers at L’Eclair, where he washed baking pans and took out dustbins. That satisfied Renate, or had satisfied her. It did annoy her that Luisa had, apparently, spoken with Rickie or someone who was sure of the newspaper account.