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Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.
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NIGHT OF FIRE AND SNOW
By
ALFRED COPPEL
Night of Fire and Snow was originally published in 1957 by Simon and Schuster, Inc., New York.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
TABLE OF CONTENTS 4
DEDICATION 5
BOOK ONE — Paris-San Francisco 6
ONE 6
TWO 15
THREE 26
FOUR 40
FIVE 54
SIX 69
SEVEN 80
EIGHT 89
NINE 112
TEN 125
ELEVEN 139
TWELVE 148
THIRTEEN 176
FOURTEEN 182
FIFTEEN 200
SIXTEEN 219
SEVENTEEN 235
BOOK TWO — San Francisco 236
EIGHTEEN 236
NINETEEN 241
TWENTY 251
TWENTY-ONE 255
TWENTY-TWO 265
TWENTY-THREE 271
TWENTY-FOUR 278
REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 283
DEDICATION
For E. A. C.
BOOK ONE — Paris-San Francisco
ONE
Miguel Rinehart was in the bar with Jean Claude when the speaker system announced that the flight from Frankfurt had been delayed by weather and would arrive at Orly thirty minutes late. The female voice, made quite sexless by filtration through tubes and circuits, repeated the message in German and French and there was a multilingual murmur of disapproval from the passengers waiting in the lounge.
Jean Claude’s face was still set in lines of wounded disgust and Miguel looked away. His literary agent had some right to complain of him, but J. C. was characteristically sulking and Miguel, under the circumstances, found it exasperating.
In the mirror behind the rows of spigoted bottles, Miguel could see the reflection of the rainy field outside with its crisscrossing pattern of red, green and amber runway lights gleaming in the dusk. On the concrete ramp under the panoramic sweep of the waiting-room windows a Sabena Douglas was loading, its door standing open in the gloom. The rain fell listlessly out of a lead-colored sky. Miguel understood now why so much was made of spring weather in Paris. It was the only time you didn’t have to suffer through snow or sleet, or suffocating, muggy heat, or as now, in early September, a constant and depressing rain.
He had mentioned this to J. C. and the Frenchman had only snapped, “You are in a mood to find fault.”
The speaker system abandoned itself to a small combo version of “La Vie en Rose” and Miguel stirred restlessly. The Frankfurt flights late arrival would delay the New York airplane and that, in turn, would hold up flights destined for Chicago and Tulsa, Los Angeles, Mexico City, San Francisco and on and on like a shock traveling along axons and dendrites so that tomorrow, half a world away, passengers in Hawaii and Buenos Aires would chafe.
Once something was decided, Miguel thought, once a course of action was established, nothing should be allowed to interfere. Airplanes and ships should arrive on time, people should fulfill their functions smoothly and without distemper.
It was almost as though he needed to say to himself: I am Miguel Rinehart, aged thirty-three. American, father, son, brother and husband. I belong. In the canyons of Madison Avenue or in the dry hills of California. Somewhere, surely, please God. But where? The answer had always evaded him.
Jean Claude tasted his Pernod and set the cloudy green glass carefully on the bar. “Of course,” he said, “the job was a small one—”
Miguel realized he was still talking about the story for Réalités that lay three-quarters finished on the abandoned desk in the apartment in Montparnasse.
“Nothing,” the agent continued sadly, “to compare with an offer from Artfilm. I understand that.”
“You can get someone else to do the piece,” Miguel said curtly.
“Yes,” J. C. said.
Meaning no, Miguel thought. Meaning damn you for leaving me in a hole with an uncompleted assignment and an angry editor.
“I’ve told you fifteen times already, Jean. I’m sorry I couldn’t finish it. There just wasn’t time.” Miguel fought to keep the irritation out of his voice. Why was it always so difficult to keep your temper when you knew you were doing something wrong, he wondered. “The cable said right now. Not a week from Sunday.”
“And when the so-great Nora Ames calls, you go. This I understand, mon Michel.” The light flashed disapprovingly from Jean Claude’s black-rimmed glasses.
Miguel took the cablegram from his pocket and held it out. “Would you like to look at the signature again?”
“I know. Victor Ziegler. As your countrymen say, who kids with who?”
Miguel put the cablegram back in his pocket and said, “What have you got against Nora?”
Jean Claude spread his hands. “As an actress? Nothing.” Miguel thought: If we follow this up there will be hard words and hurt feelings. He put a five-hundred-franc note on the bar and stood up.
“Order me another martini, will you? I just remembered I have some shopping to do.”
“Something for Artfilm’s Love Goddess?”
“No,” Miguel said. “Something for my daughter. Something for Dorrie.”
The agent looked contrite. “I keep forgetting,” he said. “This foolishness has upset me.”
“Is a thousand dollars a week foolishness?”
J. C. shook his head. “You do not go back for the money.”
“I need the money. No one should know that any better than you do,” Miguel said, frowning.
J. C. sighed. “I will never understand you Americans, my friend. A man with a wealthy wife should not have to waste himself writing claptrap for Nora’s films. What is this prejudice that devours you and your countrymen?” He finished his Pernod and shook his head again. “It is not my affair, but—”
“You’re right about that, anyway,” Miguel said.
“You are determined to go back.”
“Yes.”
“Twice you have worked in Hollywood and you have disliked it more on each occasion. These are your words, not mine.”
“This will make three. Order that martini, will you?”
“You should not return so soon. Forget that you have not completed the work I procured for you. It is a small thing. But Olinder will not forgive me for this. The letters he wrote. The encouragement. And the book not done. I shall hear about it.”
“Olinder isn’t my keeper,” Miguel said. “And, for that matter, neither are you.”
The agent looked moodily at Miguel. “How have I failed you, mon ami? Tell me. How?
Miguel was forced to smile. “No one will blame you, Jean.”
“I cannot believe it. To let you leave France with so much undone. What will Olinder think of me?”
Miguel had a sudden vivid memory of Tom Eubanks sitting in the shade of the oaks that grew around the English Building at Roslyn, saying in a stricken voice,
“Holy cow, Spick. What’s that goddam old Olinder going to say when he finds out I haven’t done the term paper?”
Miguel remembered the incident well. He had written Tom’s paper for him and Olinder had recognized the style and had given both Tom and Miguel low grades. Tom had been tearfully grateful for the passing grade but Miguel had been angry enough to ask Olinder what fault he had found with the papers. And Olinder had replied that he had simply averaged out the A Miguel was going to get and the F he had been going to give Tom to get C’s for both of them, pointing out that excellence and incompetence always added up to mediocrity. Tom Eubanks, he said, was a fine boy and an excellent athlete, but he had no business signing up for an elective course in Medieval English Literature just because Miguel suggested it. “You simply spread yourself too thin, Michael. Be thankful I didn’t flunk you both for cheating.”
Karl Olinder no longer dealt in term papers, but he had never lost that ability to inspire apprehension. As senior editor for Hillyer Press, Olinder had given his old student vast latitude. But because Miguel had failed to do what was expected of him, Jean Claude feared Olinder was going to raise hell in his quiet, pedagogic way. And so do I, Miguel thought. But I’ll make it up to him.
“If you had only applied yourself,” J. C. said.
It occurred to Miguel that applying oneself while running away wasn’t as simple as it seemed. Work was said to be the anodyne for sickness of soul, but it hadn’t solved any problems this trip. Nora, he was sure, would be glad to know it.
He straightened the collar of his trenchcoat, feeling too warm in the closeness of the lounge. “Tell the barman to go easy on the vermouth, will you? One in six is plenty.”
The agent hunched his shoulders over the bar. Like a brooding stork, he pulled his neck down into the loose ring of his collar and said, “Sit down, mon ami. You have sufficient time for buying gifts.”
“I want something special for Dorrie,” Miguel said.
Jean Claude, who was childless, sighed and said, “Une petite fille—how I envy you, mon Michel. But you have been apart for so long.”
There was an implied criticism that Miguel could not ignore. “It’s been a necessary separation,” he said.
Jean Claude lifted his eyebrows. “Nora resents the child, I suppose?”
“Certainly not. Why should she?”
J. C. shrugged. “Alaine’s daughter. After all, one must suppose—”
“You’re doing too much supposing tonight,” Miguel said in a voice edged with anger.
“You are offended with me. I am sorry, mon ami.”
“I have known Nora for a long time,” Miguel said harshly. “You don’t know her at all.”
“Only by reputation.”
Miguel felt his hand tighten on the agent’s arm. It was an angry reflexive motion.
“Please, please, mon Michel. We are friends.” Jean spread his hands helplessly. “I have trouble with your language sometimes. Have I implied something wrong?”
No one, Miguel thought, could be quite as artless as Jean Claude pretended to be. But he released his grip on the agent’s arm and stepped back.
“You fail to understand me,” J. C. said. “If I am offensive you are quite right to become angry with me. A man must defend his mistress, this I know. How else would order be preserved in the world? But it is also a customary thing for a mistress to resent a man’s legitimate family. If she did not it would be a reflection on the sanctity of marriage. My own mistress despises my wife. It is the way of things. And were I fortunate enough to have a beautiful young daughter I would not consider it inappropriate that my mistress hate her as well.”
“My God,” Miguel said in exasperation. “Why don’t you stop talking?”
“I grieve,” Jean Claude said. “And I do talk too much. But I am heartsick to see you go. I think of Karl Olinder waiting for a fine book that is unfinished. And in the eye of my mind I see you sitting in Hollywood. There are palm trees and no seasons. You are wasting yourself writing adaptations of the work of your inferiors. Yes, this much more I will say. Nora is the destroyer of your talents.”
“And they say the French never drink too much,” Miguel said. “I’m going downstairs to the arcade.”
“Wait. This is a sad occasion for me. I have been an attendant to greatness. And it is dying before my eyes.” Jean Claude regarded him liquidly.
Miguel felt an amused impatience. “I’ll be back,” he said. He put his brief case on the bar. “Keep an eye on that for me.” The agent laid a protecting hand on the scuffed leather. “All right. I will sit with this stillborn child and remember better times.”
Miguel turned and walked toward the stairway. The dusk beyond the windows was thicker, tinged with blue. Humor and anger drained out of him. He felt unaccountably tired and depressed. Was there any reason, he wondered, why he should avoid telling Jean the simple truth? That he doubted his ability to write another novel, in France, in Spain, Italy, anywhere? What did the place matter? The failure to complete the book was only the last in a long line of failures stretching back into the past.
And surely there were worse ways of spending those long and unproductive years he saw ahead of him. Writing screenplays he could still utilize the skill he had acquired over the years. Other people could create now. Let them.
The sense of loss was like a cold wind on his heart.
He found himself thinking of Alaine, remembering the apartment they had lived in on Telegraph Hill. The place with the cracked china and the view of the bay and Coit Tower. He remembered how they struggled with ration stamps and how Alaine, pregnant and unwell, had worked so hard to make ends meet on a first lieutenant’s pay, without touching her own money because she knew how touchy and proud Miguel could be.
Proud, he wondered, of what, exactly? Of his family? Of surviving the crash that crippled Tom, perhaps? Or of deceiving Alaine? Of diminishing her and lying to her?
Yet now, thinking back to that August of the last year of the war, it seemed that he had meant to keep his promises. Everything was so sharp and clear from this distance.
He had spent the first few days of August 1945 in Hollywood with Nora. Pete Wallace had been scheduled to fly the provost marshal to a meeting at the Los Angeles Wing, but Miguel had traded Wallace out of the flight and gone in his place. Three days and nights with Nora. Days and nights filled with bitter arguments and hungry lovemaking that left Miguel spent and angry.
He had left Mines Field at two in the morning and there had been trouble with one of the engines so that he had had to land at M inter and stand by for an hour while Sergeant Hayes located the defect and then two hours more to Hamilton Field, bucking headwinds and turbulence with the autopilot out so that he had to hand-fly the airplane all the way. And finally a Clipper ride into San Francisco in the gray dawn. And now he had to report back to the field at ten because General Kirbee was taking an inspection team of officers north to the fighter base at Moses Lake. The general wouldn’t fly with Pete Wallace, so the trade only worked one way, and Miguel felt stupid with fatigue and in no condition to talk about a separation he wasn’t at all sure he wanted.
Before Tom’s accident, Alaine used to tell Miguel that love was uninteresting to him unless it had the flavor of tragedy. Since the accident, she didn’t say it any more. What happened to Tom lent an almost ghoulish touch to Miguel’s infidelities. He was horrified with himself and helpless to call a halt.
There was talk. Nora was only just getting a start in pictures, so there was no real publicity. But the Army people—that was something else again. The Western Air Defense Command’s Flight Section was a small and closely knit unit, and Nora’s defection had caused a stir among the officers and their wives. It was natural they should gossip about Miguel and Nora Eubanks. God knew, Miguel thought, they had reason.
The sun slanting through the high window of the alcove touched Alaine’s hair. Miguel found himself watching her and thinking tiredly that, actually, she was very beautiful.
Which was strange, because he had ceased to think of her in just that way, and yet now, listening to her tell him that their marriage was all but over, he could only think that she was beautiful.
He was weary and it was hard to think clearly. His rumpled uniform felt tight and uncomfortable, clinging like the hours of flight to his body.
“It isn’t working out for us,” Alaine said quietly. Her blunt, strong hands were closed around a half-filled coffee cup, as though she were seeking stability from the warm prosaic touch of the cheap china. In a similar situation, he thought, Nora’s hands would be extended, taut and nervous, over the table, hungrily seeking his.
He rubbed his wrist numbly with his fingertips and said something about the baby.
Alaine’s eyes lit up with scorn and she said, “You can’t really think I’d hold you that way, Mike.”
It made him feel ashamed, and in a way, unneeded. It reminded him that Alaine didn’t have to live this way, in an overpriced two-room walk-up with dusty curtains.
He watched her get up and move to the range to get him more coffee. It was like her to interrupt a crisis like this with a homely, almost banal touch.
She had once said to him, “I have all the bourgeois virtues. I read House and Garden and look at the pictures and say, that’s what I want out of life.”
That had been in the beginning, only days after their meeting, and he had been so sure that this girl, who reminded him so much of Allie Wylie—who even almost had the same name—was the answer to loneliness. It had seemed so clear-cut and simple that he had imagined that was what falling in love at twenty-three meant as opposed to the painful confusion of falling in love with Allie Wylie at sixteen.
Where did I go wrong, he wondered?
He waited in silence as she poured the dark, bitter coffee he liked into the cup. Finally he said, “Do we have to talk about it now? I have to be at the field by ten. You can’t decide something like this in a morning.”
It was a procrastination and not a very adroit one but he didn’t feel alert enough to do better.
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