Night of Fire and Snow

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Night of Fire and Snow Page 8

by Alfred Coppel


  “It rained all the time we were in Paris,” the man said. “Every living day, it rained. So we cleared out. Jumped into the car and took off, just like we do at home.”

  He accepted a cigar from his audience and paused to light it. “Drove through the château country. Never climbed so many damn steps in my life. Then we had a quick look at the Riviera. Kitten, here, went to Grasse, of course. Bought a couple of quarts of perfume. Lot cheaper there than at home, you know. And then—this is the best part—on the way to see that grotto down near Naples, see, we stop off to take a look at Pompeii—“ He chuckled self-consciously. “Some little kids came up to Kitten, here, with some souvenirs—you know the kind I mean—“ He glanced at his wife for permission to go on.

  “Go on and tell him, Freddie,” Kitten said, tasting her highball. “You’ve been telling the story all over Europe. Why stop now?”

  “Well,” Fred said, moving closer to his listener and lowering his voice. “These little shavers come right up to Kitten and say, ‘Cock and balls, signora? Veree good luck for lady.’ I tell you, Kitten damn near died. They really had some, too. Little ones made out of baked clay with MADE IN ITALY stamped on them. I bought some and sent them to the guys at the office for a joke. Without putting my name on the packages, of course.”

  “I hope,” Kitten declared, “that’s the last time you tell that story. It wouldn’t go over so big in Pomona.”

  “Don’t worry,” Fred said. “Don’t worry.”

  The woman stood up and announced that she was going to powder her nose. “I can’t bear that horrid little cell on the plane.”

  The two men watched her go, swinging her girdled hips.

  Miguel let his imagination go on Fred and Kitten’s trip through Europe. Probably the aggressively American car, bulky on the narrow French roads, had more than managed to hold its own against those bullies of the Routes Nationales, the shrill-voiced Citroëns.

  Miguel remembered the hair-raising élan with which every Light Fifteen had picked up the challenge of the old TA MG he and Alaine had bought in London with his first royalty check from Hillyer Press on The Canceled Skies. There had been something about the cocky gait of that little red two-seater that enraged the drivers of the ugly, yellow-wheeled Citroëns.

  And Alaine, though she must have been seriously frightened, had been quite good about the endless series of impromptu road races that made up their journey across France from Calais to Nice.

  Miguel remembered other things, as well, about that spring of 1947. Like a dark and windy night in Avignon, wandering through the confined, walled town, with no particular destination in mind and suddenly finding themselves in the square before the Palace of the Popes. Like stepping back in time six hundred years, he remembered.

  Floodlights concealed behind the wind-whipped foliage had illuminated the stark fa9ade of the ancient building, and the dancing shadows were like the ghosts of all the lost penitents who had died behind those forbidding fortress walls.

  They had stopped at the edge of the vast, empty square, both moved by the eerie grandeur of the scene. Alaine’s hand had sought his as the wind moaned and sighed among the crenels high above them.

  They had walked slowly up the stone steps worn smooth by centuries and they had stood silently before the blind oaken doors, conscious of the weight of years. And that night, in their brass bed in the Hotel du Midi, they had clung together as if to assure themselves that love, and life itself, for that matter, was not a fleeting and impermanent thing in the ponderous chaos of time.

  It had been that night that had led him to write his second book, The Exile—the book Olinder said would win him a place on the list of the good, and perhaps in time, better than just good, novelists of the post-war years.

  Then he could remember a night in London, a night he had taken Alaine to Casa Pepe in Soho.

  Pepe, who made a great thing out of kissing all the pretty women who came into his place, had done Alaine the honor and then had challenged Miguel to a Peruvian wine-drinking contest with one of those spigoted contraptions that allowed the wine to pour a thin jet into the mouth from arm’s distance. Miguel had done well enough to aim most of the wine into his mouth only to find Pepe pouring his onto his forehead and letting it run down over his nose and into his mouth in a genuine tour de force.

  But the thing that had remained most clear in his memory was the Hindu girl, one of the diners, in caste mark and sari, who had begun to sing “La Paloma” in a soft and reedlike voice. She had sung without accompaniment, and the restaurant had fallen completely still and even the kitchen help had come out into the dining room to listen. And finally, when she had finished the song, everyone had shouted, “Olé!” and “Bravíssima!”

  And in the taxi, on the way back to their hotel, Allie had put her head on Miguel’s shoulder and said, “I’ve never been happier.”

  But the very next day, Becky’s cable arrived and they had to take the next plane for home, because Raoul was dying.

  Miguel crushed his cigarette into the ash tray thoughtfully. There were so many things like that that time could not dull or diminish. Only what came after was bad. The series of false starts on the third book and then when it was done at last, the disappointing reviews and small sales so that when the first of the picture jobs, collaborating with Frank Steinmetz on the screen version of The Canceled Skies came up, there was no refusing it. And so he had gone south to Hollywood once, and then again, each time waiting for the inevitable meeting with Nora.

  On the way back to the airplane, Miguel stopped at the airport communications desk and asked the attendant, a pretty girl in a green uniform, if there were any messages for him. She handed him two cables.

  The first was from Karl Olinder. TOMORROW TWELVE THIRTY MY OFFICE DONT MAKE ANY LUNCH DATES ANXIOUS TO SEE THE NEW SCRIPT GLAD YOURE COMING HOME.

  So Karl didn’t know about the job Ziegler was giving him with Artfilm. He had cabled Nora to break the news to Karl directly, or to tell Magnussen and let the agent do it. She either had not done as he asked, or she had relied on Magnussen and Magnussen had been reluctant to tell Karl, thinking that he might do something to prevent Miguel’s taking the job, at least until the promised book was delivered to Hillyer Press. One thing was very certain. Olinder wasn’t going to be happy about Miguel going out to the Coast to work on what he called “canned clap.” Miguel sighed and put the cable in his pocket.

  The second cable was from Nora and shorter, WILL MEET PLANE LOVE YOU DARLING.

  The attendant at the gate took his boarding pass and he walked head down against the wind back to the Constellation. The stewardess had put out pillows and blankets for the flight across the Atlantic. Miguel searched in his brief case for the bottle of Luminal he always carried while traveling and cursed slightly under his breath when he discovered he had only one capsule left. That was the trouble with a sudden trip. You always went half-prepared. He decided to save the capsule until a bit later. He had a feeling that he was going to need a night’s rest.

  As the airliner taxied out to the end of the runway, Miguel could see peat fires burning in the nearby hills. They grew dim or bright at the whim of the wind and they reminded him of the fires that used to bum at night on Frenchman’s Beach.

  The Villa people would gather around them and sing their songs, “Alouette” and “Allons, Mes Jolis Boeufs,” and the one he had always favored because he had memorized the words and could sing along with them: “Savez-vous planter les choux, à la mode, à la mode, Savez-vous planter les choux, à la mode de chez-nous?”

  He used to sit back in the shadows, sometimes with Tom and sometimes alone, and sing softly. The pleasure he derived from this sort of thing was something Tom was always at a loss to understand, nor could Miguel explain it to him.

  Ollie, Tom used to say, had learned some French songs when he was in France with the AEF that made a hell of a lot more sense than the sort of kid tunes the Villa Frenchies sang.

  The strange th
ing about his early relationship with Tom, Miguel thought, watching the peat fires, was that in spite of the fact that there was so little similarity between them, they had always been together, each drawing something that was lacking in his own make-up from the other.

  Tom complained about the waste of time sitting near the Frenchie beach and listening, but he was generally there. And Miguel often found himself bored by the endless series of physical feats demanded by Tom: racing across the river, lifting great stones, swinging like Tarzan from ropes hung in the madronas—but he almost always went along, wearying himself with senseless gymnastics because Tom got such pleasure out of beating him.

  It lasted a long time, Miguel mused. Through prep school and even after Tom had gone south to USC and Miguel to Stanford, they had held together as friends, Miguel priming Tom’s mind with facts that could be had from books and Tom reciprocating with what he liked to call “know-how I picked up at old Hardknocks U.” Tom never developed a taste for Mozart or Marlowe and Miguel never learned to care for the program at the Kearney Burlesque, but both learned that each had its place.

  Miguel closed his eyes as the pilots began their engine run-ups. The airplane bucked and strained to be free. After what seemed a long time, it squared away with the strip and Miguel could see the amber runway lights flashing past the window and feel the seat pressing against his back as the big Constellation lifted into the dark air.

  On the last weekend of that summer of 1932 Miguel walked down to the willow glade to meet the others. Billy Alberg and Sandy were waiting for him, but no Tom.

  Essie had invited some friends to Del Rio for the weekend and Miguel sat down and said disgustedly, ‘The house is full of girls. I even have to sleep on the sundeck.”

  Billy and Sandy were sympathetic.

  “They re all over the place,” Miguel said, digging his heel into the sandy ground. “Giggling and acting silly.”

  “Girls are pretty stupid, all right,” Sandy said stoutly.

  A humid heat rose from the river. Miguel could feel the cloying warmth of it on his skin. It made the sweat start and trickle down his spine. He seemed to have forgotten what cold weather felt like. It seemed to him that all this summer had been breath-stopping heat and the buzz of insects and the slow, somehow sensual tempo of the river.

  He thought of the girls Essie had invited to the house. Becky, of course. And Ruth Snavely, who had arms like a man and wore no make-up. Sarah and Emily Burgoyne who sounded like parakeets when they laughed, and they laughed all the time. Patches was full of their frilly clothes and their wet bathing suits and they kept hiding and dressing and undressing all over the place so that a person had no place to go. Even Concha was so busy making them sandwiches and serving soft drinks that she had no time for anything else. Girls, Miguel thought resentfully.

  “What time is old Tom coming?” he asked.

  Billy shrugged. “Ought to be here by now.”

  “Well,” Sandy said, “I wish he’d get off the dime.”

  They settled down to wait, throwing rocks into the river, aiming at a drifting stick of wood.

  “Hey, did you guys see that? I hit it,” Billy yelled.

  “Missed it a mile,” Miguel said.

  They fell to talking about the end of summer.

  “I hate to think of school again,” Sandy said.

  Miguel thought about returning to Berkeley and his spirits sank even lower. He thought of the dark polished wood of the Ampico, and the metronome ticking, and the dust motes dancing in the slanting rays of the sun coming through the windows while outside the neighborhood children played. It was going to be terrible to go back to that confining life again after this summer. He remembered the portrait of Don Miguel de Castaña y Lopez. He was named for Don Miguel, the Spanish grandee ancestor of Maria’s. He glanced covertly at Billy and Sandy. He was certainly glad they didn’t know his full name. Spick was bad enough, but Miguel José Maria de Castaña Rinehart—

  Miguel sighed gloomily. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad living as a Spaniard in Spain, or even in Mexico. But in Berkeley, California, U.S.A., it was terrible. It would be even worse after this summer’s taste of freedom. He found himself hating the dark, shadowy figure in the portrait and wishing something would happen to break the pattern of life in town into about-a million pieces so that he could live just the way the rest of the kids lived.

  “Hey, you guys,” he said half-heartedly. “My dad bought a boat.”

  “What kind of a boat?” Sandy wanted to know.

  “I haven’t seen her.”

  Billy Alberg said, “My mom thinks boats are dangerous.”

  “Not this one,” Miguel declared, reassured by their interest. “My dad knows about boats. It’s more like a ship, anyway.”

  “A ship,” Sandy said, impressed.

  “Well, not like an ocean liner or anything like that. But she’s fifty feet long and has bunks and everything.”

  “Holy cow, Rinehart,” Sandy said enviously. “That sounds like the cat’s meow.”

  Billy Alberg shrugged indifferently. “That’s not any ship.”

  “Well,” Miguel said testily. “What would you call it? A skiff?” He turned back to Sandy, thinking that he had always liked Sand a lot better than Billy, anyway. “She’s called the Nereid. She has a new diesel motor. Dad’s going to keep her at the St. Francis Yacht Club. Maybe we could all go on her some Sunday this fall. My dad would let us.”

  Sandy Johnson, whose situation in life had already conditioned him to accepting such offers graciously, said promptly, “That would be swell, Spick. We could have a terrific time, I’ll bet.”

  “I’ll mention it to my dad,” Miguel said, feeling much better. It pleased him to be able to say this because Billy had asked him about Raoul early in the summer and when Miguel had explained that Raoul and Maria were “separated” Billy had acted as though there were something disgraceful about it.

  The subject of the boat, however, was rapidly played out, since Miguel actually knew very little about it. They subsided into torpid silence.

  “Junior Freeborne told me he heard about a fellow who died from eating poison oak,” Miguel said irrelevantly. Junior Freeborne, though considered rather effeminate and something of a mama’s boy, was four years older than they and acknowledged to be pretty intelligent. His observations were sometimes worthy of attention.

  “Holy cow,” Sandy said. “Wouldn’t that be a way to torture some guy? Make him eat a whole lot of poison oak so he’d get all raw and swollen up inside and die?”

  Miguel sat in silence, thinking about someone eating poison oak and dying. He could imagine a corpse floating in the blood-warm river, its eyes staring straight up at the sun without blinking while the chiggers burrowed into the putty-like flesh. The thought made him a little sick.

  The subject of exchanging visits during the winter came up. The Albergs lived in Piedmont—not too far from the Berkeley line and Maria’s house. Sandy’s folks lived in San Francisco, and Tom’s in Oakland. Miguel knew, with a precocious intuition, that these visits would never occur. Possibly old Tom and he would get together, but this continuous exchange of visits that Sandy and Billy were talking about wouldn’t come to anything.

  “You’d like my dad’s place, Spick,” Sandy said. “He has a studio. You know those Dairy Dell milk ads you always see in magazines? The ones with Sister Bossy the Cow in them? He draws those. I bet he’d even draw you, if I asked him. Maybe put you in one of the ads,” he finished generously.

  “That would be keen,” Miguel said.

  Sandy sighed. “Why does summer have to end, anyway?”

  “It can’t always be summer,” Miguel said.

  “I know,” Sandy said mournfully.

  “What time is it?” Billy asked.

  “I don’t know,” Sandy said. “Maybe around noon.”

  “Wonder what’s holding old Tom up,” Billy said.

  “Tom said he was going to go off the high platform at the dam to
day,” Miguel said.

  “Haw. I want to see that,” Billy declared. “Tom talks big.”

  “He’s pretty good,” Sandy said. “I just wish I could swim like he does.”

  “I’m getting tired of waiting.” Billy got to his feet and brushed the dead willow leaves from his trunks.

  “Let’s walk up to the road,” Sandy suggested. “We can meet him there.”

  They started up the trail Indian file. Sandy scratched industriously at his crotch. “I got bathing suit itch,” he said. “Bad.”

  “Indian soap is good for that,” Billy Alberg said.

  For some reason he could not fathom, Miguel’s spirits were sinking again. He felt irritable and he could not rid himself of the thought that this was the end of summer.

  Sandy and Billy began to sing “Show Me the Way to Go Home.” They sang very badly and Billy didn’t know all the words. Miguel was glad when they reached the road and stopped.

  Tom was walking down the shoulder, scuffing his feet and raising a dust cloud in the still air.

  “About time, Eubanks,” Billy said.

  “We were packing,” Tom declared. “We re leaving tonight.”

  Miguel said incredulously, “Tonight?”

  “Sure.” Tommy was different, somehow. Not so friendly. As though he were already apart from the rest of them—on his way home. “Ollie wants to get going before all the Sunday drivers get on the road.” He kicked at a rock and sent it bounding down the gravel road.

  Miguel looked resentfully at him. He actually seemed glad to be going.

  “We go through Santa Rosa. That’s quicker than the Napa way.”

  “My mom always goes through Calistoga,” Sandy said. “We get to see the geysers.”

  Tom nudged Miguel and said to Sandy, “Say, Johnson, tell me how come you don’t have a place of your own up here like everybody else. Don’t you get tired of having to stay at Billy’s all the time, like a poor relation or something?”

 

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