by Irwin Shaw
When I got back to the hotel, she was lying on the bed, propped up against the pillows, staring at the paintings. She was crying. Without saying anything, she motioned for me to come over to her and pulled me down beside her and kissed me.
After a while, she said, “I’m a bitch.”
“Oh, come on, now,” I said.
She pulled away from me and sat up. “I have to tell you why I came over here. To Italy.”
“I’m delighted you came,” I said. “Let’s leave it at that. And I don’t want to hear why you think you’re a bitch.”
“I’m pregnant,” she said. “By you. I ran out of the pill the day I met you. You don’t have to believe me if you don’t want to.”
“I believe you,” I said.
“I was all ready to have an abortion,” she said, “when Lorimer called me.”
“I’m glad he did.”
“I’ve always said I didn’t want children,” she said. “But when David told me where you were …I suddenly realized I’d been fooling myself. About that. And about a lot of other things, too. I’ve quit my job. No more government for me. I was destroying myself in Washington. Along with just about everybody else I knew there. I had a cold-blooded lawyer’s proposition I was going to put to you. …”
“What was that?”
“I was going to ask you to marry me,” she said.
“That’s not so awfully cold-blooded,” I said.
“I was going to tell you we could get a divorce after the baby was born. I didn’t want an illegitimate child. Big, hotshot, hard-boiled, liberated woman that I am, the scourge of the Department of Justice.” She laughed miserably. “And I was ready to behave just like a brainless, marshmallowy little flirt just out of finishing school. But then, after the week we’ve had …” She gestured helplessly. “You’ve been so good. The pictures were the final touch. I’ll handle it by myself.”
I took a deep breath. “I have a better idea,” I said. “Why don’t we get married and have the baby and not get divorced?” As I said it I knew I was wrong to have done so. There were shadows hanging over me, shadows that had to be dissipated before I could marry anyone. Chief among the shadows was that of Pat. I had almost asked her to marry me, too, and that had come to nothing. I had tried to forget her, but had I? More often than I liked to admit I dreamed about her. Even in bed, with Evelyn sleeping beside me, I had dreamed about her.
It was with relief that I heard Evelyn say, “Not so fast. Not so fast. First of all, I might be lying …”
“About what?”
“About who’s the father of the child, for instance.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Women do, you know.”
“Are you lying?”
“No.”
“That’s good enough for me,” I said.
“Even so,” she said, shaking her head, “not so fast. I want no repenting in leisure in my house. No long faces of regret year after year. Save your spontaneous gestures of generosity for lesser events. Think it over for a while. Let’s both think everything over for a while. Let’s both be sure we know what we’re doing. Let’s give ourselves a couple of weeks.”
“But you said …” Her sudden resistance made me irrationally stubborn. “The reason you came to Italy …”
“I know what I said. I know the reason I came to Italy. It’s no longer operative. That’s a word that’s very popular in Washington these days.”
“Why is it no longer operative?”
“Because I’ve changed,” Evelyn said. “You were a stranger I was going to use. You’re not a stranger any longer and I can’t use you.”
“What am I now?”
She laughed, a little sad laugh. “I’ll tell you another time.” She stood up. “Let’s go and have a drink,” she said. “I need one.”
“Remember what you told me the first night in Washington?” Evelyn was saying. We were walking down the Via Condotti, peering idly into the windows. Since the scene in the room in the hotel, we had avoided the subject of marriage. We behaved as though the conversation had never taken place. Or almost as if it hadn’t. We were more tender with each other than before, gentler. Our lovemaking had an edge of sorrow to it.
“What did I tell you in Washington?”
“That you were a simple country boy from an enormously wealthy family.”
I nodded. “Did you believe it?”
“No.”
“You were right.”
She smiled. “Remember,” she said, “I’m a trained lawyer. Just what do you do? As your possible future wife I suppose I ought to know, don’t you think?”
“Worry not,” I said. “I make enough to support you.” Without reflecting on it, I kept up the pretense that I was still committed to what I had said her. I knew it was foolish, unrealistic, but it was the easiest path to follow. At least for the moment.
“I’m not worrying about anybody supporting me,” she said. “I have money of my own, and wherever we go I can always make a living. Lawyers hardly starve in America.”
“Why America? What’s wrong with living in Europe?”
She shook her head. “Europe’s not for me. I like to come on holidays and all that, but not permanently.” She looked at me shrewdly. “Is there a reason you don’t want to go back?”
“No.”
“You’re lying to me.” She stopped walking.
“Maybe,” I admitted. A man coming out of a leather shop bumped into me and said, “Scusi.”
“Would that be a good way to start a marriage?”
“I’m not asking you any questions.”
“Ask,” she said.
“I’d rather not.”
“I have a nice small house near the bay in Sag Harbor,” she said. “My parents left it to me. I like it there. I could set up a law practice and make a living without running myself into the ground. Whatever your business is, could you handle it living there?”
“Maybe,” I said.
“If I said that the only place I would live after we got married was there, would you still want to marry me?”
“Are you saying that?”
“I am,” she said. It was the first time since she had appeared on the terrace at the hotel in Porto Ercole that the Washington tone had come into her voice. Plainly, she was going to be no man’s meek little wife. We were walking again and I was silent for twenty yards. “Are you going to answer me?”
“Not right now,” I said.
“When?”
“Tonight, in a few days, in a month …” She was making me think about America and I was angry with her for it. Angelo Quinn’s paintings back in the hotel room were having their effect on me. Ever since I had first seen them, with their harsh and melancholy statement about my native country, I had been fighting the realization that one day I would have to go back. Some people, I had found out, are born to be aliens, luxuriate in being aliens. Not I. That was one thing the paintings had proved to me. Hell, I had thought, I’ll never learn another language. Not even one other language. Perhaps it had been an accident that I had gone into Bonelli’s gallery that day and perhaps it had been an accident that the paintings had been as good as they were, but paintings or no paintings, in the long run, I now knew, whether it was with Evelyn or without her, I would go back. I was sure Fabian would disapprove. I could hear his arguments in advance. “Good God, man, you’ll wind up with a bullet in your head.” But I couldn’t spend my life seeking Miles Fabian’s approval.
“I’m not saying I won’t live in America,” I said. “In your house in Sag Harbor, if you want. But, everything else being equal, if I told you that there are reasons that I don’t want to explain for my preferring to live abroad, reasons I might never tell you, would you still want to marry me?”
“I don’t like to accept people on faith,” she said. “Even you. I don’t have all that much faith.”
“Now I’m the one that’s asking the question. Would you still want to marry me?”
“When?” I asked.
“Tonight, in a few days, in a month …”
We walked in silence again. Crossing the street we were nearly run over by a large Mercedes, speeding to catch a light. Suddenly, I had had enough of Rome.
“By the way,” Evelyn said, “who’s Pat?”
“How do you know anything about Pat?”
“I know that you know a girl called Pat.”
“How do you know it’s a girl?” I had been taken by surprise and stalled for time. I had never mentioned Pat to Evelyn. “It’s a man’s name.”
“Not the way you said it,” Evelyn said.
“When did I say it?”
“Twice. Last night in your sleep. And the way you said it, it couldn’t be a man.”
“Oh.” I had stopped walking.
“Uh-huh. Oh.”
“It’s a girl I know. Knew,” I corrected myself.
“You sounded as if you knew her very well.”
“Did I?”
“Yes.”
“I did.”
“Were you in love with her?”
“I thought so. Some of the time.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“Three years ago.”
“But you still call out to her in your sleep.”
“If you say so,” I said.
“Do you still love her?” She smiled. “Some of the time?”
I waited a long time before answering. “I don’t know,” I said.
“Don’t you think you’d better see her and find out?”
“Yes,” I said.
23
THE TRIP BACK TO PORTO Ercole the next morning was a quiet one. Neither of us spoke much. I was busy with my own thoughts and I suppose Evelyn was busy with hers. She sat far over on her side of the car, her hands in her lap, her face composed and grave. Pat, unmentioned and thousands of miles away in snowbound Vermont, was a dark presence in the sunny Italian morning. I had told Evelyn I would go and see her. “The sooner the better,” Evelyn had said. I would have to call Fabian and tell him I was arriving in New York. By way of New England.
When we got to the Pellicano, they told me that Quadrocelli had been in looking for me the night before. I asked the girl at the desk to get him for me on the phone. “Welcome home,” he said, when the connection was made. “Did you enjoy Rome?”
“Moderately,” I said.
“You are becoming blasé.” He laughed. He did not sound like a man whose plant had recently been sabotaged. “It is a beautiful morning,” he said. “I thought today would be nice for the trip to Genuttri. The sea is gentle. Would you like to go?”
“I have to ask my friend.” Evelyn was standing beside me at the desk. “He wants to take us for a ride on his boat. Do you want to go?”
“Why not?” Evelyn said.
“We’d be delighted,” I said into the phone.
“Fine. My wife will pack us a picnic hamper. She will not accompany us. She despises boats. She has transmitted this trait to her daughters, alas.” His voice was cheerful as he described the nonadmiration for life at sea of the women of his family. “I must always be on the lookout for other companionship. Do you know where the Yacht Club is in the harbor?”
“Yes.”
“Can you be there in an hour?”
“Whenever you say.”
“An hour. I will be there getting the boat ready. Bring sweaters. It can get cold …”
“By the way, how bad was the damage at the plant?” I asked.
“Normally bad,” he said. “For Italy. Do you know anybody who wants to buy a highly up-to-date, slowly failing printing establishment?”
“No,” I said.
“Neither do I.” He was laughing merrily as he hung up.
The idea of sailing to the island on the horizon attracted me. Not so much for the cruise itself as for the fact that for a full afternoon Evelyn and I would not be alone together. I decided to invite Quadrocelli and his wife to dinner with us. That would take care of the evening, too.
Evelyn went up to our room to change for the outing and I put in a call for Fabian. While waiting for the call to come through, I read the morning’s Rome Daily American. In a column of social notes, there was an item about David Lorimer. He was being transferred to Washington. A farewell party was being arranged in his honor. I threw the paper away. I didn’t want Evelyn to read it.
“Holy God, man,” Fabian said, when I finally reached him. “Do you know what time it is?”
“Noon.”
“In Italy,” Fabian complained. “It’s six o’clock in the morning here. What civilized human being wakes up a friend at six in the morning?”
“Sorry about that,” I said. “I just didn’t want to make you wait for the good news.”
“What good news?” His voice was suspicious.
“I’m coming back to the States.”
“What’s so good about that?”
“I’ll tell you when I see you. Private business. Can you hear me? This connection is lousy.”
“I can hear you,” he said. “All too well.”
“The real reason I’m calling is to find out where you want me to leave the car.”
“Why don’t you wait where you are and I’ll come over and we can discuss this calmly.”
“I can’t wait,” I said. “And I’m calm right now.”
“You can’t wait.” I could hear him sigh at the other end of the wire. “All right—can you drive the car to Paris? Tell the concierge at the Plaza-Athénée to put it in a garage for me. I have some business to look into in Paris.”
He could have said someplace more convenient—like Fiumicino. He was a man who had some business to look into everywhere—Rome, Milan, Nice, Brussels, Geneva, Helsinki. He was being purposely inconvenient to discipline me. But I was in no mood to argue with him.
“Okay,” I said. “Paris it will be.”
“You know you’ve ruined my day, don’t you?”
“There’ll be other days,” I said pleasantly.
When we drove down to the harbor and parked the car, I could see Quadrocelli coiling rope on the deck of his little white cabin cruiser, tied fore and aft to the dock of the Yacht Club. Most of the other boats in the harbor were still fitted out with their winter tarpaulins and the dock was deserted except for him.
“Sailing, sailing, over the bounding main,” Evelyn sang as we walked toward the dock. She had made me stop at a pharmacy and buy some Dramamine. I had the feeling she shared Mrs. Quadrocelli’s low opinion of the sea. “Are you sure you’re not going to drown me when you get me out on the water?” she said. “Like what’s-his-name in An American Tragedy when he finds out Shelley Winters is pregnant.”
“Montgomery Clift,” I said. “I’m not Montgomery Clift and you’re not Shelley Winters. And the picture wasn’t called An American Tragedy. It was A Place in the Sun.”
“I just said it for laughs.” She smiled sweetly at me.
“Some laughs.” But I smiled back. It wasn’t much of a joke, but it was a joke. At least it was a sign she was ready to make an effort not to be gloomy for the rest of our time in Europe. The long haul through France would have been hard to take if she just sat in her corner of the car, silent and withdrawn, as she had done on the trip that morning from Rome. After the phone call to Fabian I had told her I had to drive to Paris and asked her if she wanted to come along.
“Do you want me to?” she said.
“I want you to.”
“Then so do I,” she had said flatly.
Quadrocelli saw us as we approached the dock and jumped off the boat spryly and hurried to meet us, robust and nautical in his shapeless corduroys and bulky blue seaman’s sweater. “Come aboard, come aboard,” he said, bending to kiss Evelyn’s hand, then shaking mine heartily. “Everything is ready. I have arranged all. The sea, as you notice, is calm as a lake and the well-advertise
d blue. The picnic basket is secured. Cold chicken, hard-boiled eggs, cheese, fruit, wine. Adequate nourishment for seagoing appetites …”
We were about twenty yards away from the boat when it blew up. Bits and pieces of wood and glass and wire flew around us as we all dove to the pavement. Then everything became deadly quiet. Quadrocelli stood up slowly and stared at his boat. The stern line had been torn away and the stern was drifting at an odd angle from the dock, as though the boat had been broken in two just aft of the helm.
“Are you all right?” I asked Evelyn.
“I think so,” she said in a small voice. “How about you?”
“Okay,” I said. I stood up and put my arm around her. “Giuliano …” I began.
He did not look at me. He kept staring at his boat. “Fascisti,” he whispered. “Miserable Fascisti.” People were now streaming out of the buildings across the wide quay and we were surrounded by a crowd of citizens, all talking at once, asking questions. Quadrocelli ignored them. “Take me home, please,” he said to me quietly. “I do not believe I trust myself to drive. I want to go home.”
We shouldered our way through the crowd to our car. Quadrocelli never looked back at his pretty little boat, which was sinking slowly now into the oily waters of the harbor.
In the car, he began to shiver. Violently, uncontrollably. Under his tan, his face took on a sickly pallor. “They could have killed you, too,” he said, his teeth chattering. “If you had arrived two minutes earlier. Forgive me. Forgive all of us. Dolce Italia. Paradise for tourists.” He laughed eerily.
When we reached his house, he wouldn’t let us go in with him, or even get out of the car. “Please,” he said, “I must have a discussion with my wife. I do not wish to be rude, but we must be alone.”
We watched him walk slowly, looking old, across the driveway and to the door of his house. “Oh, the poor man,” was all that Evelyn said.
We drove back to our hotel. We didn’t say anything about what had happened to anyone. They would find out soon enough. We each had a brandy at the bar. Two dead, I thought, one in New York, one in Switzerland and one near miss in Italy. Evelyn’s hand was steady as she picked up her glass. Mine wasn’t. “To sunny Italy,” Evelyn said. “O sole mio. Time to go, I’d say. Wouldn’t you?”