The Puzzleheaded Girl

by Christina Stead

  Lydia began laughing maliciously, “You see, if it’s chastity that worries you, we’re all problem women.”

  “Your Aunt Diana is quite a woman, she has strength of character. And what about you, does she say you’re degenerate too?” said the sour little man.

  “Oh, no. She once told me she’d leave me her money if I agreed to live apart from Mother. I didn’t, so I suppose she hates me now.”

  “How much money has she?”

  “How much can she have? She earned it all herself. You don’t make money by earning. I have money myself, but she doesn’t know; it’s a trust fund.”

  “Ah, that accounts for it all,” he said, leaning back and speaking coolly. “You’ve a father fixation and identification with the most forcible personality in your family, who happens to be unmarried. You rely on your money for defence and fulfilment, and for vengeance; just as she does. It’s castration by money.”

  “You mean I’m a miser,” she said with a tender laugh. “Oh, perhaps I am. At least, you see, I must marry someone who can give me what I want. Why should I spoil my life? I don’t want to get involved and then give some man twenty thousand dollars because I’m involved as a woman.”

  “You’ll never get married; you’ll just drift on and on. And will you get something from your mother?”

  “Oh, she hasn’t a red cent,” she said, laughing again. “She spent everything my father left. She didn’t know. She just kept giving everyone cheques. Then she just had enough to go to college and learn pharmacy.”

  He kept teasing her in his disagreeable way; but he accompanied her home and warned her again about losing him. The woman at the desk smiled at him, seeing a sweet-faced youth with good manners, and congratulated Lydia on her choice, with a gentle smile.

  Lydia ran upstairs to Tamara’s room and gossiped with her for a while. Tamara told her all her troubles; how their life would be a life of struggle and poverty; could their affection hold out under the wife’s attacks? “Living in a hotel room as I’ve done for years and just going to the office and coming back to headaches, is a miserable inhuman life.”

  “But you love each other,” cried Lydia.

  “Oh, love—yes, I can live with him: that’s the principal thing.”

  “What a compromise, Tamara!” said Lydia, bursting out laughing, but embracing her friend and kissing her on both cheeks, bouncing about her with kisses, puppyishly. She giggled and lay down on the bed. “You’re a mother to me, Tamara. Oh, I miss dear darling Mommy. What a nuisance I am to her. I’m the plague of her life. She has ruined me, I think. What man will give me the love and patience and care she gives me? But Tamara—I must have love! I must love, to marry I must love. Supposing Diana dies and leaves me all or some of her money? Of course, she won’t; that’s ridiculous! She thinks I’m mad. But supposing she does. If I gave up my father’s name and took hers, she would. If I did, I would have no need to marry till I love, then. I want a man that’s perfect, Tamara—Mother said my father was absolutely perfect. No substitutes, no compromises. He must adore me. Why shouldn’t I have everything? I can get married whenever I want to—to a hundred different men. That puts me off. It’s like sitting in a bus—a hundred different passengers.” She shrieked with laughter. “How boring! No, I prefer to wait.”

  Tamara had a headache, and Lydia went away. Shifting some of the bundles of clothing and other things, she went to bed. She fell asleep and, as usual, awakened after only an hour or two. Everything was quiet; no noise had awakened her. Her heart beat hard. She impatiently unbraided her two long thick plaits, thinking that they were hard to lie on; and then, feeling hot in her hair, braided them again. She put on the light and put it out, listened. It was the hives that had awakened her. She scratched them and tried to remember what she had eaten for lunch. With whom had she passed the day? She had almost forgotten Roger, who was last of all. Should she have gone with Emory; been, even now, in his room with him? She began to laugh, thinking of ridiculous endearments, postures.

  She had been close to many men. She tossed and pondered; she had taken awful risks. An old man in a big house in Long Island, where she had worked during college holidays—she had been engaged by his broken-hearted, broken-faced wife. A dark young man with his eyes popping from his head, with whom she had gone to a shack over the weekend—she had beaten him off, like beating off insects, laughing and beating. Coming home from college, from work in the dark streets of the city in the evening; a man who stood in a dark doorway and urinated as she passed; a young man who cried, “What time is it? Four o’clock? Five? Half-past five? Six?” Six dollars! She rolled about on the bed laughing. She never passed that place in Sixth Avenue, a deserted row of shanty buildings, without smiling.

  She did not sleep and it seemed to her a voice was saying, Macbeth hath murdered sleep, as if it helped her. She rose early in the morning and started out on her little errands. She took her suede slippers to a man around the block who would glass-paper them. Then she took a coloured dress to a laundry which refused it and then to the dry-cleaner’s. She went to a little shop to match a button. When she returned there was a letter from the Englishman, brought by hand, a passionate barefaced letter. She copied part of it out, and put it in her purse; then she burned the letter with a match, in her cabinet de toilette. She put a little valise on the bed and began to pack for Chartres.

  After putting in two or three things, she telephoned and ran upstairs to Peggy, with a housecoat over her chiffon underwear and Italian rainbow-striped slippers. She told her the whole story of yesterday. “I must have your advice, Peggy; what shall I do? Oh, what shall I do? I can’t go back to New York without doing something. You’ve known me so long. Give me the right advice!”

  “Well, go with Emory then,” said her mother’s friend, baffled, irritated, worried by the girl’s frantic mood.

  “Oh, no, I can’t, I won’t, I don’t want to. It’s awful to go to a man who wants you. It’s degrading. He can keep me, jail me. Real passion is awful, unless I feel it too. I couldn’t stand it.”

  Peggy, a long-faced, irritable woman, herself tormented by men, tried to get her to go.

  “Oh, come down with me, Peggy, come down with me and help me choose the clothes to take. It’s only a silly weekend with a friend of Mother’s. What do I care? He’s dull and goatish. I’ll just throw anything in. But do come down and help me.”

  Peggy went down but, when she got there, Lydia did nothing but shift through the piles of clothing. She kept trying on pretty things and asking advice about these and her skin troubles, and all kinds of things; talking fast with her innumerable hysterical sweet laughs.

  Towards three o’clock Lydia became very nervous, fearing the professor might be late and Emory come too soon. For once, she was packed and ready before time. When she saw the professor on the other side of the street, she ran across to him, tilting forward on her high heels, dashing between the cars.

  “Oh, Russell, let’s get a taxi. Come and get my valise!”

  “Well, I have my own—”

  Without a murmur, she herself brought her valise and coat and put them in a taxi which she hailed. The professor objected to the taxi, saying he had little money with him. He had only just received a cheque from his wife, late in coming and he could not cash it at the American Express before Monday.

  “Oh, never mind, I’ve plenty of money. I’ll pay everything for both and you pay me back on Monday, or any day,” she said glibly, getting into the taxi and pulling the professor by the sleeve. “Oh, let’s get going and shake this town off. I’ve seen too much of it, I’m sick of it. Oh, what an obsession! What do people come here for? Don’t you think the world’s the same everywhere? Especially now.” And so, talking feverishly, she got him away from the boulevard. She had left no message at the hotel.

  She calmed down, breathed and began to laugh joyously. Her demonstrative relief seemed like interest and affection. She talked about her mother and she beamed at him. She laid her han
d on his coat, ducked back and forth, leaned back and burst out laughing at all kinds of ordinary sights and sounds in the streets. She took a roll of bills out of her black suede purse, took her own luggage, paid the taxi-driver like an eager schoolgirl, out for her uncle’s birthday. She asked the professor a dozen questions, began eagerly to listen; another question tripped over the heels of his explanation. She flattered him, tried to attract him.

  “Oh, what a relief, Russell, to meet you, to be with you. Oh, it’s like home.”

  She proceeded to tell him some of her adventures, a tangle of relations she had with men; about the baron, stiff and ignorant, who never touched her hand; and about Emory, who even then, “even now at this moment, imagine,” was at the hotel, astounded, hurt that there was no sign, no word.

  “He’ll understand, I suppose, that I’ve fled before him, gone with the wind, oh, dear, oh, dear. Ha-ha. He’ll think that the disgraceful frank letter he sent me frightened me off. Because I am a virgin, you know, Russ, I am a virgin. Do you believe me? That will teach him a lesson. I put the blame on that, if he sees me again. Oh, but when I come back it will be close to sailing and there’ll be no question of being involved. He’ll give me up. Oh, what the hell,” she said, belching one of her mother’s ribald phrases, and again she laughed heartbreakingly. “Oh, Russell, advise me! Shall I come here to live and work? But then I must bring Mother. What shall I do? Ought I to marry? But Mother will be all alone. Go out from a room and work and come back to a room. But Russ, I can’t keep on living faster, faster, faster and getting nowhere, can I?”

  In the evening light of Paris, in the half-light of the cab and station, taking off her jacket and scarf, arranging them, saying, “Russell! Shall I wear it or not? Does it suit me?” quickly twisting a stray lock of her black hair, fixing a jewelled clasp, making up her black oval eyes and brilliant red lips, and turning herself out, in the end, simple, girlish and yet like a dark flower, alive and with disturbing fleshy perfume, a low-growing solitary and strange flower, she wove her rhythms around the sandy middle-aged professor.

  “Oh, it’s all right about this Englishman, never mind about him. I like to be with you. I can be friends with you; I can be entirely myself. You do understand, don’t you, what I feel about you? I can have two or three days absolutely without a hitch and without thinking of anything. You’re a friend of Mother’s and we know each other. It’s such fun, Russell. I feel so happy, so free, for with you, Russell, it’s like being with an uncle. Oh, Russell, it’s so funny with you!” She put her hand behind her heavy knotted hair and gave a crow of amusement. “Oh, Russell, you don’t know me! Men don’t know me. When I’m with girls I have such fun. Do you know in the office, after the war, when I was here with Tamara, we used to go into shrieks of laughter. I am always tossing off my shoes. One day, they hid one of my shoes, and when the boss rang for me I had to hop in with just one shoe and one bare foot. Oh, we went into gales of laughter! Oh, it was all so charming. Why aren’t you men so charming? It isn’t fun with you, is it? Don’t you have an awful boring time with each other? Confess, Russell, that you are deadly boring, so stuffy? Of course, that is why you need girls. Ha-ha-ha.” She said, sitting opposite him at the window in the railway carriage and looking at the landscape passing, “The country! Now I can be free. Oh, Paris is an obsession; I feel it like paprika. And then the men fluttering round, so aimless and asking you to decide. Oh, Russell, I can’t stand the idea of Emory standing there, pleading with me, hovering round the hotel. Where’s the satisfaction? Oh, of course I have got to live with a man eventually, to find out what it’s like, because I can’t sleep, I’m on fire. The world has narrowed down so, I don’t even see Paris, except as a décor for a man. And that’s the way they see it and I despise it. And then, though I’ve had fun, it’s light fun, the food’s poor and the trips are uninteresting, just because they don’t give me what I want. It’s there for me to take, but I can’t get involved for a night’s play. And then how do I know if I’d be glad? Is it worth it, is it worth it? Oh, I’m stupid, Russell; I think you’re Mother; I treat you like Mother. You’re a man, aren’t you? Oh, yes, you’re a man, I suppose. With you, I’m different. I don’t know, perhaps I’m wilder. It’s because I’m safe, with you,” she said, and her voice, pure, girlish, bewildering, broke strangely. “Oh, Russell, what shall I do? It’s like being delirious and yet clear-minded. I think of nothing else, nothing else; but I don’t want a man when I see him. I’m a fool, I suppose. Am I wasting my time? What am I to do? Men are a terrible aphrodisiac, and yet I don’t want them. They’re so much trouble.”

  She gave him a quick slippery smile and looked out the window at the country.

  “If it’s on your mind so much, you’d better go with a man,” said the professor.

  “Yes, oh, yes. If only I could, Russell. But I always laugh too soon. One I know in New York, he has a fat back and a shine. He put his hand on my thigh, on my leg—ha-ha—and put my hand on his. Oh! You’d think he has no bones at all. And there he sits lamping me with those foggy big eyes, and he says, Perhaps a trial marriage would be a good thing for you. I laugh. He says, You’re wicked, you’re wicked. I laugh and laugh. I nearly died of laughing. He went out of the door looking backward and says, I want to bring a lady friend of mine to see you, she’s a poetess. I had to keep both hands on my stomach not to fall down laughing. I sit in the library and think of you, he says. Ah-ah-ah! You are complicated, you understand evil! Ah-ah-ah! His kiss is deep warm, like a mealbag. His face is pale and pearish and he has a seeking mouth like a baby looking for the nipple. Oh, I suppose you must put up with things to get married? Perhaps there’s something about me that attracts peculiar men? I ought to be grateful, I know. They take me out and I think about it at night and make up my mind; next time I’ll let him kiss me, it’s only right. And then I do it gingerly with the tips of my teeth: slobber, smack, drip. Like a wet rag on the floor. Oh, why are men so awful? I guess I’m crazy, eh, Russell? I can’t interest myself in other things, though. This fat one took me to concerts. They go year after year, all their lives. It’s awful to be trampled down by a stamping herd of true believers, at a violin concert. And there is Aunt Di running off to Madison Square Garden to roar with the other frogs. Seriously, is that a substitute? You’re a professor of psychology. You can’t seriously believe it is?”

  He talked to her about it. When they got to Chartres, she said vivaciously, “Oh, I know a good restaurant here, it’s in a hotel. Let’s go there first and then find a place. Perhaps we can stay there; it’s a good hotel. I’ve stayed there. It’ll be early for hours. I just want to walk about in the air, just to be free.” The words tripped out of her mouth, falling over the laughter. “Oh, poor things, I shouldn’t do it. I have completely forgotten already about poor Emory, and really it was to avoid making a decision and avoid a scene that I came away with you, Russell. Oh, Russell, I love you so, you’re so safe. Ah-ah-ah! What a pity you’re married. I’d be so safe with you.” Laughter and excitement rippled out of her little nut-brown face. She took his arm and stepped along briskly, “Come along! Have you enough money to pay for dinner for yourself at least, Russell?” Over dinner, she told him her various troubles and about the interns.

  There were not many people in the big old hotel which she knew, but she wouldn’t stop there. She insisted upon looking for a small hotel. “Just an auberge, there is one. Oh, how nice to be with you, Russell. But you see, I was at the other hotel with Mother.”

  At the little hotel they asked for two rooms; but found that only a double room was vacant. She said impatiently that they would take this; and they moved in. They walked out, saw the front of the cathedral by moonlight, went back and went to bed. Lydia asked Russell to go into the bathroom while she undressed and got into bed. He did so; and he was nice enough to her, did not bother her when she said she was tired.

  She wanted to move to another hotel in the morning. She helped him with the bill. He was a clumsy, dogged man wi
thout pleasing ways of doing things; and he was used to being looked after by his wife. He would look at things put before him on the table with intense interest, but without saying thank you. He drank his coffee without pouring out hers; he ate more than his share. She laughed and grabbed her food from under his spreading paw.

  “Oh, you are so funny, Russell,” she said, breaking away from him, as he maritally put his big hand on hers. “You’re just a big lunk. You’re no Romeo, are you? What would Myra say if she saw us sitting here together half-dressed and so greedily snatching food from one another?”

  “Myra doesn’t come into the picture.”

  They paid the bill and set out for a walk and to look for another hotel. Now Lydia wanted to go back to the big one she had stayed in as a girl. They spent some time in the cathedral, went down to the river, walked about and were bored. At lunchtime they moved to the big hotel, where they also lunched. They spent the afternoon traipsing and complaining. Lydia had got one large room for both. She used her own name and told the proprietor she had been there with her mother. This time the washbasin was in the room behind a screen; so Lydia asked Russell to go into the corridor while she undressed and washed. She then got into bed and turned her back. Russell presently returned, made ready for bed and, when he got in, took hold of her.