Hot Night in the City

by Trevanian

  "Yes, but life—even grim, hard, 'real' life—teems with coincidences. Take our meeting tonight in the cab. If that wasn't a coinci— Say, that's not bad." He took out his notebook and scribbled 'toad—toady' as the waiter took their dinner plates and waited until he had their full attention before chanting the dessert menu.

  They chose crème brûlée, the waiter left, and she said, "What about our meeting?"

  "You'll have to admit that our meeting involved a veritable medley of coincidences."

  "I admit nothing of the sort. Given the fact that my sister and your brother sent telegrams announcing their intention to hurl themselves into an ill-considered marriage, there was nothing more natural than that you and my brother would rush to Cambo-les-Bains to make them listen to reason. No coincidence there, just the natural way of things. And, of course, you both went to the Lafitte-Caillard agency because that's where everyone makes their travel arrangements. Again, no coincidence. While you were dawdling up in the travel office, the cabs moved to the head of the line, as they always do, and all Paris fiacres are the same design and color, so it's hardly a coincidence that you, childishly miffed over an encounter with my brother and desperate to catch your train, should jump into the wrong cab. The fact that I was asleep in the corner of the cab was no coincidence, either. It was the natural result of my not getting a wink of sleep last night, worrying about poor Sophie."

  "That wasn't a twist on the old farce dodge of mistaken identity, eh?"

  "Not in the least. And it's no coincidence that you and my brother had the train tickets, while your sister and I didn't even have money for dinner. It's a result of stupid, unjust, oppressive attitudes about what men can and ought to do and what women can't and shouldn't. No, no, there was no 'Engine of Fate' operating in our encounter. It was just the logical working out of a set of givens."

  "And what about the fact that you and I are both in theater? That's no coincidence, I suppose?" He knew he had her there.

  "Well-l-l, in a way it's a coincidence."

  "Ah!"

  "But in another way, it isn't."

  "Oh."

  "Consider this: Take any two people meeting anywhere in the world. Many things about their meeting will be incidentally identical—and that's not the same thing as being coincidental."

  "It isn't?"

  "No. For instance, they would have been walking on the same street, or else they would not have met. So that is a condition of their meeting and not a coincidence. You see what I mean?"

  "Hm-m."

  "Also, it's likely that both had coffee that morning, that they both glanced at the newspapers, that they were born in the same century, in the same country, and that they have similar reservations about eating live worms, or the practice of hurling oneself out of second-story windows to get the exercise of walking back up the stairs. But none of these things could properly be called coincidences."

  "They couldn't, eh?"

  "No. They are merely the normal, random, incidental identities that one finds in any encounter. Indeed, if there weren't even one single identity in the circumstances of their meeting, that would be a coincidence. You understand?"

  "Ah-h... almost."

  "I hold that the fact that we both are in theater is one of those normal, mathematically probable identities without which our meeting would have been truly coincidental, and therefore not, in itself, a coincidence at all, but indeed quite the opposite. And there you are."

  He looked at her levelly for a long moment. "Did you go to a Jesuit school, by any chance?"

  "Girls are not admitted into Jesuit schools. Yet another instance of mindless prejudice."

  "So, if I understand correctly, you're saying that if I were to write a play based on the circumstances of our meeting, I couldn't be accused of relying on cheap, unlikely coincidences, am I right?"

  She frowned. Wait a minute, hadn't she been arguing the opposite way? And somehow twisting everything until... Hm-m.

  He smiled. "I considered ending the play with a quintuple wedding including the playwright character and the actress character."

  "Oh?"

  "But, of course, that would be ridiculous."

  "Yes, of course.... Why?"

  "Five marriages at once might seem a bit much. Then too, the playwright and the actress are what we dramaturges call 'the agents'—and they couldn't possibly get married."

  "No, of course not.... Why not?"

  "Well, for one thing, it would be too predictable. The audience would see it coming the minute he jumps into her cab. Then too, there are the medical and religious implications."

  "Medical—?"

  "—and religious. When their brothers and sisters marry, they'll be brother-in-law and sister-in-law twice over. And when their parents marry, they'll also be stepbrother and stepsister. The Bible frowns on unions of that sort. And the biologists warn us against them pretty sternly. But whether or not I decide to marry them off isn't my greatest problem."

  "It isn't?"

  "No, no. My greatest problem will be finding a cast. The role of the young playwright doesn't present insurmountable problems. It could be played by any clever, charming, intelligent, reasonably good-looking actor—provided he has a quick wit and a winning personality. But a young woman who goes around wearing short dresses and agitating for social change and chucking stewards out of compartments and jumping onto trains with strange men and threatening that her granddaughter will one day rule Europe—it won't be easy to find an actress who can pull all that off, and still be charming and lovely and desirable and winning and bright and entertaining and—well, all the qualities that I admire in—in this character I've invented. No, I'll have to search long and hard for an actress who can do the role justice. This is no job for a beginner. I'll need an actress with a long list of successes to her cred— Ai-i-i!"

  She nearly twisted the skin off the back of his hand. After which totally unjustified but infinitely gratifying assault, she left her hand on the table, the tips of her fingers accidentally brushing the backs of his. They were not holding hands. No one could say they were in any way holding hands. No. It was just that her hand was resting on the table near his because... well, it had to rest somewhere, didn't it? He was intensely aware of her soft touch, and he didn't dare move his hand even a fraction of an inch lest she suddenly realize that their hands were in contact and withdraw hers. In fact, he needn't have worried.

  The waiter brought their desserts, and she began to eat hers slowly, her thoughts turned softly inward. He could not eat his, because it was his right hand she had accidentally rendered immobile, and he would rather have died than move it.

  "Aren't you going to eat your dessert?" she asked.

  "I don't seem to have any appetite." This was a lie; he was seething with appetite, but not for food.

  "Well... if you're sure." She took his crème brûlée, and his heart was lifted by the symbolic significance of it all, as he watched her finish his last spoonful. Then they both spoke at once.

  "By the way, what's—?"

  "May I ask—?"

  "I'm sorry, what were you—?"

  "No, you first."

  "Well, I was just wondered what your name was."

  "I was going to ask you the same thing," she said.

  "Now, surely that's a coincidence."

  "Not at all."

  This tale borrows a narrative device from a story by Robert W. Chambers that appeared in the bound European version of New Harper's Monthly Magazine, August, 1903 (Volume CVII, no. DCXXXIX). I gratefully acknowledge my debt to Mr Chambers, and I should be delighted to hear from his descendants.

  THE APPLE TREE

  The Widow Etcheverrigaray took great comfort and pride from the splendid apple tree that grew on the boundary of her property, just beyond the plot of leeks that every year were the best in all the village; and her neighbor and lifelong rival, Madame Utuburu, drew no less gratification from the magnificent apple tree near the patch of piments that made
her the envy of all growers of that sharp little green pepper. Unfortunately for the tranquillity of our village, we are not speaking of two trees here, but of one: a tree that grew exactly on the boundary between the two women's land and was, by both law and tradition, their shared property. It was inevitable that the apples from this tree should lead to dispute, for such has been the melancholy role of that disruptive fruit since the Garden of Eden.

  As all the world knows, neither pettiness nor greed have any place in the Basque character, so one must look elsewhere for the cause of the Battle of the Apple Tree that became part of our village's folklore. The explanation lies in the bitter rivalry the two woman cultivated and nourished for most of their lives. When young, one of them had been accounted the most beautiful girl in our village, while the other was considered the most graceful and charming—although in later years no one could remember which had been which, and, sadly, no evidence of these qualities remained to prompt the memory. As mischievous Fate would have it, both the young women fancied that handsome rogue, Zabala, who was not yet called Zabala-One-Leg, for he was still to commit the unknown (but doubtless carnal) offence for which the righteous God the Father punished him by taking one of his legs in the Great War, while His benevolent Son, Jesus, revealed His mercy by leaving him the other to hobble along on. All the village knew that the young women admired Zabala because neither of them would deign to dance with him at fêtes, and both would turn their faces away and sniff when the cheeky rascal addressed a word to them, or a wink. If further proof of their attraction were needed, both village belles were heard to vow upon their chastity that they would not marry that flirting, two-faced scamp of a Zabala if he were the last man in Xiberoa. They would become nuns first. They would become prostitutes first! They would become Protestants first! (Of course, nobody believed they would go so far as that.)

  Now, being every bit as crafty as He is good, God knows how to punish us, not only by withholding our wishes, but by granting them. In this case, He chose to cut with the back of His blade. He willed that neither of the young women would have Zabala, for he went from the village to punish Kaiser William, who was at that time raping nuns and spitting Belgian babies on his bayonet, the enlistment posters informed us. Zabala returned three years later, without one leg, but with such worldly sophistication that he could no longer remember the Basque word for many things and used the French instead. He bragged about the wonderful places he had seen and the many sinful and delicious things he had done, but he was astonished to learn that in his absence both the women had married simple shepherds far beneath their expectations, that both their weddings had occurred within two months of the exciting and heady fête that marks the harvest of the hillside fern, and that both women had born babies after only seven months of gestation. Short first pregnancies do not occasion criticism in our valley, for it is widely known that the good Lord often makes first pregnancies mercifully brief as His reward to the girl for having preserved her chastity until marriage. Subsequent pregnancies, however, usually run their full terms, which only makes sense, as the very fact that they are not first pregnancies means that the mother was not chaste at the moment of conception. Is it not marvelous how one finds justice and balance in everything? Yet further proof of God's hand in our daily lives.

  Over the years, the shepherd Etcheverrigaray slowly increased his flock until he was able to buy a small house on the edge of the village with an overgrown garden that his wife tamed and tended until it was the pride of the village and, it goes without saying, also the envy. But the husband fell into the habit of spending time he ought to have given to the care of his sheep in the café/bar of our mayor, squandering his money on so many small glasses of wine that, after he died suddenly of no disease other than God's will, his widow would have had a hard time making ends meet but for the productive garden she had enriched over the years with her sweat and her loving care.

  As for Madame Utuburu's husband, he was plagued by something worse than drink: he was unlucky. And there is an old Basque saying that teaches us: Unlucky indeed is he who is burdened with bad luck. If there was a thunderstorm in the mountains, you could bet that some of Utuburu's sheep would be struck by lightening. If, upon rare occasions, his ewes had a fruitful season, the price of wool was sure to drop. Nor was the village very sympathetic with his misfortunes, for it is well known that bad luck is the lash with which the Lord chastises those who have sinned, however cleverly and clandestinely. And there was another thing: when the price of wool fell for Utuburu, it fell for everybody—even for us, the lucky and the innocent.

  You can imagine how surprised we all were when we learned that Utuburu-the-Unlucky was to receive an unexpected inheritance from a distant uncle. But the Lord's subtle ways were revealed when, staggering home after celebrating the only bit of good fortune in his life, Utuburu fell into the river and drowned.

  With what was left of the inheritance after grasping lawyers had gorged on it, Madame Utuburu bought the small house next to the Widow Etcheverrigaray's, and there she eked out a modest annuity by toiling morning and evening in her garden, which became either the best or the second-best garden in the village, depending on whether one measured a garden by the quality of its leeks or that of its piments.

  Thus it was that ironic Fate brought the two rivals to live and grow old side by side on the edge of the village, each with no husband, and each with only one son to absorb her love and color her expectations.

  The Widow Etcheverrigaray's son soon revealed himself to be a clever and hard-working scholar, first at the village infant school, then in middle school at Mauléon, later at the lycée at Bayonne, and finally at university in Paris. With every advance in his education, he moved farther and farther from his village, so in proportion as his mother had ever greater reason to be proud of him, she had ever fewer opportunities to show him off to her less fortunate neighbor. At first he wrote short letters that the village priest read to Widow Etcheverrigaray over and over until she had them by heart, then she would share them with the women beating their laundry clean at the village lavoir, her eyes scanning the paper back and forth as she recited from memory. And once her son sent a thick book full of tiny print with his name on the cover, which the priest told us was proof that he had written it: every word, from one end to the other. The book said such clever things about tropical agriculture that not even our priest could read it for long without nodding off. Eventually, the son gained a very important position in some Brazil or other, and the village never saw him again.

  As for Madame Utuburu's boy, the best that can be said of his educational performance is that the damage he did to school property during his brief stay was not nearly so great as some have claimed. His native gifts lay in another direction: he developed into the most powerful and crafty jai-alai player our village ever produced—and this is saying something, for it was our village that gave the world the fabled Andoni Elissalde, he who crushed all comers from 1873 to 1881, when a blow of the ball to his head made him an Innocent: one so beloved of God that he was no longer tormented by doubts or led astray by curiosity. After young Utuburu made his reputation with our communal team, he went on to play for Bayonne, where he was selected for the team that toured Spain and South America, humbling all before them and making every cheek in Xiberoa glow with pride. Thus, as the lad became more and more famous in that noblest of sports, he played ever farther and farther away from our village and from his proud mother, who nevertheless saved newspapers with pictures of him and words of praise. She saved the whole page, lest she cut out the wrong part because, like her neighbor, she was not exposed to the threats to simple faith that an ability to read entails. While touring South America the son was offered vast fortunes to play in some Argentina or other. Twice he sent photographs of himself in action, and once he sent a magnificent cushion of multicolored silk with a beautiful (if rather immodest) woman painted on it and the words 'Greetings from Buenos Aires'. On the back, in a rainbow of embroidery, was th
e word 'Madre', which the priest said referred either to Madame Utuburu or to the Virgin Mary, in either case a good thought. After this gesture of prodigal generosity, the son was heard of no more.

  In the normal course of things, the two widows would have lived out their years lavishing on their gardens the care and affection their husbands no longer needed and their children no longer wanted, going frequently to early morning mass in their black shawls, certain that their piety would not go unrewarded, and little by little slipping from the notice of the village, as old women should. But such was not the destiny of Widow Etcheverrigaray and Madame Utuburu, for the ever-increasing rivalry between them kept them much in the eye and on the tongues of the women of our village. At first this rivalry was manifested in looking over the stone wall at the other woman's garden and murmuring little words of condolence and of encouragement for next year. Over the years, these drops of sweetened acid matured into fragments of praise or sympathy that each woman would express in the course of her morning marketing rounds. Madame Utuburu constantly lauded her neighbor as a saint for having put up with that slovenly drunk of a husband. But of course, if the old sot hadn't been drunk when first they met he would never have— Ah, but why bring that up now, after all these years?

  And Widow Etcheverrigaray often let escape heartfelt sighs over her neighbor's misfortune in having a husband cursed with bad luck. The poor man had been unlucky in everything, most of all in having to live with a woman who... but enough! He was dead now, and suffering yet greater punishment!... if that is possible.

  If there was anything that made Madame Utuburu's mouth pucker with contempt, it was the way some people brought a stupid old book along with them to the lavoir every Tuesday, and looked at it and fondled it and sighed over it until others were forced to ask about it out of politeness, only to be drowned in a flood of nonsense about the brains and brilliance of some four-eyed weakling who couldn't catch a pelote in a chistera to save his life, and who never even had the decency to send his poor mother a little something for New Year's! She who had stayed awake nights trying to save the scrawny runt's life when he was sick... which was pretty often!