Nothing That Meets the Eye

by Patricia Highsmith

  “Another brandy, sir?”

  “If you please.”

  He wished the bartender were not so attentive, but what else had the miserable fellow to do? Hildebrandt watched chips of bright yellow lemon peel drop from his knife into an old-fashioned glass, looked around the burnished oak curve of the counter and saw other such glasses, and wondered when all the martinis would be drunk and by whom.

  Cluck!

  Hildebrandt started, though he knew the bartender had merely vanished behind the small brass-latched door and would reappear in a moment bearing a box of sugar cubes or an armful of limes.

  “A pretty girl—is like a melody—” the music droned, oversweet with strings.

  What pretty girl? thought Hildebrandt. Did he want a pretty girl? Really the thought sickened him. He pulled his cuffs out just beyond the garnet links and turned again to the galleon’s stern.

  A plump woman in a large black hat came in, scanned the room for her party, fluttered a hand and plowed across the sea of Persian rug toward a distant table.

  Cluck!

  And the bartender appeared, struggling with an armful of limes. Hildebrandt turned his eyes away.

  This was his last brandy. In another quarter hour or so, he should have watched the entry of two or three superannuated inmates come to take a late dinner, perhaps but not likely a pair of middle-aged men, well dressed but of that incredible colorlessness that only the Hotel Hyperion seemed to attract, come and stand a polite distance away from him at the bar and order bourbon old-fashioneds. In a quarter of an hour, he should have paid his check and walked leisurely back through the galleon’s stern, not abandoning hope for some unimaginable and unimaginably exciting stranger, until he found himself suddenly on the sidewalk beneath the hotel’s marquee. There a gust of desolation should divest him suddenly of poetry, tranquillity and will, and he would debate whether to take a taxi or the subway to his apartment or to walk to the nearest movie or to call up his friend Bracken, who lived just around the corner on Sixth Avenue. As yet he had never called up Bracken, but the possibility offered a modicum of comfort, so the thought always crossed his mind.

  Actually, though, he was alone.

  In the lobby beyond the galleon a man stopped, looked into the restaurant and walked on. The casements and the chandeliers sparkled like coruscating fireworks. The galleon floated in a blur of golden light. And abashedly realizing that tears had caused the distortion, Hildebrandt threw the brandy into his mouth. It flamed into his nose, and he saw the galleon through deeper tears.

  A black line appeared in the center of the goldenness. It was the figure of a woman with hair of the same golden beige as the doors. Suddenly Hildebrandt felt a thrill of happiness beyond that which the magic casements had ever caused, a throb of recognition. It was the way he had expected to feel when the destined one arrived, but now he smiled to himself, afraid to believe. The tremulous, inexpressible promise which for two weeks had emanated from the galleon’s stern seemed to have lifted from them and fixed itself on this woman whom the casements presented as its materialization.

  He turned back to the bar, unable even to look for her in the mirror. Her presence behind him filled the room. Before he looked at her again he must know how he intended to approach her. And yet it was, somehow, foreordained and accomplished.

  He paid his check, turned and walked, with the same leisured grace he would have walked toward the magic casements, toward the woman who sat at a table amid the field of empty tables.

  She looked up as he came closer, and all Hildebrandt could realize, dazed as he was by nearness to her, was that she regarded him without surprise, as he had known she would. Surely she would recognize him, too!

  He bowed slightly. “If I may, I should like to say good evening to you.” She was slim and stately as the casements, the heart of their poem. “My name is Oliver Hildebrandt,” he added.

  She was older, more reserved than he had thought. He could not take in anything definite about her at once except a straight fall of light brown hair beneath a small hat with a veil. Her silence confused him.

  “Are you waiting for someone?” he asked.

  “Only for a waiter.”

  “Would you mind if I sat with you a moment?”

  Perhaps her brows went up a little. Then she gestured to an empty chair. “If you like.”

  He slipped a chair out and sat down. She looked pleasant, he thought, though certainly she failed of the interest in him he had expected. Behind the veil her face was narrow and very pale, and Hildebrandt was shocked to see a thin scar that began under her right eye and curved out of his sight.

  “You haven’t been here before, have you?”

  “No.”

  Even her voice was as he had known it would be. The brandies bore him along, against her indifference. “Strange you should happen to come.”

  “Is it? It does look like a very restricted place.”

  Hildebrandt laughed. “I don’t know why anyone comes here, really, but . . .” He hesitated between sophistication and honesty and, not knowing which he chose, said, “I come because of the casements.”

  He would not have admitted then even to himself how he counted upon a sympathetic answer from her. He watched her gray eyes, which looked tired and not amused like her mouth, move to the entranceway, then back to him.

  “They are rather romantic,” she said in low musical tones that thrilled him. Yet in a way, she had said it like a plain statement of fact.

  “Yes. Absurd—and yet romantic.” He carried a match to her cigarette before she could use her lighter, took one of his own for himself and tossed his box of Players on the table. “Won’t you tell me your name?”

  “Oh”—she smiled—”that’s the least important thing.”

  “But I’ve told you mine.” He looked at the green lizard-bound lighter. “I know your initials—H.C. So I might as well know your name.”

  “Maybe legion. That might do for both of us.”

  Hildebrandt laughed uneasily, touched the brandy glass that had somehow appeared before him, and watched her sip at hers. This was the moment at which he should have had a toast to say. Yet more important it seemed to awaken her.

  “Look here, I hope you don’t think I’ve been rude,” he said, confident he had not been.

  “Not at all. I’m glad you came to talk to me.”

  Hildebrandt’s assurance leapt, put him on the edge of his chair, inspired him to fix his eyes dreamily in space for an instant, as he often did before embarking upon a rehearsed story. “You know, it’s strange, but I’ve so much to talk to you about—of trade winds and lapis lazuli seas, maybe the mosques of ancient Persia—and the way you came into this room tonight.”

  “Talk to me, then,” she said quietly. “I should love it.”

  She had relaxed and seemed suddenly dependent upon him. Hildebrandt felt enormously tender toward her. “Is something the matter?”

  She smiled. “Later. Talk to me about everything or nothing.”

  It was what he wished. She was delightful. Yet as his mind danced with anticipation of what he would say, he thought first of describing all the hours at the bar, the sense of rotting away, the absence of purpose and savor in all he did, the unwordable dream of the magic casements before she had come. And what else?

  “Shall I talk about Austria?”

  “I said anything.”

  Where had Austria fled? He remembered a ski trip with thermos bottles of American black bean soup. The blond girl he had thought he had loved, but not enough to follow her to Hamburg. Or was it Bremen? The foreign scenes he could recall were seen through an atmosphere of drifting and gluttony combined. He could not re-create them in words now for her.

  “There is Paris.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  The slow k
aleidoscope of his past fifteen years revolved around him and the woman beside him like a thin sphere that enclosed them and kept the world out. Whatever he said now would be right, since all within the sphere was perfect.

  “No.” He laughed. “Shall I tell you of the most terrifying adventure of my life? It was my adventure with aloneness. Here.” He glanced at the great coffered ceiling.

  She smiled slowly. “I’ve had those adventures myself.”

  “Then you know what they’re about.” He was rather pleased. Then he added, “They’re not nice, of course.”

  “No. When did yours take place?”

  “Until you walked in tonight.”

  She was silent. The kaleidoscope turned slowly, its patterns blurred and forgotten. All that was clear was her narrow face behind the veil that made it seem he saw her at night, in some enclosed garden.

  “Are you sure it ended when I walked in?”

  “Yes.”

  “How sure?”

  “As sure as I am that you did walk in, that you are sitting here beside me.”

  “That you are no longer alone?”

  “Yes.”

  She touched her hair with the backs of her fingers, wearily, as though to see if it were there, and looked away. “It’s nice to hear. Yet it’s hard to believe, because I am so lonely.”

  “But now it doesn’t have to be.” He smiled. “We’ve beaten it, don’t you see?”

  “Do you think?”

  “Oh, absolutely!” Hildebrandt said with the English accent he affected in his most self-assured moments.

  She rested her head against her fingers and gazed at him appraisingly.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps I’m tired. Perhaps I’m already asleep.”

  “I can guarantee you you’re not. How about another brandy?”

  She shook her head. Then with her long pale hands she drew her cigarettes and her lighter toward her. “I don’t know. Maybe I should be going.”

  “No, please!”

  “Thank you. I really can’t stay. I’m glad you spoke to me, though—if you are.”

  Hildebrandt was standing as soon as she. “But I may see you again? I mean, I must see you again!”

  “I don’t know,” she said vaguely, and moved toward the casements.

  The music played “Over the Waves,” as though to point out his comic figure floundering beside her across the silent Persian sea. “Really,” he stammered, laughing, “this is no way. I must see you again!”

  She stopped and turned to him. There was no one in all the wide room to see them. Hildebrandt could enjoy as though they had been alone the tilt of her head, the unexpected warmth as she said, “All right, I’ll see you, then.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “All right. Tomorrow.”

  “Where shall I call for you?—May I see you home now?”

  “I’ll come here.”

  “At the same time?”

  “All right.”

  He let her go, back to the casements’ wings.

  II

  He had not wanted their second meeting to be in the Pandora Room, whose one charm, that of the casements, had gone when she had entered. But since it was to be, he waited for her at the bar, wishing to glimpse her once more as he had seen her first. And finally, toward ten o’clock, her image between the casements was the end of a vigil that had begun really when he had stood here the night before, watching her disappear, having nothing but the promise that she would return. He slipped off the stool and walked across the soft rug toward her.

  She held her head higher than she had last evening. A green and brown dress brightened her, and made her less tall and thin, though she was almost as tall as he.

  “I’ve a table over here,” he said, in his intensity forgetting to greet her.

  He led her to the table he had elected during his wait at the bar, where two glasses of brandy, ordered long before as a kind of bet with himself that she would come, stood ready for them. As he seated her carefully, Hildebrandt felt that the miracle of this second meeting made the air quake and shimmer, as though a gloriole were painted about their table. He felt he would babble nonsense unless he was cautious. It might have been for this moment the Pandora Room had been created.

  “I have so much to tell you,” he began in a burst, for though he had forgot in detail what she looked like, he felt their acquaintance had progressed and only conversation lagged. He had felt for the first time, since last night, that his life had a focus, which was she. He looked at her, his eyes misty with happiness, and suddenly, though she seemed ready to listen, he was afraid to tell her all he felt. He was afraid of exposing himself. It occurred to him she had encountered such men as him before, had evaluated and was already bored by their futile, hardly varying stories. She had suddenly seemed disturbingly intelligent, and though intelligence was what he had wanted, he could not speak.

  “You might begin.”

  “Oh, can’t you tell me something about yourself first? You might at least tell me what your name is now. Where you live. Or even just what you are thinking about.” He felt more like himself now, and he slipped his cuffs out to the garnet links.

  “I don’t live here. My home’s in San Francisco.”

  “San Francisco!” Hildebrandt exclaimed, seizing the fact like a nail to fix her to some background, yet almost at the same time he realized he did not want to know about San Francisco. “How long are you staying here?”

  “Just a short while. As short as possible.”

  “Then what luck you happened to wander in here!”

  “Is it?”

  She was looking down at the tablecloth, running her thumbnail in it as though thinking of something else. It struck Hildebrandt that she regretted having met him here tonight, and the thought kept him silent as he watched her taste her brandy.

  She turned to him and set down the half-empty glass. “I’m sorry. You like to linger over your brandies, don’t you?”

  “Oh, not at all!” Hildebrandt smiled.

  “Like a gentleman—the gentleman-at-the-bar.”

  Hildebrandt’s drooping lids quivered a little. He had needed to tell her nothing. She knew. He saw himself perhaps a month from now, perhaps tomorrow evening, slumped on one of the high stools. No, not this bar, however. Some other, at least. But he lifted his head and smiled. “Shouldn’t you like dinner?”

  In a voice so gentle it hardly seemed an interruption, rather the quiet entrance of an idea, she asked, smiling, “Tell me, aren’t you married?”

  Hildebrandt leaned back with a feint of surprise. “What prompts you to ask that?”

  “Don’t you have a wife? Or didn’t you?”

  He put out his cigarette and slowly lighted another. “Yes, I was married once. Years ago. It’s funny you should ask that out of the blue. I’ve been divorced—going on eleven years.”

  “But it lingers. Doesn’t it?”

  “You seem to think so. Though my marriage didn’t.” There began stirring in him the desire to tell the story of his life, a desire so strong it overruled his fear that she knew it already, that it would bore her and kill whatever affection might have grown in her for him. But also, he reasoned, he wanted her to know. He smiled, captured by memory. “You see, my idea of life was to travel up and down one romantic river after another in Europe, just the two of us and a servant or so, until we got ready to come home.” He was making it short, beginning near the end. “We were both very young. I was only twenty-four, with an income from my father, so I saw no reason to work. I hate work anyway, actually. Only—she fell in love with someone a bit richer before we’d even left the States.” He laughed a little, sadly and tolerantly, like a gentleman who related sordid facts reluctantly, though they showed hi
m to advantage.

  “But you went on to Europe.”

  “Yes, I did. Went though all the advances I could get on my trust fund and finally went through the principal. Then I came home and sobered up and found a pleasant spot in my father’s advertising firm. Which brings you practically up-to-date. Now I drift around, trying to put an edge on a hopelessly dull existence.”

  She was looking off again, toward the casements now, and suddenly he realized she knew he had said the same thing in the same words many times before. It had never mattered before that he had, but it mattered now because she was different. He looked at her and bit the end of his tongue and cursed himself.

  “Not by yourself all the time.”

  “Oh, yes. Quite,” he replied, contritely. “It’s not often I meet anyone like you.” He puffed nervously on his cigarette. “I mean, I never have. Do you know how it is sometimes,” he began again, trying to turn her eyes to him, “when you are lonely for something, you want something and you can’t discover what it is? Not friends or lovers or any spot on earth. Something less graspable than any of those.” His hand closed with a grasping gesture on nothing. He had not said this to anyone before, and he was pleased with his articulateness and also with his honesty.

  “I know.”

  He nodded, believing she did know. He felt his eyes were stretched wide the way they were sometimes when he looked into bar mirrors and saw the ingenuous hope. But now he did not care. He wanted to go on, to tell her that at the times he wanted this mysterious thing, he sat in bars where he could heighten the sense of its absence and so possibly discover one day what it was he wanted. But remembering her phrase, the gentleman-at-the-bar, he dared not. He brought his face under control, leaned closer to her and said quietly, “I know it’s to meet you that I’ve wanted.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, her slow words making it sound somehow final and irreparable, “that you’re so lonely!”