The Golden Vanity
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SHE thought that the next morning, waking in the lucid dark of dawn, the owl's light, which delayed in the large room as smoke may be held in a bowl. Color had not yet returned to the tangible objects; there were no shadows; the world was only a thought.
Matthews was asleep, with his cheek against her hair. She could barely hear his breathing. She knew where she was; she had known while she slept. She remembered everything; she could account for nothing; what had happened was a fact. She was here. Other facts existed elsewhere.
It must be clear daylight outside. Transverse lines of pale light crossed the ceiling above the windows, thrown upward through the slanted bars of the Venetian blinds. The greyness dissolved imperceptibly second by second. The air had grown deliciously cool, and his arm across her shoulders kept her comforted and warm.
When had she . . . Perhaps from the beginning, when she found his voice pleasing. Or when she had gone downstairs, where he was waiting.
They had dined at a café on the beach. Fantastically, with Eddie and Spud. Across the room several tourists from the boat occupied a table. She was aware that they recognized her . .. Sometimes in an absent-minded mood, on the street, she passed her destination or turned the wrong corner, and suddenly observed her surroundings. This isn't where I was going ... It was like that, sitting there with Matthews. And Eddie and Spud! They were very nearly incredible. They actually did talk out of the corners of their mouths, fortunately limiting their conversation to "Yeah" and "I'll say so" and "O.K." They handled their knives and forks carefully, and were equally circumspect toward her. On account of Matthews. They weren't making any breaks. . . .
Whatever had thrown her into this stranger's arms, it was not a superficial impulse. She hadn't been drinking. One Daiquiri cocktail before dinner, and another later. She had not even finished the second; she didn't need it. The sensation of a tight band around her head had vanished. Mysteriously, she recaptured the innocence of the mind and senses which belongs to youth. The foreign ships and the foreign faces ... At eighteen or twenty, she remembered, it was enough merely to go somewhere, anywhere—to tea at the old Manhattan Hotel, to a banal play, a ten cent movie, to the beach—the simplest experience was colored with the enchantment of first impressions. Everything had been created fresh and new for one's delight. ... It was so last night. She could taste simultaneously the separate ingredients of the drink, sharp and sweet and cool and warm, the limes and sugar and rum. She felt no obligation to talk, and was glad of Matthews' taciturnity. Overhearing the conversation at a near-by table, she smiled to herself, discovering that the most commonplace phrases became original and significant in a strange language. Matthews was sufficiently observant to catch her listening. He asked, impressed and perhaps suspicious: What are they saying? She answered: Nothing much; they're only asking one another what will you have. Matthews said: You speak Spanish? She explained: Not really; I took a few lessons, because it's so beautiful. He agreed: That's so; no matter what a girl says to you in Spanish, it sounds like— He broke off abruptly.
So it does, she thought. Spanish is the speech of men and women. Of action and of love . . . And Matthews' voice was arresting, regardless of what he said, because it was distinctly a man's voice.
After dinner, Matthews said they might as well see the town. She stipulated that she must not be out too late. He assured her: We won't. He left Eddie and Spud to shift for themselves; Geraldine was with him in the taxi. What am I doing here, she thought. . . .
She was being kissed. She jerked away from him; the taxi stopped before she could make her protest articulate. . . . There was nothing to see at the second café, a small place open to the street, a few men drinking beer placidly, two of them playing some game in the far corner, gambling without excitement for the smallest stakes. It was a way of spending the evening. She surmised: Havana stays up all night... She would have been content, sitting there indefinitely. But when Matthews proposed they should go on somewhere else, she said: I'm tired; I'd rather go back to my hotel... . She heard Matthews telling the taxi driver to drive around . . . She didn't know where they were, passing big houses with gardens, secret and shadowy and profoundly foreign. Once the sweetness of cassia flowers flowed by . . . She was ruffled and out of breath: this was why one did not regret youth too bitterly. It is crude and inept and disappointed. Don't be so stupid, she exclaimed, saying in despair exactly what she meant. Millions of women have said it. Some meaning must have reached him. He desisted, though he kept his arm about her, and there was not space to escape. He said: Look here, don't you like me? She wouldn't answer. Too tired? She was obstinately silent. He persisted: How is a man to know what a woman wants? She muttered: A woman! Women aren't all alike. He said: That makes it harder to guess. She said sullenly: Oh, you spoil it—such a lovely night, and—I want to be let alone. Please tell the man to drive back to the hotel. He said: But what's a lovely night for? She was angry at herself for the futility of her attempt at communication. She said: It might be just for itself.
He pondered for a long time, perhaps five minutes. His presence became like the sound of his voice, and she grew sleepy and content again. Then he tapped on the glass and told the chauffeur to drive to the hotel. He said: That's fair enough, isn't it? She said: Yes, thank you. Presently he said: You might give me one kiss, just for itself.
She turned against his shoulder and he kissed her, touching her chin with his fingers and then her hair.
When the taxi stopped at the hotel she said good night. He said: I've got a room here myself. Oh, she said, and in the lobby she repeated: Good night. She crossed quickly to the elevator while he went to the desk for his key. She had hers; and went up alone. She was unlocking her door when she heard the elevator return, stop, and start down again; and he stood beside her, very quiet in the quiet hall, where all the doors were shut.
It was because her head was perfectly clear, and the earth was steady beneath her feet again, and he was real. If she put out her hand, he would be there.
As he was now, sleeping with his arm around her. . . . She thought, this must be the nature of temptation, the consent of the mind and will, against all argument.
She must have made some slight movement; she felt him opening his eyes, his lashes brushing against her hair. "It's you," he said. She thought, I daresay it might have been anybody! It was light enough now for him to see her smile. He said: "Well, I didn't think I was going to get you."
She said: "It was no trouble, was it?"
"Plenty," he said. "I don't know yet. . . You never told me; you went to sleep. Now do you like me?"
"Yes, that's why," she said, exactly truthful. The attraction was almost impersonal. ... In summer, as a child, she used to walk barefoot on the grass . . .
He said: "I'll tell you something; a man doesn't find out how much he likes a girl till the second time. But last week in the hall, I got the feel of you in my arm, like this—I'm sorry. .. ." He took her hand and laid her palm to his cheek. "Sandpaper. What pretty hands. Dimples across the knuckles. I'd better go and shave, before—"
With her eyes closed, she thought how lightly he moved about the room, for a big man. He said: "I'll take a shower and order breakfast, and as soon as you're ready you come to my room. It's the next, number forty-nine."
"But won't they—"
"They mind their own business. No floor clerks, and as long as you tip 'em and don't raise a row. . . ." He ought to know, she thought, without cynicism. She could hardly afford to be cynical at his expense.
Because, she thought twenty minutes later, as she drank her coffee opposite him, she knew what she had to do....
His room was almost a duplicate of her own. The shutters were open an inch, showing a narrow strip of sunlit wall across the street. She poured his coffee domestically, thinking how guileless a man looks in the morning. Washed and brushed and in green pyjamas. Nothing could be more demure than her own pale grey crêpe kimono, lined with white. Three lumps of sugar .
.. I am a respectable woman, she thought, A virtuous woman till yesterday. So I shall lie to him and run away. . . .
How should we not betray each other when we are so betrayed?
He tries to be consistent. He is an outlaw; he admits no moral implications and therefore no claims, nothing to argue. But then he has no right to make any; he shouldn't ask: Do you like me? What if I do? The worse for him. There are others who come first; nobody can meet all the claims in full. You must to the greenwood go, alone, a banished man . . . The treachery at the root of life is that if we are capable of passion or curiosity or tenderness we must be so till we die....
He said: "How long are you staying in Havana?"
"I don't know," she said, strictly veracious. It's three days till the boat sails; is there an earlier boat? I'll have to find out to-day, change my ticket if there is. Pack while he is out of the hotel; he said he had business. . . .
"How about taking a couple of weeks off? We might cruise around the islands; there must be boats."
There must be boats. Or if there isn't one before three days, wait till then, and walk aboard at the last minute. Don't leave a note. He doesn't know anything but your name. "I don't know—perhaps I could. I'd have to arrange. . . ." Let him believe so.
"You're on the stage, aren't you?"
"The stage?"
"I thought you might be, like your friend."
"Oh, yes, she is."
"None of my business, you mean."
"Oh, no, it's not that. I work for my living too, but what's the use of a holiday if you don't forget about work? It's not very interesting." Writing isn't interesting in any of its circumstances. A solitary task, composed of dissatisfactions and uncertainties ... He doesn't ask me if I'm married, she thought. He knows I am; there's the ring. I don't want to know anything about him either. Never. Away from here, he does not exist. When someone dies, you go on just the same. Almost the same. Anyhow, you go on.
"You don't say nothin' and you don't do nothin', do you?" Matthews showed his strong white teeth in a smile. "Well, you don't need to; you just give 'em a look." Why, I seem mysterious to him, she thought; I am mysterious, because I don't dare tell him anything about myself; but the reason I dare not is because my life is so ordinary, so committed to the norm of conduct, all that we take for granted. An adventuress, if there is such a creature, would not be mysterious to him. So he endows me with the fascination of mystery, with unique and irresistible seductions. Is that the secret of the women whose charms become legendary: that by chance the legend begins in their lifetime, and men surrender to that, not to the real woman, whom they would not recognize if they saw her apart from it? ... But I have no means of comparison either; he may be uttering the conventional compliments of this situation, new to me. This is his commonplace: hardly an adventure. . . . There is no excellent beauty without some strangeness.
"Where would you like to go to-day?" he asked. "I've got an appointment at ten o'clock over at my hotel; but I'll try to break away this afternoon."
"At your hotel?" she repeated. His embarrassment was comic and engaging; he was caught out.
"Sure," he said. "This isn't—well, I took this room on the off chance."
"I see," she gave way to laughter. "There's always the off chance." Patience, and stack the cards.
"You're kidding me," he said. "I guess you think I—" He couldn't get around the plain truth, lacking the sophistry to plead a special case. But he felt the injustice of the truth. He said: "I'm kind of scared of you. I mean, I don't want to get in wrong." The qualifications he had theretofore considered sufficient—he was a good spender, he could give a girl a good time—were hardly what he wished to offer.
He stood up, came around the table, and she too rose. She held him off with her hands against his chest, and he was stopped by the frail barrier. "There you are," he said. That was equally the truth. There was a physical sympathy between them of which passion was only an expression. If not love, it was a fact in nature; it flowed from the deep sources. We are sensual beings first. She was under no illusion. They had nothing else in common. Oh, nothing except that, she thought ironically—the tide of his blood against her palms. With the whole of civilization as an obstacle. That, perhaps, was the price of being civilized. And since they would get no more, they might as well make the most of it. We must also grow old and die.
"Will you be in if I telephone between twelve and one?" he asked.
She said: "Yes, I expect so. Have you got a cigarette?"
There would be time enough to find the shipping office between ten and noon. For an hour now they might talk; there wouldn't be much time for that. The words wouldn't be important in themselves, only as clues for future recollection; for delight is hard to remember, so she didn't want him to make love to her for awhile, though she did want him to. She meant deliberately to separate this brief encounter from past and future, from what he was and what she was in their other lives. Even though they were common or false, this immediate relationship had its own quality. One ought to be able to save an hour, a day, from so hard a bargain.
Cigarettes—his search revealed only three, slightly damaged. "I'll get some"; he rang, and Geraldine discreetly stepped into the bathroom when the waiter came and took the order, at the same time removing the remains of breakfast.
That was why they supposed it was the waiter returning five minutes later. Geraldine hid again hastily. She failed to close the door tight. Through the crack she heard Matthews say: "What the hell—"
She did not catch the reply, but it was not the waiter. Someone unexpected, unwelcome. Matthews listened and rejoined: "I'll give you five minutes. But you can't come here again. I told Louie I'd see him at ten o'clock." The intruder became audible: "Yeah, that's why I came here, so we could have a little talk before—"
Matthews said: "Talk fast, then. And not so damn' loud."
The colloquy became an indistinguishable murmur, at the far end of the spacious room. Geraldine didn't dare close the bathroom door; the movement might be noticed. Matthews was not saying much; the peculiar rich note of his voice occurred at intervals, curtly and with anger behind it. Geraldine remained immobile, holding her finger to her lips. A drip of water from the tap into the grey marble washbasin worried her. Matthews said suddenly, with the emphasis of contempt: "That's what you say." Then both spoke at once; but it was Matthews she heard: "Why, you damned—" The final epithet she had never heard before, and it was shocked out of her subsequent recollection by the thud of a heavy object and three shots. Someone shouted.
Startled beyond fear, she ran out, and stopped in the middle of the room, with her mouth open as if she had screamed but she knew she had not. The waiter was there, a thin young Cuban, backed against the open door; several packages of cigarettes lay scattered on the floor, obviously knocked from his hand. An overturned wooden chair lay against the wall.
Another boy rushed in carrying a tray, interrupted on the way to some other guest. The two waiters shouted senseless questions at each other in Spanish, neither heeding the other, both staring at Matthews. There was no one else in the room.
Matthews stood bent forward, his shoulders hunched, his hands pressed to his abdomen. He said: "For Christ's sake, call a doctor."
"You're hurt," Geraldine exclaimed.
He frowned. "Don't touch me, honey. Cut along. You don't want to be mixed up in this."
Instead she caught one of the waiters by the arm, shook him to enforce attention. "Go and get somebody. The manager." She thrust him into the hall and he went. She commanded the other waiter: "Help me get him to the bed." Her domestic training had taught her to take charge in emergencies.
"I'd better not move," Matthews said, "A chair." She righted the overturned chair, and he sat down slowly, keeping his hands in position. She saw a spot of dark blood, no bigger than a dollar, on the stone floor. A doctor, her mind repeated; but there is no telephone book. . . . The plaster is broken there; one bullet hit the wall. . . .
The scene was absolutely unreal. Geraldine said: "Is there an American hospital? An ambulance." She motioned to the telephone. "Be quick."
The manager grasped the situation sufficiently to obey, and she listened while he made the call; he asked for the number in Spanish and then spoke in English; that would be for the doctor.
Then he said: "But how? There was shooting?" He looked at Geraldine.
Matthews said, with difficulty: "This lady doesn't know a thing about it. She wasn't here. I thought it was the boy with cigarettes; he knocked and opened the door. I never saw the fellow before; I guess it was a hold up. There wasn't time; the waiter did come just then, took him by surprise, I saw the gun in his hand and I sidestepped and tried to down him with the chair, but he plugged me and scrammed—got away. The waiter yelled, and I guess the riot fetched the lady and the other waiter; they came running, but the fellow that shot me was gone. They wouldn't know about it." The effort of speaking was visible; his forehead was wet with sweat. But that was his story.
"You did not know the man?"
"No," Matthews said. "Will you all get out—do you want the whole damned hotel in?" His ruddy color had faded to a grey pallor.
The manager saw the point. Geraldine backed toward the door, her gaze fixed on Matthews. His eyes told her to go.
In her own room, Geraldine stood stupefied. It was impossible. The material event could find no lodgment in her mind, had not yet occurred there, for lack of preparation. There was no sequence. . . . He might be dying.