Damnation of Adam Blessing

by Packer, Vin

  • • •

  Midway through the sweetbreads, Adam decided to buy a gift for Schneider after lunch. Adam was not a stranger to the man’s tastes and habits. Those three months in New York last summer, Adam had visited many back-number magazine stores. There was the portrait in Town and County on Schneider; the piece in Fortune, and the cover story in Our Time. In addition, all the newspapers had been filled with stories on Schneider and his family, during the kidnapping period. Adam had pored through them.

  • • •

  While Adam was “resting” in Bidart, he had read a few books on silver. Luther Schneider was an avid silver collector. Adam would find him something special — a Sheffield-plate egg stand, perhaps, or one of those rare, helmet-shaped silver cream jugs. It would be something interesting for Adam to do with his afternoon. He was tired of going to the movies, and tired of listening to his French and Italian language records back in his hotel room, tired, as well, of his immense loneliness. It had been the latter that had gotten him into so much trouble before his breakdown. He had done remarkably well about his drinking during the three months in New York last summer. Loneliness had never really plagued Adam until his arrival in Europe; then he had needed to drink to forget it. No more of that. In Bidart he had made up his mind that upon his return to Paris he would get things under control; start doing constructive things about his ideas. He liked the idea of buying Schneider the gift, as a sort of symbolic token of a turning-point. From now on he would work to repay Schneider. Adam was pleased with the thought. Euphoria began to creep in. Still — he did not order the wine his meal so dearly lacked. Indeed, a turning-point. He smiled and turned the page of his newspaper, and then he came upon the short notice in the Tribune’s “Americans in Paris” column.

  It was a single-line entry: “Mrs. Vera Cameron Cadwallader of New York City is staying at the Hotel Continental.”

  • • •

  At six-thirty that evening Vera Cameron Cadwallader was waiting for him in the Continental’s Cour d’Honneur. She was sitting at a table under one of the red-and-white striped umbrellas. In the note which Adam had dropped off at the hotel that afternoon, he had simply said that he was a friend of Charity’s; that he would very much enjoy having a cocktail with her. He put an undecipherable signature at the end, and arrived a few minutes later than the appointed time, for fear she would see him and refuse to join him.

  Adam sat down. “You don’t remember me?”

  She seemed anxious to please, but suspicious. She did not remember him at all; the beard, the extra weight — Adam supposed she was thinking that Charity did not know anyone who wore a beard. She smiled. “I’m sorry. Your name — I can’t think of it, and on your note I couldn’t make it out.”

  “First of all, I’ve changed a great deal,” said Adam, “not just in appearance, Mrs. Cadwallader. I want you to understand that before I go on any further. I’m a different — ”

  “Blessing,” she said then. “You’re that Adam Blessing.”

  “Not that Adam Blessing, Mrs. Cadwallader, I assure you. You were so very right when you made the remark that I needed help, remember?”

  She was looking down at her white gloves, playing with the fingers nervously. “I don’t remember.”

  “Please just give me a few minutes to talk with you.”

  “Of course,” she said. She did not look across at him. She sipped her aperitif, still occupied with the gloves.

  “I was an awful fool, but that’s all changed now. I was in the midst of a nervous breakdown.” “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “I make you nervous, don’t I? I don’t want to. I have great admiration for you.”

  “How long,” she said looking at him then, “are you going to be in Paris?”

  Adam knew she meant to keep the conversation as impersonal as possible.

  “I live here now,” he said.

  “How nice for you.”

  “And Charity? How’s Charity?” He did not mean to say her name so soon after the conversation had begun, but Mrs. Cadwallader’s nervousness was contagious.

  “Very happy,” she said.

  “I heard they were abroad. I thought you might all be traveling together.” It was a shot in the dark. He had no idea where Billy and Charity were.

  “No, they’re in Rome,” she said.

  “I thought Billy was bored with Rome. I thought he hated Rome!” He told himself to go easy; the old tone was back in his voice, the breathless feeling. He saw Mrs. Cadwallader look more closely at him, and he laughed. “It’s a joke Billy and I had,” he said. “I used to kid with Billy about Rome.”

  “What about Rome?”

  “Just a joke Billy and I had,” said Adam. “I don’t understand.”

  “Oh, well, it’s not important. I — I don’t even know how it came up.” There was silence. Adam wanted to signal for the waiter, but he was afraid that it would simply give her an excuse to say she could not join him in the drink, an excuse to pay for her own drink and leave. Adam said, “It’s lovely here, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, lovely.”

  “I was very happy when I read of their marriage last summer.” He coughed, to camouflage his shortness of breath. “It must have been very romantic, eloping that way, spur of the moment and all.”

  “Yes.”

  “I read about it in the newspaper,” said Adam. “I read about it just a week before I left for Europe. I’d hoped to run into them, but we were never in the same places, it seems.” In Venice, though, I came close, Adam thought grimly; missed them there by two days.

  “Are you working over here, Mr. Blessing?”

  “I’m hunting down some rare silver pieces for a New York collector,” said Adam. “It’s very interesting … I suppose Billy is working for his father’s firm. I mean, he took it over, didn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, I thought so. I thought it would be something like that.” Adam’s voice was husky, his throat very dry. Out of the corner of his eyes, he could see the waiter, but he did not chance signaling him. Mrs. Cadwallader had nearly finished her aperitif.

  “How’s Mr. Cadwallader?” said Adam.

  “He passed on at Christmas time.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Mr. Blessing, I have a dinner engagement and — ”

  “I know I said the wrong thing. I should have kept up on things more,” said Adam, “but it’s hard over here. I’m sorry about Mr. Cadwallader’s death. I know it must be hard. I don’t mean to keep saying the word “hard.” I guess sometimes life just seems that way. I wish you wouldn’t leave just yet, Mrs. Cadwallader. I thought we might have one drink together.” The words rushed out of him, and Mrs. Cadwallader seemed to be looking at him as though he were very strange.

  Adam said, “Please … I mean — I was in love with Charity.” That, he had never intended to say either.

  Mrs. Cadwallader stiffened and took her gloves from the table, placing them in her lap. “I have a dinner engagement,” she repeated. “Young man, you hardly knew Charity. It’s something you made more of than the situation warranted. Now, I’m very sorry, but there’s nothing I can do.”

  The old symptoms were returning. The feeling of wanting to cry.

  Adam said, “Their marriage was my fault.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about Mr. Blessing.” She tried to catch the waiter’s eye with a raised finger, but the waiter hurried off in another direction. She opened her purse.

  Adam said, “Billy didn’t even want her to join him. She went without even knowing that, Mrs. Cadwallader. I was busy trying to get enough money together to go after her and bring her back, but I didn’t have time.”

  “Mr. Blessing, Charity and Billy are very happy.” She was taking out bills from a large foreign billfold.

  “Doesn’t it mean anything to you that Billy never intended her to join him? He wanted to call off the whole thing, Mrs. Cadwallader. I can’t tell you how I know that but — �
�

  She interrupted him. “I’m sorry, Mr. Blessing,” placing the francs on the table, rising, “I must go now.”

  Adam rose and went alongside her. “It’s my fault, the whole thing,” he said, “and you don’t know what I’ve been through. I wish you knew! Even after their marriage, I was ready to help Charity, take her back home. I tried to find them. Sometimes I just went from city to city looking for them and — ”

  Mrs. Cadwallader stopped at the exit of the Cour d’Honneur. “Mr. Blessing,” she said, “I want you to leave my company. I will report you if you don’t. You are a very ill person, in my opinion.”

  “Not any more, Mrs. Cadwallader! Believe me, I had my breakdown! I was in southern France, in a town called Bidart at a hospital. You can call Dr. Melnik there! Ask him!”

  She was walking away from him.

  “Dr. Andre Melnik!” Adam called after her. “Write him, Mrs. Cadwallader!”

  People were staring at Adam. He knew his face was very red, perspiring. He tried to get his breath. He saw Mrs. Cadwallader stop a uniformed employee of the hotel, speak with him momentarily, turn and point Adam out.

  Adam hurried through the archway, along the stone sidewalk to the Rue de Castiglione. Once in the street, he lighted a Gauloise and leaned against a pillar until he could stop shaking. Over and over as he stood there, he tried to convince himself that this is where it should end. That part of his life was all over, wasn’t it? He was well now; and if it had seemed for those few moments in the Cour d’Honneur, to be starting up again, well, then — let it end again.

  But like all the other endings, it was a beginning. Adam realized this. He drew a deep breath, let it out, gave in. There you have it — he was glad, too. He looked forward to what he knew was ahead of him. A little chill of excitement ran through him. Packing again, it would mean, and consulting the train schedules; then the embarkation, with its sweet, nervous anticipation; and the journey itself, too tense to read or sleep or think of anything all through it but the journey’s end … the inevitable round of hotels, the inquiries, the coming closer and closer…. This time though he was ahead of the game, for he knew positively that Billy was in Rome.

  “What is it you really want from him? Or her?” Melnik used to ask.

  And it used to stump Adam. He could never answer Melnik, and soon there was no need any longer for Melnik to ask. Now, the answer was so simple Adam began to grin as he thought about it. He did not want anything from them — of course, that was a silly way of putting it, and damn Melnik for that! Adam simply wanted to be with them, to help them, too. Why had he never thought to put it that way to Melnik?

  Adam tossed the Gauloise to the gutter with a flick of his finger, and with a new, but very familiar spring to his step, he started off.

  13

  The Bartender

  Madison Avenue Inn,

  Madison and 93rd

  New York, New York

  U.S.A.

  You don’t remember me, probably, but once you put me out. I’m Billy Bollin’s friend. I bear you no ill will and send this as a token of my good wishes. Adam B.

  POSTCARD FROM PARIS MAILED IN JANUARY

  Adam checked first with the Grand, then the Excelsior when he arrived in Rome, and on his third try — the Mediterraneo — he located them. They were not in. Adam left a note for them saying he would be by at six o’clock. Then he set out to find himself a place to stay. Because it was June and the height of the tourist season, it was not easy, but shortly after two in the afternoon, he found a room at the Delle Nazioni. He spent a few hours loafing about in his room, waiting for the stores to open. The last time he had been in Rome, sometime in early October, he had not understood about the stores staying closed between one and three or four in the afternoon. It was an unhappy memory, and an unhappy period. He had gone to Rome on the chance he might find them yet, though he knew Billy disliked Rome. He had gone everywhere that fall on chance, and each failure brought on a brief bout of drinking, which invariably delayed his departure. In Rome he had suffered through one of his most extended binges, starting at breakfast usually, so that by lunchtime he was already drunk enough to be laughed at. He remembered one afternoon on the Via Francesco Crispi, pulling on the iron gate that locked a small handicraft shop, begging to be let in at the top of his lungs. Somehow he had thought the shopowners were against him in particular, that they had been warned (perhaps by the proprietor of the café where he had lunched) that he was coming in their direction. A nasty scene ensued, with police dragging him away, passers-by gaping and snickering at him. He had left Rome the very next day, vowing he would never return to face such humiliation again.

  Adam realized now that all of the trouble last fall and winter had been his own fault. A breakdown, Melnik had termed it. Adam had wished he could tell Melnik the reasons for it, the tension he had suffered through, the fear that any moment the authorities would find him out. A lot of businessmen, said Melnik, can’t take the pressure any longer, crack under it…. Stop reading the stock quotations, said Melnik … rest awhile and work on

  “the other thing” … Billy was the other thing. A business rival, Adam had explained, married the woman I wanted to marry, without even loving her…. Melnik’s advice was to accept the fact of the marriage. What was the word Melnik used? Scotomise … Don’t scotomise it … Well, Adam did not intend to scotomise it. He simply intended to be sure everything was all right with them. It was Adam’s fault Charity had never received the letter Billy wrote her, telling her not to join him in Switzerland. That much he owed them, anyway — to be sure that everything was all right.

  Around four o’clock, Adam walked in the oppressive summer heat to the Via Condotti. At number 84, he bought a handsome foulard and damask tie-silk dressing gown, explaining that he wished it gift-wrapped. A wedding gift for Billy, if they were still determined to carry on with their marriage. Otherwise Adam would keep it for himself. From the Via Condotti, Adam went to Via Frattina. At Myricae he bought a brocade evening bag for Charity. There were bright threads of green in the pattern to match her eyes, and Adam smiled to think of her pleasure as he presented her with it. “You surely didn’t think I’d be sour grapes,” he’d say…. And if things were not going smoothly between Charity and Billy? … “A little remembrance to make you feel better, Chary.” … While the woman was wrapping the bag, Adam’s eyes fell on a small Tyrolean carved angel. In a burst of good feeling he made arrangements to have it sent to Mrs. Cadwallader in Paris. He enclosed a card: “I do not look back on our brief meeting with any bitterness. Best of luck in all things, Adam Blessing.” Adam spent the rest of his afternoon back in his room, recording the big day in his Journal. It was odd that as much as he had looked forward to this time, now that it was here, he was not sure what he wanted to say about it. He described his purchases, made a note of his expenditures, and then wrote rather banal things like “What will we all say to one another?” and “Even the weather looks promising, seems to be cooling off.”

  At twenty minutes to six, Adam left the Delle Nazioni, packages under his arm, his heart pounding under his jacket. A peddler near the taxi-stand was selling some blue and yellow flowers. Adam decided that tomorrow he would drop a postcard to that florist on Madison and 96th. Say something short and nice, like: “Visiting here with Charity Cadwallader and Billy Bollin. Did you know they were married? Best wishes, Mr. Blessing.” Before Adam got into the taxi, he paid for a bunch of the flowers, but refused to take them when the peddler held them out. “Give them to your wife!” Adam smiled. The peddler shook his head, not understanding. “Moglie! Moglie!” Adam said, pleased that he had remembered the Italian for “wife.” The peddler nodded and said, “Si, Moglie!” trying to give the flowers to Adam again. Adam pointed at the peddler. “Your moglie!” … The peddler made a face at Adam. He looked angry, and as Adam got into the taxi, he believed the peddler was cursing him. Adam could not understand it, and as he rode to the Mediterraneo, his feelings were hurt; ther
e was a slight edge off the evening; a blemish, ever so small.

  • • •

  “Addie?” a voice behind him said.

  Adam whirled around in the Mediterraneo’s lobby and shouted, “Billy! Billy! My God, Billy!”

  “All right,” Billy said. “Let’s calm down, Addie.”

  Billy was not smiling, and slowly Adam’s broad grin faded from his face.

  Billy was saying that they could have a drink at the bar, and he was walking ahead, with Adam following, a bit dazed by Billy’s abruptness. In appearance, Billy was the same; still dressed as neatly and elegantly as ever. His back was to Adam, but already Adam had begun to admire the silver-blue nubby-silk dinner jacket Billy was wearing, with the dark evening pants and black pumps. Billy pointed to a small table in a corner.

  “Sit down,” said Billy. “Scotch?”

  Adam had intended to sip a sherry, go very easy, but he was so bewildered by Billy’s cool greeting, he agreed to the whisky.

  Billy spoke Italian to a waiter standing nearby, then he sat down at the table opposite Adam.

  “It’s good to see you,” said Adam. “I’m sorry I’m not dressed.”

  Billy was looking him over carefully, wordlessly. “What’s the beard for, Addie?”

  “It’s not a disguise or anything,” Adam forced a chuckle. “You know … in Europe and all.”

  “Taken on a little weight, haven’t you, Addie?”

  “It’s this suit,” said Adam. Billy made him nervous, staring hard at him that way. Adam added, “Oh, I suppose you mean my face is fuller. I guess it is.”

  “Everything is, Addie,” said Billy.

  “You look the same, Billy.”