PART ONE
The Start
“The barometer of his emotional nature was set for a spell of riot.”
These words, on the printed page, had the unsettling effect no doubt intended, but with a difference. At once he put the book aside: closed it, with his fingers still between the pages; dropped his arm over the edge of the chair and let it hang, the book somewhere near the floor. This in case he wanted to look at it again. But he did not need to. Already he knew the sentence by heart: he might have written it himself. Indeed, it was with a sense of familiarity, of recognition, that his mind had first read through and accepted that sentence only a moment before; and now, as he relaxed his fingers’ grip and dropped the book to the floor, he said aloud to himself: “That’s me, all right.” The book hit the rug with a soft thump and the Scottie looked up from its basket. “You heard me, Mac,” he called out. “That’s what I said!” He glared at the sleepy dog and added, loudly, burlesquing his fear and his delight: “It’s me they’re talking about. Me!”
He had been alone for nearly an hour. When Wick left, they had had one of their familiar and painful scenes, a scene in which he played dumb, as usual, leaving to his brother the burden of talking around the subject and avoiding any specific mention of what was on both their minds.
Wick had stood in the open door and looked back and said, “I wish you’d change your mind and come with us, this afternoon.”
From the deep chair he smiled at his younger brother. “I know you do,” he said, “but I can’t. I’ll be much better off here.” He was aware that he was acting and looking like a romantic invalid and he tried to curb this.
The brother came back in and closed the door. “Listen. We’ve had the tickets such a long while. And Helen’ll be disappointed and I’ll be disappointed. You know she’s only going because of you.”
“I’ll hear it on the radio.”
“Today’s Thursday, not Saturday.”
“Oh yes. I forgot.”
“And you look all right,” his brother went on. “Nobody would think there was a thing wrong with you—it’s all in your imagination. You look perfectly all right.”
“Wick, I could never sit through it. I’d spoil it for you and Helen and I’d be miserable myself.” Unintentionally he made the pathetic, the disarming admission: “Wick, I’ve only just recovered—it’s only been three days. I couldn’t concentrate.”
The brother looked at him searchingly, almost sadly, he thought. “I wouldn’t keep asking you, Don, if I didn’t think it would do you good. It would do you so much good.”
He smiled again, hanging onto his patience for dear life. “I’d run into someone I know and I can’t see anybody.”
“You wouldn’t see anybody.”
“Oh yes I would. And besides there’s Helen. I can’t have even her see me.”
“Helen’s seen you like this dozens of times.”
“There—you see? I do show it.”
“You’re exaggerating all this, Don, and just indulging yourself. Listen, Don. If I’m willing to take off the rest of the week, to take you away for a long weekend in the country—just the two of us and Mac—I should think you could do this one thing for me. Please come with us.”
He looked at the Scottie curled up in its basket, absently watching the two brothers. After a long pause, while he gathered his breath and his brother regarded him in that worried puzzled way, he said: “I don’t mean to be stubborn but I’m not exaggerating and I’m not really indulging myself. Please try to understand. One more day and I’ll be all right, but today—I can’t go out now and I certainly can’t go sit through Tristan. Tonight, when we get together in the car and drive away, fine. But not now.—Wick, I’d go to pieces if I went out now.”
“How?” the brother asked. “And anyway, I’d be with you.”
He shook his head. “Wick, won’t you please go and forget about me? I can’t see why you want me to go when you know I don’t want to.”
“You know why I want you to go,” the brother said. “I mean,” he added quickly, “I just don’t want you to be alone when you’re feeling like this.”
“I’ll be all right,” he said, pretending not to notice the slip. He sighed, already fatigued with the familiar argument, but he believed he could keep it up forever if only it ended, finally, with his brother leaving him alone. “Will you stop worrying about me?”
“All right”—and he saw, with relief, that Wick had reached the point where he was afraid of pressing him too far and even now pretended to be pacified. “I’ll tell Helen you didn’t feel well enough. Will you be ready when I come back?”
“Yes,” he said. “I’m ready now. I feel much better since I shaved and dressed.” The shaving and dressing was probably what had precipitated this whole tiresome thing, it had given Wick ideas, but he couldn’t take it back now.
Wick didn’t seem to have noticed. “Mrs. Foley will be in about three o’clock to clean up a little. I’ve left a dollar on the radio in case you want her to get you anything.”
“I won’t want anything.”
“What are you going to do—you’re not going out, are you?”
“Oh no, I’m not going out.” He smiled, and added, “You don’t believe me, do you?”
The brother looked away. “I just thought maybe you’d be taking Mac out.”
“No. Mrs. Foley can, if he wants to go out.”
“All right,” the brother said again. “I’ll have the car sent over and we can get going by six-thirty at the latest. It may be cold down there; after all, it’s October; but a weekend in the country will do you a lot of good. Both of us.”
Don smiled again. “Thursday to Monday—that’s pretty long for a ‘weekend.’ ”
“That’s all right, the longer the better. And listen,”—Wick was working it up for his benefit, trying to act enthusiastic, trying to show he had forgotten the tiresome pleading and was convinced that he would stay where he was, safe and sound—“let’s not come back till Tuesday, or even Wednesday. Well, Tuesday—I can arrange it all right with the office.”
“Sounds wonderful, Wick. Hear that, Mac?” He laughed. “One of those long weekends in the country, that you read about!”
“I’ll be late,” Wick said, turning. “Goodbye.”
“Give my love to Helen.”
“You’re sure there isn’t anything you want?”
“Thanks, Wick, I don’t want anything. Have a good time.”
“You’ll surely be here?”
“Here?”
“When I come back.”
“Of course I’ll be here!” He was reproachful, hurt, and his brother turned at once toward the door.
“Goodbye.”
“Goodbye. Give my love to Helen!”
The door was closed; and he smiled to himself as he realized what an effort it had cost Wick not to look back once more. He smiled because he was relieved to be alone again and because he knew so much more about this whole thing than his brother did. Poor Wick, he thought, and at once he began to feel better. “Well, Mac,” he said aloud, “it seems that we’re going to the country.” He got up and went over to look at the dollar bill lying on the radio. Then he came back and sat down again in the big chair.
There was a small Longines traveling clock on the ledge of the bookshelf at his elbow and it said 1:32. He picked it up and wound it, remembering the generous Dutchman who had given it to him that winter in Gstaad and how the Dutchman’s feelings had been hurt because he hadn’t got around to thanking him for two days. He set it back on the shelf and looked about the room.
Now that he was alone, with five hours staring him in the face, he began to sense the first pricks of panic; then knew at once it was something he only imagined. “What to do, Mac, what to do?” The dog opened its eyes, lifted its head from the cushion, and relapsed into sleep again. “I get it,” he said. “Bored!” He spoke up sharply, not even thinking of the dog now. “What the hell have you got to be bored
with!” His eye fell on the gramophone. He walked over to it and lifted the cover. The last record of a Beethoven sonata was on, the Waldstein. He turned the switch and set it going; but before the record was halfway through, its jubilant energy and hammering clanging rhythm oppressed him, and he reached to shut it off. As he lifted the arm of the pickup, the trembling of his hand caused the needle to scrape across the record with a strident squawk that brought the Scottie to its feet. “Relax, dog,” he said, and came back to his chair.
The time had to be filled, he couldn’t just sit here. On the bookshelf at his elbow was a collection of monographs on modern painters. He leaned forward to examine the titles, then chose the Utrillo. He pulled the book down and spread it open on his lap. There were a few colored reproductions but these were scarcely more colorful than the black-and-whites. He thumbed through the drab pages, stopping now and again to linger over some scene of a deserted melancholy street, or a little grey lane hemmed in by sad plaster walls, and a feeling of almost intolerable loneliness came over him. Even the village squares or the open places in front of churches had this loneliness, this desertion, as if everyone had gone off for the day to attend some brilliant fair, leaving the town desolate and empty behind. In imagination, in memory, he stood in just such a little street now, as he had when he was a child—at sundown, after supper, on a summer evening, standing alone in the quiet street and listening to a steam calliope playing far away on the edge of the town, at the fairgrounds, before the evening performance of the circus. He closed the book and put it back on the shelf, remembering that moment so clearly and well that tears of pity came to his eyes—for the child, for himself, for the painter, he did not know whom.
“I must be in lousy condition to get so worked up over—over nothing,” he said. “Or do I want to?” He addressed the waking dog. “Do I, Mac? You tell me.” He stared at the dog. “Well?” The dog stared back. “Am I indulging myself, as your pr-r-r-roud master said”—trilling the “r” like an actor—“am I putting it on, is it all my imagination? Or if not mine, whose?” There’s a thought for today, he said to himself. He stood up. “Mac, you’re exaggerating, nobody would think there was a thing wrong with you! You look perfectly all right! And when I say you look all right, then, God damn it, you feel all right, do you hear?” He was having fun now, but even as he reached the pitch of his enjoyment he tired of it, and so did the dog. Who’s loony now, he said to himself apathetically, as he sat down again.
His fingers touched the edge of a small book tucked in beside the cushion of the chair. He pulled it out and looked at the title. It was a copy of James Joyce’s Dubliners his brother had been reading. He opened it and began to read at random, articulating the words very carefully in a whisper, paying elaborate attention to the form of each word but none to what he was reading. It was like the time, on similar occasions, when, keyed-up, desperate, he went out in search of a French movie, and sat in some airless movie-house all afternoon concentrating on the rapid French being spoken from the screen, because he believed a few hours of such concentration, even though he didn’t listen to the sense, had a steadying effect. So he read now for some minutes, thinking that he might even read the book right through and then through again before his brother came back. Wouldn’t that surprise him? he said to himself with a smile, while his lips formed other words: The barometer of his emotional nature was set for a spell of riot. The smile faded, he stared and read again.
The burden, the oppression was gone. He felt positively lightheaded, joyous. The words had released him from the acute sense of suspense he now realized he had been under since his brother left. This is what he had been waiting for, what he had probably known all along in the back of his mind was bound to happen. It was as though a light-switch had been snapped on or a door sprung open, showing him the way. He dropped the book; and after he had exhorted the dog, saying, “It’s me they’re talking about. Me”—he shrugged, his hands spread open, palms up, in a wide gesture, and said: “Why am I such a fool? Why resist or wait?” He looked around, his eyebrows raised to his imaginary audience, like a comedian—an audience where he himself was every one of the several hundred people staring back at the performer in silent contempt and ridicule. He knew he was thus looking at himself. For his own benefit he exaggerated the action and voice, clowning because of his embarrassment. “I leave it to you, gentlemen, Mac, all,” he said aloud; “call me ham if you like but—there’s the part! What can one do about it?”
He dropped the role and stood up. He went to the radio and picked up the dollar bill. “Control! Control, Mac,” he said. “There’s plenty of time.” He lifted his coat from the back of a chair. “All afternoon,” he added. “Time to go out and plenty of time to get back. Plenty.” The Scottie watched him from its basket. He buttoned his coat and went into the kitchen to see if water had been put down for the dog.
On the kitchen table was an envelope addressed to Mrs. Foley. He picked it up and held it to the light. He tore it open and fingered through four five-dollar bills. “Twenty, my God,” he said. “Why twenty?” It must be Mrs. Foley’s pay for the month. She came two afternoons a week to pick up and often at noon to take the dog out. He put the bills in his pocket, wadded the empty envelope into a ball and threw it out the window.
He heard the wadded-up envelope rattle along the fire-escape and he stood a moment longer looking absently out at the blank brick wall opposite. Suddenly he thought of Wick. He would be at the opera now. Helen would be there too, sitting beside him in the great nearly dark house (she’s only going because of you). The two of them would be looking at the brilliantly lighted sailing-ship scene that was the first act, and now and again one of them would lean toward the other and whisper something about the performance. Not about him; they wouldn’t be talking about him now. Chiefly because he was the only thing on their minds and neither wanted the other to know it. Helen would be wondering if he really wasn’t feeling well, or was he off again; and Wick would be wondering if Helen had accepted the excuse. She didn’t give a damn for the opera under any conditions and he certainly didn’t under these. He would be staring at the stage, half-turned toward Helen to catch her next whispered comment, and thinking: “If he isn’t there when I go back; if he’s gone out—” Don felt sorry for the distraction he knew he was causing them, and yet he couldn’t help smiling, too. He was taking their minds off the performance a hundred times more than if he had been sitting there between them and talking loudly against the music.
On his way out he went into the bathroom to see how he looked. “During the next few days,” he said, as he straightened his tie, “I’ll probably be looking into this mirror more often than is good for mortal man.” He winked. “That’s how well I know myself. However.” Before he left, he looked back at the dog. “Don’t you worry, Mac—don’t you wuddy—about Mrs. Foley’s money. I’ll be back in time to hand it to her myself,” he said, “in person. Just in case anybody should ask.” Then he slammed the door, tried it again to see if the lock had caught, and went down the stairs.
East 55th Street was cool, even for October. He thought of running back for a topcoat, but time was precious; and besides, his destination and haven lay just around the corner.
When the drink was set before him, he felt better. He did not drink it immediately. Now that he had it, he did not need to. Instead, he permitted himself the luxury of ignoring it for a while; he lit a cigarette, took some envelopes out of his pocket and unfolded and glanced through an old letter, put them away again and began to hum, quietly. Gradually he worked up a subtle and elaborate pretense of ennui: stared at himself in the dark mirror of the bar, as if lost in thought; fingered his glass, turning it round and round or sliding it slowly back and forth in the wet of the counter; shifted from one foot to the other: glanced at a couple of strangers standing farther down the bar and watched them for a moment or two, critical, aloof, and, as he thought, aristocratic; and when he finally did get around to raising the glass to his lips, it w
as with an air of boredom that said, Oh well, I suppose I might as well drink it, now that I’ve ordered it.
He thought again of Wick and Helen. Funny relationship. Closer than if they had been lifelong friends; but not because of any real affinity or interest in each other. In fact, each was the kind of person that the other did not care for at all. The only thing that held them together was him, of course. Aside from himself, they had no common meeting ground. And he was able, by his bad behavior no less than his good, to bind them closer than if they had been brother and sister. How they were one, when things were going well with him. How they were united even more, when he was on the loose. If they could see him now. Or perhaps they knew only too well what he was doing at this very moment. Hell, why wouldn’t they? It had happened so many times.…
Gloria sidled up and put a hand on his shoulder. Imperceptibly he pulled away, careful not to offend her but cold enough so that she wouldn’t get any ideas in her head. Gloria was something new here and he didn’t like it at all. Why in thunder should a 2nd Avenue bar-and-grill attempt a “hostess,” for God’s sake? He didn’t like acting snooty about her in front of Sam; and then again he thought it was well that they should be reminded he didn’t care for this sort of thing. He was fond of this bar but just the same he was different from most people who came here and they knew it. Gloria was not more than twenty, blonde, not thin, dressed in a brown satin dress that shone like copper. She always asked for a cigarette, so now he placed his pack on the counter with the hope that that would take care of her.
“Hello-o-o,” she said. “Where you been? I haven’t seen you for days and days.” She took a cigarette. “Been away?”
“Yes.”
“You look awful nice. That a new suit?”
He didn’t answer.
“My, we aren’t very chummy today. What’s the matter?”
“As a matter of fact,” he said, “I was—thinking.”
The Lost Weekend Page 2