by Irwin Shaw
13
STREAKED BY A QUARTER moon, the Mediterranean shushed gently into the beach. Jack and Veronica sat against a dune, protected from the sporadic wind, warm in their coats in the unseasonably balmy air. It was nearly midnight, and only a few lights shone in the winter-deserted colony of houses down the beach. When Veronica had suggested going to Fregene for dinner, the prospect had seemed attractive to Jack, after the heat and confusion of the Holts’ party. They had dined in a little country trattoria, eating simply and drinking a carafe of raw red wine, and had then driven on the edge of the pine forest along the beach to this lonely stretch of sand. The mingled fragrance of salt and pine enveloped them as they sat, Jack’s arm around Veronica’s waist, looking out at the mild shimmer of the moon on the water in front of them.
The title of this picture, Jack thought, pleasurably, is Two Lovers by the Side of the Sea. For the moment, Delaney and Barzelli and Stiles and Brutton, all feuds and problems, seemed distant and inconsequential.
“I have been thinking,” Veronica said. “Maybe I should come to Paris.”
She waited a moment, her head against Jack’s shoulder, and he knew that she was waiting for him to say, Yes, you should come to Paris. But he didn’t say it.
“I am getting tired of Rome,” she said. “And, anyway, I won’t be able to keep out of Robert’s way forever. And finally, he will make my life miserable.”
“At the party,” Jack said, “Despière told me that he saw Bresach hit you once, in a restaurant. Is that true?”
“Yes,” Veronica laughed, briefly. “Once.”
“What did you do?”
“I told him that if he ever did it again, I would leave him,” she said. “He never did it again, but I have left him just the same.” She laughed again. “He might as well have given himself the pleasure.” She gathered some sand in her free hand and then, hour-glass fashion, let it sift slowly down in a thin stream, back onto the beach. “I speak French,” she said. “I could get a job in a travel agency. Millions of French come to Italy every year.” She hesitated briefly. “I’ve always wanted to live in Paris. I could find a little flat and you could come and visit me.”
Jack moved a little, uneasily. He had a vision of himself hurrying to get away from his office early, swearing at the wheel of his car in the octopus-clutch of evening Parisian traffic, climbing the rickety steps of a crumbling St.-Germain-des-Prés apartment building, making love to Veronica, trying not to look at his watch, then, too soon for a lover, and not early enough for a husband, taking leave of her (regret and blame, voiced or unvoiced at the half-open door) to rush back home in time to kiss Hélène and say good night to the children before they went to bed, and making the proper, shielded answers when Hélène asked, over the pre-dinner drink, “What sort of a day did you have?” Cinq á sept, the French called it and, men and women both, seemed to manage it deftly and with pleasure.
“You prefer it if I do not come to Paris,” Veronica said.
“Of course not,” Jack said, and he wasn’t exactly lying. “Why do you say that?”
“You kept quiet in a funny way,” Veronica said.
Oh, God, Jack thought, another woman to weigh my silences.
“I’m foolish,” Veronica said. “I do not want to accept our limits.”
“What do you mean by that?” Jack asked.
“The moment that I take you to Ciampino and put you on the plane, that is our limit.” She smiled in the darkness. “What the geography books call a natural boundary. The Rhine, the Alps. Ciampino is our Rhine, our Alps, isn’t it?”
“Look, Veronica,” Jack said, speaking carefully, “I have a wife in Paris. And I love her.” For the purposes of this conversation, Jack thought, the phrase is accurate enough.
Veronica made a disdainful noise. “I am getting tired,” she said, “of men who sleep with me and tell me how much they love their wives.”
“The rebuke is noted,” Jack said. “I will never again tell anybody how much I love my wife.”
“Well, at least it’s different from Italian men,” Veronica said. “They always tell you how much they hate their wives. And the truth is, they usually do. There’s no divorce in Italy, so they can afford to tell their mistresses they hate their wives. Americans have to be more careful.”
They sat quietly for a moment, uncomfortable and opposed. Then Veronica began to hum, low, gently. “‘Volare,’” Veronica sang, “‘oh, oh! Cantare…oh, oh, oh, oh! nel blù, dipinto di blù, felice di stare lassù…I’m flying, I’m singing…’” She laughed harshly. “Love songs for the tourist trade.” She whistled two or three bars derisively, purposely flat, then took her hand out of Jack’s, and let the song slide away into silence.
Jack felt himself beginning to get angry with the girl, with her shifting and increasing claims, her quick mockery of both him and herself. “You said something just a minute ago,” he said, “that I’d like to ask you about.”
“What’s that?” Veronica said carelessly.
“You said you were getting tired of men who sleep with you and tell you how much they love their wives.”
“That’s right,” Veronica said. “Does that offend you?”
“No,” Jack said. “It’s only that Bresach said that you were a virgin when he met you.”
Veronica laughed. “Americans,” she said, “will believe anything. It’s their form of optimism. Why?” she asked challengingly. “Would you have preferred it if I’d been a virgin when I met Robert?”
“I don’t see that it has anything to do with me at all,” Jack said. “I was just curious. Do you mind that I ask you these questions?”
“Of course not,” Veronica said. She picked up his hand and kissed his fingers, lightly.
“Despière,” Jack said, “told me that Bresach once tried to commit suicide.” He felt Veronica stiffen beside him. “Is that true?”
“In a way,” she said. “Yes.”
“Was it because of you?”
“Not really,” she said. “He was going to a psychiatrist here long before he met me. To get talked out of killing himself. An Austrian from Innsbruck. Dr. Gildermeister.” She made her voice heavy and Teutonic to pronounce the name, derisively. “I had to go see him, too, after I moved in with Robert. You know what he said to me—‘I must warn you, young lady, Robert is a very finely balanced mechanism.’ That was news,” she said, sounding suddenly American. “Hot from Innsbruck.”
“What else did he say?”
“That Robert was potentially violent—that his violence might turn against himself—or against me. ‘Volare—cantare…’” she sang. She turned and put her arms around Jack and pulled, making him fall across the top of her body as she sank back into the sand. “I didn’t come out with you tonight,” she whispered, “to talk about anybody else.” She kissed him and touched his cheek with her fingers. “Do you know what I’d like?” she said. “I’d like you to make love to me. Here. Now.”
For a moment, Jack was tempted. Then he thought of lying naked in the cold sand, and the grit in his clothes later and the possibility of being stumbled upon by somebody walking along the beach. No, he thought, that’s for the younger trade. He kissed Veronica lightly, and sat up. “Some other time, darling,” he said. “Some warm night, some summer.”
Veronica lay back, motionless, her arms behind her head, staring up at the stars. Then, with a brisk movement, she jumped up. “Some summer,” she said, standing over him. “Be careful. There will come a day when I will stop making all the advances.” Her tone was flat and angry, and she brushed carelessly at her skirt, flicking the sand off, not looking at Jack, as he stood up, too, irresolutely, already beginning to regret his caution. Without a word, Veronica turned and began to walk swiftly across the dunes to where the car was parked under a tree. Jack followed her more slowly, admiring, despite his irritation with her and himself, the swinging, easy way she moved across the soft sand, barefooted, holding her shoes in her hand.
They got
into the car and Jack started the engine. He had given Guido the night off when Veronica had suggested driving out to the sea. The lights tunneling into the darkness ahead of the car made the trees on both sides seem engulfing and menacing. The road was narrow and bumpy and he drove slowly, not talking, conscious of Veronica leaning against the right-hand door, carefully keeping her distance from him.
It was only after he had turned into the main highway to Rome that she spoke. “Tell me,” she said, “how many times have you been married?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
“Three times.”
“Good God,” she said.
“That’s it,” Jack said. “Good God.”
“Is that normal in America?”
“Not exactly,” Jack said.
“What was your first wife like?”
“Why do you want to know?” Jack asked.
“I’d like to know how you’re going to talk about me when we are finished,” Veronica said. “What was she like? Pretty?”
“Very pretty,” Jack said. There was a car howling up behind him, going very fast, its lights blinking, and Jack waited until it was safely past before he continued. “She was also a disaster.”
“Is that what you’re going to say about me, too, later on?” Veronica asked.
“No,” Jack said. “I’ve never said it about my other women. Just my first wife.”
“Why did you marry her?”
“I couldn’t get her any other way,” Jack said, squinting along the headlight beams, peering down into the dead past, with its incomprehensible decisions, its unprofitable sacrifices, its imperious, dead desires.
“You didn’t know she was a disaster then?” Veronica curled her legs under her on the seat, facing him, interested, enjoying the revelations he was making, the gleam of female gossip in her eye.
“I had intimations,” Jack said. “But I made myself ignore them. Anyway, I thought after we were married, I could change her.”
“Change her from what?”
“From being stupid, narrow, grasping, jealous, untalented…”
“Did you?”
“Of course not.” Jack chuckled remotely. “She became worse.”
“And she really wouldn’t sleep with you unless you married her?” Veronica asked incredulously.
“No.”
“What was she—Italian?”
Jack laughed aloud and patted Veronica’s knee. “You’re a funny girl,” he said. “You have a feeling that if something is bad enough, it must be Italian.”
“I have my reasons,” Veronica said. “Was she Italian?”
“No.”
Veronica shook her head wonderingly. “I had the feeling things like that never happened in America.”
“Everything happens in America,” Jack said. “Just like every place else.”
“Was it worth it—finally?” Veronica asked curiously. “I mean, getting married for it…?”
“No,” Jack said. “Of course not.”
“What did you do when you fell in love with somebody else?”
“I took the plane—I was in Hollywood and my wife and child were in New York—” Jack began.
“Oh,” Veronica said. “There was a child.”
“Yes. I took the plane and went to New York and told my wife that I’d found somebody else and that I was about to begin a love affair with her.”
“Wait a minute,” Veronica said incredulously. “You mean you told your wife before it happened?”
“Yes,” Jack said.
“Why?”
“I had a peculiar sense of honor,” Jack said. “In those days.”
“And she gave you a divorce—just like that?”
“Of course not,” Jack said. “I told you she was stupid and narrow and grasping. She gave it to me six months later, when she wanted to marry someone else.”
“And the child. Is it a boy?”
Jack nodded.
“Where is he now?” Veronica asked.
“The University of Chicago. He’s twenty-two years old.”
“What is he like?”
Jack didn’t answer for a moment. That’s a question, he thought—what’s your son like? “He’s very intelligent,” Jack said evasively. “He’s taking a Ph.D. in physics.”
“Ph.D…” Veronica said. “What’s that?”
“Doctor of Philosophy.”
“Does he love you?”
Jack hesitated again. “No,” he said. “Not really. Doctors of Philosophy don’t love their fathers these days. Let’s talk about something else.”
“Why? Does talking about your son give you pain?”
“I suppose so,” Jack said.
“What about that woman in the movie?” Veronica asked. “What’s her name?”
“Carlotta Lee.”
“Weren’t you married to her?”
“Yes.”
“Did she please you?”
Jack smiled at the way Veronica had asked the question, translating literally from the Italian. “Yes,” he said, “she pleased me very much.”
“Yet you divorced her, too?” Veronica shook her head, puzzled. “It must be painful to divorce a woman as beautiful as that.”
“Not so painful,” Jack said. “For one thing, she wasn’t as beautiful as all that when we separated. Remember, there’d been a war in between. And she was older than I was to begin with…”
“Even so…”
“She found ways to make it less painful,” Jack said. “Like sleeping with all my friends, all my enemies, all my acquaintances, all anybody’s acquaintances…”
“She must have been very unhappy,” Veronica said softly.
“On the contrary,” Jack said. “It made her very happy, indeed.”
“You hate her now,” Veronica said.
“Maybe,” Jack said. “Anyway, I remember that I hated her then.”
“And your wife now?”
“I thought you didn’t want me to talk about her.”
“I have changed my mind,” Veronica said. “Don’t tell me how much you love her. Just tell me what she is like.”
“She is small, beautiful, with a soft, musical French voice,” Jack said, “and she’s hard-headed, tricky, feminine, loving. She takes care of me and maneuvers me and makes the children behave sedately when necessary and when I first met her she seemed to me to combine all the virtues of France and the French character.”
“And now?” Veronica asked. “What do you think of her now?”
“I haven’t changed my opinion,” Jack said, “—too much.”
“And yet you sleep with other women,” Veronica said challengingly.
“No,” said Jack.
“Now, Jack…” It was the first time Veronica had called him by name. “Remember to whom you are talking.”
“I remember,” Jack said. “You’re the first.”
Veronica shook her head wonderingly. “How long have you been married?”
“Eight years.”
“And nothing in all that time?”
“Nothing,” Jack said. “Until you.”
“And then, with me,” she said, “after knowing me only for an hour and a half…?”
“Uh-huh.” An old man on a bicycle loomed up on the side of the road and Jack swung around him carefully, slowing down. He didn’t try to explain to Veronica, or even to himself, what had happened to him, after the eight years, on the rainy afternoon following the lunch with Despière and Miss Henken. It had seemed inevitable, correct, necessary, it had happened without his willing it or foreseeing it. “After knowing you for only an hour and a half,” he repeated. He stopped. Whatever else he was going to do tonight, he was not going to expose the intricacies of his relationship with his wife—his inability, from the beginning, to give himself completely, the dragging sense of guilt because he didn’t love her enough, the frequent sense of boredom, of being stifled and baffled
by the net of domesticity and conjugal routine she cunningly threw around him. He was not going to tell this girl about his surge of relief when he had left Hélène at the airport or about not feeling the least flicker of desire for her for the two weeks before his departure, or about the other similar periods that lay like dead gray patches on his life with Hélène. Vaguely, he felt that these facts discredited him and would discredit him even more, in his own eyes and in the eyes of Veronica, if he was disloyal enough to voice them at a time like this.
“Are you going to tell your wife about me when you go back to Paris?”
“I don’t think so,” Jack said.
“You are not as peculiarly honorable these days, as you were when you were young.” Veronica’s voice had taken on an edge of harshness, mockery. “Is that it?”
“That’s it,” Jack said. “I’m not a lot of things now that I was when I was young.”
“Would your wife leave you if she found out?”
“I don’t think so,” Jack said. He grinned. “Remember, she’s French.”
Veronica was silent for several moments. “It would have been nice, I think,” she said softly, “to know you when you were young.”
“Probably not,” Jack said. “I was arrogant and opinionated and I was so interested in being honest to myself that I never hesitated to hurt people…”
“Robert’s like that.” Veronica laughed drily. “Just like that. Do you mean you were like him?”
“Probably. In some ways,” Jack said. “Except that I never threatened to kill anybody. And I never tried to kill myself.”
Veronica leaned closer to him, regarding him closely, seriously, in the flaring brief light of headlights sweeping down toward them on the other side of the road. “What happened to you,” she said, “I wonder.”