Two Weeks in Another Town

by Irwin Shaw

  He thought of Despière, born and baptized a Catholic in Bayonne and being buried as a Catholic this morning in Africa, and the idea of Despière, or Despière’s soul, being subject, this morning or on any morning, to this inaccurate and grotesque selection, was intolerable to him.

  “I’ve had enough,” Jack said to Carlotta. “I’ll wait for you outside.”

  She had stood next to him silently, staring up through her glasses at the ceiling. Her face looked grave and puzzled. “I’ve had enough, too,” she said. “I’ll come with you.” She took off her glasses and put them in her bag and they walked across the bare floor and out together without any further words.

  The sky was overcast when they came out and the piazza was gray and melancholy in the flat light. They stood in front of the fountain and stared back at the huge bulk of St. Peter’s.

  “I had a curious feeling in there,” Carlotta said. “I had the feeling that Michelangelo didn’t really believe in God.”

  Jack looked at her sharply. Momentarily, he wondered if he had spoken in the chapel without realizing it.

  “What’s the matter?” Carlotta asked. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “Because that’s what I was thinking in there, myself,” Jack said.

  “Married people,” Carlotta said. “After a certain number of years they begin to think the same thoughts at the same time. It’s the final fidelity.”

  “We’re not married.”

  “Sorry,” Carlotta said. “I forgot.” For a moment, uneasy, they both stared at the cathedral. “How many people who helped build this church,” she said, “do you think really believed?”

  “Probably most of them,” Jack said. “The age of faith…”

  “I don’t know,” Carlotta said. “It’s hard to tell from their work. For example—in there—those scenes from the Bible. The Botticelli of Moses kneeling before the burning bush. But Botticelli also painted Venus rising from the foam. What did he believe? The miracle of the burning bush or the miracle of the birth of Venus from the sea? Why one more than the other? What do you believe?”

  “When we were married,” he said, “what did you think I believed?”

  “Oh, I supposed you thought there was a God, of some kind—”

  “Maybe I still do,” Jack said reflectively. “There is a God. Yes, I believe that. But I don’t think He has any interest in us. Or at any rate, not the interest that any religion says He has. That is, it does not affect Him whether we murder our fellow man or honor our father and mother or covet our neighbor’s wife. I can’t feel that self-important. If there is a God, maybe He’s a scientist and this world is one of His laboratories, in which He practices vivisection and observes the results of chemical experiments. Why not? We are cut apart living, we are poisoned, we die by the million, like monkeys in laboratories.” He spoke savagely, allowing the bitterness he felt over Despière’s useless death to flood through him. “The monkey who dies because he is used as a control and is not inoculated against a disease certainly is not more of a sinner than the monkey who has been protected and merely has a low fever for a couple of days. Maybe we’re God’s monkeys and we suffer and die for His information. And the guilt we feel from time to time when we break what we consider His laws may be just another interesting virus He’s managed to isolate and control. And faith may be just a side effect or symptom of the guilt virus, like the hives people get who can’t tolerate penicillin.”

  Carlotta was frowning. “I don’t like to hear you talk like that,” she said. “It’s too gloomy.”

  “Actually, it’s not as gloomy as Christianity,” Jack said. “After all, you believe in vivisection, don’t you?”

  “I’m not so sure.”

  “Of course you do. If one child in the world is saved by the death of a million monkeys, you feel it’s a fair bargain, don’t you?”

  “I suppose I do,” Carlotta said reluctantly.

  “Well, isn’t that a more cheerful thing to believe than that we’re going to be consigned to eternal punishment for characteristics over which we have no control and which are built into the human animal, just like his eyes and ears and his five senses? At least, this way, we can hope that there is some Purpose behind it all, that somewhere in the universe some profit will accrue because of our sufferings. Until now, we’ve been able to believe that the experiments of scientists had a useful, constructive object. Now, of course, what with the hydrogen bomb and germ warfare and all the rest of it, we’re not so sure. A scientist today is suspect. And with good reason. After all, if you judge by the harm it’s done to humanity, a good-sized segment of the scientific community should be locked away as criminally insane. But we can still hope that God is a pre-1940 scientist, Whose hand perhaps has slipped a little, but Whose intentions are still reasonable. Only God’s reasons of course must not be confused with our reasons—any more than the experimenter’s reasons must be confused with the monkey’s, cut open on his table.”

  Carlotta shivered inside her light cloth coat. “I hate talk like that,” she said. “Let’s go back to the car.”

  Jack took her arm and they started walking toward where the car was parked. “Did you feel all this all the time?” Carlotta asked. “Even when I knew you?”

  “No,” Jack said. “I think only in the last week or so. Since I came to Rome. I’ve moved into a new department of my life. Some curious things have happened to me in the past two weeks.”

  “If I were you,” she said, “I’d stay away from this city from now on.”

  “Maybe I will,” he said. “Maybe I will.”

  Before they got to the car, where Guido, alert and polite, was standing, with the door open, Carlotta turned and took a last look at St. Peter’s. “So many churches,” she said, “all over the world, and all for nothing, for a lie, a dream…What a waste.”

  Jack shook his head. “It’s not a waste,” he said.

  “But you just said…”

  “I know what I just said. But still, it’s not a waste. Even if that was the only thing to show for it—” Jack gestured toward the mass of the church. “Even if the only thing that had ever come out of the whole process was what Michelangelo did in there, it would be worth it. And, of course, there’s infinitely more than that. Not only the substantial things, the stones, the statues, the windows, the paintings—but the comfort it has given on this earth to the faithful…”

  “The faithful,” Carlotta said. “Trapped by a lie.”

  “Not trapped,” Jack said. “Ennobled. I envy them, I envy every true believer with all my heart.”

  “Then why don’t you believe?” Carlotta asked. “Can’t you stand a little comfort yourself?”

  “Why don’t I believe?” Jack shrugged. “Have faith, they say. It’s like saying, Be beautiful. I would like to be beautiful, too…”

  They stood for a moment more, looking across the bare, stone sweep of the piazza. A wind had sprung up, cold and cutting, and some nuns who were hurrying toward the cathedral steps seemed to be floating across the pavement on their billowing habits.

  “It’s going to rain,” Jack said. “I’m sorry we came. It’s the wrong morning. Let’s go back to Rome.”

  In the car, returning to their hotel, they were silent most of the way. Carlotta sat in one corner, her face thoughtful and grave, not looking at Jack. After a few minutes she spoke. “Do you know why I never talked to you before about religion?” she said. “Because religion is mixed up in my mind with death. And I can’t bear to think about death. Do you think about death much?”

  “During the war, I did—a great deal,” Jack said. “And recently, since I came to Rome.”

  Carlotta took off her gloves. She looked down at her bare hands and slowly caressed one with the other. “This flesh,” she said softly, and Jack knew what she meant by the gesture and why she had said the words. She reached out her left hand and took his and clung to it. “Jack, will you take me out to dinner tonight, please? I don’t want to be a
lone tonight.”

  “I don’t think that would be a good idea,” Jack said, as gently as possible. He could have told her he was busy, but he wanted to let her know that he was refusing her as a deliberate choice.

  She withdrew her hand abruptly. “Sorry,” she said. She put her gloves on again, smoothing the wrinkles elaborately.

  How many times, Jack thought, have I watched this woman perform this plain, everyday, vain, appealing, feminine act. How many voyages, great and small, happy and unhappy, have been introduced by that dry leaflike little womanly noise.

  “Jack…” she began, then stopped.

  “Yes?”

  “Do you know why I really came to Rome?”

  “If you’re going to say that you really came to see me,” Jack said, “I’m not going to believe you.”

  “No, I wasn’t going to say that. I came to see Maurice Delaney. As I told you.” She made an impatient movement with her shoulders. “If they’ll ever let me into his room. Do you know why I came to see Maurice?” She waited for a moment, but Jack didn’t say anything. “I came to see him because of all the men I ever let make love to me, he gave me the most pleasure. And I thought, now, if he was dying, he would like to hear that.”

  “I’m sure he would,” Jack said drily.

  “You know how important love was to me…Sex, if you prefer that word…”

  “Was?”

  “Was. I found out that it was the most important thing. The center of my life. So if a man gives you…”

  “I don’t need any diagrams,” Jack said.

  “You’re not angry that I told you that, are you?”

  “No,” Jack said. It was almost true.

  “Now,” she said, “I somehow have the feeling that I can say anything to you, tell you everything.”

  “Our divorce,” Jack said lightly, not wishing to have her say anything more, “has not been in vain.”

  “Like me, Jack,” she whispered. Her head was down into her collar and her voice was thin and plaintive. “Please like me.”

  He was silent.

  “We’ll see each other again, won’t we?” she said. “Before I leave Rome.”

  “Of course,” he said, lying.

  24

  IN THE SMALL, CLUTTERED room on the fourth floor Bresach and Jack worked all afternoon, organizing, page by page, the changes, additions, and cuts that they had blocked out for Delaney’s picture the night before in the restaurant. They worked swiftly and efficiently together, understanding each other with a minimum of words, and collaborating with each other, at least for this afternoon, as though they had done at least a dozen jobs together before this. Hilda, Delaney’s secretary, whom Jack had enlisted to help them, had been taking it all down in shorthand, and by six o’clock, when fatigue made them call a halt, she had a huge sheaf of notes that she took home with her to transcribe.

  After she had gone, Jack accepted a cup of coffee that Max, in silent, anxious attendance, had prepared. Jack sipped the coffee gratefully, leaning back in his chair and thinking pleasurably of the work they had accomplished that day. “Maybe I’m delirious or suffering from shock,” he said, “but I think this is finally going to be a wonderful picture.”

  Bresach, also drinking coffee, out of one of the two cups in the apartment, grunted. “Control yourself, Andrus. Beware of the euphoria of the depths.”

  “It’s not euphoria,” Jack said. “I’m being as cold-blooded as I know how to be. I repeat—I think we’re going to have a wonderful picture.”

  “Non-vomitous,” Bresach said. “That’s as far as I’ll go.”

  Jack put down his cup and stood up and stretched. “All right. Wonderful and non-vomitous.”

  “How do you think Delaney will take it?” Bresach asked.

  “He will thank us for saving his life.”

  “You don’t think you’re being naïve?”

  “I’ll tell you what I think,” Jack said. “If he was up and around, he’d probably object to a lot of things we’re doing. Not all, but a lot. But this way, he’ll get to see the whole thing, already done. Whatever you may think about him, he’s no fool, and even if he wants to recut it somewhat or add one or two of the old things, he’ll recognize that it’s been improved.”

  “Well,” Bresach said, shrugging, “you know the man better than I do.”

  “Yes, I do,” Jack said. “Shall we keep going tonight? I can be back here by about nine o’clock.”

  “Oh.” There was a curious little silence, and Bresach and Max exchanged glances.

  “What’s the matter?” Jack asked.

  “Nothing’s the matter,” said Bresach. “It’s just that Holt invited me to dinner. He told me to ask you to come, too. Max, too. I think he feels guilty if he doesn’t pay for dinner for at least twenty people a night.”

  “When did you see Holt?” Jack asked. He had avoided talking about Holt’s proposed deal to Bresach and had been grateful that Bresach hadn’t mentioned it. He would have to make a stand sooner or later, but he wanted it to be as late as possible, when the other problems had been solved.

  “I went there this morning,” Bresach said. “To his office.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He made a very generous offer,” Max said quickly.

  “He’s a very generous man,” Jack said. “What did he say?”

  “More or less the same thing he told you last night,” Bresach said. “X number of dollars for the story and a weekly salary to work with Delaney when he gets out of the hospital and can get around to preparing the script and shooting it.”

  “X number of dollars,” Max said. He waved his hands agitatedly. “Why don’t you tell him? Fifteen thousand dollars! It’s a fortune.”

  “You forget, Max,” Bresach said, smiling with a touch of malice at his friend, “that I’m the son of a rich father and I despise money.”

  “I don’t care how rich your father is,” Max shouted. “You don’t have enough money to eat three meals a day, and you know it.”

  “Take it easy, Max, take it easy.” Bresach patted Max’s shoulder soothingly. “Nobody says I’m turning the money down.”

  “What did you tell Holt?” Jack asked.

  “I told him I wanted to talk to you first,” Bresach said. “I told him I trusted you. Not with girls…” He grinned sourly. “But with something like this. He said you were coming in with him and Delaney as producer…”

  “That isn’t definite yet,” Jack said.

  “Last night,” Bresach said, “you said you didn’t want to comment at the moment. How about this moment?”

  Jack walked over to the window and stood with his back to the room, looking out at the dark roofs of the buildings across the court and the lighted windows of kitchens in which women were preparing dinner. He thought of Delaney, lying in his hospital room, planning, even now, how he was going to make the picture of Bresach’s script. He remembered Delaney’s excitement and hope for the project and he remembered how much he owed Delaney. But he knew the time had come to decide how much he owed the boy, too. With all his violence, and all his talent, Bresach was vulnerable and could be easily damaged. Easily crushed, perhaps. If this first venture went wrong, if Delaney appropriated it, corrupted it, overlaid it with the tricks and curlicues and sure-fire melodrama and sentimentality that had disfigured his work in the last ten years, there was no telling what the effects would be on Bresach. Aside from what it would do to the story itself, which was delicately and unsentimentally composed, and which would fall apart if it were done wrongly. A third allegiance. To a hundred or so sheets of badly typed paper. And Sam Holt—What did he owe Sam Holt?

  “Mr. Andrus,” he heard Max begin to speak.

  “Sssh,” Bresach said. “Let the man think.”

  Irrelevantly, the youthful voice made him remember his own son, and the letter in the airplane and the letter from Chicago. He stared out across the court into the lighted windows, feeling the chill of youthful eyes upon him, Bres
ach’s, Steven’s, his own, when he was their age, Delaney’s, at the time when Delaney had come for the first time into the dressing room in Philadelphia. Two whole generations of young men, he thought, sons and fathers intermingled, are waiting for me to betray them.

  Let the man think…

  If a question like this had been placed before that young Delaney who had entered Jack’s life that night, how would he have answered it? Jack smiled a little to himself, remembering the violence of Delaney’s harangue about poor Myer’s play and the stricken expression on the producer’s face before he fled the room. Well, Jack thought, in honor of my friend, in gratitude for what he has taught me…

  He turned back toward Bresach and Max. “You’d be a fool to let anyone else touch it,” he said. “Especially Delaney. Now I have to go to the hospital, and after that I have to go back to my hotel to shave and dress. When you find out what restaurant Sam Holt is taking you to, call and leave a message. I’ll join you later.”

  He was conscious of Max’s sad, reproachful glance as he picked up his coat and left the apartment.

  Delaney was sitting up in bed and eating his dinner when Jack came into the room. He had been shaved and his complexion was ruddy and he was having a glass of red wine with his meal. He waved his fork when he saw Jack. The equipment for the oxygen was nowhere in sight. He looked as sound as he had at the airport when he had come to meet Jack, and his voice had its old throaty power when he said, “Should I ring for dinner for you, too? It’s a hell of a restaurant.”

  He had awakened that morning feeling good, he told Jack. It was as simple as that. He had secretly walked around the room when the nurse was out, and his legs weren’t wobbly and there were no pangs in his chest. “If it wasn’t for the godamn cardiogram,” he said, “I’d have packed my bag and been out of here by noon. Do you think that cardiogram could be all screwed up?”