by Irwin Shaw
“No,” Jack said.
“It’s possible,” Delaney said, almost as though he thought that if he convinced Jack, he could leap out of bed. “Don’t neglect the possibility. Doctors’ve been wrong before, you know. And Italians with machinery…”
“Italians are better with machinery than anybody in the world,” Jack said.
“Well, anyway,” Delaney said, grumbling like a little boy, “I’m going to go to the john by myself. I don’t care how they scream. They’re through slipping me their bedpans.” He drank some of his wine. “This is damn good wine. I tell you, Italians know how to run a hospital.” He held the wine up in front of his face and frowned, as it brought something back to his mind. “Remember what that poor bastard Despière said about Italian wine?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t be tactful,” Delaney said. “I read the papers this morning.” He finished the wine. “I told him he was going to get his fool head blown off. You know, I have the feeling he expected it, and he didn’t care one way or another…”
“He cared,” Jack said.
“Then what did he keep going for?”
“Maybe he needed the money.”
Delaney made a face. “I suppose if you’re going to get killed you might as well get paid for it.” He started on a plate of vanilla ice cream. He ate with gusto, noisily stuffing a dry biscuit into his mouth along with the ice cream. “Italian ice cream—best in the world. Girls, ice cream, and fast cars—what more does a country need? I should have come here when I was twenty-five. With a whole godamn heart. If he had to be killed, maybe it’s just as well he did it now, before he finished that piece on me.” Delaney grinned. “The Frenchman didn’t like me. Oh, no, my boy, the Frenchman couldn’t stand my guts. When he looked at me and he didn’t know I was watching, it was like a big sign on his face, ‘I think Maurice Delaney is Sonofabitch Number One.’ In French. Do you know how to translate it into French?”
“Not literally,” Jack said. He wanted to steer Delaney away from this subject. Uneasily, he tried to remember where he had hidden the manuscript of Despière’s article.
“Marvelous ice cream,” Delaney said, putting down his spoon. He rang for the nurse, and leaned back comfortably against the pillows propped against the tilted back of the bed. “This has been a refreshing day,” he said. “They even plugged in a phone this afternoon.” He waved to indicate the instrument on the table next to the bed. “The doctor’s allowing me two calls a day. I only made one and they still owe me one. I looked at that phone for an hour before I made up my mind who I wanted to call first. Clara or Barzelli. I was going to toss a coin, only I didn’t have a coin on me.” He smiled, making fun of himself. “Then I decided, what the hell, I’m an old man with a bum heart, why kid myself, why not make peace in the family. It only took three minutes of talk and the battle was won. Clara’s coming over in an hour. They’re putting up a cot in here and she’s going to sleep here, give the nurse a night off. She’d be here now, but she promised she’d have dinner with Hilda. In the long run, you can’t escape the clutch of women, Jack. But a man has to try.” He sighed contentedly. “I feel so good I could smoke a cigar. And I hate cigars.”
As Delaney rattled on, enjoying his reborn sense of vitality, Jack felt reassured about what he had come to say. Delaney might not like it, but he would be able to take it.
A little round sister, who sounded starched as she moved, came in to take the tray. “Signore,” she said to Delaney, “a lady has telephoned, a Signora Lee. She inquires to know if she is permitted to come to pay a visit. I have promised to call her back at her hotel.”
“Tell her she is not permitted. Tell her I am dying a long, slow, agonizing death and I am in a coma most of the time and I do not recognize anybody.”
“Signore,” the sister said disapprovingly. “It is not a matter to be joked. I will merely say that for the time being it is not permitted.” She went out with the tray.
“Carlotta,” Delaney grumbled. “That’s all I need. Have you seen her?”
“Yes.”
“What’s she like?”
“Fat.”
Delaney laughed. “The plump, loaded widow. Kutzer left her a pile.” He shook his head. “God, how people turn out”
“She told me why she wants to see you,” Jack said.
“Why?”
“You gave her more pleasure in bed than any man she’s ever had anything to do with,” Jack said, “and she thought it would be a fitting thing to tell you before you died.”
Delaney laughed brutally. “Well,” he said, “everybody likes to have a reason for a pilgrimage to Rome. The bitch. To say a thing like that—even to an ex-husband.”
“No, she’s not a bitch,” Jack said. “It’s just that she’s obsessed by the subject. Or at least she was. Now, I think she’s only obsessed by the memory of the subject.”
“You know how it happened?” Delaney demanded.
“No.”
“Do you want to know?”
“If you want to tell me.”
“Ah, why the hell not,” Delaney said. “It’s so long ago, and it’s the one thing I ever hid from you, and it made me feel like a bastard for years. It was during the war,” Delaney said. “You were overseas, and I took her out to lunch to bawl her out because it was common gossip that she was spreading herself all over town. I told her that she ought to be ashamed of herself and what a remarkable guy you were and that she was going to regret it and that she was ruining her life, and she looked at me across the table, and she said, ‘I’m not going to stop. And since I’m not going to stop, why don’t you get in on some of the fun along with the other boys?’” Delaney sighed and smoothed out some of the creases in the top sheet with the palm of his hand. “My curse, for a long time,” he said, “was that when it was offered to me I couldn’t refuse it. I told myself I wasn’t doing anything to you. I knew that when you got back you’d break it off with her sooner or later, no matter what I did or didn’t do. So we got up from the table and drove out to a motel in the Valley and praised the afternoon. It only lasted a few weeks. I felt like too much of a heel. Outside of my work, I have very few principles, and it’s never occurred to me that I am universally loved for the sweetness of my character, but sleeping with my best friend’s wife while he was off getting shot up in a war never did make me particularly proud of myself. Even if I was just one of a long parade. So I put a term to my black villainy.” He drawled the sentence mockingly. “Ah—it’s a load off my mind. I’ve always wanted to tell you and now the deed’s done. You angry?”
“No,” Jack said. “And I wasn’t angry then. It’s not important. And it wasn’t important then.”
“Not to anybody but me,” Delaney said softly.
The room was silent for a moment, and Jack wondered if Delaney was dropping off to sleep. Delaney had moved the shade on the lamp so that it shone away from him and Jack could only make out Delaney’s face dimly, in the shadows against the pillows.
“Maurice…” Jack said, tentatively.
“Yes?”
“Are you going to sleep?”
“Hell, no. Why?”
“Because there’s something we have to talk about.”
“I’m listening,” Delaney said.
“It’s about that script of Bresach’s. I don’t think you ought to do it.”
Delaney sat up in surprise. “I thought you said you liked it?”
“I like it very much,” Jack said. “But I think it’s too much of a job for you right now…”
“In six weeks, I’ll be out of here. The doctor says…”
“You’ll kill yourself if you start working again after six weeks,” Jack said.
“Kill, kill…” Delaney said irritably. “I’m getting tired of people prophesying my death. If I want a drink, if I screw a girl, if I walk to the bathroom, if I read a script…”
“Come on, Maurice,” Jack said gently. “You know it’s not the same thing.”
&
nbsp; “I know, I know.” Delaney sighed. “How long do you think I ought to knock off?”
“A year.”
“A year! What happens to the script? What happens to you? What happens to Holt?” Delaney’s voice was taking on a querulous, sick man’s tone. “In a year, everything can slide away from you. I might just as well be dead as try to wait a year. What do I do for a year? Knit? Ever since I started, as a kid, I haven’t taken a vacation for more than two weeks. I’ll go out of my mind.”
“I didn’t say you had to take a complete vacation,” Jack said. “I just said you shouldn’t get on the set and direct, because that’s man-killing…”
“Who’ll do it, then? Hilda? The Angel Gabriel?”
Jack took a deep breath. “Bresach.”
Delaney sat up sharply, his head suddenly in the light. He stared at Jack. “Are you kidding?”
“No.”
“He’s only twenty-four years old.”
“Twenty-five,” Jack said. “He’s old enough to write it, hell be old enough to direct it.”
“Where do I come in, then?” Delaney asked. “Where do you come in?”
“Holt wants to set up a company to do three pictures, doesn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“Well,” Jack said, speaking quickly but calmly, trying to keep a tone of argument out of his voice, “this can be the first picture. You can help produce it. He’ll need plenty of help. You’ll be invaluable to him. And at the same time, you won’t be killing yourself day after day on the set. And while you’re recovering, you can search around for the other two stories and start preparing them, and when you’re well enough, a year from now, you can start shooting them…”
“Where’re you during all this?” Delaney demanded.
“I hope I’m back in Paris,” Jack said, “with my wife and family, quietly doing my job. You don’t need me.”
“I need you,” Delaney said harshly. “You don’t know how badly I need you. Where the hell do you think I’d’ve been these last few days without you?”
“You can find someone else.”
“Name him,” Delaney said.
“Well, not at this moment, but…”
“Not at this moment,” Delaney said. “And not tomorrow, and not in a month or a year from now. I’ve told you before, and I’ll tell you again—you’re the only man I’ve ever been able to work with for any length of time without an explosion. Do I sound selfish?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I meant to,” Delaney said. “But I’m selfish for you, too. I want to get you out of that narrow, little obscure rut of yours pushing a pen for the government in Paris…”
“Maybe I’m happy in what you call my narrow, little obscure rut,” Jack said, trying to keep his voice from rising in anger. “Or maybe I don’t think it’s such a rut…maybe I think I’m doing an important job and doing it well.”
“You didn’t look like a happy man the day you got off the plane,” Delaney said. “Were you?”
“What difference does that make?”
“Were you?”
“No,” Jack admitted. “It happened I was at a low period.”
“What did I tell you?” Delaney said triumphantly. “I saw the signs, I saw the signs. You were wallowing in bureaucratic melancholy, you were feeling useless and half-dead. Why, even in the short time you’ve been here, you’ve come to life, you seem ten years younger. Listen, Jack, you’re no boy any more—you probably only have one more big move left to you in your whole life. Don’t miss it, don’t miss it…”
“I’ll think it over,” Jack said wearily. “I’ll write you from Paris.”
“The hell with it,” Delaney said. “If you won’t come in, tell Holt and Bresach the whole thing’s off…”
“You bastard,” Jack said.
“Nobody ever pretended I wasn’t a bastard,” Delaney said smugly. “Well, partner?”
Jack sighed, then smiled. “Okay, partner.”
“Call your wife and tell her to rush to Berlitz and start taking Italian lessons immediately,” Delaney said. “A new and glorious life is opening for her. I wish I had a bottle here. To celebrate.”
“If we had a bottle here,” Jack said, “I’d probably hit you over the head with it.”
“Save it for the next board meeting,” Delaney said briskly. “So, partner, you think Bresach can do it?”
“Yes.”
“It’s an idea, it’s an idea…” Delaney said. “What the hell, if anybody’d ever given me a chance when I was twenty-five, I’d’ve dazzled them. And it wouldn’t be as if the kid was out in the blue, all on his own. We’d be on tap every day…What sort of kid is he, Jack? Can we work with him? Do you like him?”
“We can work with him,” Jack said.
“You don’t like him,” Delaney said.
Jack sighed. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve never been as confused about anybody in my whole life.” Maybe I love him, Jack thought, maybe I’m looking for someone to take the place of my son Steven, because I just found out my son hates me, maybe I’m afraid he’ll kill himself. “You got some time on your hands?” Jack said. “I’ll tell you a long story.”
“I have all night,” Delaney said. He chuckled a little sadly. “I have all year, lad. Tell me a story.”
“Once upon a time,” Jack said, “a man came down to Rome to lend a helping hand to an old pal for two weeks…”
“I love the beginning of the story,” Delaney said, settling comfortably into his pillows. “Go on.”
Then Jack began to go over the two weeks, trying to get it all in, leave out nothing, the drunk on the steps, the bloody nose, the emotion on seeing himself on the screen, so many years later, in The Stolen Midnight, the dream of bulls, the premonition of death, the concourse of dead friends, the meeting with Veronica, the love-making, the crazy visit of Bresach with the knife, the disappearance of Veronica and his involvement with the boy because of the necessity of finding out what had happened to her, his fascination with Bresach and pity for him, his admiration for the violence and purity of his ambition, mingled with his fear that just that violence and purity would shatter him.
Delaney listened without a word, immobile in the bed, with the slanting light of the lamp cutting a sharp diagonal line above his head against the wall and ceiling.
“My feeling about him is all mixed up,” Jack said. “I couldn’t put it in a word. He entertains me. I enjoy him. I have hope for him, in the way I would like to have hope for my son, and I feel guilty about him because I was the instrument for hurting him, the way I feel guilty about having hurt my son. I worry about him, because there is something terribly fragile about him, and finally, and I suppose absolutely irrationally, I feel responsible for him.”
Jack lapsed into silence. Delaney was lying back, his body motionless under the covers, his hands clasped across the chest. After a while, he spoke, his voice rueful and humorous. “God, what a two weeks,” he, said. “No wonder you seem so much more alive. You have no idea how much I envy you…You don’t think the boy’ll be tempted to use his knife on me one of these days, do you?” He laughed.
“No,” Jack said. “I think that’s behind him.”
“Tell me, Jack,” Delaney said, his voice low and gentle, as he spoke from the pillows, without moving his head, “if I’d been completely well, if this thing hadn’t happened to me—” He tapped his chest. “What would you have advised the boy to do?”
“What do you mean?” Jack asked, although he knew what Delaney meant.
“Would you have told him to let me do his script?” Delaney said. “Or would you have told him to hold onto it and do it himself? Of course, it’s just a theoretical question.” There was a touch of irony in the way Delaney spoke the last sentence.
“No,” Jack said. “It’s not theoretical. Because he asked me, this evening, just before I came here.”
“And what did you say, Jack?” Still the light, friendly tone of irony. “Did you consid
er a long time?”
“Yes,” Jack said. “I thought about you…”
“The poor, old, infirm pal, lying in the hospital, plucking piteously at the coverlets with his nervous, wan fingers…”
“No,” Jack said soberly. “I thought of you the night I met you when you raised such honest hell in the dressing room in Philadelphia.”
“And you told the kid to keep it out of my hands?” Delaney said flatly.
“Yes,” Jack said.
Delaney tapped his chest again in an unconscious small gesture. “Well, I asked you and you told me.” He chuckled. “There’s nothing like honesty in a partnership, is there, Jack?”
“What would you have done if you were in my place?”
Delaney waited a moment before answering. “The same thing,” he said, “the same thing…” He grinned painfully. “If I was that age again and back in Philadelphia. Now? Today?” He shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m a long way from Philadelphia. Who knows what filthy, corrupt thing I’d’ve said? You see, Jack—I wasn’t lying before when I said I needed you.” He sat up, his face coming abruptly into the light. There was a curious, soft smile on his lips, the sort of smile to be seen on the lips of old men as they watch children at play. “Thanks for coming, Jack,” he said. “Now, for Christ’s sake, go out and get some dinner. You’re going to need all your strength.”
Jack stood up. He hadn’t kept track of the time and he hadn’t realized it was so late. He would have liked to be able to tell Delaney how close he felt to him, how the gap of the years between them had been finally bridged by what they had said to each other that evening. But he had never been overt with Delaney and he could not be overt now.
“Jack,” Delaney said, as Jack stood with his hand on the doorknob, “you said you had hope for the kid…”
“Yes.”
“How about the old man, Jack?” Delaney said softly, “Me. Have you got hope for him?”
“Yes,” Jack said. “A great deal.”
Delaney nodded gravely. “Good night, partner,” he said. “Drink three martinis for me.”