Park Avenue Tramp

by Flora, Fletcher

  I did not want him to be hurt or to die. All I wanted was to make him happy and to be happy myself, and that’s what I did and almost was. He said himself that he was happy, that each time we were together was the best time of all, and this was good. It’s true, of course, that it would not have continued indefinitely, or even much longer, which I’ll not try to deny, but it was good for the time it lasted and better than no good at all. This is only logical, that something is better than nothing, and it is surely not my fault that it ended badly.

  So. I have reasoned calmly and rationally, there is no question about that, and it is clearly preposterous for me to have this terrible and oppressive feeling of guilt, as if I had personally done a great wrong or had deliberately permitted the great wrong that was done. Commitment to grief is one thing, and commitment to guilt is another. That’s the distinction I must understand and believe. I saw him die, however. There’s no getting away from that. I saw him beaten and killed by a monster, and I said nothing afterward to anyone, and just a little while ago when the policeman was here I still said nothing, and the reason I have said nothing and will say nothing is because I am afraid of Oliver, and I know that he would find a way to destroy me if I gave him cause. I could go away, of course, but he could certainly find me if he wanted to, and even if he couldn’t I still wouldn’t go away, because there is no place for me in the world but this place and no way to survive but this way. I’m a coward, to tell the truth. I do not care to make a gesture that would change nothing that has happened and would only make things worse.

  There. I have faced things fairly as they are, and myself as I am. There is supposed to be a kind of catharsis in this, and one is supposed to feel much better after having done it. In a little while, if I sit here quietly, I shall surely begin to feel better.

  She sat quietly and waited to begin feeling better, but she didn’t feel better at all, and pretty soon it was impossible to wait any longer for anything or to stay any longer in the apartment than it would take her to change her clothes and get out. Unfolding her hands and rising, she walked stiffly to her room with the strangest and most disturbing sense of being precariously contained, as if the slightest exaggerated motion would cause her to fly apart in all directions. In her room, she changed her clothes and brushed her hair and came out again to the telephone and called down to the garage for the Jaguar. When she got downstairs and outside to the street, the Jaguar was there, and she got in it and drove away, and then for the first time she began to think of where she would go, and she knew, even as she began to think, that she was going to Duo’s, where Joe Doyle had worked, and this was for some reason imperative, something she had to do.

  It was after four o’clock when she got there, and Yancy was at the bar. He saw her enter and watched her approach, and then, just as she reached the bar, he turned his back and spoke to her reflection in the long mirror behind a row of beer glasses.

  “Get the hell out of here,” he said.

  “What?” she said.

  “You heard me,” he said. “Get the hell out of here and don’t ever come back.”

  She stared past him into the mirror, meeting his eyes sadly, and he was almost convinced for a moment that he had hurt her inexcusably and should be ashamed of himself.

  “Why are you abusing me?” she said. “Don’t you believe that I am as sorry as you for what happened?”

  “No.”

  “Do you believe that it happened because of me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it because you hate me so much that you want to think so badly of me?”

  “I don’t hate you. What would be the use? It would be like hating cancer.”

  “If you don’t hate me, why don’t you look at me?”

  “I don’t want to look at you. I don’t want to see you or talk to you or have you near me. I’m sick of you, and I’m afraid of you. You’re contagious. I told you before what you were, and I told Joe, but it didn’t do any good, and now it’ll never do any good. He’s dead, and there’s no way of proving who did it, I guess, but you know and I know why it happened, that it was because of you and what you are and did. I wish it had been you instead of him, but it wasn’t, and probably that’ll be all right, after all. In the end, you’ll probably find a harder and slower way to die.”

  She shook her head from side to side, as if she would not believe that he was saying such cruel things to her, and the heavy side of her hair moved slowly back and forth over one sad eye.

  “All right,” she said. “I can see that I had better go away. Good-by.”

  He didn’t answer, and she turned and walked to the door and stopped and looked back, but he continued to look into the mirror silently, and so she went on out and got into the Jaguar, and it was remarkable how she had begun suddenly to feel. She felt vastly relieved and lightened, purged and almost exonerated by Yancy’s castigation. Driving away in the Jaguar, she started thinking about somewhere else to go in order to avoid being alone, and she decided that Bernardine DeWitt’s apartment on MacDougal Street was the closest place that appealed to her, and so she went there.

  She was admitted to the apartment by the maid, and there were, as usual, several people talking and moving around and drinking cocktails, but Bernardine wasn’t among them. Perhaps she had merely gone off somewhere for a few minutes, or even for a few hours, which wouldn’t be exceptionally odd of Bernardine, who was very casual about guests, but it didn’t matter, anyhow, where she had gone or when she would come back. Everyone would simply drink as much as he wanted, and leave when he was ready.

  Charity had one Martini quickly, and then took another to carry around the room. She had drunk about half of it and spoken amicably to three or four persons when she came to a young man in a corner. He was sitting alone with an empty glass in his hand, and he had an interesting, angular face and stubborn hair that went in different directions in several places. She stopped and looked down at him, pushing her hair back on the heavy side with the hand that did not hold her glass.

  “Hello,” she said.

  He stood up with a kind of awkward, spasmodic motion, as if he moved by sections, one after the other. He returned her look with fierce intensity.

  “Hello,” he said. “I was just watching you.” “Were you? Why?”

  “Because you’re the only woman here worth watching.”

  “Do you really think so? Even if you don’t, it was a charming thing to say. I don’t believe anyone has ever said anything so charming to me before.”

  “Please don’t accuse me of being charming. I was only telling the truth. I’d like to paint you.” “Are you a painter?”

  “Yes, I have a studio in the Village. You needn’t ask who I am, however, because you’ve never heard of me.” “Possibly I’ll hear of you in the future.”

  “Possibly. It doesn’t matter. Will you come to my studio and let me paint you? I couldn’t pay you, of course. I’m very poor.” “I wouldn’t want you to pay me.” “Will you come, then?”

  She heard in his voice the same kind of urgent fierceness that she saw in his eyes. She was aware of the stirring of incipient excitement. “Perhaps,” she said. “Let’s sit down and talk about it.”

  THE END

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  Lysistrata

  1

  SHE WAS in bed.

  Athens slept, and so did Lysistrata. But even as the streets of sleeping Athens were disturbed by nocturnal rowdies—in spite of the vigilance of Scythian police from marketplace to the brothels of the Piraeus—so was the sleeping mind of Lysistrata disturbed by dreams of Lycon and Lycon’s love.

  It had been now seven long and barren months since he had left her for the fortress of Pylos in distant Messenia. Seven months of days since she had served him Boeotian eels and the wines of Hellas. Seven months of nights since she had received him in the service of Aphrodite. Seven months of days and nights of empty heart and aching groin. It simply did not pay in these d
ays of endless war to be the respected wife of a citizen. One had much better become one of the hetairai, the highest of courtesans, and dye one’s hair yellow and wear flowery robes. One could then, at least, have a little fun out of life.

  So Athens and Lysistrata slept, and the night passed. At dawn, since Athenians were early risers, a slave girl came into the room to start the day. The girl was called Theoris, and she had a slender and delicate body that seemed to float with an incredible grace of motion, and to glow softly in the thinning darkness. She carried a small torch which cast a distorted shadow behind her. Kneeling beside the bed of her mistress, she applied the flame of the torch to the wick of an oil lamp, a flat terra-cotta bowl standing on exquisite candelabra. The light of the lamp flickered and grew and spread softly over the sleeping Lysistrata. Leaning forward, Theoris looked upon her mistress with tenderness and compassion. It had been, after all, an intolerable time since the master had come to her on Aphrodite’s business—and chastity, which was a virtue, could quite easily, like other virtues, be overdone. With small and delicate hands, the compassionate slave girl, who had not herself been forced to an excess of virtue, shook her mistress gently awake, making in her throat as she did so a kind of solicitous crooning sound that was like a phrase of barbarous music. Waking slowly to the day and the day’s certain boredom, Lysistrata sat up and stretched in the light of the terra-cotta lamp, her body strong and supple and still firm-fleshed, itself in the light a thing of light and shadow.

  “Good-morning, Theoris,” she said. “What time is it?”

  “Dawn,” the slave girl said. “Earlier, I should think, than it is necessary for you to get up.”

  Lysistrata stretched again, lowering her hands to caress for the briefest instant her alert breasts and the clean lines of her sides.

  “Well,” she said bitterly, “I have nothing to keep me in bed in the morning, and nothing, so far as that goes, to send me there at night.”

  Theoris understood her mistress’s meaning clearly, feeling almost as resentful as if she were the one who had been deserted, but she was forced by her station to use restraint in her response.

  “Men are idiots,” she said.

  Lysistrata laughed, patting with affection the bare shoulder of her pretty slave.

  “You are certainly right,” she said. “Since they spend their lives in the practice of idiocy, it is perfectly apparent that they are idiots. I must admit, Theoris, that I am frequently astonished by your perception. How old are you?”

  “I don’t know, Mistress.”

  “Well, no matter. Can you remember a time when Athens was not at war?”

  “No. All of my life there has been the war.”

  “And almost all of mine. I was a child when it began, long ago in the time of Pericles. Well, Pericles has been dead and out of it for almost two decades now, but his precious war has gone on and on without him, except for the short time of the Peace of Nicias, which was no real peace, and it has been all this time like a hungry beast that eats our idiot men, who nourish and support it in true idiocy so that they may be eaten. Does this make sense?”

  “Now that you have asked me, I confess that it doesn’t.”

  “Naturally not. That’s because you are a woman and therefore sensible. Do you believe that it makes sense to the women of Sparta and Corinth and Boeotia and all the states of the Peloponnesus?”

  “It does not seem likely.”

  “Truly you are perceptive, Theoris, and I must say that I have great admiration for your natural intelligence. Women are women before they are Spartans or Corinthians or anything else, and while a Spartan or a Corinthian may not object to sleeping alone, a woman does. To put it mildly, we are sick of this idiocy, which you have perceived and labeled, and if we were permitted, we could do a much better job of managing things. As it is, we have all too few pleasures at present, and not many more to remember or anticipate. Truly a woman is in the worst possible state when there is no purpose in going to bed on the one hand and none for getting out of it on the other. Is the basin filled?”

  “Yes, Mistress.”

  “Good. I feel inclined to make myself seductive. There is nothing to be gained from this, of course, but I like to keep in practice in case things should improve. I shall bathe and oil and scent myself as if I were preparing for the arms of Lycon, and then I’ll sit around and do nothing and be bored, and perhaps later my friend Calonice will come to entertain me with some more intimate details of her relationship with her husband Acron. He is home temporarily from the war, and I honestly believe she tells me these things with the idea of satisfying me vicariously.”

  Getting up, followed by the slave girl, Lysistrata went out of the room into the Proitas, the central court around which the house was built, and in which stood the family altar and the statue of Hestia, protectress of the hearth. But Hestia, as Lysistrata saw it, had been grossly remiss in her function, and the deserted wife did not linger to offer thanks for nothing. Passing swiftly around a part of the court’s perimeter, she entered a paved bathroom. Naked, standing beside the large marble basin that Theoris had filled, she bathed and dried quickly with the slave girl’s help, and the touch of the slave reminded her suddenly of the touch of Lycon, and she shivered a little and was filled with the disruptive ambivalence of love and longing and anger. Passing again around the court past the statue of Hestia, she returned to the room in which she slept too much alone.

  Without instruction, having been told already that the morning toilet would be as if for the arms of Lycon, Theoris opened a chest and began to set out the items her mistress would need. First a shining mirror to catch and reflect the shadow of beauty in the soft light of the oil lamp. Alkanet root for lips and cheeks. Antimony for the eyebrows and kohl for the lids. Oil of mastic to keep the body sweet. Thyme and marjoram, mint and myrrh. Lysistrata sat before the mirror and the mirror’s image, and she thought bitterly that the firm flesh she saw might well be dry and withered on its bones before men returned to sanity and Lycon to his home.

  She sat quietly while Theoris braided and bound her hair, securing it with many pins. Afterward, working with a deft economy of motion, she applied to herself in the areas designated by proper usage the oils and paints and scented unguents. This done, she put on a white peplos, a garment in two pieces secured at the waist by a girdle, and sandals.

  “I think I’ll go out into the garden for a few minutes,” she said. “I’ll have some bread and wine when I come in.”

  Turning away, she went into a passage and through a gate into a small garden. Gardens were rare in Athens, and only fortunate women had one. Only extremely fortunate women had both a garden and a husband.

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  Copyright © 1958 by Fletcher Flora, Registration Renewed 1986

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction.

  Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

  eISBN 10: 1-4405-3903-0

  eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-3903-9

 

 

 
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