by Irwin Shaw
There was a knock on the door and Strand opened it to let the waiter in with the whiskey. He poured stiff drinks into three glasses and handed Linda hers. She drank half of the drink in one convulsive gulp. “I’ll tell you something,” she said. “I don’t blame him for Mrs. Harcourt and whatever others there were. In spite of everything, Russell was the soul of discretion. Whatever he did, he kept to himself. I was absolutely dumfounded when he appeared with Mrs. Harcourt. He must have been at the end of his patience. Although even in just this short time I’ve gotten to like her, really like her a lot. She’s so pretty and considerate.” She finished her drink and held out her glass and Strand refilled it. “Frankly, I was pleased for Russell and I never saw him so gay before.”
Strand heard the sound of laughter from the bathroom and turned, puzzled, as Leslie came into the room, giggling, her face rearranged. “What’re you laughing at?” he asked, trying not to sound angry. With Linda in the state she was, laughter seemed callous.
“I was thinking about my hitting that woman,” Leslie said, still giggling. “It was one of the most satisfactory moments of my life. I broke a fingernail on her, too. I didn’t know I was going to hit her. It was automatic. Deliciously automatic. Ah, whiskey. Just the thing to make the evening perfect. I may get drunk tonight to celebrate. I’ll depend upon you, Allen, to put me safely to bed. I knew Europe was going to be interesting, but I never thought it would be that interesting.” She raised her glass. “To my fingernail,” she said. “And to amateur painters and piddling schoolteachers and their brood and to the Jews. I’m getting to love parties among the upper classes, I really am, they’re so refined.”
“Are you all right?” Strand asked anxiously.
“Tip-top,” Leslie said airily. “Tonight has made my summer.”
The telephone rang and Strand picked it up. It was Hazen. “Allen,” Hazen said, “I’d like to talk to you if you don’t mind. Can you come to my room? Just you, please. Are the women okay?”
“I think so. They’re drinking.”
“I don’t blame them. I’d drink too if I weren’t afraid my ulcer would kick up, if it hasn’t already.”
It was the first time Strand had heard that Hazen had an ulcer. He was gathering a great many new facts this evening. “I’ll be right over,” he said. “Leave some of the booze in the bottle for me,” he said to Leslie and Linda.
“Give my regards to the lovebird,” Leslie said. Her tone was not friendly. “We’ll be here, waiting for the next bulletin from the front.”
He was finding out some new things about his wife, too, Strand thought as he walked down the corridor to Hazen’s room. There was a streak of toughness in her that he hadn’t suspected was there. It might be useful in facing up to the shocks that life had in store for her, but he wasn’t sure that he liked it.
Hazen’s door was ajar and Strand knocked and went in. Hazen was sunk deep in a chair, scowling. He still had all his clothes on, jacket and vest rumpled now. He had unbuttoned his collar and pulled it open and loosened his tie as though he had had trouble breathing and he didn’t look as he usually did, ready for a board meeting or an address to the jury. He glanced up as Strand came in and ran his hand wearily across his face, the scowl vanishing, replaced by a twitch of embarrassment.
“I want to apologize for this goddamn evening,” he said. His voice was still hoarse.
“Forget it. I’ve been through worse.”
“I haven’t,” Hazen said. “That woman’s demented. Will you ever forget that crazy scream?”
“She was in good voice.”
“She loves to make scenes. With me, especially. It’s her favorite form of amusement.” Hazen stood up and pulled at his collar, loosening it further. He began to pace. “Mrs. Harcourt’s packed and left. God knows where she’s going at this time of night. I wouldn’t blame you if you’d all done the same thing. Well, there won’t be any visiting vineyards tomorrow. It’s good of you to keep me company in my dark hour. After all those hideous insults. I don’t know what I’d do tonight if I couldn’t talk to you. First of all I owe you some explanations.”
“You don’t owe me anything, Russell.”
Hazen shook his head, still pacing. “It’s true about Barbara. Maybe I was unwise to bring her along. I noticed Leslie didn’t take kindly to her presence.”
Barbara, Strand thought, finally I know her name.
“I’m very attached to her. And there was some legal work we had to get out of the way.” Hazen sounded defiant. “And we weren’t hurting anybody. She’s a fine woman and I don’t know how I’ll ever make up to her for what happened tonight. She came over to the States last year on business and she spent a couple of weekends at the beach. But, Christ, there were at least six other people in the house all the time. My goddamn nosy neighbors. ‘And of course friends in America are quick to let me know of your activities.’” He mimicked his wife’s voice. “‘Legions of friends.’ And all that stuff about you and your family. How anybody could make something evil out of my befriending people like you and lending a little helping hand here and there is beyond mortal comprehension. There’s no purity left in the world, Allen, none, and no belief in goodness. Just malice. Endless malice. The sharks who’ve drunk my wine and feasted at my table’d tear a man to shreds for the pleasure of ten minutes’ gossip about something that is no business of theirs at all, something as innocent as a newborn babe’s first breath. Christ, maybe it’ll be a good thing if I have to give that damned house to her. Fuck the legions of friends.” He was ranting now and pacing faster and faster.
“Are you going to give her the house?”
“What else can I do? That wasn’t an idle threat about suicide. After you left me alone with her she told me she was already in touch with some lawyer in New York—I know the man and wouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot pole—and had written out everything, chapter and malicious verse, and instructed him to make sure it got into the papers after she’d done herself in. My name’d be dragged in the mud and so would that of a great many other people and there’d be some perfectly working marriages on the rocks. I’ll have to give in. I’ll be honest with you—I hate the bitch and I’d be glad to see her dead but I’ll feel guilty for the rest of my life if she dies because of me just for a few lousy dollars and a ramshackle old house that’ll be swept out to sea in a couple of years anyway. I’ll give her what she wants even if it leaves me penniless. But it won’t. She’s been rich all her life but you ought to see the gleam in her eye when she talks about money. I’ll put a tough young lawyer from my office on her and she’ll bargain. When she sees the goodies dangling in front of her, suicide won’t seem so attractive to her even if it could ruin me. She’ll bargain, all right.”
“I wish I could help,” Strand said, shaken by Hazen’s torment.
“You are helping,” Hazen said. Suddenly he stopped pacing and in a clumsy gesture put his arm around Strand’s shoulders, then quickly pulled away as if embarrassed by this display of affection and went on pacing again, as though the only way he could alleviate the pain that had him in its grip was by movement. “Just by being here and letting me get some of this off my chest, you’re helping more than you could possibly know. God, I’ve been bottled up so long, keeping everything to myself, my wife, my worthless children, everything, I was ready to explode. My portable harem! Linda Roberts, for God’s sake! We could be on a desert island for twenty years and we’d never even think of touching each other. The bitch knows it as well as we do but she wants to destroy every human contact I ever had or could have. So—there were others. I confess that to you—there were others. What else did she expect? She stopped sleeping with me years and years ago and even before that, from the day we were married, it was like trying to make love to an icicle. It was different before we were married, when my father and her father—they were partners in the firm—decided it would be nice to keep the money in the family and winked at the fact that their upright son and debutante daughter were fu
cking practically under their eyes. Jesus, was she different then, you’d think she was the hottest thing between the sheets since Cleopatra. But once the ring was on her finger, when I came near her it was as though I was trying to rape a nun. How we ever managed to beget three children is one of the mysteries of the goddamn age. And that’s how they turned out, too, although maybe it wasn’t all their fault, with a mother like that, full of venom toward their father and insanely infatuated with her brats. Nothing was too good for them, all three of them were given Ferraris when they were eighteen. Three Ferraris parked in front of the door! Can you imagine anything like that? None of them ever finished college. They came running to their mother crying that the teachers were unfair to them or they were unhappy with the class of students they had to put up with or they wanted to go to Europe for the winter with their lovers. Lovers in the case of my beloved son were conspicuously of the male sex. And they just laughed at me when I tried to reason with them. And their mother would laugh along with them. And it wasn’t just the money. When I looked around at the children of friends of mine who had ten times the money we had and saw that they were ambitious, responsible citizens that any father would be proud of and then compared them to the children who bore my name I wept. And blaming me for the boy’s overdose! I had to go to San Francisco for a few days and I thought it would be good for him and asked him to come along, but he said he was busy, he couldn’t make it. Busy! Christ, all he did was loll around the apartment all day. He never bothered to get out of his pajamas or even shave. He looked like a hermit in the desert with his beard. It must be hard for you, with your kids, to understand how I felt, but I tell you it was like drinking acid day after day, year after year. And if you think for a minute that she let me alone even after she cleared out of the house and went to Europe you couldn’t be more wrong. She bombarded me with letters, full of all kinds of threats and accusations and the worst kind of filth, you couldn’t begin to imagine how degraded that lady’s mind is, it’s a sewer, that’s what it is. If the postal authorities ever opened one of those letters she’d’ve been arrested for sending obscene matter through the mail. In the beginning I answered them, trying to reason with her, but it was hopeless. Would you imagine even in your wildest dream that that flower of New York society, that graduate of a fancy finishing school in Switzerland would write in her own hand to her husband and the father of her children that he was a cocksucking, shit-eating liar who should have his balls cut off and stuffed into his mouth for supper? Finally, I just threw her letters away unopened and left word that I would not answer the phone when she called. Wait till I find out who it was in my office who told her I was in Tours. Whoever it was will be fired so fast it will take his breath away and I’ll make sure he’ll never get a job in the legal profession again.”
Suddenly Hazen stopped pacing and threw himself, sprawling, gasping for breath, red in the face, into the big chair and began to sob.
Strand had backed against the wall to keep out of the way of the bulky man careening like a berserk bull elephant around the pretty room with its old Provençal furniture and flower-patterned wallpaper. Now he stood, transfixed, staring, horrified, pitying, helpless, frightened, anguished, as the huge man delivered, in a mad torrent of words, his guilt, his hatred, his shattered hopes. For the moment Strand could not talk, found it impossible to stretch out a hand in friendship or rescue for the man who, he felt, might never be rescued, might be lapsing once and for all before his eyes into a mania as disastrous as that of the woman who had caused it. I’m paying for the summer, he thought. Why me? Then was ashamed of the thought. “Please,” he said. “It’s over.”
“Nothing is over,” Hazen said. He was moaning now, the sound choked, an eerie soprano. “It will never be over. Get out of here. Please. Forgive me and get out of here.”
“I’m going,” Strand said, relieved that he could leave the room, get away from the sound of Hazen’s grief. “You ought to take a sedative or a sleeping pill.”
“I don’t keep any of that stuff around. The temptation would be too great,” Hazen said without looking up, but in a calmer voice.
“I could let you have something. One pill.”
“One pill.” Hazen laughed harshly. “There’s a remedy. Cyanide. Thank you. And go.”
“All right.” Strand moved toward the door. “If you need me during the night, just call.”
Hazen looked up at him, his eyes red, his mouth just barely under control. “Forgive me, my friend,” he said. “Don’t worry. I’ll be okay. I won’t call.”
Strand went out of the room and walked down the corridor toward his room, feeling weary and drained. The prisoners of Catherine de Medici were not the only ones tortured publicly in the valley of the Loire. Leslie had left the door unlocked and he let himself in. There was only one small lamp on and Leslie was under the covers, sleeping, snoring softly, which she did only when she was ill. He undressed silently, but even in her sleep she felt his presence and opened her eyes. He was just about to climb into his own bed when she stretched out an arm.
“Please,” she whispered. “Tonight.”
He hesitated, but only for a second. If ever there was a time for the warmth of beloved, familiar body against beloved body, this was the time. He slipped off his pajamas and got in beside her. He lay with his arms around her in the narrow bed. “Don’t say anything,” she murmured, “not anything.” She began to caress him, softly. Then they made love, gently, soundlessly, allowing desire and gratitude, the enormous remembered gift of loving, of releasing sex, obliterate the chaos of the night.
Leslie fell asleep immediately after. He lay awake, unable to sleep, his heart suddenly an independent and unruly part of his body, racing wildly. No, he thought, it can’t, it would be too much. By an act of will he tried to control the thunder he felt inside his chest, but the heart went on in its unsteady drumming, guided by ominous signals of its own. Despite all his efforts, his breathing became louder and louder, rasping, and he felt he was choking. Unsteadily, he got out of bed, stumbled in the darkness, trying to get to the bathroom, where his shaving kit was, with the bottle of nitroglycerin pills. He tripped over a chair, fell heavily, with a groan, was unable to lift himself off the floor.
The noise awoke Leslie and a moment later the room was lit as she switched on a lamp. With a cry, she leaped out of bed and rushed over and knelt beside him.
“My medicine…” he said, between gasps.
She jumped up, ran into the bathroom. He saw the light go on, heard the rattling of bottles, water running. He pulled himself along the floor, managed to sit up, his back against a chair. Leslie knelt beside him again, held his head as she put a capsule in his mouth and tilted a glass against his lips. He gulped thirstily, felt the capsule wash down his throat.
He tried to smile reassuringly. “I’ll be all right,” he said.
“Don’t talk.”
Suddenly, the harsh sound of his breathing subsided. The attack, if that was what it had been, was over. “There,” he said. He stood up. He swayed a little, but he said, “I’m cold, I’ve got to get back into bed.” He felt foolish, standing there naked.
She helped him over to the bed and he fell into it. “Do you want me to call a doctor?”
“No need. I just want to sleep. Please get in beside me and turn out the light and put your arms around me.”
She hesitated for a moment, then put the glass and bottle of pills on the bedside table, switched off the lamp and got into bed with him.
When he awoke in the morning, he felt fine. He put his hand to his chest and was pleased that he could barely make out the orderly small pulse under his ribs.
He was having breakfast with Leslie when the phone rang. She went to pick it up. Standing at the table on which the phone rested, she looked refreshed and young, her hair long, hanging down over the shoulders of her dressing gown in the morning sunlight. Watching her, Strand marveled at the resilience of womankind.
“Of course, Russell,�
�� she was saying, “I understand perfectly. Don’t worry, we’ll be ready in an hour.” She put the instrument down and came back to the table and buttered a piece of croissant. “We’re going back to Paris this morning,” she said. “I imagine the Loire valley has lost some of its charm for our host.”
“How did he sound?”
“Normal. How did he sound when you saw him last night?” She looked over the rim of her coffee cup at him.
“You don’t want to know,” Strand said.
“Bad?”
“As bad as could be. Ugly and sad. If you want the truth, it made me sorry we ever met him.”
“That bad?” Leslie said thoughtfully.
“Worse.”
“Did he attack you?”
“Not personally. Just the whole world.” He stood up from the table. “If we have to be ready in an hour I’d better start getting packed and dressed.”
The trip to Paris was grim. Leslie had turned out not to be as resilient as he had thought. The night had finally taken its toll. After breakfast she had begun coughing and looked feverish, her eyes and nose damp. She complained that she was freezing, although she was bundled up and it was a warm day.
Hazen, impeccably dressed in his business suit and outwardly composed, drove. They had barely passed the outskirts of Tours when Strand found himself regretting Mrs. Harcourt’s midnight flight. Hazen drove like a madman, going slowly at times but weaving the car across the road, then putting his foot down violently on the accelerator to pass trucks on blind curves, cursing under his breath at other drivers as if they were mortal enemies. He doesn’t need pills to commit suicide, Strand thought, holding Leslie’s sweating hand, he’s going to do it with the internal combustion engine. And he’s going to take us all with him. For the entire trip, as their heads snapped with the sudden and unpredictable accelerations of the machine and their bodies rolled from side to side when Hazen swung around turns, Leslie sat with her foot jammed against the foot rest, her legs rigid. Linda, dressed in a smart suit, next to Hazen on the front seat, slept the whole way, as if, knowing she was going to be killed that morning, she had decided to die mercifully unconscious. She had not slept a wink all night, she had told the Strands, and she seemed determined to go to her Maker well rested and looking her best.