They had a few words about Con’s accommodations and what was going on in town. Then they talked about Athens, Gus exclaiming plaintively what a terrible thing the German occupation was for that ancient democratic city and how he hadn’t had any word at all from those members of his family that still lived there.
Then Gus asked him about his family in America and what business they were in, laughing gleefully when he perceived that Con’s father was prospering and suggesting that they keep in touch after the war maybe they could all turn a drachma together on an export-import deal.
Gus insisted he have a dinnerparty for Danny and Con but within the next few nights as he was leaving town. Con sensed it was a sincere invitation and not a help-a-serviceman gesture and accepted for them for the second day after tomorrow.
Con edged to the bar and refilled his scotch and when he turned around Gus was talking to an overlymadeup overlyjeweled dowager. Con hesitated, then turned half-away and instantly across the room his eyes caught Carla chatting with a mixed group.
Somehow, almost imperceptibly she didn’t seem the same. Now her light silken hair hung loose in folding waves, brushing her cheeks lightly as she moved her head, hanging far down on her shoulders in a sunny softness that swept up carelessly at the ends in a resilient roll. That was it.
She had combed out her hair since this afternoon when she had come with the Turners to meet them at the gateway to the town. She certainly hadn’t said much but then she didn’t have to with her patented graciousness giving her that isolated distance. And once when the bearers were gathering up the luggage on the hotel steps, Con remembered vividly, he had looked up and she was staring at him in that icy way, exactly the way she had that first night at the Three Hundred Club in Calcutta, and Con had thought then that he knew exactly what a frog must feel like when it was on the dissecting table of a zoology class. And when he stared back she had turned her eyes away, almost loathingly away as if that’s exactly what he was indeed, a scientific specimen, feeling angrily that in that fixed instant she had read his own eyes.
Then right after that she had looked back and smiled a slice of a smile and a slice of a frown that wrinkled the skin under her blue eyes. She wished him a happy holiday then, graciously from that distance then. And he thought he discerned something in her eyes, a gleam of placid solemness behind the glacier of her eyes. But he wasn’t sure.
She was speaking ardently now to a robed noble Indian. She had on a finely tailored navy suit with a turtle-neck sweater to match and he noted the icy absence of any ornamentation and the way it blended with the calculated countenance of her discourse. Finally she moved away from the group, going the width of the room between guests toward the gargantuan fireplace, holding herself stoically imperially erect but unable to hide the loose looseswinging way of her long legs and the rumble of her butt which, Con thought fleetingly, was no virgin butt.
She stopped and looked at the great six foot log that flickered, resting one hand on the mantle, throwing one silken leg back, then as she leaned over to study the flames the tip of her breasts came forward of her suit jacket giving him a perfect picture of her superb profile, suddenly conjuring up certain other thoughts that often disturbed him.
“I say, how about a steak instead?” Gus said facetiously, slapping Con on the back and laughing uproariously.
He was laughing so hard, so fatly heavily that for a moment Con thought he would choke. “Was it that obvious?” Con grinned, glancing out of the corner of his eye to see if Carla was looking. She wasn’t.
“Obvious? You couldn’t have been more obvious,” the Greek said his eyes watery. His forehead and cheeks had burst into a sudden perspiration and he patted them delicately with a linen handkerchief.
“Is she married?” Con asked.
“No, no, she’s not for you. It’s a shame but she avoids turmoil, y’know. And a young officer on a holiday? Never. She keeps her head too well above water for that.”
“Then she’s not attached?” Con asked.
“Would it make a difference?”
“I don’t know.”
Gus sighed deeply. “She’s divorced. She has a child. A daughter in Vienna. She lives for the day she will see the child again. And the child’s future.” The Greek blew his nose abruptly. “But she had her pleasures. In her way she enjoys life,” Gus said stoically. “But never, never to the point where her pleasures interfere with her plans.”
“She’s attached then?” Con asked pointedly.
“I don’t know, actually. I don’t think so.”
“I think you’re wrong, Gus. I don’t think she enjoys life at all.”
“Come, come, old man,” he took Con’s arm. “We’ll find Nickie. She’ll introduce you around. Nickie knows all the ladies and you’ll have some sport. I apologize. I should have thought of it before,” he chuckled a titillated chuckle and his squat body vibrated all over. “Careful, here’s Carla.”
“Gusto,” she said coming up. “And Captain. M.J., Mr. Turner rather, asked me to keep an eye on you, Con. I see you’re well taken care of.”
“Very fine,” Con grinned. “Thanks. And my thanks to Mr. Turner. Gus is very entertaining.”
“We were talking about women, y’know,” Gus chuckled. “That’s always amusing. Complicated but amusing,” he smiled sideways at Con. “We weren’t talking about the Captain’s monkey. Carla is intrigued about your pet monkey.”
Con was momentarily startled. How could they possibly know about the monkey? Danny surely hadn’t had time to tell them. “Well, my monkey’s female,” he saved, grinning. “The most honest female I’ve ever known.”
The Greek laughed wheezingly: “Your Colonel Pearson told us about her. What is it you call her?”
“Scheherezade,” he said. Well, he might as well play their game. “But she hasn’t been too well lately. She drinks too much. Alcoholic, really.”
“Alcoholic,” Gus slapped his leg boisterously. “That’s a good one.”
“And do you talk to her?” Carla asked brushing her hair from her cheeks with long firm fingers. “The Colonel said you understand each other.”
“I talk to her,” Con said still grinning, glad she had brought it up. “It’s like talking to myself really. Danny and I were discussing something akin to it earlier this evening. Most of your life when you talk to people you only talk to yourself anyhow. So it doesn’t make much difference if you talk to a monkey instead. In fact it has its points. The lies you tell people that you really don’t know are lies until later on, you don’t have to feel sorry for when you tell Scheherezade. And at the same time you talk things out. Talking things out is usually very clarifying. At least to me, it is.”
A crystal from the chandelier was dangling refracting the light across his goatee and for the first time she saw the red of it and the heaviness of his brows and the dark hair curled up from his chest by his open collar. For a moment she couldn’t tell whether he was chiding or not:
“You philosophize,” she said matter-of-factly. “I wouldn’t think you’d have time for that in war,” she said seeing his forehead furrow suddenly, enigmatically, sensing in him a grave small boy bewilderment as if he wondered why there shouldn’t always be time to do what he must.
“Of course he’s a philosopher,” Gus wheezed. “Anyone with Greek blood is a philosopher.”
She looked slightly down at Gusto, his pudgy fingers wrapped around the ivory holder, his yellowish eyeballs shifting widely. “You a philosopher, Gusto?” she burst out laughing.
It was such a real unorganized laughter that it startled Con that it could possibly come from such a stiff presence of organization.
“What do you call yourself, philosopher? Diablo?” She put one hand on Gus’s shoulder and Con saw the curved line of her breasts move upward under the navy sweater under her suit coat.
“Not Diablo,” Gus wheezed. “That’s a politician’s name. I’m Miserlou: the miserable one.”
“Wonderful,” Carla l
aughed her unorganized laugh. “That’s a perfect name. Who gave it to you? Nickie?”
“Who else? Who else understands me enough to feel sorry for me,” Gus said with a depraved grin. “Nickie knows how I’ve suffered. She gives me the sympathy I deserve.”
“My God, he means it,” Con said to Carla.
“Of course he means it,” she said looking at Gus like a great-aunt to a nephew. “It’s a hard life counting your money and your estates. Always aware that someone was waiting for you to make that first mistake. That’s why Gus is so heavy; nervous appetite. Gus really doesn’t like to eat.”
“You do understand me,” Gus said putting his head down purposely, bashfully, “I’m so glad to know someone else understands,” he said almost femininely in that sinister way. “It’s uplifting.”
“You’re impossible and I love you,” Carla said, “but I must get on,” her smile vanished gradually.
She made no gestures, Con noted. She seemed to imply her gestures.
“I’ll see you later, Gusto. And perhaps, Captain, if you’re still here, I’ll see you too.”
She gave him one final look with those cold impervious eyes. And Con watched the looseswinging way of her silken legs as she walked away. She couldn’t hide that with her majestic carriage or with those goddamn eyes, he thought.
The orchestra was playing America’s latest smash hit: Mairzy Doats.
“You see what I mean,” the Greek said. “She’s jolly distant even if she does laugh like a gypsy dancing in the dirt. Come, we will find Nickie.”
They found Danny instead. He was with a subaltern from Wingate’s Raiders who was on sick leave. The subaltern was very young and quite drunk and somewhat reminded Con of Island. He had been machine-gunned once through the liver and through both hands which were in heavy casts and made his drinking an awkward effort. His name was Guy Wilson.
Gus chatted with them awhile and left. They did what all soldiers swear they would never do on holiday, talk soldiering. They had several drinks and Guy turned very pale and the skin around his eyes began to twitch. Danny suggested once that he have a bite to eat and offered to get him a plate from the buffet. He ordered another drink instead.
Guy told the foulup story of how one of the agents attached to Wingate’s Raiders had parachuted behind the lines, the pilot having missed the target and the agent coming down on top a Japanese officer’s mess tent at the dinner hour.
Con and Danny had heard the story several times before but didn’t mention it. Guy thought it quite a typical tale and very amusing and laughed very hard telling it so that the pain from his liver cut whitely across his face.
Con thought he had never seen anyone so lonely, or anyone so young drink so deliberately hard. And the more he drank the greater his melancholia. Finally, suddenly as if he were a bird that had been potted on the wing, his eyeballs went up into his head and they managed to grab him an instant before he hit the floor.
They carried him into the library and got a doctor. The Hindu M.D., University of Iowa ’41, said there were no adhesions. M. J. Turner the always gracious host suggested Guy spend the night as a house guest and Danny accepted for him. They carried him upstairs and put him to bed. The Doctor checked him over once more in the bed and promised to call in the morning.
“I haven’t seen your wife as yet,” Con said to M. J. Turner coming down the stairs. “I’d like to pay my respects.”
“Rather,” Danny said.
He told them she was either in the kitchen or by the buffet tables in the diningroom. They stopped at the bar and picked up another drink, noticing the party was beginning to thin out.
They finally found Mrs. Turner directing one of the servants by the buffet. In her black dress and absence of makeup she was as contrastingly plain as her husband was distinguished. She held her head far back, almost saucily back and with the chest and hips of an opera diva she was as American as her birthplace of Pocatello, the perfect picture of a successful farm wife that had raised a brood, bought a house in town and joined the country club, Con thought nostalgically. But strangely she wasn’t out of place here; she seemed to bring what she was with her.
She invited them into the kitchen and insisted that they try a little fried chicken. “I fix it for M.J. once a week,” Esther Turner smiled proudly. “And beef stew, too. In spite of all his airs he’s still got his small town ways. And Con dear while I warm the chicken make me a bourbon and water. Light on the water,” she winked pointing to a cabinet.
Con made her the drink and he and Danny set down at a long ship’s table in the center of the large kitchen. She ordered the head cook out of the way, scurrying around for a few moments chattering over her shoulder about how fascinating a country India was and the wisdom that was buried here and wasn’t it a shame so few people realized it.
Then a houseboy came in and informed her about the subaltern that was her houseguest. Danny tried to reassure her that everything was all right but she insisted checking that he have enough blankets and putting a heater in his room as you could never tell about the furnace. Danny said he would go with her and Con joked that he would take care of the kitchen.
They hadn’t been gone long when M.J. came in with Nickie on his arm, Carla and Gus following. Nickie had on a white cashmere off the shoulder cocktail dress that was very far off one shoulder and Con saw at once that she was a little tipsy.
“Look who’s here,” she exclaimed. “My Burman,” she came toward Con lithely and threw her arms around him. “Where have you been?” she pouted.
He could feel her nails on the back of his neck and as she rose up on her toes her perfume cascaded over him, and right before she kissed him he saw the half-open wetness of her mouth.
His arms fell around her and he could feel the scalding almost inhuman warmth of her as she seemed to focus everything that was she into one boiling knot, and a cold, frightening, inhuman fear ran through him fully.
“Cut, print, and send it to the Hayes office for clearance,” M. J. Turner mused.
“Kheeee,” the Greek poked his elbow into Carla’s ribs.
Nickie stepped back finally. “Welcome,” she laughed. “Welcome to Mossorrie.” She took one step back and sprang lithely up sitting on the table, her legs dangling girlishly.
“Now that’s what I call a welcome,” Con forced redly, still startled, still feeling that long twisting sliver of fear.
“Make me a gin-tonic, M.J., please,” Nickie said.
“You see, Carla,” Gusto ribbed. “That’s the way the boys expect to be greeted.”
“Oh no,” Con said. “That’s the way they like to be greeted. They don’t expect it.”
“Thank you, Con,” Carla said.
“I’ve some guests to see,” M.J. said.
“I’ll make the drinks,” Carla offered.
“Don’t you dare go, M.J., before you give me my cigarette case,” Nickie said.
“Why don’t you ever greet me like that?” M.J. asked.
Con couldn’t tell whether he was kidding or not.
“When you come round with your enlistment papers,” she teased. He handed her the case and she kissed him lightly, brushingly on the forehead.
“I say, where’s Esther?” Gus asked.
Con explained and said when they returned he supposed Danny and he better get along. But M.J. going out the kitchen door interrupted requesting they stay at least a little while longer.
“I’ll see to it personally,” Nickie said. “Come over here, Con, and tell me about Burma.”
At once she saw that she had made Con feel a little awkward and so did Gus.
“Gus won’t mind,” she said plaintively.
“Really I don’t,” the Greek waddled up. “Nickie talks a good game but that’s about it.”
And Con sensed that Gus really didn’t mind.
Carla came up with Nickie’s gin-tonic and asked Con if he’d like a refill. He had been staring at Nickie’s long sensuous hands crisscrossed over
each bare shoulder, again remembering the remark that Lau’rel had repeatedly made about there being no other hands in the world like those of a halfcaste.
Finally Con blurted to Carla that he guessed he had plenty, yes he was fine, then his eyes focused in on her. Carla’s head was angled ever so slightly and there was a rush of light across the perfect straight line of her nose, a requiem of composure on the little jut of her lower lip but the eyes looked contrastingly coolly at him with that orderly sense of an unorderliness he did not know, and again he felt like he was on a dissecting table, goddamn her.
Then her eyes wandered away. They wandered away as if they were the only eyes that had ever wandered away from anything; as if she had invented wandering eyes, as if she held the patent on wandering eyes exclusively.
Gus was saying something to Nickie now but Con didn’t hear. Carla wasn’t posing, Con was thinking. She wasn’t play acting him deliberately. She had not looked at him in the imitation of some other woman in some other time or place looking at some other man. She had not looked at him in imitation anymore than she had chosen the navy suit and turtle neck sweater or the carelessly free comb of her hair because she thought it had looked chic in some fashion magazine.
No. She dressed that unfashionable way that was more than fashionable and she looked that coolly attentive way that was he-knew-not-what because it was the way of hers; only hers, discriminatingly hers, orderly hers without any of the grisly patterned orderliness of the society in which she lived, he thought irritated, as if the world should fall in around her and if it didn’t the hell with the world, I am the woman that can lick it. And making you believe it, he thought. Actually making you believe it. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t. No, damn it, it wasn’t.
“I was going to Kashmir to ski,” Carla was saying to Gus now. “But I could cut it short.”
“It might be wise, y’know,” Gus said. “It could save trouble later on. I’ll wire you as soon as I’ve seen the Consul.”
“I haven’t been to Kashmir in ages,” Nickie said.
Never So Few Page 25