He was very tired. The thought of going to bed for a few hours crossed his mind, but he stayed where he was, his collar open, his legs stretched out, smoking pipe after pipe and tapping the ashes out on the floor.
He didn’t move until, around noon, he abruptly got up, went to the phone, and, for the first time, called long-distance and gave the operator a number in Hollywood.
“Hello … That you, Ulstein?”
Ulstein wasn’t a friend. He did have friends in Hollywood, directors, French actors and actresses, but he didn’t feel like calling them today.
“This is Combe … Yes, François Combe … What? No, I’m calling from New York … Yes, I know that if you had something for me you would’ve written or cabled me … That’s not why I’m calling … Hello? Operator, please keep the line open …”
Ulstein was an awful man he’d met in Paris, not at Fouquet’s, but on the sidewalk outside, where you’d see him walking around just to make people think he’d been inside.
“Do you remember our last conversation out there? You told me that if I was willing to play smaller parts or, not to beat around the bush, minor parts, you’d be able to find me work … What?”
Combe smiled bitterly, since he could tell Ulstein was about to start talking big.
“Give me numbers, Ulstein…I’m not talking about my career. How much a week? … Yes, for any part at all … Damn it, that’s none of your business! Just answer my question!”
The unmade bed to the one side, the gray rectangle of the window to the other. Raw white and cold gray. His voice was insistent.
“How much? Six hundred dollars? … In a good week? … Fine, five hundred. Are you positive? You’re prepared to sign, say, a six-month contract at that rate? … No, I can’t give you an answer now. Tomorrow, probably … No, no. I’ll call you.”
Kay didn’t know about that. Maybe she expected to come back to an apartment filled with flowers; she didn’t know that he’d considered it and shrugged the idea off in disgust.
Was he right to wonder if they’d still feel the same way?
He was going too fast. He knew that he’d traveled, in almost no time at all, a long, steep path that men can take years to complete, often their whole lives, if they reach the end at all.
He heard church bells when he left the house; he started walking, his hands in the pockets of his beige trench coat.
And Kay couldn’t know that it was now eight at night and he’d been walking since noon, except for the fifteen minutes it took to eat a hot dog at a lunch counter. He hadn’t eaten at their diner. Why bother?
He walked across Greenwich Village toward the docks and the Brooklyn Bridge, and for the first time crossed the immense structure on foot.
It was cold and drizzling. The sky hung low with heavy gray clouds. The East River was covered with angry white crests of waves, the tugs sounded shrill whistles, and ugly flat-bottomed brown ferryboats carried passengers back and forth on unchanging routes, like trams.
Would she believe him if he told her he had walked all the way to the airport, stopping at most a couple of times in a bar along the way, the shoulders of his trench coat soaked, his hands in his pocket, his hat dripping wet, like someone in a mystery story?
He hadn’t played the jukebox. He didn’t need to.
And everything he’d seen on his pilgrimage through this gray world, the little dark men bustling about under electric lamps, the stores, the movie theaters with their garlands of light, the butcher shops, the bakeries with their disgusting pastries, the coin-operated machines that played music or let you knock metal balls into little holes, everything the whole great city could invent to help a lonely man kill time, he could look at all that now without revulsion or panic.
She would be there. She was going to be there.
That one last worry, which he dragged past block after block of buildings, brick cubes with iron staircases outside in case of fire, where the question was not how people had the strength to go on living there—that was easy enough—but how they had the strength to die there.
Trams went by, filled with ghastly, secretive faces. And children, little dark figures in the grayness on the way home from school, strained, too, for happiness.
Everything in the shops depressed him. The wood-and-wax mannequins in their hallucinatory poses, holding out their too-pink hands in pathetic beckoning gestures.
Kay didn’t know about any of this. She didn’t know anything. Not that he’d walked around for exactly an hour and a half in the airport, among other people who were also waiting, some huddled and anxious, others happy or indifferent or self-satisfied, not that he’d wondered if at the last minute he’d be able to hold out.
He kept thinking about the moment when he would see her again. He wondered if she’d be the same, if she would look anything like the Kay he loved.
The whole thing was even subtler than that, even deeper. He’d sworn to himself that the moment he laid eyes on her, he’d say, “It’s all over, Kay.”
He knew she wouldn’t understand. It was almost a play on words. What was over was the walking, the chasing and hounding each other. The running after each other, the turning away and turning back—that was over.
He’d made up his mind, which was why his trip here had been so purposeful and so painful.
Because despite everything there was still the possibility that she wouldn’t be able to follow him, that she wasn’t at his level yet. And he couldn’t wait.
It was over. That summed it up. He felt as though he’d run the whole cycle, looped the loop, fulfilled his destiny, or at least that fate had caught him.
In the all-night diner, when they were still total strangers, everything had already been decided.
Instead of asking why, instead of groping in the dark, resisting and rebelling, he said, with humility and without shame, “I accept.”
He accepted everything. All their love and whatever was going to happen. Kay as she was, had been, and would be.
Could she really have understood that when she saw him waiting there, with so many others, behind the gray barrier of the airport?
She rushed toward him, trembling. She kissed him, unaware that he wasn’t interested in kisses. She exclaimed, “At last, François!” Then, like a woman, “You’re soaking wet.”
She wondered why he was staring at her so hard, looking like a sleepwalker, why he was dragging her through the crowd, pushing through almost savagely.
She almost asked, “Aren’t you glad I’m back?” Then she remembered her suitcase. “We’ll have to wait for my luggage, François.”
“I’ll have it delivered.”
“But I might need some of my things.”
“Too bad,” he said. He gave their address at the ticket window.
“It would have been easy by taxi. I brought you something from Mexico, you know.”
“Come on.”
“Of course, François.”
In her eyes he glimpsed fear, also submission.
“Anywhere around Washington Square,” he told the driver.
“But …”
He didn’t ask her if she was tired or if she’d eaten. He didn’t notice she was wearing a new dress under her coat.
She took his hand, but he didn’t respond. Instead he acted stiff, which took her aback.
“François?”
“What?”
“You haven’t really kissed me yet.”
Because he couldn’t kiss her here and now—that wouldn’t mean anything. He did try, but it struck her as grudging. She was afraid.
“Listen, François.”
“Yes.”
“Last night …”
He waited. He knew what she was going to say.
“I almost called you a second time. Forgive me if I’m wrong. But the whole time I had a feeling someone else was there.”
They didn’t look at each other. It reminded him of the other taxi, that earlier night.
“Answer me. I won’
t be angry. Although—in our room …”
He said, almost dryly, “Someone was there.”
“I knew it. That’s why I didn’t dare call back. François …”
No! He didn’t want a scene. He was so far beyond that! And her hand gripping his, her sniffling, the tears she was holding back.
He was impatient to be home. It was like a dream, the long road that has to be traveled, the end almost in reach, but always one last hill that remains to climb.
Would he have the will to do it?
Shut her up. Someone should tell her to shut up. He couldn’t. She’d come back, and she thought that was enough. But he had moved on while she had been away.
She stammered, “Did you really, François?”
“Yes.”
He said it coldly because he resented her for not being able to wait for the wonderful moment he had prepared.
“I didn’t think I’d ever feel jealous again. I know very well I have no right to be …”
He saw the bright lights of the diner where they’d met and told the driver to stop.
She couldn’t have expected anything like this. He knew she was crushed, choking back tears, but that’s how it was. He said to her again, “Come on.”
She followed submissively, uneasily, tortured by the mystery he’d become. He said, “We’ll have something to eat and then go home.”
And like a character in a mystery with his wet trench coat, his soaking hat, and his pipe, he stepped out of the taxi into the light. For the first time he had lit his pipe while they were in a taxi.
Without asking what she wanted, he ordered her bacon and eggs. He ordered her brand of cigarettes and offered her one before she could look in her purse.
Was she beginning to guess what he hadn’t yet been able to say?
“What I can’t understand, François, is why it had to be the night when I was so happy because I knew that I’d be coming home.”
She could see him looking at her, more distantly than he ever had, even on the night they’d first met, just in this spot.
“Why’d you do it?”
“I don’t know. Because of you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing. It’s too complicated.”
He was glum, removed. She needed to talk. “I have to tell you—unless it bothers you—what Larski did. I haven’t accepted anything yet. I wanted to talk to you first.”
He already knew. Anyone looking at them that night would have thought that he was heartless. But that was unimportant, nothing compared to the decision he’d made, to the truth that had finally dawned upon him.
She was going through her purse wildly. It was in bad taste, but she was so frantic he didn’t hold it against her.
“Look.”
She held up a check for five thousand dollars.
“I want you to understand exactly …”
Of course. He understood.
“He didn’t do this in the spirit you think. I have a right to it, according to the terms of our divorce. But I never wanted to bring up the question of money, just as I didn’t demand to see my daughter so many weeks a year.”
“Eat.”
“Am I annoying you?”
“No.” The reply was sincere.
Had he foreseen this? Almost. He was too far ahead. He was going to have to wait, like the first person to make it up a hill.
“Waiter. The salt, please.”
Here she was, starting all over again. The salt. The pepper. The Worcestershire sauce. A light for her cigarette. Then … He wasn’t impatient. Instead of smiling, he maintained the formal, grave demeanor he’d displayed at the airport. That was what unnerved her.
“If you knew him, especially if you knew his family, you wouldn’t be surprised.”
Surprised? By what?
“For centuries they’ve owned huge, huge estates. There were times when they made a lot of money. I don’t know if they still do, but they’re colossally rich. But they’ve kept up certain customs. I remember, for instance, one crazy old man, some kind of eccentric or a con artist, I don’t know which, who’d been living in one of their castles for ten years, supposedly cataloging the library. He read all day long. From time to time he jotted down notes on little scraps of paper and threw them into a box. After ten years, the box caught fire. I’m sure he set it on fire himself.
“In the same castle there were three ancient wet-nurses. I don’t know whose wet-nurses, since Larski’s an only child, but they lived pretty well. I could tell you a lot more stories like that.
“What’s the matter, darling?”
“Nothing.”
He’d caught sight of her in the mirror, as on their first night, looking a little blurry and distorted. Here was his final test. He hesitated.
“Should I cash the check?”
“We’ll see.”
“For me, it’s…I mean, don’t get angry, but I want to pull at least some of my own weight … You understand, right?”
“Of course, my love.”
He wanted to laugh. It was almost grotesque. Her poor love was so far behind his. She couldn’t conceive of his love even though he was about to offer it to her!
And she was so scared and bewildered! She went back to eating, doing it with deliberate slowness, trying to stave off the unknown that lay ahead. She lit her inevitable cigarette.
“My poor Kay!”
“What? Why poor?”
“Because I’ve hurt you, a little bit, without meaning to. But I think it was necessary. I didn’t do it on purpose, but simply because I’m a man. It might happen again.”
“In our room?”
“No.”
She looked grateful. She still didn’t know. She hadn’t realized that their room was almost a thing of the past.
“Come on.”
She fell in step beside him. June had known how to do that, too, their thighs touching as they walked.
“You know, you’ve really hurt me. I’m not angry with you, but—”
He kissed her under a streetlight—the first time ever that he’d kissed her out of pity. The moment hadn’t yet come.
“Do you want to go to our little bar for a drink?”
“No.”
“What about the Number One bar? It’s not far.”
“No.”
“All right.”
She followed along, obediently, without feeling too reassured. They came to their house.
“I never thought you’d bring her here.”
“I had to.”
He wanted to get it over with quickly. He pushed her into the stairway, almost the way he’d pushed June the night before, though he knew there was no real comparison. He saw the fur floating up the stairs in front of him, the pale legs that halted on the landing.
Then, he opened the door and turned on the light, and there was nothing but the empty room, cold and messy to greet her. He knew she wanted to cry. Perhaps he even wanted her to cry. He took off his trench coat, his hat, and his gloves. He took off her hat and coat.
Her lower lip was starting to tremble when he said, “You see, Kay, I’ve come to a decision.”
She was still afraid. She was looking at him with a little girl’s wide eyes, and he wanted to laugh. It was an odd state of mind to be in while saying what he was going to say.
“I love you. I know it now. No matter what happens, whether I’m happy or unhappy, I accept it. That’s what I wanted to tell you, Kay. That’s what I swore to myself I’d shout on the phone, not just the first night, but last night as well, in spite of everything. I love you, whatever comes, whatever I have to go through, whatever I—”
But now it was his turn to be perplexed. He had expected her to fall into his arms, but she remained in the center of the room, looking drained and distant.
Had he been right to worry about their not feeling the same way anymore?
He called out, as if she were a long way off: “Kay!”
She didn’t look at him. She
remained aloof.
“Kay!”
She didn’t come. Her first impulse wasn’t to come to him. On the contrary, she turned her back. Then she ran into the bathroom, shutting the door.
“Kay …”
He stood, dumbfounded, in the middle of the room he had deliberately left in a mess, with his hands empty and his love out of reach.
11
HE SAT SILENTLY and without moving, in the depths of his chair, his eyes fixed on the door. There was no sound from inside. Time passed, and he calmed down, while his impatience melted into a gentle, suggestive mood, something like confidence, and he began to feel at ease.
Much later, without a noise, the door opened. He saw the knob turn, the door open, and she was there.
They looked at each other. She had changed, but he couldn’t tell how. Her face or something about her hair was different. She wasn’t wearing makeup and her skin was fresh. She’d been traveling all day but it didn’t show.
She smiled as she came toward him, shyly, almost awkwardly, and it struck him as sacrilegious for him to be here witnessing the birth of this happiness.
Standing in front of his chair, she held out her hands to help him up. It was a solemn occasion—it was important that they should both be standing.
They didn’t kiss. They held each other, cheek to cheek, saying nothing for a long time. The stillness trembled around them, until at last she let out in an undertone, “You came back.”
Then he was ashamed to have foreseen the truth.
“I didn’t think you’d come back, François. I didn’t even dare hope you would. Sometimes I hoped you wouldn’t. Do you remember in the taxi at the station, I said to you at the time that I didn’t think you’d ever understand?
“That it wasn’t going away, but more like coming home … For me. And now …”
He felt her go limp in his arms. But he was weak and clumsy, too, faced with the wonderful thing that was happening to them.
He was afraid she would falter. He wanted to lead her over to the bed, but she protested feebly, “No …”
It wasn’t their place, that night. Squeezed together in the big threadbare chair, each could feel the other’s pulse and the other breathing.
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