“I feel very honored,” Therese said.
“So don’t waste your thirst on highballs. Where did you get that lovely dress?”
“Bonwit’s—it’s a wild extravagance.”
Genevieve Cranell laughed. She wore a blue woolen suit that actually looked like a wild extravagance. “You look so young, I don’t suppose you’ll mind if I ask how old you are.”
“I’m twenty-one.”
She rolled her eyes. “Incredible. Can anyone still be only twenty-one?”
People were watching the actress. Therese was flattered, terribly flattered, and the flattery got in the way of what she felt, or might feel, about Genevieve Cranell.
Miss Cranell offered her cigarette case. “For a while, I thought you might be a minor.”
“Is that a crime?”
The actress only looked at her, her blue eyes smiling, over the flame of her lighter. Then as the woman turned her head to light her own cigarette, Therese knew suddenly that Genevieve Cranell would never mean anything to her, nothing apart from this half hour at the cocktail party, that the excitement she felt now would not continue, and not be evoked again at any other time or place. What was it that told her? Therese stared at the taut line of her blonde eyebrow as the first smoke rose from the cigarette, but the answer was not there. And suddenly a feeling of tragedy, almost of regret, filled Therese.
“Are you a New Yorker?” Miss Cranell asked her.
“Vivy!”
The new people who had just come in the door surrounded Genevieve Cranell and bore her away. Therese smiled again, and finished her drink, felt the first soothing warmth of the Scotch spreading through her. She talked with a man she had met briefly in Mr. Bernstein’s office yesterday, and with another man she didn’t know at all, and she looked at the doorway across the room, the doorway that was an empty rectangle at that moment, and she thought of Carol. It would be like Carol to come after all, to ask her once more. Or rather, like the old Carol, but not like this one. Carol would be keeping her appointment now at the Elysée bar. With Abby? With Stanley McVeigh? Therese looked away from the door, as if she were afraid Carol might appear, and she would have to say again, “No.” Therese accepted another highball, and felt the emptiness inside her slowly filling with the realization she might see Genevieve Cranell very often, if she chose, and though she would never become entangled, might be loved herself.
One of the men beside her asked, “Who did the sets for The Lost Messiah, Therese? Do you remember?”
“Blanchard?” she answered out of nowhere, because she was still thinking of Genevieve Cranell, with a feeling of revulsion, of shame, for what had just occurred to her, and she knew it would never be. She listened to the conversation about Blanchard and someone else, even joined in, but her consciousness had stopped in a tangle where a dozen threads crossed and knotted. One was Danny. One was Carol. One was Genevieve Cranell. One went on and on out of it, but her mind was caught at the intersection. She bent to take a light for her cigarette, and felt herself fall a little deeper into the network, and she clutched at Danny. But the strong black thread did not lead anywhere. She knew as if some prognostic voice were speaking now that she would not go further with Danny. And loneliness swept over her again like a rushing wind, mysterious as the thin tears that covered her eyes suddenly, too thin to be noticed, she knew, as she lifted her head and glanced at the doorway again.
“Don’t forget.” Genevieve Cranell was beside her, patting her arm, saying quickly, “Six-nineteen. We’re adjourning.” She started to turn away and came back. “You are coming up? Harkevy’s coming up, too.”
Therese shook her head. “Thanks, I—I thought I could, but I remember I’ve got to be somewhere else.”
The woman looked at her quizzically. “What’s the matter, Therese? Did anything go wrong?”
“No.” She smiled, moving toward the door. “Thanks for asking me. No doubt I’ll see you again.”
“No doubt,” the actress said.
Therese went into the room beside the big one and got her coat from the pile on the bed. She hurried down the corridor toward the stairs, past the people who were waiting for the elevator, among them Genevieve Cranell, and Therese didn’t care if she saw her or not as she plunged down the wide stairs as if she were running away from something. Therese smiled to herself. The air was cool and sweet on her forehead, made a feathery sound like wings past her ears, and she felt she flew across the streets and up the curbs. Toward Carol. And perhaps Carol knew at this moment, because Carol had known such things before. She crossed another street, and there was the Elysée awning.
The headwaiter said something to her in the foyer, and she told him, “I’m looking for somebody,” and went on to the doorway.
She stood in the doorway, looking over the people at the tables in the room where a piano played. The lights were not bright, and she did not see her at first, half hidden in the shadow against the far wall, facing her. Nor did Carol see her. A man sat opposite her, Therese did not know who. Carol raised her hand slowly and brushed her hair back, once on either side, and Therese smiled because the gesture was Carol, and it was Carol she loved and would always love. Oh, in a different way now, because she was a different person, and it was like meeting Carol all over again, but it was still Carol and no one else. It would be Carol, in a thousand cities, a thousand houses, in foreign lands where they would go together, in heaven and in hell. Therese waited. Then as she was about to go to her, Carol saw her, seemed to stare at her incredulously a moment while Therese watched the slow smile growing, before her arm lifted suddenly, her hand waved a quick, eager greeting that Therese had never seen before. Therese walked toward her.
AFTERWORD
My inspiration for this book came in late 1948, when I was living in New York. I had just finished Strangers on a Train, but it wasn’t to be published until 1949. Christmas was approaching, I was vaguely depressed and also short of money, and to earn some I took a job as salesgirl in a big department store in Manhattan during the period known as the Christmas rush, which lasts about a month. I think I lasted two and a half weeks.
The store assigned me to the toy section, in my case the doll counter. There were many types of doll, expensive and not so expensive, real hair or artificial, and size and clothing were of utmost importance. Children, some whose noses barely reached the glass showcase top, pressed forward with their mother or father or both, dazzled by the display of brand-new dolls that cried, opened and closed their eyes, stood on their two feet sometimes, and, of course, loved changes of clothing. A rush it was, and I and the four or five young women I worked with behind the long counter could not sit down from eight-thirty in the morning until the lunch break. And even then? The afternoon was the same.
One morning, into this chaos of noise and commerce, there walked a blondish woman in a fur coat. She drifted toward the doll counter with a look of uncertainty—should she buy a doll or something else?—and I think she was slapping a pair of gloves absently into one hand. Perhaps I noticed her because she was alone, or because a mink coat was a rarity, and because she was blondish and seemed to give off light. With the same thoughtful air, she purchased a doll, one of two or three I had shown her, and I wrote her name and address on the receipt, because the doll was to be delivered to an adjacent state. It was a routine transaction, the woman paid and departed. But I felt odd and swimmy in the head, near to fainting, yet at the same time uplifted, as if I had seen a vision.
As usual, I went home after work to my apartment, where I lived alone. That evening I wrote out an idea, a plot, a story about the blondish and elegant woman in the fur coat. I wrote some eight pages in longhand in my then current notebook or cahier. This was the entire story of The Price of Salt. It flowed from my pen as if from nowhere—beginning, middle, and end. It took me about two hours, perhaps less.
The following morni
ng I felt even odder, and was aware that I had a fever. It must have been a Sunday, because I remember taking the subway (underground) in the morning, and in those days people had to work Saturday mornings, and all of Saturday in the Christmas rush. I recall nearly fainting while hanging on to a strap in the train. The friend I had an appointment with had some medical knowledge, and I said that I felt sickish, and had noticed a little blister on the skin of my abdomen, when I had taken a shower that morning. My friend took one look at the blister and said, “Chickenpox.” Unfortunately, I had never had this childhood ailment, though I’d had just about everything else. The disease is not pleasant for adults, as the fever goes up to 104° Fahrenheit for a couple of days, and, worse, the face, torso, upper arms, even ears and nostrils are covered or lined with pustules that itch and burst. One must not scratch them in one’s sleep, otherwise scars and pits result. For a month one goes about with bleeding spots, visible to the public on the face, looking as if one has been hit by a volley of air-gun pellets.
I had to give notice to the department store on Monday that I could not return to work. One of the small runny nosed children there must have passed on the germ, but in a way the germ of a book too: fever is stimulating to the imagination. I did not immediately start writing the book. I prefer to let ideas simmer for weeks. And, too, when Strangers on a Train was published and shortly afterward sold to Alfred Hitchcock, who wished to make a film of it, my publishers and also my agent were saying, “Write another book of the same type, so you’ll strengthen your reputation as . . .” As what? Strangers on a Train had been published as “A Harper Novel of Suspense” by Harper & Bros., as the house was then called, so overnight I had become a “suspense” writer, though Strangers in my mind was not categorized, and was simply a novel with an interesting story. If I were to write a novel about a lesbian relationship, would I then be labeled a lesbian-book writer? That was a possibility, even though I might never be inspired to write another such book in my life. So I decided to offer the book under another name. By 1951, I had written it. I could not push it into the background for ten months and write something else, simply because for commercial reasons it might have been wise to write another “suspense” book.
Harper & Bros. rejected The Price of Salt, so I was obliged to find another American publisher—to my regret, as I much dislike changing publishers. The Price of Salt had some serious and respectable reviews when it appeared in hardcover in 1952. But the real success came a year later with the paperback edition, which sold nearly a million copies and was certainly read by more. The fan letters came in addressed to Claire Morgan, care of the paperback house. I remember receiving envelopes of ten and fifteen letters a couple of times a week and for months on end. A lot of them I answered, but I could not answer them all without a form letter, which I never arranged.
My young protagonist Therese may appear a shrinking violet in my book, but those were the days when gay bars were a dark door somewhere in Manhattan, where people wanting to go to a certain bar got off the subway a station before or after the convenient one, lest they be suspected of being homosexual. The appeal of The Price of Salt was that it had a happy ending for its two main characters, or at least they were going to try to have a future together. Prior to this book, homosexuals male and female in American novels had had to pay for their deviation by cutting their wrists, drowning themselves in a swimming pool, or by switching to heterosexuality (so it was stated), or by collapsing—alone and miserable and shunned—into a depression equal to hell. Many of the letters that came to me carried such messages as “Yours is the first book like this with a happy ending! We don’t all commit suicide and lots of us are doing fine.” Others said, “Thank you for writing such a story. It is a little like my own story . . .” And, “I am eighteen and I live in a small town. I feel lonely because I can’t talk to anyone . . .” Sometimes I wrote a letter suggesting that the writer go to a larger town where there would be a chance to meet more people. As I remember, there were as many letters from men as from women, which I considered a good omen for my book. This turned out to be true. The letters trickled in for years, and even now a letter comes once or twice a year from a reader. I never wrote another book like this. My next book was The Blunderer. I like to avoid labels. It is American publishers who love them.
May 24, 1989
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1921, Patricia Highsmith spent much of her adult life in Switzerland and France. She was educated at Barnard College, where she studied English, Latin, and Greek. Her first novel, Strangers on a Train, published initially in 1950, proved to be a major commercial success and was filmed by Alfred Hitchcock. Despite this early recognition, Highsmith was unappreciated in the United States for the entire length of her career.
Writing under the pseudonym of Claire Morgan, she then published The Price of Salt in 1952, which had been turned down by her previous American publisher because of its frank exploration of homosexual themes. Her most popular literary creation was Tom Ripley, the dapper sociopath who first debuted in her 1955 novel, The Talented Mr. Ripley. She followed with four other Ripley novels. Posthumously made into a major motion picture, The Talented Mr. Ripley has helped bring about a renewed appreciation of Highsmith’s work in the United States.
The author of more than twenty books, Highsmith has won the O. Henry Memorial Award, the Edgar Allan Poe Award, Le Grand Prix de Littérature Policière, and the Award of the Crime Writers’ Association of Great Britain. She died in Switzerland on February 4, 1995, and her literary archives are maintained in Berne.
PRAISE FOR PATRICIA HIGHSMITH
“Patricia Highsmith’s novels are peerlessly disturbing . . . bad dreams that keep us thrashing for the rest of the night.”
—The New Yorker
“Murder, in Patricia Highsmith’s hands, is made to occur almost as casually as the bumping of a fender or a bout of food poisoning. This downplaying of the dramatic . . . has been much praised, as has the ordinariness of the details with which she depicts the daily lives and mental processes of her psychopaths. Both undoubtedly contribute to the domestication of crime in her fiction, thereby implicating the reader further in the sordid fantasy that is being worked out.”
—Robert Towers, New York Review of Books
“For eliciting the menace that lurks in familiar surroundings, there’s no one like Patricia Highsmith.”
—Time
“The feeling of menace behind most Highsmith novels, the sense that ideas and attitudes alien to the reasonable everyday ordering of society are suggested, has made many readers uneasy. One closes most of her books with a feeling that the world is more dangerous than one had ever imagined.”
—Julian Symons, New York Times Book Review
“Mesmerizing . . . not to be recommended for the weak-minded and impressionable.”
—Washington Post Book World
“A writer who has created a world of her own—a world claustrophobic and irrational which we enter each time with a sense of personal danger. . . . Miss Highsmith is the poet of apprehension.”
—Graham Greene
“Patricia Highsmith is often called a mystery or crime writer, which is a bit like calling Picasso a draftsman.”
—Cleveland Plain Dealer
“An atmosphere of nameless dread, of unspeakable foreboding, permeates every page of Patricia Highsmith, and there’s nothing quite like it.”
—Boston Globe
“Highsmith’s novels skew your sense of literary justice, tilt your internal scales of right and wrong. The ethical order of things in the real world seems less stable [as she] deftly warps the moral sense of her readers.”
—Cleveland Plain Dealer
“Highsmith writes the verbal equivalent of a drug—easy to consume, darkly euphoric, totally addictive. . . . Highsmith belongs in the moody company of Dostoevsky o
r Angela Carter.”
—Time Out
“No one has created psychological suspense more densely and deliciously satisfying.”
—Vogue
“Highsmith’s writing is wicked . . . it puts a spell on you, after which you feel altered, even tainted. . . . A great American writer is back to stay.”
—Entertainment Weekly
First published in the USA by The Naiad Press, Tallahassee, FL, in 1952
Revised edition with an Afterword by the Author, 1984
Published in Great Britain under the title Carol
First published as a Norton paperback 2004
Copyright © 1984 by Claire Morgan
Copyright © 1991 by Patricia Highsmith
Copyright © 1990 by Diogenes Verlag AG Zurich
“Easy Living.” Theme from the Paramount Picture Easy Living. Words and Music by Leo Robin and Ralph Rainger. Copyright © 1937 (Renewed 1964) by Famous Music Corporation. International Copyright Secured.
All Rights Reserved.
Excerpt from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” from Prufrock and Other Observations by T. S. Eliot. Reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.
All rights reserved
Production manager: Amanda Morrison
ISBN 0-393-32599-7 (pbk.)
eISBN: 978-0-393-34564-3
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