Go Naked In The World

by Chamales, Tom T. ;

  CHAPTER XXV

  MARCI, Marci Preston, in her Evanston home had earlier that day called Pierro Stratton to cancel an engagement to drive out to Barrington to look at an almost completed house which, because of its unique design, was causing considerable comment in architectural circles and had aroused Pierro’s curiosity. She couldn’t make it, she told him, because her father wasn’t feeling well.

  In the course of their conversation Marci had (more from her well-bred ways rather than from any genuine curiosity) asked Pierro how his family was. And in the course of Pierro’s reply he had mentioned that Nick had taken off for Florida, impulsively as usual, with two old men, one a Halstead Street drunkard, to go fishing, to which Marci herself replied that she wasn’t at all surprised—and wouldn’t have been surprised to have heard he was in South America.

  Actually Marci’s father wasn’t feeling well though Marci was convinced from the tone of Pierro’s voice, though polite and soft as usual, that Pierro was reluctant to believe her. Her father, actually, was not suffering from any physical malfunction but rather from a mental one. He was depressed. Severely depressed, Marci knew, and had had severe states of depression ever since he had that operation on his prostate three years before. And it seemed, or she believed, that she was the only one who could really cheer him, though, usually, she found out that after cheering him, after listening to all his talk about how he wanted his funeral and the size and shape of his tombstone and how he would never live to see one of his own grandchildren, after all that Marci usually found out that she, herself, was depressed.

  It seemed lately his depression was recurring more and more often and she had begun to think a lot about what it would be like for him when she went away—what his reaction would be to her actual departure, and who was going to take care of him. She had actually begun to feel quite guilty even thinking about leaving and guilty about not being married so that she could have the child that her father so wanted. After all, she was almost thirty. And she had had a feeling the last few years, ever since his operation, that he wasn’t going to live too long. Certainly a grandchild would make his last days happy ones, and happy for her, too.

  After she had cheered her father up and he was carried upstairs by the big, old white-haired Negro servant she put on her bathing suit and walked down the steep steps of the cliff in front of their house and took a long swim and sat on the beach for over an hour, then took another long swim. She was an excellent swimmer, had loved the water since she was a little girl (she had begun at an extremely early age, swimming with her father as part of his polio exercises) and the good tired feeling she would get after she had extended herself gave her a warm, tired pleasure. Secretly she liked to swim in the nude and sometimes at night she would come down to the beach alone and after getting out neck deep would remove her suit and play friskily in the water holding her suit in one hand.

  After the swim she had taken a lukewarm bath, sitting in the tub for over an hour reading James Joyce’s Ulysses. Then she dried herself thoroughly and powdered and went into her bedroom and opened the windows wide so that the lake breeze came through, then lay down nude on the bed. She read a little while longer, then didn’t seem to be able to concentrate and dropped the book over the edge of the bed to the floor and closed her eyes and felt the lake breeze gentle to her body, a slight tingle on her shoulders and breasts, knowing exactly how she must look with her red hair on the white silk sheets and her (oddly) red-brown Scandinavian body with its smattering of freckles. She rubbed her breasts a moment then suddenly she thought about that night she had first gone with Pierro and they had stopped by the Strattons in Winnetka and of the way she had suddenly caught Nick staring so invadingly at her breasts. Quickly she removed her hands from them and lay there her legs together, her palms pressed flat to her side like a statue she had once seen.

  She closed her eyes trying to forget. Tired now from the hours she had spent with her father, tired now from the long swim and the sun, good tired now so she would not have to think of what she had been thinking lately—of leaving the stage and caring for her father or of getting married. But there were other things, cool things now in the warm of this late summer afternoon.

  in Switzerland the mountains after the snow with no ski tracks powder snow it was and the sun coming through between the clouds all white cumulus and how you worried about your freckles you were thirteen and your heart skipped its first teenage skip all flutter funny over a golden Austrian ski instructor and the powder feel of the clean snow and the swish-swish as you passed the trees and into the open again in the early morning with the smoke funneling up in slow smoke soot lines from the village far below knowing the golden one was pressing you easily right behind and would swish soon by down away that was the morning you promised yourself you would never wear pigtails again and you never did

  thirteen and on Christmas Eve sitting between your mother and father all comfy cozy in the open sleigh one horse on the snowroad up from the village towards the nobleman’s chalet sleigh bells tinkling and the clot clot put put and the moonglow bright on the white snow the villagers lining the road with torches and the big fur blankets Mommies and Daddy’s arm around you all clean fresh cool wind to your face body tired excited you had skied hard that day and the hot wine and the carolers and ancient stone fireplace and the feel of the turtle neck sweater against your neck and the firelight on the golden ones hair and the wine all warm in your tummy you could feel your face glow and your pigtails were gone and some day you would marry him you said and the flutter funny when he kissed you under the mistletoe

  but that was all of Switzerland that year remember how Mommie coughed coming down in the sleigh that night and held you close next day and felt all warm beautiful in the eyes and you did not know she was dying and when she did New Year’s Eve your father couldn’t tell you he was too broken up and had tried to get out of the wheel chair and fell hard to his head on the planked floors later you heard he had wanted to kill himself it was terrible hard to believe she was dead because they didn’t let you see her but seeing him cry kind strong that he was was worse it seemed than Mommie being gone for a while anyhow worse until then it seemed there were no more tears in him to cry and you realized she would never hold you again sweet Mommie and poor Daddy and you stood alone for the first time cold gray January on the deck rail with the snow coming down soft wet with the pride of your native land looking all cold wet gray black big lonesome too big to move to budge but Miss Liberty made you swallow hard with pride and you weren’t mad at the purser any more for him not letting you go below to look at Mommies coffin Aunt Rose Mary was there waiting strong straight unflinching she was your new mother now she said and you went alone to the ladies room and cried and cried she would never know how to care for Daddy like you and Mother had

  two years later in Switzerland the golden one was gone to the service of a Union Labor Party man named Hitler in Vienna and you never saw him again it was the first time you had heard that name it was odd the way the innkeeper had mentioned it and you remembered when you heard it again and the thought of the golden one did not make you funny flutter again you didn’t like Austrians any more but Englishmen one in particular tall and wavy-haired and so very bashfully polite two whole years older and going to Cambridge next year

  but you would not do it with him when sudden changed half-drunk no longer soft eyed gentle he tried it was so smeary revolting the ugly whiskey way he breathed grabbed sickening to hear him beg it was so hard to understand why when it came to that men changed so it really was it made the world go all topsy-turvy and suddenly not enchanted anymore.

  was that why you let that girl do it to you that year at Smith so pretty was she and gentle tender and held you so close those fall nights and petted you like Mommie had or did she really do it you know you did but was it in a dream you couldn’t dream like that with her three times how terrible she was how twisted that pretty face when you would no longer let her in the bed with you it
was almost impossible to believe how mean she was you had to leave even a winter with Aunt Rose Mary stuffy as it would be was better than that it was hard to believe it was the same Germany that spring something was terribly wrong all over there it was good to sail in Maine again in the summer clean it was and to study in the theatre group and you never thought you would meet anyone like him

  different than all the rest was he just back from the war in Spain and kind and bright and made you feel younger than you had felt in years it was so easy to do it with him young as he was he seemed all strong and in need of no one that was the way he was and you could not sleep for thinking of him and did not dream of his wild ways

  it must have been the war that made him the way he was you did not love like that in the summer free tender wanted to give so much and unafraid and feel so much so much that was not only your own feeling but his feeling too you somehow knew what it was with him the way he had simply gone away and said I will see you in New York if you come

  he was not cruel really he was just so it seemed wanting to be alone not tied down or afraid of New York and how lonely it could be you had followed him there and moved into his village flat and after the hard way he worked and read and was so keenly interested in things you could feel the wildness coming on and he would go away and not come back for days and days how terrible were those days in some way from the look in his eyes when he would return you believed that there must be something wrong with him it wasn’t normal and shouldn’t have been after all those terrible things she had pried from him about Spain

  there wasn’t anything she could do for him not anyone he was that way concerned about death it had to be the war in Spain and sometimes just sitting there with him in the flat with the fire in the fireplace in the fall he would be as far away as if he was not in the room and suddenly one day he said I am going to Canada to fly and fight this war which we must all fight sometime and there was no reasoning and controlling of him

  he left just that way the way he seemed to do everything as if he did not really care but cared too as if there wasn’t a thing in this wide world that he was afraid of he was not lazy just one headed strong someway and must really have thought he could change the world living the way he did turning down opportunities to act if he felt it really didn’t suit him he was she had to admit about the finest young actor she had seen around held himself in tow with a rigid control and yet knew exactly what the thing was that he was to portray giving it meanings that no one else could give it and so concerned with William Blake and it seemed fanatic curious to know what kind of life Poe had lived and always reading that terrible morbid poem that Lawrence wrote at the beginning of Seven Pillars of Wisdom about love and death as if death itself was some form of love she would never know what he meant

  you never knew how he really was how he would look when he came in or what he would talk about when they ate or if he would come for you in bed gentle kind or strong wild wanting or wanting to give did he really know that he would die it must have been terribly cruel a trick of Satan he probably thought dying before he really had a chance to fight God help him maybe he was better off dead he had so much to give maybe his sin was not giving it how still your fingers feel the way his hair felt and the somehow exciting man-smell he would have in the summer after a long run up the beach in the hot sun or after he had labored hard at the theatre it was odd how he liked to work with his hands at times the way he concentrated laboring like a little child tying its shoe laces.

  was that her love

  all the years and the places she had been and the things she had done and still didn’t know what love was no that could not have been love with him

  no

  or could it

  What was wrong with Pierro? she wondered suddenly opening her eyes. Was it just that he had no physical attraction for her? She had always been attractive to men that way, she felt. Or was it just that he was so preoccupied with his work? It was so odd the gentle way he kissed her goodnight—always on the forehead.

  But what of the summer and the stage? her father? what kind of life was she destined to live, she wondered with that nameless lonely fear? Suddenly she wanted to cry and quickly got up off the bed and went into the bathroom and ran the water and sobbed and laughed funny to herself and cried and did not seem able to stop for the longest time. Finally, she showered. Her eyes were red and she bathed them and dressed and went back into the bedroom and called Pierro and asked him if he would take her to a movie, that she was restless. He said he would pick her up about eight. Then she went down to dinner.

  “Did you have a nice swim?” her father asked her.

  “Wonderful,” she said. “I thought I’d go to a movie with Pierro.”

  “Good idea,” he said. “You’re fond of him, aren’t you?”

  “He’s very nice, dad. And brilliant. I think he has a wonderful future.”

  “What kind of a boy is Nick? Old Pete’s son.”

  “I don’t think there’s much hope for him. He’s wild, it seems. Uncontrollable. No sense of values. He’s in Florida—fishing now.”

  “He can’t be too bad a boy if he likes to fish,” Marci’s father said.

  “Well, Pierro says he went fishing. That might be family pride.”

  “Don’t they get along—Pierro and Nick, I mean?”

  “Nick doesn’t seem to get along with anyone, except maybe his sister. He takes his sister everywhere. But you really can’t compare the two, Dad. I mean Pierro and Nick.”

  “I’m so glad for the time you’ve spent home,” her father said suddenly, slightly plaintively.

  “It’s been good to be home with you. I’ll miss you. Now go ahead and eat your soup before it’s cold. It’s good for you.”

  “I’ll miss you,” he said softly, paternally.

  And Marci wanted to get up and hold his head in her arms as if he were a little boy. She stared at him for a moment, then picked up her spoon. “I wonder if Europe will ever be the same again.”

  “We’re never the same again, not after something like this,” he said. “Never.”

  CHAPTER XXVI

  NICK on the sand beach of the small key his hands under his head and staring vacantly up now through the rent in the clouds where the turkey vultures still soared, waiting still for the tide to begin to change, suddenly thought of Raul’s father and the first night he had seen him after he had come home, that very first night he had taken Nora out to Los Caballeros. Was that the second or third night after he had come back to Chicago?

  It was strange, he thought, that suddenly he should think of the half-drunken Benchleyan image of Raul’s father. Strange, too, how vividly he remembered that night—the very table they occupied, Ellen the Fair, Tuttle, Tuttle’s wife-to-be, Tuttle’s younger brother from up at Great Lakes with the sailor suit that was much too big for him and made him look three years younger than the seventeen he was (and drinking martinis besides) he was so small funny young, how vividly even Nick remembered the songs the organist had played, and how Nora was that night—wild and turbulent with that strange animation that had taken him so by surprise and which seemed to run on such a high voltage current that he, himself, was carried away by it though he did not recognize what it was (it was certainly more than passion) and still did not know exactly what it was, though, he thought now, I certainly do not object to whatever it was and truthfully it is one thing I am not too curious to find out too much about, probably because in a case like this I am superstitious like a ballplayer and am afraid that if I do find out she might lose whatever it was and then I, too, would lose whatever it was which would certainly throw my sexual batting average into one hell of a slump.

  For a second thinking about that Nick grinned slightly and Gus resting in the shade nearby saw him, then saw the grin fade as the sun will fade darkly behind clouds, then the still and unmoving perplexed look on Nick’s face all tanned brown bearded very old now, scarred now, scarred like the world was scarred, hungry for so
mething like the world was hungry, Gus thought, famined maybe, famined for love the way the world was famined for love now, sick maybe the way the world was sick, the young bearded old scarred face all frowning perplexed, an almost numb-like perplexedness, like a face in shock, shocked numb by eruption after eruption, lie after lie, explosion after explosion, contradiction after contradiction, bewilderment after bewilderment—the body was not really shocked, Gus knew, though the face looked it, but the man was shocked because somehow he was paying for sins that were not his sins and no one had ever told him that he had to pay for any but his own.

  Nick was thinking:

  I know what it is about Raul’s father and why I have thought of him here and now where there is certainly peace if there is peace anywhere. He is. all that I do not want to be. Maybe he is all that all of us do not want to be. I wondered if that is why he comes around us young ones so much? To show us that is what we should not be? To show us that if we do not help ourselves unselfishly we will end up as he had ended up—paunchy with bloat of liquor and food, a house in which he does not feel at home, a wife that he does not understand, and a world that he truly does not wish to live in because there is nothing in the world to live in but the same old thing of no love and no happiness.