Tender Is the Night (16 page)

He knew
that what he was now doing marked a turning point in his life—it was out of
line with everything that had preceded it—even out of line with what effect he
might hope to produce upon Rosemary. Rosemary saw him always as a model of
correctness—his presence walking around this block was an intrusion. But Dick’s
necessity of behaving as he did was a projection of some submerged reality: he
was compelled to walk there, or stand there, his shirt- sleeve fitting his
wrist and his coat sleeve encasing his shirt- sleeve like a sleeve valve, his
collar molded plastically to his neck, his red hair cut exactly, his hand
holding his small briefcase like a dandy—just as another man once found it
necessary to stand in front of a church in Ferrara, in sackcloth and ashes.
Dick was paying some tribute to things unforgotten,
unshriven
,
unexpurgated.

XXI

After
three-quarters of an hour of standing around, he became suddenly involved in a
human contact. It was just the sort of thing that was likely to happen to him
when he was in the mood of not wanting to see any one. So rigidly did he
sometimes guard his exposed self-consciousness that frequently he defeated his
own purposes; as an actor who underplays a part sets up a craning forward, a
stimulated emotional attention in an audience, and seems to create in others an
ability to bridge the gap he has left
open.
Similarly
we are seldom sorry for those who need and crave our pity—we reserve this for
those who, by other means, make us exercise the abstract function of pity.

So Dick
might, himself, have analyzed the incident that ensued. As he paced the Rue des
Saintes-Anges
he was spoken to by a thin-faced
American, perhaps thirty, with an air of being scarred and a slight but
sinister smile. As Dick gave him the light he requested, he placed him as one of
a type of which he had been conscious since early youth—a type that loafed
about tobacco stores with one elbow on the counter and watched, through heaven
knew what small chink of the mind, the people who came in and out. Intimate to
garages, where he had vague business conducted in undertones, to barber shops,
to the lobbies of theatres—in such places, at any rate, Dick placed him.
Sometimes the face bobbed up in one of Tad’s more savage cartoons—in boyhood
Dick had often thrown an uneasy glance at the dim borderland of crime on which
he stood.

“How do
you like Paris, Buddy?”

Not
waiting for an answer the man tried to fit in his footsteps with Dick’s: “Where
you from?” he asked encouragingly.

“From
Buffalo
.”

“I’m
from San
Antone
—but I been over here since the war.”

“You in the army?”

“I’LL
say I was. Eighty-fourth Division—ever heard of that outfit?”

The man
walked a little ahead of him and fixed him with eyes that were practically
menacing.

“Staying
in
Paris
awhile, Buddy?
Or just passing through.”

“Passing through.”

“What hotel you staying at?”

Dick had
begun laughing to himself—the party had the intention of rifling his room that
night. His thoughts were read apparently without self-consciousness.

“With a
build like yours you oughtn’t to be afraid of me, Buddy.
There’s
a lot of bums around just laying for American tourists, but you needn’t be
afraid of me.”

Becoming
bored, Dick stopped walking: “I just wonder why you’ve got so much time to
waste.”

“I’m in
business here in
Paris
.”

“In what line?”

“Selling papers.”

The
contrast between the formidable manner and the mild profession was absurd—but
the man amended it with:

“Don’t
worry; I made plenty money last year—ten or twenty francs for a Sunny Times
that cost six.”

He
produced a newspaper clipping from a rusty wallet and passed it over to one who
had become a fellow stroller—the cartoon showed a stream of Americans pouring
from the gangplank of a liner freighted with gold.

“Two hundred thousand—spending ten million a summer.”

“What
you doing out here in Passy?”

His
companion looked around cautiously. “Movies,” he said darkly. “They got an
American studio over there. And they need guys can speak English. I’m waiting
for a break.”

Dick
shook him off quickly and firmly.

It had
become apparent that Rosemary either had escaped on one of his early circuits
of the block or else had left before he came into the neighborhood; he went
into the bistro on the corner, bought a lead disk and, squeezed in an alcove
between the kitchen and the foul toilet, he called the
Roi
George. He recognized
Cheyne
-Stokes tendencies in his
respiration—but like everything the symptom served only to turn him in toward
his emotion. He gave the number of the hotel; then stood holding the phone and
staring into the café; after a long while a strange little voice said hello.

“This is
Dick—I had to call you.”

A pause from her—then bravely, and in key with his emotion: “I’m glad
you did.”

“I came
to meet you at your studio—I’m out in Passy across the way from it. I thought
maybe we’d ride around through the Bois.”

“Oh, I
only stayed there a minute! I’m so sorry.”
A silence.

“Rosemary.”

“Yes,
Dick.”

“Look,
I’m in an extraordinary condition about you. When a child can disturb a
middle-aged gent—things get difficult.”

“You’re
not middle-aged, Dick—you’re the youngest person in the world.”

“Rosemary?”
Silence while he stared at a shelf that held the humbler poisons of
France—bottles of
Otard
,
Rhum
St. James, Marie
Brizzard
, Punch Orangeade, André
Fernet
Blanco, Cherry
Rochet
, and
Armagnac.

“Are you
alone?”

—Do you
mind if I pull down the curtain?

“Who do
you think I’d be with?”

“That’s
the state I’m in. I’d like to be with you now.”

Silence, then a sigh and an answer.
“I wish you were with me now.”

There
was the hotel room where she lay behind a telephone number, and little gusts of
music wailed around her—

“And two—for
tea.
And me for you
,
And you for me
Alow
-own.”

There
was the remembered dust of powder over her tan—when he kissed her face it was
damp around the corners of her hair; there was the flash of a white face under
his own, the arc of a shoulder.

“It’s
impossible,” he said to himself. In a minute he was out in the street marching
along toward the
Muette
, or away from it, his small
brief-case still in his hand, his gold-headed stick held at a sword-like angle.

Rosemary
returned to her desk and finished a letter to her mother.

“—I only
saw him for a little while but I thought he was wonderful looking. I fell in
love with him (Of course I Do Love Dick Best but you know what I mean). He
really is going to direct the picture and is leaving immediately for
Hollywood
, and I think we
ought to leave, too. Collis Clay has been here. I like him all right but have
not seen much of him because of the Divers, who really are divine, about the
Nicest People I ever
Knew
. I am feeling not very well
to-day and am taking the Medicine, though see No need for it. I’m not even
Going to Try to tell you All that’s Happened until I see YOU!!! So when you get
this letter WIRE, WIRE, WIRE! Are you coming north or shall I come south with
the Divers?”

At six
Dick called Nicole.

“Have
you any special plans?” he asked. “Would you like to do something quiet—dinner
at the hotel and then a play?”

“Would
you? I’ll do whatever you want. I phoned Rosemary a while ago and she’s having
dinner in her room.
I think this upset
all of us, don’t you?”

“It
didn’t upset me,” he objected. “Darling, unless you’re physically tired let’s
do something. Otherwise we’ll get south and spend a week wondering why we
didn’t see Boucher. It’s better than brooding—”

This was
a blunder and Nicole took him up sharply.

“Brooding
about what?”

“About Maria Wallis.”

She
agreed to go to a play. It was a tradition between them that they should never
be too tired for anything, and they found it made the days better on the whole
and put the evenings more in order. When, inevitably, their spirits flagged
they shifted the blame to the weariness and fatigue of others. Before they went
out, as fine-looking a couple as could be found in
Paris
, they knocked softly at Rosemary’s
door. There was no answer; judging that she was asleep they walked into a warm
strident
Paris
night, snatching
a vermouth
and bitters in the shadow
by Fouquet’s bar.

XXII

Nicole
awoke late, murmuring something back into her dream before she parted her long
lashes tangled with sleep. Dick’s bed was empty—only after a minute did she
realize
that she had been awakened by a knock at their salon
door.

“
Entrez
!” she called, but there was no answer, and after a
moment she slipped on a dressing-gown and went to open it. A
sergent
-de-
ville
confronted her
courteously and stepped inside the door.

“Mr.
Afghan North—he is here?”

“What?
No—he’s gone to
America
.”

“When
did he leave, Madame?”

“Yesterday
morning.”

He shook
his head and waved his forefinger at her in a quicker rhythm.

“He was
in
Paris
last
night. He is registered here but his room is not occupied. They told me I had
better ask at this room.”

“Sounds
very peculiar to me—we saw him off yesterday morning on the boat train.”

“Be that
as it may, he has been seen here this morning. Even his carte
d’identité
has been seen. And there you are.”

“We know
nothing about it,” she proclaimed in amazement.

He
considered. He was an ill-smelling, handsome man.

“You
were not with him at all last night?”

“But
no.”

“We have
arrested a Negro. We are convinced we have at last arrested the correct Negro.”

“I
assure you that I haven’t an idea what you’re talking about. If it’s the Mr.
Abraham North, the one we know, well, if he was in
Paris
last night we weren’t aware of it.”

The man
nodded, sucked his upper lip, convinced but disappointed.

“What
happened?” Nicole demanded.

He
showed his palms, puffing out his closed mouth. He had begun to find her
attractive and his eyes flickered at her.

“What do
you wish, Madame?
A summer affair.
Mr. Afghan North
was robbed and he made a complaint. We have arrested the miscreant. Mr. Afghan
should come to identify him and make the proper charges.”

Nicole
pulled her dressing-gown closer around her and dismissed him briskly. Mystified
she took a bath and dressed. By this time it was after ten and she called
Rosemary but got no answer—then she phoned the hotel office and found that Abe
had indeed registered, at six-thirty this morning. His room, however, was still
unoccupied. Hoping for a word from Dick she waited in the parlor of the suite;
just as she had given up and decided to go out, the office called and
announced:

“
Meestaire
Crawshow
, un
nègre
.”

“On what
business?” she demanded.

“He says
he knows you and the
doctaire
. He says there is a
Meestaire
Freeman into prison that is a friend of
all the
world. He says there is injustice and he wishes to
see
Meestaire
North before he himself is arrested.”

“We know
nothing about it.” Nicole disclaimed the whole business with a vehement clap of
the receiver. Abe’s bizarre reappearance made it plain to her how fatigued she
was with his dissipation. Dismissing him from her mind she went out, ran into
Rosemary at the dressmaker’s, and shopped with her for artificial flowers and
all- colored strings of colored beads on the Rue de
Rivoli
.
She helped Rosemary choose a diamond for her mother, and some
scarfs
and novel cigarette cases to take home to business
associates in
California
.
For her son she bought Greek and Roman soldiers, a whole army of them, costing
over a thousand francs. Once again they spent their money in different ways and
again Rosemary admired Nicole’s method of spending. Nicole was sure that the
money she spent was hers— Rosemary still thought her money was miraculously
lent to her and she must consequently be very careful of it.