Three Bedrooms in Manhattan (19 page)

“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.

H
E 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.

“Don't speak, François. Tomorrow …”

Because the sun would rise tomorrow and they'd enter a new life together forever.

Tomorrow they would no longer be alone. They would never be alone again. She shivered, and at almost the same time he sensed an old, nearly forgotten worry rise in his throat. Both had understood that even though they didn't want to, they had to look back at the loneliness they were leaving behind.

And they wondered how they'd survived.

“Tomorrow …” she said again.

They would no longer have or even need a room in Manhattan. They could go wherever they wanted, whenever. There was no need to listen to a record in a little bar.

The lightbulb hanging from its cord went on in the tailor's shop across the way, and she smiled, at once tender and teasing.

He squeezed her hand to ask her why, not needing words now.

She stroked his forehead and said, “You thought you'd gone further than I had, didn't you? You thought you were far, far ahead of me, and all the while it was you, poor darling, who was behind.”

Tomorrow would be a new day. Now it was dawn, and far off, you could hear the city coming to life.

Why hurry? The day was theirs, and the days that would follow. The city no longer frightened them, not this one and not any other.

In a few hours, this room would vanish. There would be luggage in the middle of the floor. The chair they were in would become just another shabby piece of furniture.

They could look back without fear. Even the trace of June's head on the pillow had lost its horror.

The future was for Kay to decide. If she wanted, they could go back to France together, and with her at his side he'd pick up where he'd left off. Or they could go to Hollywood and start from scratch.

It was all the same to him. Weren't they starting from scratch anyway?

“Now I understand why you couldn't wait for me,” she said.

He wanted to hold her in his arms. He tried to, but she slipped away. In the early-morning light he saw her kneeling on the rug before him, kissing his hands, whispering, “Thank you.”

They could get up, pull the curtains on the cold gray day outside, and look around at the room, so poor and naked.

It was a new day. Calmly, without fear or suspicion, and only a little awkwardly, because it was all so new, they began to live again.

They stood in front of each other, a few feet apart, smiling, in the middle of the room.

He said, as if this was the only way to translate all the happiness inside him, “Good morning, Kay.”

And her lips shook as she replied, “Good morning, François.” And after a long silence: “Good-bye, little tailor …”

They locked the door behind them when they left.

This is a New York Review Book

Published by The New York Review of Books

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Trois Chambres à Manhattan
© 1946 by Georges Simenon Limited, a Chorion company

Translation by Marc Romano and Lawrence G. Blochman entitled

Three Bedrooms in Manhattan
© 2003 by Georges Simenon Limited, a Chorion company

Introduction copyright © 2003 by Joyce Carol Oates

All rights reserved.

Cover photograph: Erwin Blumenfeld, Times Square, 1951 Courtesy of Yorick Blumenfeld

Cover design: Katy Homans

The Library of Congress has cataloged the earlier printing as follows:

Simenon, Georges, 1903–

[Trois chambres à Manhattan. English]

Three bedrooms in Manhattan / by Georges Simenon ; translated by Marc Romano ; introduction by Joyce Carol Oates.