Letty Fox (74 page)

“But those other things die,” I said, thinking she was worried about death. “They die sooner than we do.”

“I'm just speaking generally. Death isn't one thing, it has all kinds of factors. We ought to find a way to prolong each stage of life. They complain that the youth of the race is longer now, but also the age of the race is longer. We can lengthen it. Those people who live long have always signs of youth in them, even to the end. Men who are packed with energy contain all the men they ever were: children, youths, men in their prime, even their mothers, too. And they attach to themselves all kinds of other living things of their race, as other grand old men, which they suck up; and they consort only with the most living; and they love young beautiful girls, for example, only to drink up, unconsciously, from them the new blood, don't you see? But also they have shunned old age all their lives. So, such men are not old, but young, and you can never tell when, out of this secret drinking of new and strong blood they have always done, they will regenerate at least their energy and flash upon you, making even an ordinary young girl or man feel feeble. There are such old men and I am sure that old man there, timidly sitting there begging for glances is not one of them. I don't want to run down the poor old man, but he is not one of them.”

“But King David gat no heat,” said I.

She looked sad, “Yes. I am just thinking generally. Old age begins at sixty perhaps, but senility does not begin till much later, even till eighty-five if the person is energetic. Some men of genius have kept going, apparently in perfect health, till eighty-four or so. It is quite possible. In senility the intelligence dies, but until then, there is no sign of deterioration; the brains are sharper, and the judgment gentler, but—naturally, there is fatigue. Even feeling, sensitivity collapses. Especially the ability to know how others suffer. The old man wants to love, he knows he is in a situation where he might, and he cannot—then he becomes very sad. I read about one poor old man who had been a celebrity—he had to walk upstairs on his hands and knees, when no one was looking. He could not bear the weight of his body, it was too much to hold up. Other old men spend fortunes trying to get back their hair, their clear skin, their potency—it is a different life from ours. It is in another planet.”

“I can't bear old men or old women. I never could.”

Jacky said: “You know, poor Faust”—she laughed, as if she knew him—“he drew the sign of the macrocosm, that's the great world—”

“Look, I've been to school!”

She laughed, “He feels intense joy and cries out, ‘Am I a god?' Today, he'd cry out, ‘Am I a ruler, a dictator, the head of a government?' Wouldn't he? God was the highest in those days; of course, an imaginary creature. Now, we'd say, I'm fit to run the government. I suppose a very rich man, born to it, like W. R. Hearst, he naturally thinks, am I a god? Am I a king? Am I nature? He tries to do what he can to give other people his impression.”

“Yes, sentimentalism leads you to defend Hearst on romantic ground.”

“Not at all. I hate him. But what's the situation of a man who considers himself above the mob, for whatever reason? Take not a bad man like Hearst, but a good man like Gondych.”

“Gondych who?”

“Simon Gondych; he's some vague relative of ours, or, at least, of the Foxes.”

“Oh! Yes. I see. What about Gondych? What's he doing in this boat?”

“No, you don't understand!”

To my surprise, I saw that Jacky was hurt.

“Yes, yes. I understand; excuse me, Jacky, I'm so gross, really. I get used to making jokes, but I didn't see what you meant.”

“You don't see now; it isn't your fault, Letty. I have to tell you, though. No one could understand. But you've been out with men; you understand.”

I was silent because a premonition struck me. Jacky said, “You have no idea what he is really like … All my life I heard things about Simon Gondych. You know last year he got the Copley Medal or something, from the Royal Society.”

“Yes, Jacky.”

“I went out with him several times,” she said, in enraptured tones.

“Really, with Simon Gondych?”

“Oh, you have no idea what he is like.”

“No.”

“Oh, Letty! Such a man! I'm not afraid to rave, because it's clear he is an exceptional man—he gets medals; he got the Nobel Prize.”

“Yes—evidently; of course.”

“But as a man—he is charming; beyond everything; out of this world!”

I laughed.

“He'll soon be out of this world, won't he—he's a bit old for you, Jacky.”

She started to cry and put her head on her two arms on the window sill.

“
Il est vieux, c'est un vieux, je sais
.”

I saw everything, but did not understand it.

“Don't let yourself go like that; explain it to me. I'm listening.”

“Since Grandma's last party, about Muron, the broker, you know—I went out with him. He's very interesting. Papa met us in a cafeteria one day and he said: ‘What are you doing, Faust, with this young girl? I give you permission to seduce her, for you have not the aid of Mephistopheles.'

“Gondych said: ‘Probably Mephisto wouldn't do business with me anyhow.'

“Anyhow, the next day he telephoned me. I have the impression he thought he had got the go-ahead signal from Papa.”

“I know,” I said. “Papa is capable of that. He sees everything, he knows everything, and he is a scandal as a papa.”

“I have been out with Simon about fifteen times since then. One weekend I refused to see him because, you know, the whole week I didn't sleep, but really, not one night. It was as if I had eaten deadly nightshade, or benzedrine; whatever you eat not to sleep. I had been out three times that week—and as I thought it over in bed at night, of course, I went into simply every detail, I saw—”

“Yes?”

She said, “I saw he was trying to seduce me.”

“You let him see you were crazy about him “

“I didn't mean to, but I suppose he couldn't help but see it. But I am glad that he did not know what I was thinking all that week— he would laugh at me.”

“What were you thinking?”

“Why, I was adoring him, like any schoolgirl adores any professor. I was inwardly praying, ‘Oh, divine intelligence, oh, god, enlighten me.' I thought he took me out to enlighten me, can you imagine? I am delighted that he can never know that about me. He would think I am a fool.”

“Yes, and you still think he's a god, don't you?”

“Yes. I am still sure. But a different kind. The god of love. The true one. Supposing he is here, he has to have some human form. Why a vapid young man, with yellow curls? Why not a divine old man?”

I looked at her attentively. I knew that in a way, this way, I had never loved and did not even wish to. I preferred to have the right use of my eight senses and of my brains as well.

“At any rate, I am not mad, but everything I have ever wished for, he has given me. Absolute love.”

“Well, I don't understand. Do you mean he loves you, too—?”

She was silent for a while, and I looked her over, in the dusk, now thickening. She was really beautiful. I was surprised. I could not help thinking of her powerful and white limbs and of what charms Gondych could have. He was red and yellow, bright-eyed, brisk, well-mannered.

“He loves young women, you know, because he is old,” said Marguerite, my sister Jacky, “and not my sort, I know. I don't fool myself. He likes the lively sort; and I am quite a bore to him with my adoration, or I would be if I let him see it. But I don't. I go out with him—fifteen times—and I listen to the story of his adventures with other young women.”

“That means he likes to confide in you.”

“Why can't he tell me he loves me? Why must I hear about them?”

“Well—perhaps it's his line. ‘
Parler l'amour, c'est faire I'amour
.' ”

“No. He doesn't love me, that's all. Imagine—I'm a little more than eighteen, not bad-looking. I love him, but so madly that I'd sacrifice my life for him if I could, and what does he tell me? ‘Love is sacrifice; at one time a young woman I lived with—' and he tells me some absurd story. All the time I'm pawing the ground with impatience, and I myself would do anything just to prove to him— but meanwhile, what happens? In comes a girl of rather a gypsy type—a bit like you, in fact, Letty, and he follows her with his eyes: ‘That girl certainly has gypsy blood,' he says. Of course, I have no
nous
, I admit. He places me with my back to the street, and then he tells me, ‘Now I can look at you,' but it is to look at the street he wants, he is mad about company. I don't attract him. I go, look at myself in the glass, I'm beautiful! Pale-faced, disagreeable young men actually follow me, but he looks over my shoulder and says, ‘There's a pretty girl with a young man, you know, my dear, an old man is fascinated, and looks to see why he has invited her out.' ”

“Very ungallant! Why do you go out with him?”

“I don't know. Each time I come home very angry and swear at him. I burst into tears. As if I needed him! And I can go three or four days without thinking about him, then he calls up. I go unwillingly, and as soon as I see him, he has his claws in me—he doesn't mean to. He only sees me to tell me about the others.”

“It's really extraordinary! After all, Jacky, there are lots of men. Why go out with him? Turn him down!”

“I can't.”

“That's silly.”

“I can't turn down Simon Gondych.”

“Because he is Simon Gondych?”

“If he weren't, of course, but what is the use? I love him madly, so madly, so much with my whole soul, that if he won't have me—”

“Don't say such things,” I said.

I had tears in my eyes, I didn't know why exactly. I thought her affair absurd and the result of isolation and summer. Later, she told me some of the things he had told her, old scholar's tales, fascinating researches he only had pursued and which he told her. I understood the vanity of her love. I took Jacky to the subway and took a drink at a soda fountain coming home. I was engrossed with her story. I knew she was a young college girl without knowledge of men, but the conduct of Gondych was something new to me. When I got home, I thought for a long while, and then, with a smile, I wrote Gondych a note, telling him how much I had always admired him, how I'd seen his citation in the paper, and how I had always compared him with Talleyrand, so complex and witty in company, but frank and simple, charming and human in tête-à-têtes. I asked him to come and have tea with me at my flat the next Saturday about four.

The next Saturday morning, a florist's boy brought me a bouquet from Gondych; he himself came at four sharp, appearing at the door in his usual, charming, gay way and rushing in, like a whirlwind, to give me a kiss and dispose his things, in an interesting, lively way about the place. I saw that he had a lot of charm. He made an appointment with me for later in the week. Thus, I had the chance to see whether Jacky was seriously in trouble.

I acted out of curiosity, without morality. With regard to sex, I have never been able to see where moral behavior began; it seems to me that everyone is for himself; yet, in this case, I know that I betrayed poor Jacky. I said to myself that no good could come out of her schoolgirl love for the great professor. He was happy with me, but even with me I observed his habit of looking around, in all public places, to find the most beautiful and youngest girls, and I felt rather humiliated. Of course, I was not old, but through Gondych I had first had the sensation of aging. There were others younger than me; he picked them out and showed them to me. He was fifty-nine. I wondered sometimes if he was Old Scratch. He was sharper than a needle. His anecdotes were not only the ones Jacky had repeated to me, but newer, more secret ones, that he had dug out himself, and that he brought to me, like a victor with the spoils.

When he did not telephone me, after receiving my kisses, I was disgruntled; I began to long for him myself. Yet he was a very strange person, attracting undesirable attention in public places; and he was so clearly not of my generation. People would think he was my father or uncle, even grandfather. Then he made love boldly— he was ashamed of nothing; and he would say, He was ashamed of everything, he was gentle, meek and timid. The affair was irritant, intriguing; and he was gallant and generous. He treated me always with unusual respect, and seemed, at times, somberly distracted. I was curious about what the love of a man like that could be.

One evening, after we had been to a movie together, and he was bringing me home, I began asking him in the taxi to come upstairs and have tea or a glass of beer. He said nothing to this, but held my hand and pressed close. When we turned into Twenty-first Street, it seemed to me that he hesitated. At my gate (an iron fence with gates ran before three or four houses in a row), he shook my hand and said good night, but I held him by the arm, “Come upstairs with me, Simon; I want you to stay with me a while.”

“It's too late, Letty.”

“I want you to—please—”

With my hand on his sleeve, I brought him through the gate. At the door, where I was obliged to insert my key, he turned back again, “No, my dear, you are very kind, but it is too late and you are a young girl; this makes it wrong—you understand—”

“Simon, I'm not a child, we're not children, I know what I'm doing.”

“No, no, my dear—”

But he came into the hall and began to ascend the dark, long staircase. At the top of the first flight, he stopped again, after following me quite softly in the dark, “No, I must not.”

“Simon, are you mad? What are we? What are you doing? What a noise you're making, too.”