Marjorie Morningstar (88 page)

She said sullenly, blinking and yawning, “I don’t know which is more thoroughly ruined,
my dress or my reputation. How could you let me stay here? You’re a cad, that’s what.”

But she accepted a fresh toothbrush from him, washed her face, and put herself to
rights. They went up on the boat deck, and she noted with relief that there were several
weary-looking couples still in evening dress here and there on the ship. “It isn’t
six yet,” Eden said. “Last night out anything goes. Don’t look guilty, that’s all.
We’re probably the most innocent pair on the ship.”

Tired and sleepy as she was, the first glimpse of the faint greenish hump on the horizon
dead ahead of the ship sent a wave of pleasure and wonder through her. She caught
at Eden’s arm. “That’s it?”

“That’s it,” he said. “The Old World. You’re looking at France. Over the horizon is
Paris and the Eiffel Tower and, of course, Noel Airman.”

Two days later, still dazed and unsettled by the strangeness and suddenness of her
shift in plans, Marjorie was flying in an Air France plane from Paris to Zurich with
Mike Eden, in a clear brilliant afternoon. She had found out with Eden’s help that
Noel had gone vacationing in Switzerland; and she was going to try to track him down
there.

The ordered loveliness of the landscape unrolling slowly beneath her threw her into
a near-trance of sweet excitement. She could not understand why the books had not
dwelled more on the physical beauty of Europe. The continent seemed to her one green
pleasure park, dotted with picture-book cities; and smoothed and polished for centuries,
by the people who had lived and died there, to the perfection of a single master painting.
That this pretty place was the setting for all the carnage in the history books, and
the current horrors of the Nazi era, passed her imagination. The jagged march of the
Alps, purple and white against an azure sky, shocked her with delight.

The wheels of the plane skidded on the runway; and then there was the mess at the
customs, in the crowded buzzing airport, with signs in four languages everywhere,
and people around her apparently gabbling in seventy languages; and then she and Mike
were riding in a cab in violet twilight through a light-spangled city that looked
half like a medieval tapestry and half like a futuristic movie. All this time she
remained in her state of bemused pleasure.

Then she saw the swastika.

It leaped at her eye—huge, gilded—as the cab slowed, coming to the hotel. She touched
Eden’s arm. “What’s that building?”

“What do you suppose? German consulate.” He was irritable and glum; he usually was,
at this hour of the day, even without the fatigue of travel.

The bellboy took their bags inside the hotel. She hung back on the sidewalk. “Mike—”

“Yes?”

“Is it very silly of me? I want to go and look at that consulate building.”

“Let’s go in and register and bathe, for crying out loud. Then you can contemplate
its charm all evening. It’s no treat to me. I’ve seen a swastika.”

“Just for a minute.”

His true smile came slow and weary across the pallid face. “The bird and the snake.
Sure, come ahead, feast your eyes.”

They walked down the sidewalk to the German consulate. She stood staring up at the
gilded eagle and swastika on a huge bold medallion over the doors. After a while she
said, “They’re real, aren’t they? They really exist.”

“Oh yes,” Eden said dully. “They exist.”

She went to bed that night with her spine still somewhat a-crawl, having obtained
a sleeping pill from Mike Eden. He had made no reference to the Nazis during dinner.
He had talked about France, and Italy, and about Noel Airman’s charm and wit. But
she knew he had been aware of the slightly shocked state into which she had been thrown
by the mere sight of the gilded swastika. Marjorie had seen plenty of swastikas before,
in newsreels and magazines; but this was the first one she had seen with her own eyes
that really meant business, so to say.

For a long while the pill did not work. It loosened and warmed her limbs, and calmed
her nerves, but her mind remained tight and sharp in the darkness; and at last she
sat up, turned on the bed lamp, and smoked, sorting out the astonishments of the past
two days. Most astonishing of all, much more so than Mike Eden’s sudden casual invitation
to her to fly to Zurich with him, had been her ready acceptance. But since the moment
she had first seen this strange haunted man at the gangway of the
Queen Mary
—at least since the moment she had first talked to him at the rail, as the ship steamed
down the Narrows—it seemed to Marjorie that she had cut her moorings from everything
familiar and solid in her existence, including her own standards of propriety.

Once she had thought that Noel Airman had opened a new world to her, a world of novel
manners and values; but now she was beginning to see his free ways and shocking talk
as a sort of negative print of her own world; Noel’s innovation had been to call the
black of West End Avenue white, and the white black. Outside that limited world, outside
her perpetual little tug of war with Noel, outside her girlish dream of becoming Marjorie
Morningstar, there was, there had always been, a roaring larger world in which men
like Mike Eden moved; by chance, blindly pursuing Noel, she had stumbled into this
larger world, and it scared and excited her.

Eden had called Paris from Cherbourg as soon as a telephone line had been passed from
the dock to the ship; and in no very long time—he didn’t say how he had managed it—had
come to her with Noel’s Paris address. Noel was off skiing in the Alps, he added,
and wasn’t expected back for ten days. He had then offered to escort her to Paris
and see her settled in a reasonably cheap hotel, before proceeding on his way to Germany;
and he had been amazingly deft and quick in clearing through customs, getting French
money, treating with porters, and transferring baggage from the ship to the Paris
train. They had arrived in Paris toward evening, in the rain, and she had seen nothing
of the city but one small quiet restaurant where she had had an elegant dinner (while
Eden consumed a bowl of raw salad and a whole loaf of bread) and the dowdy Mozart
Hotel, where he had put her up.

Just before saying good night to her, standing in the hotel lobby waiting for the
creaky elevator, Eden had abruptly said, “You’ve got ten days to kill. Why slosh around
Paris by yourself? This is the dreariest time of the year here. I have to spend a
week or so in Zurich before I go to Germany. Come along. I’ll take you driving in
the Alps. Maybe we’ll track down Noel. There aren’t too many places he can be. It
may be your only chance ever to see the Alps. They’re worth seeing.”

The best answer she could think of, trying to catch her breath, was, “I’m not sure
that’s a decent proposal.”

“Of course it’s decent,” Eden said without a smile, “and you haven’t the slightest
doubt of it.”

“I thought shipboard acquaintances invariably turned into horrible bores on land.”

“I guess all rules have exceptions. You’re holding up very well. I just think you’d
enjoy the Alps. Will you come?”

In the second or two before she answered, Marjorie thought of many things: of the
loneliness and strain of spending ten days alone in a great foreign city, waiting
for Noel to get back; of Eden’s brief but revolting collapse on the ship, and his
peculiarly swift recovery; of her growing suspicion that he was engaged in undercover
or illegal transactions of some kind in Germany; of what her mother would say about
her travelling around Europe with a man like Eden, if she ever found out. Hesitating,
she looked at his face, calm and pleasant, though unchanged in its shadowed remoteness.
She was not at all in love with him. The sight of him with a hypodermic needle in
his hand had withered, probably for good, any such notion that might have been floating
far back in her mind; but she did feel affection, and pity, and concern for him. Despite
his bizarre traits, he was, in his good moods, rare company; and if there was such
a thing as a decent man, he was decent.

She said, “How shocked would you be, I wonder, if I said yes?”

“Shocked?” His smile was agreeable and mild. “I’d be very pleased. You make me feel
good when you’re around, that’s all.”

She said, “Well—I haven’t any dignity left, that’s one sure thing. I’ve chased Noel
this far, I may as well go yodelling after him up and down the Alps, eh?” She laughed
rather ruefully. “I guess I’ll come, Mike. Thanks for asking me. It sounds like fun.”

“Well, good. It will be, I promise you.”

“If my mother knew what I was doing she’d kill me. But I might as well be hanged for
a sheep as for a goat. I don’t suppose there’s a living soul who’d believe at this
point that we aren’t having an affair. I don’t care.”

“Now suppose,” Eden said, a rather acid grin coming on his face, “I really ought to
mention this—suppose we do meet Noel, travelling together like this? We just might.”

“Oh, him. I imagine it’ll enhance my glamor in his eyes. It’s probably just the jolt
he needs.”

Perched on a bed in Zurich, finishing her cigarette, Marjorie smiled and yawned. Completely
adrift though she was, her uppermost feeling was perky pleasure at her own daring,
now that she was actually in Switzerland with Eden. Whatever was going to happen in
the next ten days would not be dull. For all she knew, this time tomorrow night she
might be dining with Noel—or with Noel and Eden together, a stimulating prospect.

The pill took hold. She slept through twelve dreamless hours.

In the morning there was a sealed note under her door in Eden’s writing, with some
Swiss banknotes:
“Sorry, had to go out early on business. Phoned several ski lodges. No luck on Noel
yet. I’ll be back for cocktails and dinner, probably phone your room about five. You
can get around this town with English and your high-school French. Don’t buy too many
cuckoo clocks. You owe me $50, I changed that much for you. Mike.

Conscious of handwritings now, she scanned Eden’s carefully. It was vertical, clear,
disappointingly plain; she had expected marked elegance from a man who had made a
study of handwriting. Noel’s she recalled, was much more impressive; gracefully shaped
letters,
t
’s crossed with a strong upward slant, and curious striking capitals. All one could
say for Eden’s was that it was very easy to read.

She went out and strolled around Zurich, feeling lost and sheepish. It was a neat,
wealthy-looking city, but not exciting once she was used to the multiple-language
signs, and to the slightly different look of streetcars and policemen, and to the
clean clear air, which in her experience didn’t go with city streets. To pass the
morning, she shopped for a wristwatch for Seth and had lunch in a sidewalk restaurant,
where the coffee and the little chocolate pastries were exquisite.

She returned to the hotel at three-thirty and took a nap; woke after five, and called
his room. There was no answer. She bathed and dressed, taking her time; at half-past
six she telephoned him again; no answer. Ready for dinner, dressed even to her hat,
yearning for a cocktail, hungry, she sat reading
Tom Jones
and smoking nervously until half-past seven. She glanced at Eden’s note to make sure
she had not misunderstood it; telephoned his room again; and, fighting off alarm,
called the desk clerk and asked whether Mr. Eden had checked out. No, came the polite
reply in a moment, he was still registered; no, he had left no message for her.

At eight she went to the bar, drank a cocktail quickly, and returned to her room.
At half-past nine she ordered dinner in her room, and picked without relish at the
food. At midnight he still had not called. She sat up till one-thirty reading over
and over a week-old New York
Times
which she had bought in the lobby. She read through the help wanted ads, the shipping
news, and the financial section, becoming bitterly homesick for New York as her worry
over Eden mounted. At last she turned out the light, tossed and dozed miserably till
the sun came up at seven, and then slept for a couple of hours. The first thing she
did on waking was to reach for the telephone. Eden’s room did not answer.

She killed the morning in sightseeing, and the afternoon at a movie house showing
two very old American films. Half a dozen times she went to the telephone booth in
the ladies’ room of the movie house and called the hotel, but there never was a message
for her. Marjorie was increasingly torn between fear for Eden’s safety, and commonsense
embarrassment at her own melodramatic worries. One of the movies happened to be a
spy story; and all the paraphernalia of mysterious blondes, papers concealed in toothpaste
tubes, and sudden vanishings, so familiar in the blown-up gray images of the movie
screen, made her feel exceptionally silly each time she dropped down into dry real
life and went to call the hotel. That Eden had been spirited away by the Nazis—which
was what she was imagining, if her vague fears had any tangibility at all—was simply
too much to believe. More likely he was exactly what he said he was, a businessman
dealing in drugs and chemicals; and his reticence and nervousness, if they had any
meaning, probably were attributable to currency manipulations, or shading of the drug
trade laws, the usual shifts and dodges of a businessman clipping corners to make
more money. In a year in her father’s importing office, she had learned quite a bit
about this commonplace aspect of international commerce. Everybody did it, more or
less.

She knew, too, that Eden was startlingly absent-minded, and quite capable of forgetting
a dinner appointment and ignoring her for a couple of days. Several times on the ship
he had failed to meet her at an appointed place and time, absorbed in his card games;
and during one entire day he had paid no attention to her at all, sunk in a poker
game that had carried over from the night before. For all she knew, Eden was off somewhere
now playing cards, while her mind was dancing with lurid pictures of him being chained
and tortured.