Nothing That Meets the Eye (42 page)

“He means nothing to me,” Helene said quickly and apologetically.

“And perhaps I don't, either! Say it, if it's true.”

What was true? One thing she was sure was true was that she did not want to hurt Gert's feelings. But she sensed also that his blustering was his self-defense, and no doubt all for his good. “That is not true. But I made you no promises, Gert. You may have your brooch back.—I am not playing games with you.”

“If you don't want me—if you prefer that Frenchman—I prefer to kill myself, and I will!”

She did not believe him at all, but did not want him to see that she didn't. She continued to walk up the snowy path, Gert beside her, his eyes fixed avidly on her face. They were draining her somehow, Helene thought, and since she felt there was not much of her to drain, she did not wonder that she felt exhausted, at a loss. And she sought in vain for some conventional manner in which to handle the situation with Gert. She found none, she supposed, because she had abandoned such things before she came to Alpenbach, in fact days before she had left Munich. She remembered suddenly with a nostalgic pang the good-byes at the station, her surprise that Frau Müller, her charwoman, had come on her bicycle to the station to see her off. It had been as if everyone had known it was the last time they would see Helene, and yet everyone had been especially merry and affectionate, too.

“You see that rock?” Gert said, pointing up to the rocks at the top of the small mountain which they had never climbed. “That's where I'll jump from—unless . . .”

“Unless?” Helene said, as casually as she might have said “Pardon?” to something she had not quite heard and was not very interested in. She had thought of that mountain peak herself. She felt a possessiveness about it which was strange and a little ludicrous. Gert would never make use of those rocks, and it was simply a funny coincidence that he had spoken of them this way now.

“Unless you'll let me see you again. Unless we can make some kind of . . . arrangement.”

She knew what he meant: for him to be her only lover, yet a lover in a very romantic sense, probably with no physical contact whatever. He wanted to be able to come and have coffee or dinner with her in her Munich apartment once in a while, and to know that she permitted no other man to do that. Helene shook her head impatiently, involuntarily.

“What do you mean?” Gert asked. He was still watching her every expression.

Crunch, crunch—crunch-crunch went their boots in the snow, and Helene could suddenly stand no more of it. She stopped, lifted her head briefly to look up the gently sloping mountain to its top—which was certainly not eight kilometers high, as Gert had said—then turned around.

But they stood still.

“May I see you again?” Gert asked in his firm way.

“Yes. Here. But not in Munich,” she said flatly. She was tired of explanations, or of the impossibility of them. She began to walk back toward the hotel.

“Then I shall do what I said,” Gert said. Now his arms hung, like his head, as he walked. “But I shall write a poem to you first.”

That's a good thing to do, Helene thought, before dying. Then she realized that writing the poem would probably so ease his mind, all thought of suicide would leave him. At any rate, she felt absolutely sure he wouldn't kill himself, but she could not have said why. It was just a feeling of certainty, like the instant of realizing that one has fallen in love.

“May I offer you a cup of tea?” Gert asked when they were standing in front of the hotel door again.

Helene had not wanted to come back so soon, but now she wanted only to be alone, and the only place for that was in her room. “No, thank you, Gert. If you'll excuse me, I'll go up to my room for a while.”

“If I'll excuse you!” Gert said, smiling a little. “Of course.”

“Bye-bye,” Helene said in English, patting his arm quickly, then she went into the hotel.

In her room, she took off her hood, slipped out of her boots, and automatically carried them into the tiled bathroom so the few flecks of snow that remained on them would not melt on the carpet. Then she took off her jacket, and walked to the window. In the distance, the black, irregular top of the mountain showed against a pale, bright blue sky. All the ground was white except for three or four huge green firs. No skiers were in sight now, and when she realized this, the scene took on a melancholy, a look of loneliness.

All these people want me only because I don't need them any longer, Helene thought suddenly. It's ironic, but perfectly human, after all. They think I won't take anything from them, and they're right.

And it was quite funny. If she, for instance, had come here and fallen in love with the Frenchman, or with Gert if she had been younger, and had consequently tried to win them, she would probably have failed. She was not beautiful, and there had been a few times in her life—maybe two or three—when she had been attracted to certain men, and had failed utterly to make them notice her. Helene smiled on the view outside. It was beautiful again, very beautiful. She felt strangely beautiful herself, and strangely pure and guiltless. No one looks more beautifully on the world than someone who is going to leave it, Helene thought. And of course, the world never looks more beautiful than then, either, probably, but not like something beautiful that one desires to possess, or regrets leaving. She was filled with a happy knowledge that the world would remain, slowly changing, but remain—as beautiful as it was now.

Consequently, having had these thoughts at eleven in the morning, she was somewhat prepared for Signora Cacciaguerra's strange words at twelve-thirty. Helene had come down for a Kirschwasser before lunch, but before she reached the bar, Signora Cacciaguerra, a smallish, brunette woman of about forty, well dressed and well groomed, in a black and red ski outfit, accosted Helene in the hall. She asked if she could speak with Helene alone for a moment, and Helene suggested they go into the bar.

Signora Cacciaguerra looked quite distrait, and her forehead had puckered with an anxious frown. “Would you mind, please, if we had a conversation in your room?”

“Has something happened to your husband?” Helene asked, thinking at once of a skiing accident.

“No, nothing like that,” she replied, making a gesture toward the lift. “May we—”

“Oh, of course.” Helene followed her into the elevator. When they reached her room, Helene said, “We can have something sent up here, if you like.” But Signora Cacciaguerra didn't answer, so Helene ordered a Kirschwasser and an americano by telephone. “Do sit down, signora,” Helene said for the second time.

At last, Signora Cacciaguerra sat, on the edge of the armchair. “You may think it very strange—you will think it strange that a wife comes to you with . . . But my husband . . .” She groped for words, smiled, and struggled on. “He acts very strange. Not—I mean, he doesn't say anything definite, but he is always looking at you, and he daydreams about you. You must have noticed.”

Helene hadn't particularly, because Signor Cacciaguerra looked at her no more often than three or four other men and women did—including Signora Cacciaguerra herself.

“He is also moody now—alternately happy and moody. Staring out the window. But he doesn't want to go outdoors. I am not jealous of you, that's the funny part,” the woman said with a little laugh. “Strangely enough, I came to ask for your advice. Even, for instance . . .”

“For instance?”

“Shall we all have dinner tonight together? Perhaps it would help if my husband would be with you. He does speak of you, now and then, it's just the way he speaks of you that's so strange. I have seen him a little interested in other women now and then, believe me, but not like this. He puts you on a pedestal.”

The boy with the drinks knocked just then, and Helene was glad of the interruption. She took a ten-schilling note from her bag, and handed it to the boy with her thanks.

“Danke vielmal, gnädige Frau,” he said, and departed, leaving the tray on her dressing table.

Helene handed Signora Cacciaguerra the americano. “I hope you like this.”

“I do, it's my favorite. I drink it always in Milano. Cheers.”

Helene echoed the English word, “Cheers.” Signora Cacciaguerra had been speaking in Italian, Helene in French, which she spoke better. They had all spoken French the evening they sat at a table together after dinner. “It's too beautiful here to be worried by small things. Besides, I'm leaving in a day or so, if that's any comfort to you,” Helene said cheerfully.

“Oh, but it is not, you know? And I am not sorry to have met you.” Signora Cacciaguerra returned Helene's smile with a smile of equal sincerity. “Yes, I feel better already. But what about dinner tonight?”

“I've promised to have dinner with Monsieur Lemaitre tonight. But why can't we all sit at the same table?”

“No. I am sure Monsieur Lemaitre wouldn't like that,” said Signora Cacciaguerra graciously, “thank you. And neither will my husband like it that Monsieur Lemaitre is dining with you.” She laughed heartily at her own remark.

Helene was smiling also, and still standing. There would be no dinner for her tonight. She suddenly felt that tonight was her night.

Signora Cacciaguerra stayed a few minutes more, drinking her americano and telling Helene about her two sons in Milano. They were eleven and thirteen, and very different. One wanted to be a painter, the younger was going to be an engineer and build skyscrapers. They were so different, they had to have separate rooms now. “I would like you to meet my children,” she said with enthusiasm. “Do you ever come to Milano?”

“Only once every five years or so, I'm afraid.”

Signora Cacciaguerra gave Helene her address, then left by herself, saying she did not want her husband to see them together downstairs for fear he might guess she had spoken to her.

Helene went down a few minutes later. André met her near the door of the dining room, and asked if she would join him and a friend who had just come from Paris for lunch.

“That is, if you don't think you'll be bored if you see me at dinner tonight as well,” André added.

Helene accepted.

That afternoon, Helene packed her suitcase for tidiness' sake, and asked for her bill to be prepared. The manager was surprised that she was leaving so soon, but Helene said that it was probable she would leave the following day, and she wanted to settle. She paid for the extra day, and left a good sum under the lamp on her bedtable. In an envelope of the hotel's stationery, she left a hundred and fifty schillings for the maid Kaethe. She put Gert's brooch into an envelope, thought of writing a note, and decided not to. She addressed the envelope to Gert von Boechlein. There was no need to write to her husband or her son, she felt, even though she was capable of writing a friendly good-bye to both: notes would only stir up sentiment, would be kept perhaps for years, and might wound her son's heart years from now, if his heart should ever become capable of being wounded. She had said the only kind of good-byes she wanted to say to her cheerful friends at the Munich Hauptbahnhof before she came to Alpenbach.

At six o'clock, she went out in her ski pants, with hood and mittens. It was the hour when most people bathed and changed their clothes, and she was glad not to run into anyone in the lobby. Then she began to climb the snowy path, estimating that by the time she reached the top, it would be dark. She was sorry to inconvenience the hotel with a death, but death, she supposed, was always a nuisance: if one dove into a river, for instance, many people would spend days looking for the body, or there would be inconvenience if the body were found unexpectedly on the riverbank days or weeks later. At least she was not going to die in the hotel. She supposed she would land in a pile of snow yards deep and be frozen or suffocate. The words had no terror and almost no meaning now. And what if she met Gert at the top of the mountain about to do the same thing? Helene thought, and laughed a little, because she was so sure he wouldn't.

By the time she neared the top, she could not see her footing. She pulled herself up by her hands on the bare, irregular rocks. And when she reached the top, she did not hesitate for more than ten seconds, paused only to take two or three deep breaths of air, then she walked forward, tumbled over headlong, and fell into emptiness. The wind whistled through her hood into her ears. Though she hurtled downward, she had a sensation of weightlessness, of bodilessness also. She saw her whole life, from her yellow-haired childhood to her university days, her marriage, its slow decline, to the last sections of her life in Munich—but all so quickly, it might have been one panoramic snapshot—click! And all in all, life was not bad, she thought. It was her last thought, before a dark and final click.

TWO DISAGREEABLE PIGEONS

T
hey lived in Trafalgar Square, two pigeons which for convenience shall be called Maud and Claud, though they didn't give each other names. They were simply mates, for two or three years now, loyal in a way, though at the bottom of their little pigeon hearts they detested each other. Their days were spent pecking grain and peanuts strewn by endless tourists and Londoners who bought the stuff from peddlers. Peck-peck, all day amid hundreds of other pigeons who like Maud and Claud had nearly lost the ability to fly, because it was hardly necessary any longer. Often Maud was separated from Claud in a bobbing field of pigeons, but by nightfall they somehow found each other and made their way to a cranny in the back of a stone parapet near the National Gallery. Uff! and they'd heave their bulging breasts up the two or three feet to their domicile.

Maud would make disagreeable noises in her throat, signifying both pique and scorn. She was the same age as Claud, which wasn't young. Her first mate had been hit in the prime of life by a bus while trying to capture part of a sandwich.

Maud's standoffish sounds could have been interpreted as “At it again today, eh?” or various other taunts at Claud's virility and his groundless self-esteem. Perhaps Claud hadn't been at it again today, but his was a roving eye. Often Maud had the satisfaction of seeing Claud bested by a younger male who swooped down at the wrong moment for Claud and his newly found female. Claud would put up a blustering show, pretend he was willing to fight, but the younger male would go for his eyes and Claud would retreat.

“Shut up,” Claud would reply finally, and settle himself for sleep.

Once in a while, for a change of scene, Claud and Maud took the tube to Hampstead Heath. Rather, once they had taken the tube and found themselves at Hampstead Heath, much to their delight. Space! Plenty of things to peck at! No people! Or almost no people. Sometimes they took the tube for amusement, not caring where they might be when they got off. They could always find their way back to Trafalgar Square, even if they had to make a bit of an effort and fly a few yards here and there. Buses were safer as to direction, though there wasn't much to hang on to on the top of a bus. They certainly remembered the direction of Hampstead Heath, and by hopping a bus starting in that direction there was a fair chance they'd get there, and if the bus veered, they simply flew to another bus that looked more promising. They'd made it twice by bus.

However, tubes were more fun, because Maud and Claud enjoyed making people step out of their way. People laughed and pointed when Maud and Claud rode the escalators up and down. Sometimes people whipped out cameras, as in the Square, and they'd be photographed by flash.

“Look out! Don't step on the pigeons! Ha-ha!” That was a familiar cry by now.

Maud was haunted by a vague memory of a daughter who had been clubbed before her eyes on a pavement near the Square. That had been an offspring by her first mate. Or had she imagined it? Maud was shy to this day of people carrying sticks, even umbrellas, of which she saw plenty. Maud would flinch and sidle away a few inches. Maud fancied that she could acquire another mate if she wished, but something—she couldn't say what—kept her with boring Claud.

With mutual consent, they decided to head for Hampstead Heath one Saturday morning. Something awful was going on in Trafalgar Square. There were hordes of people, and bleachers and loudspeakers were being set up. Not a day for peanuts and popcorn. Maud and Claud descended to the underground in Whitehall.

“Ooh, lookie, Mummy!” cried a little girl. “Pigeons!”

Maud and Claud ignored it and kept hopping down. They went under the turnstile, unnoticed but kicked by someone, then took the escalator down. Claud led, though he didn't know where he was going. He hopped onto the first train.

“Look at that! Pigeons!” someone said.

A couple of people laughed.

Maud and Claud were among the few passengers not jostled. They had a clear circle around them. Again it was Claud who led when they got off, his head bobbing authoritatively. He didn't know where he was, but liked giving the impression that he did.

“They're getting on the lift! Ha-haa-aa!”

A way was cleared for them as if they were VIPs.

In the rush of people up the stairs to pavement level, Maud and Claud had to take to their wings. This left them exhausted when they stood finally in the sunlight near a news vendor. Maud started out, leading. The pavement sloped upward, and this direction she took. The pavements near Hampstead Heath usually sloped upward, she remembered. Claud followed.

“Ah, romance,” a male voice said.

The voice was wrong. Often Claud led, when he wanted to appear superior to Maud, knowing Maud would follow no matter what. Sometimes it was just the reverse, and it had nothing to do with the mating urge. After three streets, hopping down and up curbs, Maud was becoming tired. Claud had made a wrong decision, detraining when he did, and Maud got beside him and indicated this with a glance and a derogatory rattle. She didn't know where she was, either, though she knew that Trafalgar Square was somewhere behind and to her right. No problem getting home, at least. But this wasn't the Heath.

Then Maud sensed or spotted a patch of green ahead on the left, and with a toss of her head, which made her breast glisten blue and green in the sunlight, she steered Claud to the left. They paused to let a taxi turn, then continued. Up the curb. Now Maud could see the greenery, and she put on some speed, fluttering her wings as her feet moved in double time on the pavement. She mustered the energy to fly over the three-foot-high rail of a little park.

There were benches on which people sat peacefully, and a fair-sized expanse of green grass, untrammeled. A pond in the center. Maud began to peck.

Claud noticed three other pigeons, a female and two males, not far away on the grass. They wouldn't take kindly to him and Maud. But the males were otherwise absorbed at the moment. Maud said something to the effect that Claud might try his luck there, and Claud replied promptly that she might try hers. Maud walked off, turning her back on the lot of them, including Claud. Claud was pecking at a worm, and thinking that he preferred dried corn, when one of the males swooped on him.

The attacking bird was in better physical shape. Claud only rose a few inches in the air, and slammed himself down, not to much effect. Claud beat a retreat, walking, flapping his wings and making noises to indicate that he was annoyed but by no means vanquished and that he simply wasn't going to bother to fight.

Maud affected amusement and indifference.

It began to rain, quite suddenly. Claud and Maud walked toward the nearest tree. The rain had the look of lasting. Should they take the tube for home? It was only midafternoon. Rain would bring the worms out, maybe a snail or two. Suddenly Maud flew at Claud and attacked him in the neck.

Claud was already in a bad mood, and he stalked off toward a path. When he reached the pavement, he turned smartly left. This was the way back to the tube, he thought, and it was even the direction of home.

Maud followed, hating herself for following, but consoled by the fact that she had Claud under her eye and that it was the general direction of Trafalgar Square. Claud's day would come, Maud thought. If she made sufficient effort, a younger male might actually invade their home and rout Claud from his own premises. That would pay him back for—

Clomp!

What was that?

A blackness had descended. Claud was in it with her, squawking and flapping.

Maud heard children's laughter. A box! Maud had had it once before, and she'd escaped, she reminded herself. The cardboard box scraped along the pavement, catching one of her legs painfully. She and Claud were tumbled suddenly upside down, they saw a brief patch of sky, then a nasty coat or something was thrown over the box. They were jiggled and jostled as the children ran. They went down steps. Maud and Claud were tossed onto the floor of a brightly lighted room. They were inside a house.

A woman shouted something.

The children, two boys, laughed.

Maud flew onto a table. It was a kitchen in one of those edifices she and Claud had often looked into through a semi-basement window.

“What're you going to do with them?—A-aak!”

Claud had taken off, up to the sink rim. A boy came for him, and Claud hopped down into a corner by a door that was open only a crack.

One boy strewed bread on the floor, which Claud ignored. Claud was interested in the door, Maud saw, but the rest of the house might not be open anywhere, so what good was the door? Maud defecated.

This produced a yelp from the woman. Good! Maud knew that a dropping could go a long way: it meant contempt, for one thing. Maud had been kicked a few times—deliberately—when she'd done it on her own land, Trafalgar Square, not even meaning it as an insult. But then people weren't normal, they were insane, most of them. You could never tell what people were going to do. Peanuts one minute and a club the next.

The woman was still jabbering, and there was a whoop from the boys, and they lunged at Claud with open arms, trying to grab him. Claud flew up and loosed a dropping, hitting one boy in the face. Laughter. Claud teetered on a clothes dryer near the ceiling, oscillating.

A big man with a loud voice came in. Maud detested him on sight. He made a long, bellowing speech, then bent close to Maud and spoke more softly. Maud took two steps backward, knocking a china lid off something, keeping an eye on the man, ready to join Claud if he came any closer. The man left the kitchen.

The woman was making popcorn at the stove. Maud and Claud recognized the smell. Meanwhile the children tittered stupidly by the sink. The man came back with a tall tripod affair. Bright lights came on. Then Maud and Claud understood. They'd seen the same thing in Trafalgar Square on a larger scale—tripods, moving platforms, awful lights everywhere that turned night into day. Now the light was right in Maud's eyes, and she turned in a circle. The camera buzzed. Maud would have defecated again, but at the moment was not able.

“Popcorn!” the man cried.

“Coming!” The woman swung around with the pan just in time to collide with Claud, who had been going to try the window. He had hoped that the top part might be open, but before he had time to see, he was on his side on the floor. He got to his feet. The woman spilled some popcorn on the floor near him, and Claud backed away as if it were poison.

“Ha-ha!” the man laughed. “Scare 'em up again, Simon!”

The smaller of the odious two flailed his arms at Maud, while the other boy stomped toward Claud.

Maud and Claud rose, wings flapping wildly. Claud dropped like a fat eagle onto the forehead and hair of the bigger boy, all claws out.

“Ow!” the boy cried.

Maud contented herself with two hard pecks at the smaller boy's cheeks and as much clawing as she could get in, before she pushed herself off just in time to avoid a swat of the man's fist. It was going to be a fight for life, Maud realized, and she and Claud were trapped.

The woman took a broom to Claud, missing at every swing. “Open the window! Get them out!”

“I'll wring their necks! They're insane!” yelled the red-faced man, striding toward the window.

Maud could see that the man was angry, but who had brought them here but his own nauseating children? Maud attacked the man just as he was pulling the window down from the top. He fended Maud off with an elbow and ducked.

Claud flew out the window.

“Use the broom!” said the woman, handing it to the man.

Maud evaded the broom, flew to the dish rack over the sink, seized a saucer to brace herself, and as she took off toward the window, the saucer fell in the sink and shattered.

Another cry from the woman, a roar from the man, both of which faded as Maud flew, flew several yards with the energy of her wrath, and then she sank to the civilized pavement, where she could walk normally again and recover her breath. What a relief to get out of that madhouse! Good Lord! Such people should be reported! Maud held her head high and thrust her beak forward with every step. There were groups—people, in fact—who fought for pigeons. She'd seen people in Trafalgar Square stopping boys from using guns or even from throwing things at pigeons. If they ever got hold of this family, there'd be hell to pay.

Where was Claud?

Maud stopped and turned. Not that she cared much where Claud was. If she went straight home, as she intended to do, Claud would turn up this evening, she had no doubt. What help had he been to her just now? None.

She heard his voice. Then he appeared behind her, rushing toward her on legs and wings, looking exhausted. Maud shook her feathers and walked on. Claud walked beside her, grumbling a little, as did Maud, but gradually their sounds became calmer. They were, after all, free again, and they were walking in the direction of home. Suddenly Maud made for a bus. Claud followed, getting himself with some difficulty up to the roof. They crouched for better grip. Some buses lurched horribly. They had to switch to another bus, hoping for the best, but their instinct was right and they soon found themselves jolting down the Haymarket. Home! And it wasn't yet dark. The sky was a smoky blue where the sun was setting.