Short Stories: Five Decades (91 page)

“The receiver of letters.” There was an open box of Kleenex on the bureau, and an eyelash curler, and a half-eaten bar of chocolate, and Constance felt guilty to be presenting Mark so frivolously.

“He’s very handsome.” Pritchard squinted at the photograph.

“Yes,” Constance said. She found her moccasins and put them on, and felt a little less embarrassed.

“He looks serious.” Pritchard moved the Kleenex to get a better view.

“He
is
serious,” said Constance. In all the three weeks that she had been skiing with Pritchard, she had said hardly anything about Mark. They had talked about almost everything else, but somehow, by a tacit agreement, they had avoided Mark. They had skied together every afternoon and had talked a great deal about the necessity of leaning forward at all times, and about falling relaxed, and about Pritchard’s time in public school in England, and about his father, and about the London theatre and American novelists, and they had talked gravely about what it was like to be twenty and what it was like to be thirty, and they had talked about Christmastime in New York and what football weekends were like at Princeton, and they had even had a rather sharp discussion on the nature of courage when Constance lost her nerve in the middle of a steep trail late one afternoon, with the sun going down and the mountain deserted. But they had never talked about Mark.

Pritchard turned away from the picture. “You didn’t have to shoe yourself for me,” he said, indicating her moccasins. “One of the nicest things about skiing is taking those damned heavy boots off and walking around on a warm floor in wool socks.”

“I’m engaged in a constant struggle not to be sloppy,” Constance said.

They stood there, facing each other in silence for a moment. “Oh,” Constance said. “Sit down.”

“Thank you,” Pritchard said formally. He seated himself in the one easy chair. “I just came by for a minute. To say goodbye.”

“Goodbye,” Constance repeated stupidly. “Where’re you going?”

“Home. Or at least to England. I thought I’d like to leave you my address,” Pritchard said.

“Of course.”

He reached over and picked up a piece of paper and her pen and wrote for a moment. “It’s just a hotel,” he said. “Until I find a place of my own.” He put the paper down on the desk but kept the pen in his hand, playing with it. “Give you somebody else to write to,” he said. “The English receiver of letters.”

“Yes,” she said.

“You can tell me what the snow’s like,” he said, “and how many times you came down the mountain in one day and who got drunk at the bar the night before.”

“Isn’t this sudden?” Constance asked. Somehow, after the first few days, it had never occurred to her that Pritchard might leave. He had been there when she arrived and he seemed to belong there so thoroughly, to be so much a part of the furniture of the place, that it was hard to conceive of being there without him.

“Not so sudden,” Pritchard said. He stood up. “I wanted to say goodbye in private,” he said. She wondered if he was going to kiss her. In all the three weeks, he hadn’t as much as held her hand, and the only times he had touched her had been when he was helping her up after a particularly bad fall. But he made no move. He stood there, smiling curiously, playing with the pen, unusually untalka-tive, as though waiting for her to say something. “Well,” he said, “will I see you later?”

“Yes,” she said.

“We’ll have a farewell dinner. They have veal on the menu, but I’ll see if we can’t get something better, in honor of the occasion.” He put the pen down carefully on the desk. “Until later,” he said, and went out, closing the door behind him.

Constance stared at the closed door. Everybody goes away, she thought. Unreasonably, she felt angry. She knew it was foolish, like a child protesting the end of a birthday party, but she couldn’t help feeling that way. She looked around the room. It seemed cluttered and untidy to her, like the room of a silly and careless schoolgirl. She shook her head impatiently and began to put things in place. She put the boots out in the hall and hung the parka in the closet and carried the box of Kleenex into the bathroom and gave the half bar of chocolate to the chambermaid. She straightened the coverlet of the bed and cleaned the ashtray and, on a sudden impulse, dropped the eyelash curler into the wastebasket. It’s too piddling, she thought, to worry about curling your eyelashes.

Pritchard ordered a bottle of Burgundy with dinner, because Swiss wine, he said, was too thin to say farewell on. They didn’t talk much during dinner. It was as though he had already departed a little. Once or twice, Constance almost started to tell him how grateful she was for his patience with her on the hills, but somehow it never came out, and the dinner became more and more uncomfortable for both of them. Pritchard ordered brandy with the coffee, and she drank it, although it gave her heartburn. The three-piece band began to play for the evening’s dancing while they were drinking their brandy, and then it was too noisy to talk.

“Do you want to dance?” he asked.

“No,” she said.

“Good,” he said. “I despise dancing.”

“Let’s get out of here,” Constance said. “Let’s take a walk.”

They went to their rooms to get some warm clothes, and Pritchard was waiting for her outside the hotel door when she came down in her snow boots and the beaver coat her father had given her the year before. Pritchard was leaning against a pillar on the front porch and she stared at him for a moment before he turned around, and she was surprised to see how tired and suddenly old he seemed when he was unaware that he was being watched.

They walked down the main street, with the sounds of the band diminishing behind them. It was a clear night, and the stars shone above the mountains, electrically blue. At the top of the highest hill, at the end of the
téléphérique
, a single light glittered from the hut there, where you could warm yourself before the descent, and buy spiced hot wine and biscuits.

They walked down to the bottom of the street and crossed over onto the path alongside the dark skating rink. The ice reflected the stars dimly and there was the noise of water from the brook that ran along one side of the rink and scarcely ever froze.

They stopped at a small, snow-covered bridge, and Pritchard lit a cigarette. The lights of the town were distant now and the trees stood around them in black silence. Pritchard put his head back, with the smoke escaping slowly from between his lips, and gestured up toward the light on top of the mountain.

“What a life,” he said. “Those two people up there. Night after winter night alone on top of the hills, waiting for the world to arrive each morning.” He took another puff of the cigarette. “They’re not married, you know,” he said. “Only the Swiss would think of putting two people who weren’t married on top of a hill like that. He’s an old man and she’s a religious fanatic and they hate each other, but neither of them will give the other the satisfaction of taking another job.” He chuckled as they both looked at the bright pinpoint above them. “Last year there was a blizzard and the
téléphérique
didn’t run for a week and the power lines were down and they had to stay up there for six days and nights, breaking up chairs for firewood, living off chocolate and tins of soup, and not talking to each other.” He stared reflectively at the faraway high light. “It will do as a symbol this year for this pretty continent,” he said softly.

Suddenly Constance knew what she had to say. “Alan”—she moved squarely in front of him—“I don’t want you to go.”

Pritchard flicked at his cigarette. “Six days and six nights,” he said. “For their hardness of heart.”

“I don’t want you to go.”

“I’ve been here for a long time,” he said. “I’ve had the best of the snow.”

“I want you to marry me,” Constance said.

Pritchard looked at her. She could see he was trying to smile. “That’s the wonderful thing about being twenty years old,” he said. “You can say things like that.”

“I said I want you to marry me.”

He tossed away his cigarette. It glowed on the snow. He took a step toward her and kissed her. She could taste the fumed grape of the brandy faint on his lips. He held her for a moment, then stepped back and buttoned her coat, like a nurse being careful with a little girl. “The things that can happen to a man,” he said. He shook his head slowly.

“Alan,” Constance said.

“I take it all back,” Pritchard said. “You’re not at all like the girls who advertise soap and beer.”

“Please,” she said. “Don’t make it hard.”

“What do you know about me?” He knocked the snow off the bridge railing and leaned against it, brushing the snow off his hands with a dry sound. “Haven’t you ever been warned about the young men you’re liable to meet in Europe?”

“Don’t confuse me,” she said. “Please.”

“What about the chap in the leather frame?”

Constance took a deep breath. She could feel the cold tingling in her lungs. “I don’t know,” she said. “He’s not here.”

Pritchard chuckled, but it sounded sad. “Lost,” he said. “Lost by an ocean.”

“It’s not only the ocean,” she said.

They walked in silence again, listening to the sound of their boots on the frozen path. The moon was coming up between the peaks and reflecting milkily off the snow.

“You ought to know one bit of information,” Pritchard said in a low voice, looking down at the long shadow the moon cast on the path ahead of him. “I’ve been married.”

“Oh,” Constance said. She was very careful to walk in the footprints of the others who had tamped the path down before her.

“Not gravely married,” Pritchard said, looking up. “We were divorced two years ago. Does that make a difference to you?”

“Your business,” Constance said.

“I must visit America someday,” Pritchard said, chuckling. “They are breeding a new type.”

“What else?” Constance asked.

“The next thing is unattractive,” Pritchard said. “I don’t have a pound. I haven’t worked since the war. I’ve been living off what was left of my mother’s jewelry. There wasn’t much and I sold the last brooch in Zurich last week. That’s why I have to go back, even if there were no other reasons. You can see,” he said, grinning painfully, “you’ve picked the prize of the litter.”

“What else?” Constance asked.

“Do you still want to hear more?”

“Yes.”

“I would never live in America,” Pritchard said. “I’m a weary, poverty-stricken, grounded old R.A.F. type, and I’m committed to another place. Come on.” He took her elbow brusquely, as though he didn’t want to talk any more. “It’s late. We’d better get to the hotel.”

Constance hung back. “You’re not telling me everything,” she said.

“Isn’t that enough?”

“No.”

“All right,” he said. “I couldn’t go with you to America if I wanted to.”

“Why not?”

“Because they wouldn’t let me in.”

“Why not?” Constance asked, puzzled.

“Because I am host to the worm,” Pritchard said.

“What’re you talking about?”

“Swiss for delicate,” he said harshly. “They kicked D. H. Lawrence out of New Mexico and made him die along the Riviera for it. You can’t blame them. They have enough diseases of their own. Now let’s go back to the hotel.”

“But you seem so healthy. You ski—”

“Everybody dies here in the best of health,” Pritchard said. “It goes up and down with me. I almost get cured, then the next year”—he shrugged and chuckled soundlessly—“the next year I get almost uncured. The doctors hold their heads when they see me going up in the lift. Go home,” he said. “I’m not for you. I’m oppressed. And you’re not oppressed. It is the final miscegenation. Now shall we go back to the hotel?”

Constance nodded. They walked slowly. The town on the hill ahead of them was almost completely dark now, but they could hear the music of the dance band, thin and distant in the clear night air.

“I don’t care,” Constance said as they came to the first buildings. “I don’t care about anything.”

“When I was twenty—” Pritchard said. “When I was twenty I once said the same thing.”

“First, we’ll be practical,” Constance said. “You’ll need money to stay here. I’ll give it to you tomorrow.”

“I can’t take your money.”

“It’s not mine,” Constance said. “It’s my father’s.”

“England is forever in your debt,” Pritchard said. He was trying to smile. “Be careful of me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I am beginning to feel as though I can be consoled.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“It can prove to be mortal,” Pritchard whispered, taking her clumsily and bulkily in his arms, “for those of us who are inconsolable.”

When they woke in the morning, they were solemn at first, and disconnectedly discussed the weather, which was revealed through the not quite closed curtains to be gray and uncertain. But then Pritchard asked, “How do you feel?” and Constance, taking her time and wrinkling her eyebrows in a deep attempt to be accurate, said, “I feel
enormously
grown up.” Pritchard couldn’t help roaring with laughter, and all solemnity was gone. They lay there comfortably discussing themselves, going over their future like misers, and Constance was worried, although not too seriously, about scandalizing the hotel people, and Pritchard said that there was nothing to worry about—nothing that foreigners could do could scandalize the Swiss—and Constance felt more comfortable than ever at being in such a civilized country.

They made plans about the wedding, and Pritchard said they’d go to the French part of Switzerland to get married, because he didn’t want to get married in German, and Constance said she was sorry she hadn’t thought of it herself.

Then they decided to get dressed, because you could not spend the rest of your life in bed, and Constance had a sorrowful, stinging moment when she saw how thin he was, and thought, conspiratorially, Eggs, milk, butter, rest. They went out of the room together, bravely determined to brazen it out, but there was no one in the corridor or on the stairway to see them, so they had the double pleasure of being candid and being unobserved at the same time, which Constance regarded as an omen of good luck. They discovered that it was almost time for lunch, so they had some kirsch first, and then orange juice and bacon and eggs and wonderful, dark coffee in the scrubbed, wood-panelled dining room, and in the middle of it tears came into Constance’s eyes and Pritchard asked why she was crying and she said, “I’m thinking of all the breakfasts we’re going to eat together.” Pritchard’s eyes got a little wet then, too, as he stared across the table at her, and she said, “You must cry often, please.”