The Girl Who Passed for Normal (6 page)

“You feel sorry for her.”

“No. I think she’s sad in a way, but who knows? There’s
something terribly fragile and innocent and almost — free, about Catherine. She’s like a moon or a planet that’s shot off into space, out of orbit. But she can’t reciprocate anything. She’s fond of me, I’m sure, but the thing is, for anyone to really save Catherine, loving her isn’t enough. They’d also have to get her to love them. And then it might not be
hopeless
.”

David laughed. “And so the world is redeemed by love. You are a good Christian.”

Barbara shook her head, and David said, “Anyway, I still want to meet them. Why don’t you take me up there
tomorrow
? You can say we’re going somewhere together afterward, and I’m waiting for you.”

*

They went next day, and David said he liked Mary
Emerson
. He also said he liked Catherine. They had talked together and walked round the rock garden for five minutes.

The next day, Mary Emerson told Barbara that she had found David very nice; when Barbara asked Catherine what she had thought of David, she only smiled and nodded. Then, later that afternoon she suddenly said in a brisk voice, “Yes, I found him most charming —” and then stopped, and looked confused, as if she had used a phrase that she had learned by heart, that she knew to be apt, but whose meaning she could not understand.

*

But if Mary and Catherine Emerson liked David, Barbara’s mother didn’t.

Barbara had written her, telling her that she was living with an American, that she was very happy, and that her
move out of England had been the best thing she could have done.

Her mother wrote back and didn’t mention what Barbara had told her. “I’m so glad you have a flat‚” she wrote. “I have wanted to come to Rome all my life. I plan on coming for the month of July.”

Barbara wrote back that July was the hottest month in Rome, and that the apartment wasn’t big enough for guests. Her mother replied, “The heat has never bothered me, and if the apartment isn’t big enough I can easily stay in a hotel somewhere near you. Please book me a room.”

The morning she arrived David was at one of his meetings, so Barbara went alone to the airport. On the bus back into town she didn’t know how to start telling her mother about David, so she didn’t mention him. Her mother said how happy she was to finally be in Rome, and she hoped she would be able to see everything there was to see. Barbara took her to her hotel and they had lunch. Afterward they went to the apartment, her mother climbing the stairs very slowly.

“I don’t know if I’ll be coming to visit you very much if I have to climb all those stairs,” she said. She sat down, fat and exhausted, and Barbara could see her wet scalp through her thin, greasy hair.

David arrived at four. He smiled at Barbara’s mother and said, “So you made it up our stairs.”

Barbara’s mother nodded curtly. “Yes, thank you very much, David.”

“Did you have a good flight?” David asked.

She nodded again and said, “Yes, thank you very much, David. I’m quite used to flying, you know. I flew out to South
America two years ago. My other daughter’s out there. She bought me a ticket.”

David nodded and looked amused. “Good‚” he said. He cleared his throat. “I guess you find it hot here after England.”

The fat, sweating woman said, “We’re having a very good summer in England.”

David nodded again and said, “Good.”

“Did anything happen today?” Barbara said.

David shook his head. “I made one brilliant suggestion and told two dirty jokes.”

“What do you do, David?” Barbara’s mother said.

“It’s sort of difficult to explain.”

“Well, I expect I’ll be capable of understanding.”

“I try to teach computers,” David said. “You see, you can teach a computer to say —” he paused, grinned, and resumed in a monotone — ‘All — Jews — blacks — homosexuals — and — intellectuals — are — wicked —’ but you can’t get a computer to put that sentence together by itself, say it
meaningfully
. That’s what I’m trying to do.”

Barbara sighed.

*

Later David said, “Your mother doesn’t approve of me.”

“You didn’t expect her to, did you? You tried your hardest to make her disapprove.”

“I don’t see why not. I don’t disapprove of her.”

“But you want her to disapprove of you.”

“Yes, I guess I do. It makes me feel — wicked. It amuses me!”

“You were behaving very childishly.”

“Oh, fuck off.”

The month passed, very hot and uncomfortable.

Whenever David was with Barbara’s mother he tried to amuse her, but she was not amused. Barbara tried to excuse David to her mother, but her mother always said, “I think David’s very nice.”

“You might think he’s very nice but you don’t approve of him, do you?” Barbara said.

“I don’t approve of him for you. He’s not your type.”

“Who is the right type for me?”

“Howard was.”

“Howard’s dead.”

“There are other Howards in the world.”

“I don’t want another Howard.”

Her mother sniffed. “It’s your funeral.” She sounded quite satisfied.

Ten days after her mother had gone, Barbara received a telegram from a hospital in London: “Have had heart attack. Please come home. Mother.”

She phoned the hospital. “Yes,” the doctor said, “your mother’s very ill.”

“I don’t know what to do,” Barbara told David.

“Well, you have to go home, don’t you?” David said. Then, seeing her look, “Oh for God’s sake.”

*

That evening she said, “David, I’ve been thinking. You wouldn’t like to go to the Emersons’ while I’m away, would you?”

“What am I going to do with the girl? I can’t see myself dancing.”

“You could teach her to read.”

“She really can’t read?”

“I don’t know. I think she can read the words, but she can’t put them together to make sense of them.”

“Exactly my line of work, you mean.”

“Well it is, isn’t it?”

“When am I going to do my work? And what happens when there are my meetings?”

“It’s only for two hours a day. And your meetings are always over by three, at the latest. Anyway, I’ll probably be back before your next round.”

“How much does the woman pay?”

“Ten dollars an hour.”

David nodded. “Well, I guess it might be interesting. Field work, sort of.”

“Then you’ll do it?”

“It depends if those two ladies want me, doesn’t it?”

“Oh, they’ll want you. I think they both liked you.”

“Perhaps Catherine doesn’t want to learn to read.”

“I don’t understand why she can’t. She’s so very slightly retarded. And she can chatter in Italian to the housekeeper, and watch the television quite happily.”

David laughed. “Oh, she’s sly. I’ll try and give you some answers when you come back.”

“Will you miss me?”

“Well, I guess I’ll be wearing the same clothes till you come back, and the house will get sort of dirty, and I’ll be spending my hard-earned dollars from Catherine on eating out.”

Barbara smiled. “What did you do before I —”

“Took over?” David said. “Oh — I managed.”

“Why,” Barbara said hesitantly, “do you live with me?”

“Rephrase the question. Why do you live with me?” He paused, and grinned. “Well, we get on O.K. mostly. Don’t we?”

“Is that all?”

“All?” David laughed. “That’s a lot. What more do you want!”

While she was in England, Barbara received two letters from David. The first arrived a week after she had left Rome.

She received the second letter six weeks later.

Barbara said to Catherine, “I’ve been thinking about what you said yesterday, about David going back to America. It’s impossible. He couldn’t have been going to bed with your mother, either. He wrote me a letter.” She paused, knowing she was speaking too quickly. “He wrote me that he didn’t like your mother. He liked you, but not your mother.”

Catherine looked sulky, and then appeared to be thinking. Finally she came out with, “Well, even if they didn’t go to bed together, mother wanted to. I know she did.” She stopped, and thought some more. “Then — if David —” she paused, and smiled. “Then she’s killed him,” she said quickly. “Don’t you see? She killed my father, and now she’s killed David.”

It was Wednesday night, and rain was pouring. Barbara had sat at home alone, listening to the rain and wondering where David was, until she felt that if she didn’t go out she would dissolve and become part of the wet darkness.

She considered going to the cinema, but she didn’t like to go alone; she wondered if there was a concert, but knew that even if there was, she wouldn’t go. She wanted to be with someone, to be somewhere warm, and to talk; she wanted to talk about David. She sat alone and thought about Marcello, with his red-and-peach-painted rooms, his unbrushed hair, his expensive clothes, and his ridiculous opinions; and about his relationship with David, which she had never dared ask about, and in which she had always pretended she was not interested.

She telephoned Marcello and asked if he was alone; then she asked if she could come over. “I’d like to see you,” she said, though she knew he must think she was lying. She wanted to see him because he had been closer to David than anyone else — closer, possibly, than her, though she didn’t
want to know this for sure — but more than this, she wanted to see him because, though everything about him irritated her, she found him exciting. She had never admitted this to anyone, above all not to David, but now that she was alone she admitted it to herself.

She found Marcello exciting for the same reason that she hated him. She felt insulted by him. The professor of philosophy was all
there
— he was solid, he belonged. Oh, he could let dust gather on the floor and on the books, and he could ignore it if someone dropped a bit of burning ash on one of his chairs; but in spite of his amateur wall-painting and political posters, he gave her the impression of something safe and strong. Marcello could insult the world as much as he liked without getting thrown out. He could hold whatever political opinions he liked; he could be as hypocritical, false, stupid, biased, and boring as he liked; but he would still always belong.

She knew she had affected his life and his relationship with David; yet he never seemed to notice it or care about it. She felt she had triumphed over him, but he gave no sign of being aware there had been a battle. He knew she hated him; he was polite to her. She felt that he should resent her; instead, she resented him. He was kind to her, he was
attentive
, he was intolerable; and he excited her.

She thought, as she put her coat on and turned out the lights in the apartment, that in a way Catherine and Marcello were rather similar. They stood, respectively, at the back and front doors, as it were, of the real world, from which she felt, since the death of Howard, she had been excluded. She would have liked to enter by the front door, via Marcello,
but knew it was impossible, so she was trying the back door, via Catherine. She couldn’t, as she walked down her stairs, make out where David had come into it — or came into it. His secret was, she guessed, that he could go in and out any door, front, back, or side, just as he pleased.

Catherine and Marcello … yes. She would like them to meet. She wondered if they would recognize in each other a similarity; a mutual inability to fall from grace, as she put it to herself. They were both rich, too; she wondered if that had anything to do with it.

The wind blew her hair back, and she felt the rain, cold on her face.

*

She was sitting in the peach-painted room. It was very hot, and she was drinking red wine. “But I believed her when she said it,” she remarked. “Everything’s so inexplicable, I believe everything. I believe David’s gone back to America when Catherine says so, to wait for Mary Emerson. Then I believe that Mary Emerson killed him. I believe that he just got fed up with everything. I’m sure he’s going to come back and I’m sure he’s not.”

Marcello ran his hand through his hair; his fingers were dirty. “Don’t you know anyone from his work?”

Barbara shrugged. “Don’t you?”

Marcello shook his head, and Barbara felt annoyed. “Oh, yes, you don’t approve, do you.” She felt her lips tightening, then bowed her head. There was no point in getting angry. “I don’t know anything,” she said softly. “It’s ridiculous, isn’t it? David never ever spoke about it. Sometimes I thought he was making the whole thing up.”

“Where did he have his meetings?”

“I don’t even know that.”

“Hasn’t David got any letters?”

“No, I’ve looked. And the only papers he did have that might have been relevant were in his briefcase, which isn’t there.” She stopped, then added, “His passport was in his briefcase, too. He always kept it there.”

“He was paid when he went to his meetings, wasn’t he?”

“Yes. I suppose if he doesn’t go to his next meeting they’ll try and find him. But if he does —” she shrugged. “You don’t think it’s possible that all that computer stuff was a sort of front? Maybe he was really doing secret work for the American Air Force, or has defected or been abducted —”

Marcello shook his head and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “No, I’m afraid not. Didn’t you ever see those things he wrote for those magazines? They were quite genuine.”

“Yes.” Barbara nodded. “It was only an idea. The thing is, as David never told me about anything — his family,
upbringing
— not even why he wanted me to live with him. Half the time I had the feeling that he wasn’t very firmly here. So now that he’s not, any explanation of his
disappearance
, however ridiculous, seems reasonable. That was why, when Catherine Emerson talked about her mother killing David, it seemed almost possible. And then David had said something in one of his letters —”

“What did you say when she told you that?”

“I told her she shouldn’t say things like that.”

Marcello, who was sitting on the floor by her chair, took one of her hands for a second and looked at it. It was white against his darker skin, and the red varnish on the nails was
chipped. He put it down again. “Barbara, I think that the most obvious explanation is the most likely.”

“Which is?”

“David was an intelligent person doing a job that he was good at — he must have been, otherwise they wouldn’t have gone on using him. And I’m sure — I know — that he thought that he was being misused, or he thought his work might be misused. He was teaching a machine to learn something that perhaps he didn’t really believe should be learned.”

Barbara shook her head. “David didn’t share your political opinions.”

“It isn’t a matter of political opinions.” He sounded as if he were explaining something very simple to her. “It was a matter of aesthetics for David. He was doing something creative that, if used right, could make life grow — and he was afraid it would be used to the opposite effect.”

“Did he tell you this?”

“No. But I know David very well.”

Barbara made no comment.

“And so —” Barbara could tell from his voice that he was dreaming. “— David had been here for three years. He enjoyed himself. He thought he was a foreigner living outside society, being free. But he was doing something that was very much a part of society. He was doing something that could be used to control society. And if David wanted to be free himself, he must have seen the contradiction. With you, and his life here, he saw that he was fooling himself. And so he got up one morning and left. I’m sure he’s gone back to America and will try to do something he believes is on the side of life and freedom.”

“Rubbish.” Barbara looked down at the long unbrushed
brown hair and wanted to touch it. “I suppose you’re trying to explain it in simple terms to me, but it’s rubbish, anyway. Honestly, Marcello. I did know David a little bit myself.” Then she lay back in the chair and shook her head. “Oh, you’re probably right though. I suppose you and David were always sitting down and talking about ‘life’ and ‘freedom.’ But that’s only talk. I want David back, and I hope he hasn’t gone for your silly abstract reasons, because if he has I honestly don’t think I would want him back. I prefer to think he’s gone to America for Mary Emerson. I even prefer to think that she’s killed him. At least that would be human.” But there was no point in talking to Marcello. She knew he would win, if they kept talking, even though he was wrong. He would win, because he was strong.

They sat in silence for five minutes and she drank her wine. Then, “I suppose you think what I’m doing with Catherine Emerson is wrong. I suppose I shouldn’t try to help her. I should let her shamble about with her mouth open, crying behind doors and being persecuted by her mother.”

Marcello shook his head. “No. Only you shouldn’t kid yourself that if you cured that girl the world would instantly become beautiful. You’d merely have given her the possibility of seeing that it isn’t, and that something should be done about it.”

Barbara was tired. She couldn’t fight. “Marcello, would you mind very much if I slept here tonight?” she said. “I don’t want to be alone. I’m so depressed.”

He nodded pleasantly. “Of course. You can sleep over there — there’s a bed under all those covers. It’s probably been slept in a couple of times, but I think it’s clean.” He
stood up, and Barbara looked at his dark skin and his droopy moustaches; he was so solid, he was so much there. “That’ll be fine. It really doesn’t matter. I’m so tired.”

The next morning Marcello made coffee. As they were drinking it, Barbara said, “Did you mind, when I went to live with David?”

Marcello looked her in the eyes. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I thought he was doing the wrong thing.”

“Oh,” Barbara said. Then, after a while, she said, “Did you tell him?”

“Yes.”

“What did he say?”

“He laughed, and said he knew it.”

Barbara wondered whether he was telling the truth. She could hear David saying it, but it still hurt to think he’d said it.

“Why did David want me to stay with him?”

“He said he didn’t.
You
wanted to stay with him.”

She hated Marcello. “He wouldn’t have put up with me if he didn’t want me.”

“He didn’t really care.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Why did you want to live with him?”

“Because I love him.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Of course you do. You love him for the very reasons that he’s left you. Because he’s brilliant, and free. He’s also rather childish. That’s why he let you stay.”

Barbara shook her head. “I don’t believe you. David liked having me there. He likes me. I know he does.”

“David likes most people.”

“He pretends to.”

“Exactly.”

“Did you love him?”

“Yes.”

“So he’s left you, too, hasn’t he?”

“I don’t look at it like that. David was ready to leave. And he’s left. That’s good. It’s nothing to do with me.”

“That’s just talk. You must mind.”

“I’m glad,” Marcello said.

*

She had never been able to forget Marcello. He moved out of David’s apartment and she moved in, but every day David would speak to him on the telephone, talking and laughing about things he never talked or laughed about with her. They all ate together three or four times a week, and she sometimes felt like a secretary at a business dinner, as if she was there just to take notes. She thought, one evening, watching them at a table in a trattoria, that Marcello had always been in a position to choose the facts of life, whereas she, like most people, had had them forced on her. He could choose to live on bread because he had, and had always had, the possibility of eating cake; but she denied his right to claim that bread was the best of all possible diets. And that is what he did.

She had said to David that evening, when they were finally alone, “Marcello makes his choice from a position of power, and he doesn’t see that even if his choice is right his position isn’t.”

David had laughed and said, “Marcello would say that one must reject the individual. He thinks he has rejected his position of power, and then made his choice.”

“But he’s wrong, isn’t he?”

“It doesn’t really make any difference.”

*

But it did; Barbara was sure. She sat with her coffee cup in her hand and said, “Did you see David all the time I was away? I mean — as much as usual.”

“No. In fact I saw him very little.”

“Why?”

“The woman he worked for — Emerson — her son was here for most of September and October. David was showing him round, looking after him.”

“How strange.” She stared at Marcello. “He never
mentioned
it in his letters, at all. Mary Emerson told me her son was here. But she didn’t say anything about their being friendly either.”

“David came around a couple of times with the boy. And then once on his own about ten days ago, I think I told you. He was quite — normal. He said the Emerson boy had gone back to college in California.”

Barbara frowned. “You only saw David
three
times while I was gone?”

Marcello nodded.

“But you used to see David almost every day. Didn’t you think it was odd?”

“I never asked David questions. If he wanted to come round he came.”

“You don’t think it’s possible he’s gone to California?”

“No. David wouldn’t do that.”

Barbara felt like she was going to cry. “What am I going to do, Marcello?”

“Do you have to do something?”

“Yes — I mean, the apartment, for example. It’s David’s. There’s rent to be paid — I must get in touch with the landlord and — there are hundreds of things. What do I do with letters that arrive?”

“Have any arrived?”

“Not yet.”

Marcello smiled. “You’re quite certain David’s not coming back?”

Barbara said, “I’m not certain. But I feel it. I feel that it’s all over.”

“What’ll you do?”

“I’ll either go back to England or I’ll go and live with Catherine Emerson. Her mother’s going to America for good. She wants me to go and live there.”

“The mother really is going to America? When you
mentioned
that the girl said —”

“Yes, she’s really going. And she’s not coming back, I’m sure.”