The Merry Month of May (43 page)

But all of that only flashed through my mind in a series of thought-memories impressions. The main point was that if these ageing ladies from an earlier time, with the same identical background as Louisa, could have this particular hangup, why mightn’t Louisa from a later generation have the same damned thing, only in a latent way, like one of those butterflies fixed and preserved in plastic?

“Well, what do you want me to tell you, Harry?” I said, turning back from the window.

“I don’t want you to tell me anything, sport,” he said. “Not a thing.”

“What about this film you’re working on?” I said. “You can’t just up and leave it like that, can you?”

“The Western? Sure I can. I got a contract says I can stop and leave the production any time I don’t like the way things are going. I always get that kind of contract. So, I don’t like the way things are going.”

“What about all those Cinema Committee kids, who are counting on you so much?”

“That’s a lost cause, anyway. They haven’t got a chance. Not in God’s world. There just isn’t enough good backlog film. You saw the stuff with me. They all mean well, they’re just damned amateurs. They don’t know their trade.” It was about the worst condemnation Harry could give, I suspect. “I only did it for Hill, you know that. And now that dumb asshole has flown the coop. But I’m leaving them all my film anyway. I’ve set it up. They already have it.”

“Did you do it
for
Hill, Harry?” I said. “Or did you do it in competition with him?”

“
For
him,” Harry said. “You know that as well as I do. I would never have bothered to get myself involved, otherwise.”

“Well, what about little McKenna,” I said, “my Goddaughter?”

“Her?” he said. “Hell, she’s fixed up better, and better off, than all of us. That young lady is likely to become the first female President of the benighted Nunited States.”

“Maybe I better tell you about Hill,” I said.

“What about him?” he said sharply.

“Well, I promised him I wouldn’t tell either you or Louisa. But under the extraordinary circumstances that exist now I think I have the right to tell. He’s gone off to Cadaqu?s. You know, where you went that summer two years ago. Apparently he fell in with a bunch of American hippies, or beatniks, or whatever they’re called now. He’s become a hippy Zen Buddhist, and renounced the world. He’s gone down there to live in one of those caves outside of town and meditate.”

Harry laughed suddenly. “Oh, that’s only likely to last for a year or so. We all go through our period of that. Didn’t you? Sure you did. Hell, in a year I’m likely to be back here, back in the old harness,” Harry said. And then he grinned. “Or off somewhere in India or Bali, living it up.”

He had come over to where I was, with his glass, and we were both standing on the sill looking out at the deeply throbbing barge traffic on the river, making its way upstream with loads of sand, or oil, or gravel.

“Well, what about Louisa?” I said.

“That one can certainly take care of herself, I think,” he said in a cold tone. And so there you were. He had apparently arranged everything about his flight to Rome, and beyond, with some executive and PR man at TWA that he knew. This man had been able to get him on the Rome flight at such short notice, particularly since he was going first class. The PR man had arranged for him only to pay tourist, but to ride up front in first. As, in fact, he had done for Samantha the day before, through Harry’s instigation. He looked at his watch.

He stepped down from the sill and back into the room. “Can I call a cab from here, Jack?”

I did not turn away from the river, and did not answer for a moment. But then I thought what was the use? “Sure,” I said softly. “Use my Chèque-Taxi number.”

“Five minutes,” he said, when he hung up the phone.

“They always say five minutes,” I said. “Usually it’s three.”

It was three. We both stood in the window till the taxi came. Then Harry slapped me on the back and shook hands.

Down in the street on the quai, after he and the driver had stowed away his bags, he looked up and grinned a kind of glittering, eyes-bright, teeth-bright grin, and waved.

Then he climbed in and disappeared, and the cab moved off, and became lost in the traffic on the bridge.

25

I
DID NOT GO DOWN
to the Gallaghers’ apartment that night, for the usual daily meeting of Americans. I just was not up to it. I dined alone and turned in early. I assume Louisa presided over it, in spite of the absences of Harry and Samantha. But then, she had done that before. Unless she brought it up, there would be no curiosity or distress because neither of them was there. So I assume she did not bring it up. Anyway, nobody, including Weintraub and Ferenc Hofmann-Beck, told me that anything unusual had happened Saturday.

On Sunday morning Louisa called me at about eleven-thirty. Fortunately, I was already up and had completed my toilet and had shaved. I was having my light, meager breakfast, preparatory to going out for the Sunday papers. There is no Paris
Herald
on Sunday, and I would have to walk up to St.-Germain-des-Prés to get the English Sundays that I liked, the
Times
and the
Observer.
The French do not have much of a tradition of Sunday papers. They have them of course, but it is not like the tradition we English-speaking peoples have for Sunday papers.

“I have to see you, Jack,” she said into the phone. “I have to see you right away.” She spoke in that peculiar toneless voice she had taken up in the past few days, since Bobby Kennedy’s death. Although her lips writhed a lot, and she stared hard at you, the voice had taken on a peculiar tonelessness.

“All right, darling Louisa,” I said. “I’m having breakfast. Will you have coffee with me? Shall we go out to an outdoor café? It’s sunny today. It’s Sunday.” I tried hard to make it light.

“No. I want to see you by yourself,” she said. “In your pad.”

“Okay. I’ll be here.”

“Thank you,” she said, in the tone of a young miss getting her diploma from a young ladies’ finishing school.

I suppose all that should have warned me. It did not. It only took her a few minutes to get up to my place from their place further down the quai. I had moved my coffee tray out into the living room, and was sitting there still in my kimono, when she rang.

Well, she still had that wide-eyed, stary look and her lips still writhed. Staring about an inch above my head, she did not take long in getting to the point. She got to the point right away. After accepting a cup of coffee, which she did not even sip from, she said, “Jack, I would like for you to have an affair with me.”

You must note here, if only in my own defense, that she did not say: “I want to have an affair with you.” She said, “I would like for you to have an affair with me.”

I tried to laugh it off. “Why, darling Louisa! Nothing would give me greater pleasure!” I said, and tried to grin impishly. “But you must know that I was raised in a very stern school. I couldn’t possibly have an affair with my best friend’s wife. It just isn’t in me.”

“Your best friend,” she said, still staring an inch over my head. “I suppose you know Harry’s left for Rome. Chasing after that little girl, that I tried so hard to help.”

“Why, yes. I do know,” I said. “He stopped by here on his way out of town to say good-bye.”

“I thought you might. You know, I could have saved that little girl. If it had not been for him. I think she has
some
kind of a buried, latent nymphomania problem. I was getting her straightened out. Or I thought I was. But all the time everything I did was already negated beforehand by the fact that he was already sleeping with her. So—I want you to have an affair with me. To clean everything up.”

“But darling Louisa, darling,” I said. “You must know I can’t do something like that.”

“But, why not?” she said. Then she said an extraordinary thing. “You’ve always been in love with me.”

I was knocked back. I wondered if I had been? Had I been giving her that impression, over the years? Was it her ego? Reflecting on it, in the few seconds left me, I decided that perhaps I had been. But it had not been that kind of love. It had not been the kind of love where I would want to see and fondle those nicely heavy breasts, peer at and kiss those tightening nipples that she must have, grope and rowel with my hand in that dark triangle of mystery to find the opening into her, that path, that opening that most women are so damned overly eager to have explored. It was not that kind of love I had for her. I had that kind of love for Martine, perhaps. But I didn’t have it for Louisa.

“Louisa, I can’t,” I said in a kind of panic. “You must realize that. For me, you must realize it. At least let me think about it. Surely you don’t want us to just up and take off our clothes and mate, fuck, here on my Second Empire couch, or on the floor, do you?” I choked a little on that one word. I was hoping it would snap her back.

“Why not?” she said, peering at something, some vision, just an inch above my head. “Yes, that’s exactly what I do want. Exactly that.”

She stood up, suddenly, and began taking off the jacket of her suit.

I stood up, and stopped her. I grabbed the shoulders of the jacket and made her slip her arms back into the sleeves, then pulled the collar onto her neck. She didn’t resist me. Instead she let her head droop back, her eyes closed, prepared for kissing, her mouth a little bit open, but I did not kiss her. “Louisa, we simply can’t do that. Not like that. Louisa, you’re distraught.”

“I suppose I am distraught,” she said vaguely. Then she straightened up, and shook her jacket back into place, still staring at some point on my forehead just above my eyes. “Yes, I suppose I am. Yes, you’re right. I guess it wouldn’t have worked anyway,” she said, vaguely. “Well, Jack, so long, I guess,” she said. “Good-bye. We must see each other soon, you know. You must come for dinner.” She was heading for the door.

“Louisa!” I cried. I was terribly distressed. “You have to realize I’m just not built that way! You must understand that!”

“Oh, I understand,” she said. “I understand. I understand everything. Or almost.”

“Louisa! I’m not rejecting you!” I cried.

“Oh, sure,” she said. “I understand that. I understand that much. Please do call. We’ll have dinner soon.” She went out and shut the door. She slammed it, but she did not slam it with any sense of fury or frustration. It was just a normal slam.

I sat down on my Second Empire couch and put my head in my hands.

I just never had thought of her that way.

She called me again that evening, around about eight-fifteen, I think it was. I had not eaten anything. But I had put away a certain, if not a sufficient, amount of Scotch. Just the same, the peculiar misery in me, the feeling of having made an irreparable mistake, burned up like a Bunsen burner all the alcohol in my blood and left my mind as clear and sober as a child’s—and about as knowledgeable.

In any case, I was in full possession of my faculties, if not very happy, when she called. So I was able to get the tone.

“Jack?” she said.

“Yes. Yes, Louisa.”

“Jack?” she said again. “Dear Jack. I’ve always been in love with you, you know. You didn’t know that, did you? But I have. You are all the things that Harry has always pretended to be, but never really has been. I had to hide it, you know. You know. That was my duty. But I’ve always been in love with you, Jack. Since the time you came to us to start your review. Did you know that it was me who made Harry put the money in it? No, I suppose you didn’t. And maybe it wasn’t me who made him. I’m sure he wanted to himself. He just didn’t have the courage. Anyway, your review is beautiful, Jack. It’s much better than the
Paris Review.
And I’ve always loved you, Jack, since then. I just wanted to tell you.” There was a silence then. There was a peculiar sing-song to her voice, a flat quality.

“Louisa? Louisa? Louisa, are you all right?” I said.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “Oh, yes. Oh, yes, I’m fine. I’m going to Switzerland.”

“You’re what?” I demanded. “Switzerland?”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “Switzerland. You know. Switzerland. It’s beautiful there. St. Moritz. And you can meet everybody. At least, everyone who is anybody. And you can ski. You can ski off the tops of the mountains there. You know. Right off the tops of them, and you can float forever. I’m going to float forever. I’m going skiing. But always remember I’ve loved you, Jack, since the very first day you came to us. Please don’t forget that.”

“Louisa,” I said. “Louisa? You’re going skiing?”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “Oh, yes. I’m going skiing. I’m going skiing, Jack. Oh, it’s so beautiful, skiing. Right off the tops of them. And down below there is nothing but the pure, white snow. Pure. And white. No evil, no dirt, no filth. A few cottages of faithful villagers, who love their cows and their land. Don’t want to kill. And there you are up there, way up in the air, and it all belongs to you, and you love it. Oh, yes. I’m going skiing, Jack. Good-bye, my love, my darling love. My lovely Jack.” She hung up and the phone went cold stone dead.

I was in a panic. I didn’t know whether she had flipped her mind or what, but I knew instinctively something bad had happened somewhere. And I thought I ought to get down there. I hadn’t eaten anything, and I hadn’t dressed. That scene of the morning had really done me in. I threw off my kimono, and bare naked dragged on a pair of chino slacks, an old shirt and a jacket, loafers without socks. I ran all the way to their apartment, which was more than three blocks.

Well, it was a pretty awful scene. A bad scene. In the time it took me to get there after her phone call she had become unconscious and her maid had found her. The sweet, lumpish Portuguese lady, a friend of my own Portuguese, was on her knees beside the big daybed couch in the center of the living room, wringing her hands and wailing. When I knelt and tried to find a pulse in Louisa’s delicate fine-boned wrist, the Portuguese mumbled something in a high piercing shriek, and ran out the door.

Fortunately, McKenna was in bed asleep of course. Louisa had calculated that. She had also left the front door unlocked, so that I was able to barge right in. Had she calculated that, also? So she could leave herself room for me to come and save her? At that moment I thought so. Later on, when I saw what she had taken, I changed my mind.