Two Weeks in Another Town (36 page)

“No,” Jack said.

“I always knew I wanted to live in a place where they milked buffaloes,” Bresach said, taking a huge piece of cheese on his fork and stuffing it in his mouth. “In our country, we have got rid of the buffaloes and Charlie Chaplin. Up, McGranery.”

“Don’t start that again, Robert,” Max said.

“So when I got better,” Bresach said calmly, as though there had been no interruption in his story about himself and his family, “I blackmailed my mother into hocking a ring and giving me the money to come to Italy. I told her that if I hadn’t gotten started in the movies in one year, I’d come back and make paper cartons for the rest of my life and honor my mother and father like a good boy. By the way, Andrus, what did your father do?”

“He had a small fruit-drying plant in California.”

“God, the way people spend their lives,” Bresach said. “Did he have a holy feeling about dried fruit?”

“No,” Jack said. “It was just a way of earning a living. He didn’t take business very seriously. As long as he made enough to support his family and buy the books he liked that was all he wanted.”

“Was he American?”

“Yes.”

“It was a lucky thing he died before McGranery got around to him.”

“Robert,” Max said warningly.

“I am learning everything I can about the man who is the most important man in the world to me,” Bresach said, “John Andrus. Or James Royal. The double man. He is the two most important men in the world to me because he’s robbed me of the thing that I wanted and needed more than anything else in my life. He is the Opponent, he is the Demon of Loss, he is the Destroying Element.” Bresach was chanting crazily now, his eyes almost closed, the sweat streaming down his cheeks. “When I face him, I face my father, I face the paper-carton factory, I see a door closing in my face, I see my love vanishing down a thousand dark, unknown streets, I see my bed with a hunted man in it, not the warm girl who belongs there and who is gone. I look at him and I remember the day I tried to kill myself…It is vitally important to me that his father dried fruit in California. I must search out his last secret.”

“You’re dead drunk,” Jack said.

“Even that is possible,” Bresach said calmly. “But drunk or sober, you must learn about me, too. You are involved with me. We are the main elements in each other’s lives. We are wound around each other like snakes in battle. You are a civilized man. What you do to me, you must do in full knowledge. At the end, no matter what happens, you must not be able to say to yourself, ‘I didn’t know. It was an accident.’” He drained his glass and poured himself another, full to the brim, the wine purplish and raw. His hands shook and the flaring throat of the carafe with the seal of the city of Rome on it, clinked nervously against the glass. “I am in despair,” he said, “and you must know it.”

“Robert,” Max said softly, “it is late. It is time to go home.”

“If Veronica isn’t there,” Bresach said, “I have no home. Without her I am zero, I am minus 273.1 degrees Centigrade, where the protons stop their movement within the atom. Christ, who would have thought anything like this could happen in Rome? Veronica…” He took a deep breath. “Where is she?” he asked petulantly. “I need her. Maybe she’s sitting at a table in a restaurant in the next block. It drives you crazy. We ought to be out roaming the streets sniffing for her perfume like bloodhounds. I lied to you the other night, Jack. I said there were ten thousand girls more beautiful than Veronica. It was a cheap, despicable, cowardly lie, and I said it because I wanted her so badly. I was begging for her. There is no girl more beautiful than Veronica.” He put his hand into the pocket of his duffel coat and took out the knife and put it on the stained tablecloth between himself and Jack. “There it is, between us, you sonofabitch,” he said, his voice choked.

“Robert,” Max said softly. “That is no good. Put the knife away.”

Bresach touched the knife, smiling crookedly at Jack. Then, surprisingly, he put the knife away. “It is the symbol of the unsheathed and upright penis,” he said quietly, “in the dreams I dream. You see, I haven’t wasted all my time with Dr. Gildermeister.”

“The next time you see me,” Jack said, “be careful. I may be carrying a gun.”

“Will you?” Bresach nodded agreeably. “Yes, that would be the sensible thing to do, wouldn’t it?” He stood up abruptly. “I’m leaving,” he said, standing very erect and with extreme and self-conscious steadiness. “Pay the bill, Jack. I’ll call you tomorrow about the date with Delaney.”

He turned on his heel and walked rigidly out of the restaurant.

Max stood up, fumbling with his scarf. “It’s late,” he said. “Do not worry. I will bring you the script. Thank you for a most excellent dinner. Now, if you will excuse me…” He took his battered greenish hat off the hook and clamped it on his head and fled.

T
HE SLEEPING PILL. LOVELY
transparent plastic tube, soluble, jade-green in the bed-table light, loyally carrying its cargo, three grains of peace, across the perilous dark hours. To make the voyage from night to morning navigable for twentieth-century man. But in that sleep of drugs what dreams may…Further measures are necessary. The bottle. Haig, Dewar’s, Black and White, Johnny Walker, reliable old friends, to be found at all good bars, in Rome or out of Rome. The steep, heavy-limbed midnight plunge into forgetfulness. Alcohol plus sodium-ethyl-methyl-butyl-barbituate equals six hours of oblivion, and, after all, what’s better than oblivion?

Sleep now, pay later.

Only for a moment, after the lights are extinguished, before the drug has put in its’ full claim on the exhausted, fretful body, is there the brief fingering of memory to be endured, a sense of loss, desire, guilt…

And in the morning, a wild, quick rush of dreams, with the telephone ringing, and the operator waiting to say, as instructed,
“Sono le sette,
Signor Andrus,” to get you to the studio on time. And the Benzedrine to get over the sleeping pills and the Alka-Seltzer to get over the whisky and the black coffee for courage and to keep the hands from shaking too badly while shaving.

Sleep now. Pay later.

Sunday morning.

Jack came down into the lobby late. Bresach was waiting for him, looking skinny, pale, well-shaven, disdainful of the over-dressed ladies who were passing through the lobby on their way to church. Jack looked at him with something close to hatred in his heart. Max had kept his promise. He had brought over the script that Bresach had written. And it was brilliant. It was about three Hungarian refugees and a young American student who lived in one room in Rome, given to them by a crazy old English spinster who had lived in Italy since she was a girl. Max’s experiences had obviously gone into the writing of it. It was sad and funny and violent, and there was a grotesque and pathetic love story between one of the refugees and an American girl touring Europe with her mother, and the whole thing was done in the simplest and cleanest of terms, with a stunning directness of images and language and with a certainty and control that made it almost impossible to believe that it had been created by a young man who had had almost nothing to do with the making of movies before this.

Looking at Bresach across the lobby, and remembering the script, about which he had not yet spoken to the boy, Jack felt resentful and unfairly burdened by this new revelation of Bresach’s resources. Now he was not only responsible, almost through no fault of his own, for Bresach’s disaster with Veronica, but he was responsible for his excellence, his talent, his future.

It was with a sense of being trapped and suffocated that he watched Bresach cross the lobby toward him, malnourished, vulnerable, demanding, haunting.

“I am on time,” Bresach said. It was an accusation.

“So I see,” Jack said. He went over to the desk and dropped his key there. The porter handed him two envelopes. Jack opened the first one. It was a communication from the Italian Telegraph Service informing him that his telegram to Veronica’s mother had not been delivered, because the recipient was not known at that address.

There’s something for Sunday morning, Jack thought. To brighten the Roman Sabbath.

As he and Bresach walked out onto the street where Guido was waiting for them with the car, Jack handed the opened message to Bresach, without comment.

Bresach stopped and studied it, shaking his head. Jack opened the other envelope. It was a telegram. “Don’t worry, dearest,” it said, “Love, Veronica.” It had been sent from Zurich, at ten thirty the night before. Jack read it twice, searching for a code, a hidden message. All this means, he thought, is that last night at ten thirty she was alive and in Zurich. As Bresach came up to him, Jack stuffed the telegram into his pocket.

“I can’t make anything out of this,” Bresach said, folding the communication from the telegraph company. “That’s the address she gave me, all right.”

“Did you ever send any other telegrams or letters there?” Jack asked.

“No,” said Bresach. “It was only for emergencies. There were never any emergencies. Until now. How about the other one? Was that about anything?”

“No,” Jack said.

They got into the car and sat back as Guido started down the sunny avenue, crowded, even this early, with its Sunday families.

Later on, Jack thought, maybe I’ll show him the telegram. After I’ve had a chance to think about it. Zurich. Who goes to Zurich? Why does anyone go to Zurich?

Bresach hunched into his duffel coat in a corner, glowering out the window. They were passing a newly built church, its pale stone raw and incongruous amid the weathered walls on each side of it. Latecomers were hurrying up the steps for Mass, and Bresach regarded them as though they had insulted him. “That’s what this town needs,” he said. “More churches.” He took off his glasses and wiped them on his necktie, violently, then put them back on again. “This is a waste of time,” he said, “going to see Delaney. We’re at opposite sides of an abyss.”

“Why don’t you wait and see?” Jack said.

“Did you give Delaney my script?”

“Yes.”

“Has he read it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Have
you
read it?”

“Yes,” Jack said. He waited for Bresach to ask him what he thought of it. But he only snuffled a little in his corner and said, childishly, “I don’t know why I let you talk me into things.”

“Do you want to get off here?” Jack asked, exasperated, knowing that it was only bad temper and rhetoric, that he could not let Bresach get off here or anywhere.

Bresach hesitated. “What the hell,” he said. “I’ve come this far.” He peered out at the street. “I thought you said Delaney lived opposite the Circus Maximus.”

“He does,” Jack said.

“This guy’s going toward Parioli.” Bresach gestured toward Guido, in the driver’s seat.

“Calm down,” Jack said. “You’re not being kidnapped. Delaney’s out there this morning. Taking riding lessons. It’s the only time he could give you.”

“Riding lessons?” Bresach snorted. “What’s he going to do—gallop off to the Hundred Years’ War?” He subsided into sullen silence for a moment. “Do you sleep at night?” he asked.

“Yes.” Jack said nothing about the pills, the whisky.

“I don’t,” Bresach said gloomily. “I lie in bed and listen to Max’s nightmares and wake him up when he gets to a border. I’m going to tell you something. If I don’t hear from her this week I’m going to the police.” He glared over at Jack, challenging him, waiting for argument.

“You don’t have to go to the police,” Jack said. “I heard from her.”

“When?”

“This morning.”

“Where is she?” Bresach was watching him narrowly, suspecting him.

“Zurich.”

“What?”

“Zurich.”

“I don’t believe you,” Bresach said.

Jack took out the telegram and handed it to Bresach. He read it, his lips tucked into a harsh, thin line, then crumpled it and put it in his pocket. “Dearest,” he said.

“Have you any idea where she might be in Zurich?” Jack asked.

Bresach shook his head gloomily. “I don’t have any idea where anybody might be anyplace.” He took the crumpled telegram out of his pocket and flattened it out on his knee with great care and studied it. “Well, at least she’s alive,” he said. “Are you pleased?”

“Of course,” Jack said. “Aren’t you?”

“I’m not sure,” said Bresach, staring down at the paper on his knee. “I fall in love once in my whole life, and it has to be someone like this.” He tapped the telegram bitterly. “I had three months of happiness with her. What do you think—is that the limit? Is that the ration? And after that, limitless despair? Tell me, what about you? Supposing you never hear from her again? Supposing this telegram is the last word you ever get from her in your whole life—Zurich, escaped to Zurich—what happens to you? What do you do—just go back to Paris and live your nice bourgeois life with your wife and kids and forget about her?”

“I won’t forget her,” Jack said.

“Andrus,” Bresach said, “do you know anything about love?”

“I know one or two things,” Jack said. “I know it doesn’t end with a telegram.”

“What does it end with, then? I wish I knew. Do you know the story of the Spartan boy with the fox?” Bresach demanded.

“Yes.”

“There’s more to it than meets the eye,” said Bresach. “It’s an allegory, it’s crammed with symbols, it’s not what it seems to mean at all. The fox is love, and you have to hide it, and you don’t bring it out on parade because you
can’t
bring it out—it’s locked inside you—and first it licks you playfully, and then it takes a little tentative nip, then it likes the taste—and then it begins to eat away in earnest—”

“Don’t be so full of self-pity,” Jack said. “That’s one of the worst things about your generation.”

“Screw my generation,” Bresach said. “I don’t belong to it and it doesn’t belong to me. Me and the fox, that’s what I belong to.” Neatly, he folded the telegram, then threw it out the window. It swooped and twisted, leaflike and free on the windy, sunny avenue.

“Don’t worry,” Robert said, “dearest. There’s a message for this year. Were you ever in Zurich?”