Beggarman, Thief (13 page)

I AM GLAD I AM NOT A TRANSLATOR, I TOLD HER. BUT IT SET ME THINKING AND I WAS UP HALF THE NIGHT WORRYING ABOUT MYSELF AND MY CONNECTION TO LANGUAGE.

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Gretchen was in the bar when Rudolph got back to the hotel. She was drinking a champagne cocktail and talking to a young man in tennis clothes. She had been doing quite a bit of drinking the last few days, which was not like her, and had been talking to any men who happened to be around, which, he thought, maliciously, was very much like her. Had he heard footsteps softly passing his door last night, past the paired shoes, in the direction of her room? Remembering Nice, he could hardly complain. And whatever diversions she found to amuse herself with in the limbo in which she found herself were at the very least excusable.

“May I introduce my brother, Rudolph Jordache,” she said as Rudolph came over to the table at which they were sitting. “Basil—I forget your second name, dear.”

She must have had at least three champagne cocktails, Rudolph thought, to say dear to a man whose name she’d forgotten.

The young man stood up. He was tall and slender, actorish, dyed hair, frivolously good-looking, Rudolph decided.

“Berling,” the young man said, bowing a little. “Your sister’s been telling me about you.”

Berling, Basil Berling, Rudolph thought, as he nodded acknowledgment of the bow. Who has a name like Basil Berling? British, from his accent.

“Won’t you sit down and join us?” Basil Berling said.

“Just for a moment,” Rudolph said, without grace. “I have some things I have to discuss with my sister.”

“My brother is a great discusser,” Gretchen said. “Beware his discussions.”

Four cocktails, not three, Rudolph thought.

“What will it be, sir?” Basil Berling asked, polite British member of Actors Equity, working hard on his speech, conscious that he came from a mediocre school, as the waiter came up.

“The same,” Rudolph said.

“Three of the same,” Basil Berling said to the waiter.

“He’s been plying me with drinks,” Gretchen said.

“So I see.”

Gretchen made a face. “Rudolph is the sober one in the family,” she explained to Basil Berling.

“Somebody has to be.”

“Oh, dear, I fear the discussion to follow,” Gretchen said. “Basil—what is the name again, dear …?”

She’s pretending to be further gone than she really is, Rudolph thought. To annoy me. Today I’m everybody’s target.

“Berling,” the man said, always pleasant.

“Mr. Berling is an actor,” Gretchen said. “Isn’t it a coincidence,” she asked, her tone girlish and drunk at the same time, “here we are at the very end of the world and we meet by sheerest jolly happenstance in a low bar and we’re both in the flicks?” She was mocking him now with a fake English accent, but the young man seemed beyond offense.

“Are you?” The Englishman sounded surprised. “I mean in films? I say—I should have guessed.”

“Isn’t that gallant?” Gretchen touched Rudolph’s arm flirtatiously, brother or no. “I have to admit the fearful truth. I’m in the unglamorous part.” She sipped at her new drink, smiling over the rim at Basil Berling.

“Hard to believe,” Berling said heavily.

Must get rid of him forthwith, Rudolph thought, before I ask the manager to throw him out.

“Oh, yes,” Gretchen said. “Behind the scenes. I’m one of those ladies with the black fingernails. Up to my ass in acetate. Film editor. There, now, the secret’s out. Just a plain, humble cutter.”

“You do honor to the profession,” Basil Berling said.

God save me from the mating rites of others, Rudolph thought, as Gretchen said, “Sweet,” and patted the back of Berling’s hand. For a moment Rudolph was curious about how his sister
really
was in bed, how many men were in her past, her present. She’d tell him if he asked.

“Gretchen,” Rudolph said, as Gretchen tilted her head with too much charm at the actor, “I have to go up and tell Jean she has to pack. I have her passport and she’ll want to be leaving tomorrow. I’d like a word with you first, please.”

Gretchen made a pretty grimace. Rudolph would have liked to slap her. The day’s events had worn his nerves thin. “Drink up, dear,” Gretchen said to Berling. “My brother is a busy man, the conscientious bee going from flower to flower.”

“Of course.” The actor stood up. “I’d better get out of these clothes, anyway. I played three sets of singles and I’ll come down with a monstrous cold if I sit around wet much longer.”

“Thanks for the wine,” Gretchen said.

“My pleasure.”

Dwyer had said, “My pleasure,” too, Rudolph remembered. Everybody was enjoying himself this afternoon, he thought sourly. Except him.

“Will I see you later, Gretchen? For dinner?” Berling said, tall, but with skinny, stringy legs, Rudolph noticed. I’d look better in tennis shorts, he thought meanly.

“I daresay,” Gretchen said.

“A pleasure to have met you, sir,” Berling said to Rudolph.

Rudolph grunted. If the man was going to call him sir, as though he were on the edge of the grave, he’d be crusty, as befitted his age.

Brother and sister watched the actor stride out, springy and virile, treading the boards.

“God, Gretchen,” Rudolph said, when the actor had gone, “you certainly know how to pick them, don’t you?”

“There’s very little choice at this season,” Gretchen said. “A girl has to take what comes along. Now, what unpleasant thing are you in such a hurry to tell me?” She wasn’t drunk at all, he saw.

“It’s about Enid,” he said. “I’d like you to get on the plane with Jean and Enid tomorrow and keep an eye on her. On both of them.”

“Oh, God,” Gretchen said.

“I don’t trust my daughter with Jean,” Rudolph went on doggedly.

“What about you? Aren’t you coming along?”

“I can’t. There’s too much still to attend to here. And when you get to New York I want you to stay with them in my apartment. Mrs. Johnson’s off on a holiday in St. Louis for another week.”

“Come on now, Rudy,” Gretchen said. “I’m too old to take up babysitting.”

“Damn it, Gretchen,” Rudolph said, “after all I’ve done for you …”

Gretchen put her head back and closed her eyes as though by that physical act she was holding back an angry reply. Still in the same position, and with her eyes still closed, she said, “I don’t have to be reminded every day of what you’ve done for me.”

“Every day?” Rudolph bit off the words. “When was the last time?”

“Not in so many words, my dear brother.” She opened her eyes and leaned forward again. “Let’s not argue about it.” She stood up. “You’ve got yourself a baby-sitter. Anyway, it will be nice to be back again in a place where murders happen in the newspapers, not in the bosom of your own family. What time does the plane leave?”

“Eleven-thirty. I have your ticket.”

“Think of everything, don’t you?”

“Yes. Everything.”

“I wouldn’t know what to do without you, Brother,” Gretchen said. “I’d better start packing myself.” She smiled at him, but he noticed the effort. “Truce?”

“Truce,” he said.

On the way to the elevator he stopped at the desk to get his key. “While you were out, Mr. Jordache,” the concierge said, “a lady came by and left a letter for you.” He took an envelope out of the box and gave it to Rudolph with his key. The envelope had only his name on it, in a woman’s handwriting that he felt he had seen someplace before. In the elevator he tore open the envelope and picked the single piece of paper out of it.

It was from Jeanne.

Dear American,

This is just to tell you to please not call me. You can guess the reason why. I’ll call you when I can. It may not be for a week or two. It may be that they have called off the war in Paris permanently. I hope you are having a good time in Antibes and are prolonging your stay. The afternoons are dreary without you. If you wish to write me, do it through Poste Restante, Central Post Office, Nice. I hope I have spelled everything correctly.

Drive carefully,

Jeanne

He crumpled the letter and put it in his pocket, got out of the elevator, went over to the door of the suite, arranged his face, put the key in the lock and went in.

Jean was standing at the window, staring out to sea. She didn’t turn around when he came in. Against the fading light which came through the open window, her silhouette was slender and young in a linen summer dress. She reminded him of the girls he had gone to college with, girls who wore their boyfriends’ fraternity pins on their bosoms and went to the Saturday-afternoon football games in bulky fur coats and bright woolen stockings and to the proms at which he had played the trumpet in the band, to help pay his way through school. Standing at the door, looking at the illusion of vulnerable youthfulness which his wife created, he felt a pang of pity for her, unsought, unprofitable.

“Good evening, Jean,” he said, advancing toward her. Jean, Jeanne, he thought. What’s in a name?

She turned slowly. He saw that she had had her soft, shoulder-length hair done that day and that she had put on makeup. The old woman she would one day be had gone from her face.

“Good evening,” she said gravely. Her voice, too, had returned to normal, if normal for her meant not rasping with drink or fury or self-laceration.

“Here’s your passport,” he said, giving it to her. “The lawyer got it back today.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“I have your ticket for the plane tomorrow. You can go back home now.”

“Thank you,” she said again. “And you?”

“I’ll have to stay at least a week more.”

She nodded, opened her passport, glanced at her photograph, shook her head sadly, threw the passport on the table.

My passport photo doesn’t flatter me either, Rudolph would have liked to say.

“At least a week …” Jean said. “You must be exhausted.”

“I’m all right.” He sank into an easy chair. Until she had said he must be exhausted he hadn’t realized how tired he really was. He had been sleeping badly, waking often in the middle of the night, with uneasy dreams. Last night he had had the most curious, disturbing dream. He had awakened with a start. The bed had seemed to be shaking and the first thought he had had was that there was an earthquake. In his dream, he had remembered, he seemed to have been pinched all over his legs by invisible, mischievous fingers. Poltergeists, he remembered thinking in his dream. Awake, he had thought, Now where did that word come from? He had read it, of course, but he had never spoken it or written it.

“How is Enid?” he asked.

“Fine,” Jean said. “I took her to Juan-les-Pins this afternoon and bought her a miniature striped sailor’s jersey. She looks charming in it and she’s been posing in front of the mirror in it ever since. She’s having her supper now with the nurse.”

“I’ll look in and say good night to her,” he said. “In a while.” He loosened his collar and tie. Unyoked for the day, he would put on an open-necked sports shirt for dinner. “Gretchen will be on the plane with you and Enid,” he said.

“She needn’t bother,” Jean said, but with no hint of resentment. “Perhaps she’d like to stay on. The weather’s glorious now and I saw her walking up from the sea with a handsome young man.”

“She’s anxious to get back to New York,” he said. “I’ve asked her to stay with you and Enid until Mrs. Johnson gets back from St. Louis.”

“That will be dull for her,” Jean said. “I can take care of Enid myself. I have nothing else to do.” But again calmly, without resentment or the tone of argument.

“I think it would be better if Gretchen was there to help out,” he said carefully.

“Whatever you say. Although I can stay sober for a week, you know.”

“I know,” he said. “Just to be on the safe side.”

“I’ve been thinking, Rudy,” Jean said, standing with her hands clasped in front of her, her fingers interlaced, as though she were on a platform giving a prepared speech. “About what we’ve been through.”

“Why don’t you forget what we’ve been through?” Rudolph said. He was in no mood for prepared speeches.

“I’ve been thinking about us,” she said evenly, without hostility. “For your sake and for Enid’s, I think we ought to get a divorce.”

Finally, he thought. At least I wasn’t the one to say the word. “Why don’t we wait awhile to talk about things like that?” he said gently.

“If you want. But I’m no good for you. Or for her. You don’t want me anymore.…” Jean put up her hand, although he hadn’t begun to say anything. “You haven’t come near me in over a year. And you’ve found somebody down here, I’m sure. Please don’t deny it.”

“I won’t deny it,” he said.

“I don’t blame you, dear,” she said. “I’ve been poison for you for a long time. Another man would have left me long ago. And the crowd would have cheered.” She smiled crookedly.

“I wish you’d wait until we were both home in America …” he started to say, although he felt that a great weight was being lifted from his shoulders.

“I feel like talking this evening,” she said, without insistence. “I’ve been thinking about us all day and I haven’t had a drink in more than a week and I’m as sane and sensible as I’m ever going to be for the rest of my life. Don’t you want to hear what I’ve been thinking about?”

“I don’t want you to say anything that you’re going to regret later.”

“Regret.” She made a little awkward movement, as though she were jerking away from a wasp. “I regret everything I say. And just about everything I’ve done. Listen carefully, my dear. I am a drunk. I am disappointed with myself and I am a drunk. I will be disappointed with myself and remain a drunk all my life. And I won’t get over it.”

“We haven’t tried hard enough up to now,” he said. “The places you’ve gone to weren’t thorough enough. There are other clinics that …”

“You can send me to every clinic in America,” she said. “Every psychiatrist in America can poke among my dreams. They can give me antabuse and I can vomit my guts out. And I will still be a drunk. And I will scream at you like a shrew and disgrace you.… Remember, I did it before and not only once … and I can ask for forgiveness and I can do it again and I can risk my child’s life driving her around drunkenly in a car and I can forget everything and go looking for a bottle over and over again until the day I die and I wish it was going to be soon only I don’t have the courage to kill myself, which is another disappointment.…”