Evening in Byzantium (15 page)

“That’s a word I’m going to remember, Penny,” he said. “Crawling.”

She ignored his warning. “Four or five nights a year,” she said, “there won’t be any games at home. That’s all. I think we both can stand it.”

“I’m forty-four years old, Penny,” he said. “I don’t see myself remaining celibate for the rest of my life.”

“Celibate!” She laughed harshly. “There’s another word for you. You can do whatever you want. Just the way you always have.”

“I think,” he said quietly, “tomorrow will be just the day for me to go on a nice long trip. Europe might be just the thing.”

“The girls’re coming home for Christmas,” she said. “The least you owe them is to be here when they come. Don’t take it out on them.”

“All right,” he said. “Europe can wait until after Christmas.”

He heard a telephone ringing. Still dislocated in time, he almost called out, “Penny, will you take that, please?” Then he shook himself, looked around, realized where he was, at an ornate, fake antique desk in a hotel room facing the sea, and reached over and picked up the phone. “Craig speaking,” he said.

There was a faraway howling over the wires, American voices jumbled and speaking too low to be understood, then, weirdly, a few notes of a piano, then a click and silence. He frowned, put the phone down, looked at his watch. It was past midnight, between three and six in the afternoon on the continent of America. He waited, but the phone did not ring again.

He stood up and poured himself a drink. He felt a wetness on his cheek. He looked disbelievingly at himself in the mirror. He had been weeping. He brushed the tears roughly away with the back of his hand, drank half the whisky, glared at the telephone. Who had tried to reach him, what message had been baffled in its course to him in midocean?

Perhaps it had been the one voice that could have made everything clear—tell him where he stood, what were his assets, what his debts, what he owed, what was owed him. On what side of the ledger he might enter his marriage, his daughters, his career. Let him know once and for all if he was morally bankrupt or ethically solvent, announce whether his loving had been a defensible expense, answer the question of whether or not, in an age of wars and endless horror, his preoccupation with fictions and shadows had been a callous waste of honor.

The telephone did not ring. There was no message from America. He finished his drink.

When he had been away from her, Penelope had had the habit of calling him almost every night just before she went to bed. “I don’t sleep happily,” she had said, “unless I hear your voice and know that you’re all right.”

The telephone bills had been enormous.

Sometimes he had been irritated by her calls, at other times moved by husbandly tenderness at the sound of the low, familiar, musical voice from a distant city, the other shore of a continent. He had been irritated when he thought that she had been checking on him, testing his fidelity, even though after what had happened between them he felt that he owed her no fidelity, or at least not
that
form of fidelity. He had been unfaithful to her occasionally. Without a sense of guilt, he told himself. Nor did he underestimate the continuing pleasure his indulgence made possible. But he had never allowed himself to become seriously involved with another woman. To that extent, he had felt he had protected his marriage. For the same reason he had refrained from inquiring into his wife’s relations with other men. He had never checked on her. She had secretly rifled through all his papers, he knew, hunting for women’s names, but he had never picked up a letter addressed to her or questioned her about whom she had seen or where she had gone. Again, without examining this facet of his behavior closely, he had felt that it would have been demeaning to him, a belittling blow to his pride. He had recognized the female cunning in Penelope’s late-night telephone calls but for the most part had tolerated them, even been fondly amused by them, flattered by them. Now he knew he had been wrong. He and his wife had avoided candor, and they had drained their marriage.

He had been angry that morning when he had received her letter and had made out the monthly check, and he had reflected on her rapacity and meanness of spirit. But now, after midnight, alone, the memories that had been aroused by passing the house on the Cap d’Antibes that afternoon working within him and the frustrating sounds of the indecipherable voices on the wires still echoing in his ears, he couldn’t help but remember better times, gentler encounters.

For Craig, at least, the marriage worked best at times of stress—when late at night, after long hours in the theatre, he would return from the chaos of rehearsals, the savage clash of wills and temperaments whose tensions it was his job as producer to absorb and accommodate, and find Penelope waiting up for him, ready to make a drink for him in the beautifully ordered living room of their house and listen to him pour out his recapitulation of the day’s work, the day’s problems, the small tragedies, the day’s insane comedies, the fears for the morrow, the disputes that remainded to be solved. She was sympathetic, cool, understanding. Her intuition and intelligence could be relied on. Invariably, she was helpful, the most reliable of partners, the most useful of advisers, steadfastly faithful to his interests. Out of all the memories of his marriage, all the good times, the summer in Antibes, the deeply satisfying moments with his daughters, even the long-shared pleasure of their love-making, it was those countless quiet midnight conversations in which they shared the best of themselves with each other that in retrospect were the real texture of their marriage, the most painful to have to forget.

Well, he had plenty of problems tonight, he could use advice. Despite everything, he knew he longed for the sound of her voice. When he had written her to tell her he was taking steps for a divorce, she had written him a long letter pleading with him not to break up their marriage, with all the reasons, passionate and sensible and homely, for keeping it alive. He had barely glanced at it, afraid, perhaps, that it would sway him, and coldly sent her a note telling her to find a lawyer.

Then, as was almost inevitable, she had become a lawyer’s creation, striking for gain, advantage, revenge. Now he regretted not having read her letter more carefully.

On an impulse, he picked up the phone, gave the operator the number of the house in New York. Then, after he had put the instrument down, he remembered from his daughter’s letter that Penelope was in Geneva.

Foolish woman, he thought, as he got the operator back and canceled the call, this is one night she should have been at home.

H
E poured himself a fresh drink, paced the room holding the glass in his hand, angry with himself for submitting himself to the past, torturing himself with the past. Whatever he had come to Cannes for, it had not been for that. Gail McKinnon had a lot to answer for. Well, he had come so far, he thought, he might as well go all the way. Go over all the mistakes, all the wrong turnings, all the betrayals. If masochism was to be the order of the day, enjoy it. Listen to the ghosts, remember the weather of other seasons …

He sipped at his drink, sat hunched over at the desk, allowed the past to invade him.

He was in his office, back from three months in Europe. The trip had been neither good nor bad for him. He felt suspended in time, not unpleasantly, postponing all decisions.

There was a pile of scripts on his desk. He leafed through them without interest. Before the breakup with Penelope, or the semibreakup, or whatever it was, it had been his custom to do most of his reading in the small studio he had fixed for himself at the top of his house where he had no telephone and could not be interrupted. But since he had come back from Europe, he had taken a room at a hotel near his office and only occasionally visited the house or slept there. He hadn’t moved his clothes or any of his books, and when his daughters were at home, which was rarely, he was there. He did not know how much they knew about the breach between him and their mother, and there were no indications that they had noticed any change. They were so concerned with the problems of their adolescence—dates, school, diets,—that Craig doubted that they would have paid much attention even if their parents had staged Macbeth before their eyes in the living room, complete with bare dagger and real blood. On the surface, he thought, Penelope and he behaved much as they had always done, perhaps a shade more politely than formerly. There had been no further scenes or arguments. They asked each other no questions about their comings and goings. It was a period in which he felt strangely peaceful, like an invalid who is very slowly recovering from a long illness and knows that no great efforts can be demanded of him.

Occasionally, they went out together. Penelope gave him a present on his forty-fourth birthday. They went down to Maryland to see a school play in which Marcia acted a small part. They slept in the same room in a hotel in the town.

None of the play scripts he was offered seemed worth doing, although there were one or two that he was sure would succeed. When they were done by other men and were hits, he felt no sense of loss or opportunity wasted.

He had given up reading the dramatic pages of the newspapers and had canceled his subscriptions to the trade papers. He avoided restaurants like Sardi’s and Downey’s, which had been favorite places of his and which were always filled with theatrical and movie people, most of whom he would know.

He had not been in Hollywood since the week of the preview in Pasadena. Every once in a while Bryan Murphy would call him and tell him he was sending him a script or a book that might interest him. When they arrived, he read them dutifully, then called Murphy and said he was not interested. After about a year, Murphy only called to find out how he was. He always said that he was fine.

There was a knock on the door, and Belinda came in carrying a playscript with a sealed envelope clipped to the cover. She had a peculiar, wary expression on her face. “This just came in,” she said. “By hand.” She put the script on his desk. “It’s Eddie Brenner’s new play.”

“Who brought it in?” He kept his voice noncommittal.

“Mrs. Brenner,” Belinda said.

“Why didn’t she come in and say hello?”

“I asked her to. She said she preferred not to.”

“Thanks,” he said, and slit the envelope. Belinda closed the door softly behind her.

The letter was from Susan Brenner. He had liked her and was sorry events had made it impossible for him to see her anymore.

He read the letter. “Dear Jesse,” Susan Brenner had written, “Ed doesn’t know I’m showing you his play, and if he finds out, I’m going to be in for a rough half hour with him. But no matter. Whatever happened between you and him must be ancient history by now, and all I’m interested in is getting the play on in the best way possible. He’s been mixed up with mediocre people in recent years, and they’ve hurt him and his work, and I have to try to keep him out of their hands this time.

“I think this is the best thing Ed has written since
The Foot Soldier.
It has some of the same feeling, as you will see when you read it. The only time any of Ed’s plays has received the production it deserved was that once when he worked with you and Frank Baranis, and I’m hoping that the three of you can get together again. Maybe the time has come when you all need each other again.

“I have faith in your talent and integrity and your desire to do things in the theater that are worthwhile. I am sure that you’re too reasonable and honorable a man to allow a painful memory to interfere with your devotion to excellence.

“When you’ve read the play, please call me. Call me in the morning around ten o’clock. Ed rents a little office nearby where he works, and he’s out of the house by then. As ever, Sue.”

Loyal, innocent, optimistic wife, he thought. As ever. Too bad she hadn’t been around that summer in Antibes. He stared at the script on his desk. It had not been typed or bound professionally. Probably Susan Brenner had faithfully typed it herself. Brenner, he knew, could hardly afford hiring a service to do it for him. A painful memory, Susan Brenner had written. It wasn’t even that anymore. It was buried under so many other memories, painful and otherwise, that it was like an anecdote told about a stranger in whom he was only remotely interested.

He stood up and opened the door. Belinda was at her desk reading a novel. “Belinda,” he said, “no calls until I ask for them.” She nodded. Actually, the telephone rang very seldom these days in the office. He had spoken out of old habit.

He sat down at his desk and read the unevenly typed script. It took him less than an hour. He had wanted to like it, but when he put it down, he knew that he didn’t want to do it. The play, like Brenner’s first one, was about the war but not about combat. It was about troops of a division that had fought in Africa and was now in England preparing for the invasion of Europe. It seemed to Craig that it attempted too much and accomplished too little. There were the veterans, hardened or pushed near the breaking point by the fighting they had already seen, contrasted with the green replacements being whipped into shape, in awe of the older men, uncertain of their courage, ignorant of what to expect when their time came to go under fire. Along with that, and the conflicts engendered by the clash of the two groups, there were scenes with the local English, the girls, British soldiers, families, in which Brenner tried to analyze the difference between the two societies thrown together for a few months by the hazards of war. In style, Brenner varied from tragedy to melodrama to wild farce. His first play had been simple, all of one piece, fiercely realistic, driving in one straight line toward an inevitable bloody conclusion. The new play wandered, moralized, jumped from place to place, emotion to emotion, almost haphazardly. Brenner’s maturity, Craig thought, if that was what it was, had deprived him of his useful early simplicity. The telephone conversation with Susan Brenner was not going to be a pleasant one. He reached for the phone, then stopped. He decided to reread the play the next day after he had thought about it for twenty-four hours.