Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (30 page)

But with Maria it had been different; they had both been reconciled to having no future, and the past had been something which had to be forgotten. With Maria there had been only the moment at hand, completely unshadowed, unexpected, something to be grateful for. Perhaps, Tom thought, it’s a matter of expectations–he and Betsy had always expected so much! Everything would be perfect for them, they had expected from the beginning. They would be rich, they would be healthy, and they would do no wrong. Any deviation from perfection had seemed a blight which ruined the whole. But he and Maria had expected nothing; they had started with hopelessness and had been astonished to learn that for a few weeks they could be happy.

Lying there in his hotel room, Tom suddenly remembered the day of the picnic with Maria, and he smiled–even the distant memory made him smile. It had been a ridiculous day from the beginning. After having wangled the use of a jeep, he and Maria had started from Rome at nine o’clock in the morning, with a large basket full of groceries and a bottle of wine. The sky had been gray, with feathery wisps of white cloud blowing across darker, blacker clouds billowing up from the horizon, and it had been cold–the mud puddles beside the road had been crusted with ice. At nine-thirty, just as they got outside the city, it had begun to rain. It had been a ridiculous day for a picnic, but the thought of going back had not even occurred to them. He had stopped, and she had helped him to put the side curtains on the jeep, and it had been snug and warm inside, with the world appearing eerie through the dripping windshield. They had headed south and driven aimlessly–there had been a delicious sense of freedom in coming to a crossroad and turning to the left or right completely at random, without caring at all where they were going. Maria had turned up the collar of her old soldier’s overcoat, but she had not worn a hat, and her dark glossy hair had got wet while they were putting the side curtains up and had stayed damp all day. She had looked contented sitting there on the hard
un-comfortable seat of the jeep. She had not smiled–her face had so often been serious–but she had hummed a song almost inaudibly under her breath, and he had kept glancing at her, receiving enormous satisfaction from the sight of her sitting there beside him so serenely.

“What are you singing?” he had asked. “Sing louder, so I can hear.”

She had shaken her head modestly. “I can’t sing,” she had said. “I know no music.”

“I do,” he had said. “You happen to be sitting beside the star baritone and mandolin virtuoso of the entire United States. Want to hear me?”

“Yes.” She had laughed.

“You’ll have to imagine the mandolin in the background,” he had replied. “Pling, pling, pling–does that set the proper mood?”

“Yes.”

“All right!” At the top of his lungs he had sung “Old Man River” and the “Saint Louis Blues,” both of which had seemed absurdly doleful. Her laughter had formed a sort of accompaniment to the songs, and he had gone on to sing, “Way down upon the Swanee River, far, far away–there’s where my heart is turning ever, there’s where the old folks stay. . . .” He had been briefly conscious of the irony of the fact that at the moment he wasn’t worrying much about the old folks at home, but he had brushed that thought away. He had sung all the songs whose words he knew that day while they drove aimlessly around in the rain. She had not tried to sing with him–she had just sat there and from time to time had put her hand on his knee with curious hesitation, almost as though it were dark and she were trying to make sure he was still there. Once, when he stopped at a crossroad, she had leaned over and kissed him on the mouth with almost painful intensity. That had been a curious and wonderful thing about her that he had understood only gradually: her almost constant eagerness to make love. At first, he had been surprised, and then he had thought that she was simply an ideal and probably practiced soldier’s girl, and he had been a little cynical about her ardor. But after he had known her a few days he had realized that physical love was the only form of reassurance she knew, and that she was completely happy and sure of him only when she was caressing him and giving him pleasure, and that it was chiefly
this that caused her constantly to entice him. She was scared, just as scared as he was, he had realized. On that day while they were driving in the rain she had told him a little about her past. The village in which she had lived with her parents had been one of the first hit by the invasion. The Germans had made a brief stand there, and the planes had dropped bombs of white phosphorus. Her parents had refused to go to a bomb shelter for fear that their house would be looted if left empty, but they had forced her to go. Crawling up from the shelter after a bomb had burst near by, she had seen her house in flames, seen her father stagger out carrying her mother, both their bodies enveloped in flames. The other people from the bomb shelter had not let her run to them. Her father had fallen after taking only a few steps, and she had seen the bodies of her parents lying at right angles to each other, burning like a fiery cross. As she told Tom about this, she had been objective, almost matter-of-fact. The tears had not come until he had impulsively stopped the jeep and put his arms around her, feeling in himself an overpowering need to try to comfort her, in spite of the knowledge that for such things there is no solace. She had cried hard for about ten minutes, and her sobs had been all the more agonizing because they came silently through clenched teeth and taut lips. After regaining control of herself, she had taken from her battered handbag a cheap imitation gold compact, opened it, and put powder on her face. For several seconds she had stared at herself in the tiny, clouded mirror. “Do you think I am beautiful?” she had asked.

“Very beautiful.”

“Not beautiful enough to keep you. Everyone dies or goes away.”

Not wanting to lie or to be cruelly truthful, he had not contradicted her. He had said nothing, but had kissed her, and she had returned the kiss with all the passion which had been suppressed in her silent tears. “Tell me again that I am beautiful,” she had said.

He had done so. She had sighed and said, “All right. Let’s drive some more.”

For an hour they had driven in silence. At about noon they had grown hungry and had turned up a narrow road in hilly country, seeking a place where they could get out of the rain and eat. They had driven for perhaps another half hour before coming to an abandoned villa, the east end of which had been destroyed by artillery fire. The ground all around the villa had been badly cut up, and the
buff-colored stucco walls pockmarked with machine-gun bullets. He had driven the jeep slowly around the driveway which encircled the building, past a swimming pool choked with fallen masonry. On impulse he had twisted the steering wheel suddenly and driven between two shattered pillars, across a tiled courtyard littered with rubble, under a part of the roof which projected over what must once have been an anteroom. There he had stopped, and, wondering at the marvelous convenience of the ruin which allowed them to drive out of the rain, they had stepped out of the jeep. He had lifted the hood and taken part of the distributor with him, as well as the ignition key, to make sure no one would steal the car. Carrying their picnic basket and shivering a little in the dampness, they had walked through an enormous jagged hole in a charred wall and entered a huge living room. The glass in the high windows along the right-hand side of the room had been shattered, and tattered damask draperies were being blown inward, arched by the wind into the shape of wings. There had been a puddle in the middle of the polished oak floor, and everywhere there had been bits of glass and countless pieces of paper, as though an office had exploded. In one corner there had been the wreck of a grand piano, the board with the ivory keys lying separate from the rest, like the jawbone of a prehistoric beast, and the big brass-colored frame with most of the strings still taut resting on edge, like a harp. They had crossed this room and, after walking through two utterly bare rooms, had found what must once have been a small library, with a white marble fireplace at one end. The walls had been lined with bookcases, all empty now, except for many scattered leaves and detached leather bindings. There had been only two windows in that room, and, miraculously, only a few of the lower panes had been broken. Through one of the windows they had been able to see a small circular pool, in the middle of which a white marble nymph, slim waisted and full breasted but now headless, rose, holding in one upraised arm a cornucopia, out of which a fountain must once have spouted.

“Here,” he had said, putting the picnic basket down. “We’ll see if the chimney works.” Gathering some of the book leaves which lay on the floor, he had struck a match, ignited the paper, and dropped it into the fireplace. The smoke had gone straight up. “We can build a fire,” he had said.

She had stood, holding her coat collar close around her neck and
looking small and lost, while he had gone to the great living room and brought back an armful of polished fragments from the splintered top of the piano. After she had helped him to gather more paper, he had built a fire carefully, setting the sharp splinters of wood on end like a wigwam. The smoky orange flames had climbed them swiftly. Suddenly the room had been full of the acrid smell of burning varnish. She had knelt by the fire and held her hands out to it, and he had noticed for the first time that her hands were the hands of a nervous child, that she had bitten her fingernails to the quick. Her hands had been surprisingly small, fragile, and finely tapered. She had glanced up at him, and upon seeing that he was looking at her hands, she had quickly doubled them into fists, so that the fingernails were hidden, and had put them into the pockets of her coat with exactly the gesture of a child caught stealing cookies. Then she had stood up, looking flustered. Impulsively he had taken her right hand out of her pocket, smoothed it in his own hands, and kissed it. She had buried her face in his shoulder, and he had felt that she was shivering.

“You’re too beautiful to worry about your hands,” he had said. “Come on, you’re cold–let’s get more wood on that fire.” He had gone to the living room and come back carrying a heavy amputated leg of the piano, the foot of which had been carved to resemble the claws of a lion clutching a round, shiny ball. This he had placed on the fire, and the flames had immediately embraced it, licking greedily at the varnish. He had returned to the living room and, grabbing one of the tattered damask draperies, had given it a hard pull and brought it down in a cloud of dust and a clatter of falling curtain rods. This he had dragged to the library and had ripped pieces from it to stuff the broken windowpanes. The remainder he had spread on the floor as a tablecloth, and she had begun to unpack the basket, placing sandwiches done up in brown paper and the bottle of wine and a cold roast chicken carefully in a row. Gradually the roaring fire had warmed the room. They had taken their overcoats off and folded them by the tablecloth to serve as pillows on which to sit.

That day she had been wearing a worn black skirt, a white blouse cut almost like a man’s shirt with an open collar, and a dark-green jacket which she had made herself, trying to copy a picture in a magazine advertisement. They had eaten greedily, wiping their hands on the damask tablecloth and passing the bottle of wine back and forth
between them. When they were through, she had packed the remnants of the picnic away in the basket. Carefully lighting two cigarettes, he had handed her one, and she had sat down comfortably, edging a little toward the fire and holding her hands out to the flames, this time unabashed. Outside, the rain had started coming down faster, and the rags he had stuffed in the broken windowpanes had started to drip on the floor. Far overhead a squadron of bombers had droned, going somewhere, high above the clouds. The unbroken glass in the windows had trembled. Content to sit and stare into the fire, which was already reducing the great claw of the piano leg to embers, he had said nothing. Glancing at his wrist watch, he had seen it was not yet two o’clock. That meant they would have eighteen more hours until eight o’clock the next morning, when he would have to check in with the sergeant at the transportation desk. Eighteen more hours, he had thought gratefully, and slowly had calculated: the big sweep hand on his watch would have to tick off one thousand and eighty minutes, a marvelously long time. He had glanced at her and to his surprise had found her looking hurt and forlorn. Suddenly he had realized that she had expected him to make love to her long before this, and that she was afraid that he had grown tired of her, or that she had displeased him in some way. He had smiled at her. “Come over here,” he had said. Quickly she had gone to him and lain with her head in his lap, looking up at him, his smile mirrored on her face. He had stroked her hair and forehead softly, feeling, for the moment, oddly calm. Overhead another squadron of bombers had droned, followed by more and more, until the whole building trembled. He had glanced over his shoulder and through the rain-streaked glass had seen the headless nymph outside, holding her empty cornucopia high, silhouetted against the rain-drenched clouds. After a few moments he had looked back at Maria, lying with her head on his lap in the yellow firelight, and he had seen that to invite his affections, she had unbuttoned her jacket and opened the blouse, partly exposing her breasts and the deep valley between them. He had kissed her then, the kiss beginning almost as an act of kindness, but quickly becoming much more than that. “Oh, God, I love you,” he had said.

They had left the villa just in time to get back to Rome before dark. When they had returned to her room, she had started cooking supper on a small primus stove he had given her, and he had lain
down on the bed and glanced at his watch again. It had been only six o’clock–still fourteen more hours, eight hundred and forty more revolutions of the sweep hand before he had to check in. He had stretched out on the soft bed, full of an incredible sense of luxury, thinking of the minutes ahead as a king might think of his empire. Maria had sat, looking wise and contented, stirring a pan of soup, which slowly had begun to steam, giving a fragrance to the air.