Old Acquaintance (17 page)

L
OTTE
was at her dressing table, preparing to sock ’em in the eye. It takes skill and time. It also takes concentration. So Miss Campendonck had been banished to her own room, while the goddess considered, with some professional attention, the exact reflection of her own moon. Between Diana and Narcissus there is not much to choose, but tonight, expecially tonight, I want to look even more immortal than usual. It is because I feel so old. It is also because
they are so damn young. Though Sophia Loren is all right, and nobody has anything against Katina Paxinou. It’s the starlets who get on your nerves.

The door opened and Unne came in, interrupting, in the mirror, the surgical hesitation of an eyebrow pencil. Paint me as I am, said Cromwell, but then Cromwell had had only one identity, and so had no choice but to be proud of it.

“My goodness, you’re not even dressed yet. Where have you been all day?”

“I’m not going.”

“Don’t be silly. Of course you’re going.”

Unne sat down on a chair, demure, and scared-looking. Or did that expression signify contrite awe?

“I’ve married Paul,” she said.

“Damn!” said Lotte, as the pencil slipped. She reached for the cold cream. “You’ve
what?
”

“Married Paul.”

“Does he know?” asked Lotte tartly.

“Who?”

Come to think of it, it was no time for wit. Besides, the young seldom understand. “Charlie.”

“We’re going to run away.”

Lotte frowned. “I don’t give a damn about that. I
can
tell you what you’re going to do right now.” (I must remember to be casual. So long as I remain casual, I will not have to take this seriously. One must always discipline one’s self never to take anything seriously. That way, one can usually manage to take it on its own terms. Remember that.) “You’re going to go into your own room and dress, and phone Paul, and tell him to dress, and for the rest of this evening, you’re going to behave yourselves. If you find that difficult, you can soothe yourself with the knowledge that it is for the last time. What you do later is your own business. I’m not going to have Charlie’s evening spoiled by two very foolish children.”

“I’m not foolish.”

“You realize he doesn’t have a penny, of course.”

“I have some money. Besides, he likes to teach golf. There’s nothing wrong with teaching golf.”

“I never said there was. But you know what he is, as well as I do.”

“He doesn’t like it. He told me so himself, when we drove home from that horrible evening. He doesn’t like sophisticated people very much.”

“Whether he likes them or not doesn’t have anything to do with it. We all have to do things we don’t like. And what’s more, we usually want to.”

“He’s in love with me.”

“Love, fiddlesticks!”

“I’m twenty-three. I have to have somebody. And I like him.”

Lotte was a world older than that. But there is nothing you can do. They do it all to themselves. The best you can do is speed them on their way. But she needed a moment, all the same, and when we need a moment, we scold or give advice.

My God, she’s what I used to be, she thought. She let the expression on her face soften. She was furious, not with Unne, but with the world. It was such a shame. For some reason she remembered her own portrait, done as a bust by Renée Sintenis, in the best bronze, thirty years ago, with a firm chin and sun-swept hair. She turned back to her mirror and responsibility.

“Unne?”

“Yes.”

“Make Paul go through with tonight. Just be there. Don’t tell Charlie anything. Tonight means a lot to him. Then run away if you like. I’ll tell him myself. But do this, please, for me.” So long as she worried about Charlie, she wouldn’t have to worry about herself.

Unne looked stubborn.

“I won’t pretend I like it, but I’ll see you through,” said Lotte.

Shyly, Lotte could see her face in the mirror, Unne smiled, so Lotte smiled back.

“That’s better,” she said. “Now go dress. There isn’t much time.”

In the mirror she watched Unne get up and come over to her. The poor child looked like crying. Lotte shut her eyes, and felt on the back of her neck a kiss, one of the few sincere ones, she supposed. When she opened her eyes, Unne had gone.

She had been so beautiful, and now the years might make her wan. Lotte hoped not. She stared at the empty mirror. She stared at the empty chair. And then she went on with what she had been doing. Fortunately coincidence provides us with these helpful tasks. There is no point in crying over spilt milk. It had always seemed to her a silly phrase. Try as she would, she could never imagine anyone ever having literally done so, except possibly at the Petit Hameau, in a
tableau
vivant.

She finished, took the towel from around her neck, but did not get up immediately.

There had been a very poor film a few years back, called
The
Golden
Coach,
one of those international efforts, with Anna Magnani, and directed by Renoir or Réné Clair, she couldn’t remember which. When the money comes from one country, the skill from another, and the talent from a third, the result is seldom good. It had been about strolling eighteenth-century players in Peru. The color had been admired. Dennis King had been admired. Anna Magnani had been admired. On the whole it had been terrible.

But at the end it suddenly became moving. Anna Magnani saw to that. She has lost her lover, or she has lost what she
loved, it is all the same. She decides to go away. She is only a
commedia
dell
’
arte
figure. The show must go on.

At the end of the performance, the curtain closes, she steps from behind it, and the
Fenice
disappears, the Lima opera house disappears, as she addresses the audience, and we are not in that opera house, after the comedy, but in some other comedy, played to no audience at all, in the Cosmic Opera House.

She stands there, a battered, cheerful, and triumphant woman. She has been through entirely too much. But she is an entertainer, even if there is no audience any more, so she must entertain.

“And do you miss him?” asks a voice offstage, probing like a water douser.

“Perhaps,” she says, and shrugs. She makes a moue. She knows how she feels, but she needs a second to decide how much she is willing to feel it. “Perhaps a little.”

It is the end of the film, but there is no applause. In the Cosmic Opera House there never is. But there is the right to say “perhaps.”

Lotte gazed into the empty mirror. Yes, there she was. It had not touched her. Then she, too, went downstairs, but into no music, into nothing at all.

It is impossible to make one’s heartbreak intelligible to those who have broken it, not by what they have done to us, but to themselves. We did so want to save them. But since they would not understand, we do the wiser to keep mum. It would be better, however, if they did not apologize for what they have done to us, instead. That only makes it worse.

SHE
looked, of course, she was always careful about such things, wonderful. Knowing that helped.

Things seemed to be going well. Not only is one misunderstood, but one can scarcely understand one’s self. As it is, one is only a luceole, a word Charlie always applies to the employees of Time Inc., and nobody ever catches the pun, which must displease him, poor dear.

She looked around her. They were up to the prizes. A prize should go for inconsequence. We all need inconsequence from time to time, it should be encouraged, but then prizes are seldom given to our real desires. She found herself presenting the best actress with a statuette, and meaninglessness is not the same thing, alas. To be inconsequent requires an effort, and effort, obviously, was not quite what this young woman had made.

Charlie seemed to be having a lovely time. Novelists so seldom get to occupy a stage. He was gracious to everyone, and she had to admit he did his impersonation well. The monocle, in particular, was effective. She was pleased for him. She was pleased for herself. She liked the films, when you came right down to it. Not every fool’s paradise is inhabited by only fools. An amazing number of quite respectable people take refuge there. After all, it’s pretty country.

*

The greatest living German novelist and his dog Tray, thought Charlie, admiring the sea below him of burnished faces. Like Sir Walter Scott and Maida, except that everybody
loved Sir Walter Scott, or pretended to, and if I had a dog Tray it would probably just rape the photographer, whereas Maida sighed wearily and headed for the door, if she so much as smelled portrait paint. Except that the two greatest living German novelists are both dead, particularly Musil. Of course there’s Günter Grass, but he always looks as though he’d had a hard morning with his embalmer, and besides, he’s just the greatest living German novelist this year. Next year things may be better. And I forgot Böll. I always do. I suppose, like me, he’ll wind up writing about refugees, but he isn’t old enough to write about mine. He’ll have to wait for the next crop, not that he’ll have to wait long.

It was about time to get to work. He was glad he was pleased with himself tonight, otherwise the strong odor of fish exuded by the prize committee might have bothered him. He regarded his audience with satisfaction. I may not have gotten a prize, he thought, that’s the price of popularity, you don’t, but at least they know who I am. Happily, he handed over the Grand Prix Luxembourgeois to its first and slightly embarrassed Communist, a scruffy little man from Poland. In Poland they have to worry more about these things than they do at home.

*

The prize award dinner was followed by a second meal, at which it was possible actually to eat, instead of merely choking down a few sour grapes and a bad
Consommé
Madri
lène.
The other judges left as soon as they could. They were probably on circuit. But most of the judged stayed on to pick up Lotte’s opening at the Casino tomorrow.

Charlie presided at this second supper, the surrogate father with his surrogate family. He looked secure, and soon whipped up the right Alice in Wonderland feeling. Give him the right materials, and he usually could. Paul was being
either cowardly or kind, it would be hard to say which, but since the two are linked characteristics, perhaps it didn’t greatly matter. Only Unne was sitting bolt upright. Unne looked somehow sorry. She had that manner the well-bred always have of suggesting that though they are never out of place, the particular world in which they are sitting at the moment most certainly is. When we are well-to-do we go into charity work. It is an obligation. It helps to pass the time.

All the same, we are all nice people, thought Lotte, that’s what makes us all such hell.

They went upstairs early, which is to say, at half past one. Unne did not seem to care for it when Paul went obediently into Charlie’s suite, ahead of Charlie.

That wasn’t sporting of her, though understandable, Lotte supposed. When the sophistication slips, it is possible to see the face of the lost child underneath. But Lotte would be up early, and felt too tired to be sympathetic. She sent Unne to bed.

THEY
met in Lotte’s sitting room at seven, in a gray light to which she was so unaccustomed that at first she thought the room must have been redecorated during the night.

Unne was invulnerable and tender in a tailored suit. Paul looked rumpled. He was running away, of course. He had exactly that shamefaced schoolboy look. So was Unne. We cannot, so they say, run away from ourselves. Nonetheless, when we meet ourselves again after the trip, the change may
have done us good: we may be kinder. Lotte wished them well.

But for Unne she felt profoundly sorry. It must be terrible to feel so much, and yet to put up with so little, so early on as twenty-three.

She took them downstairs, saw them drive off in a rented car, waited until it had turned its corner, came back, undressed and lay down, but of course she couldn’t sleep, and the only thing in the room to read was a copy of Roberts’s
Rules
of
Order
, which Miss Campendonck must have left behind. Unless you are a clubwoman, it is not an exciting book.

Did she mind? She thought about it, and discovered, regretfully, that she didn’t. After a certain age one cannot be romantic either about one’s self or other people any more, lonely or not. One’s always glad when it’s over. Charlie, she suspected, would feel differently. She would have to cope with that. But not just now.

*

The door opened and in came Miss Campendonck, wearing a flannel dressing gown, her hair in rat curlers.

“This is bad for you, when you have to go on tonight. Give me that book,” she said, looked at what it was, and put it down. “You weren’t reading,” she said accusingly.

“No.”

“Does
he
know?”

“I don’t think so. I said I’d tell him.”

“Not much spine, that young man.”

Miss Campendonck sniffed. And then, surprisingly, though as usual, with no nonsense about her anywhere, she said, “Poor thing, I always liked her. At least she’s made
her
mistake early. When she divorces
him
, it won’t be too late to begin again.”

Alas, the Unnes of this world seldom divorce the Pauls, at
least, not until too late. They just go on and on, hoping there will be a change, and of course there isn’t any, until it is too late to make a change themselves. They’re fifty-three.

It was a great waste. But you couldn’t explain that to Miss Campendonck. Miss Campendonck would not have understood. She was not, herself, a married lady.

And yet she seemed to understand something. With one of those alarming glimpses she allowed you, sometimes, into her own sub-basement, where a naked light burned permanently in an empty room, Miss Campendonck said, “Perhaps you’d better go
see
the old devil at that. You won’t get any
sleep
until you do.” To shade that light, she made it an order, and left the room before Lotte could do anything so crude as to suspect her of humanity.

Lotte got up and went along the corridor.