The Merry Month of May (27 page)

I’ve got to say he did not mess around, Hill. “I’m in deep trouble, Jack—Uncle Jack,” he said.

“Jack is okay,” I said.

“I’m in deep trouble,” he said, staring wildly at the floor, as if it were responsible for whatever it was that had happened to him. For a second I almost expected him to kick it viciously, in revenge.

“Well, it happens to lots of people around your age,” I said. “It even happens to people my age.”

“I’m in love,” he said, dully, and flopped down in my best chair.

I was a little put off, startled. I had thought that that was already understood, between us. So I tried to be light. “Oh,” I said, “I thought it was something serious.”

“Don’t joke around.” He glared at me almost viciously.

Seriously, I said, “I did not mean to joke. I was only trying to get you to loosen up, maybe laugh.”

“Well, don’t. And don’t joke,” Hill said. “Do you know what this is doing to me? What it’s already done?”

“I guess I have some idea. Don’t forget I was married for nine years, before I was divorced. Anyway: So she’s gone.”

“Absolutely. I checked with Weintraub. And with the other guys I know who she made it with. And with the two girls that I know of that she slept with. Not one soul has seen her since Monday night. Not since she was with dad and me.”

I went over to the bar. Hill leaped up from the easy chair and followed me two paces behind as if afraid to let me get anywhere beyond arm’s reach.

I seriously did not know what to say to him. Whether to tell him the truth—or what I was reasonably sure was the truth; or to just tell him nothing. Which would be the worse for him? So many people believe in telling the absolute, unadulterated truth to everyone nowadays. It’s come back into fashion again in this decade. But I didn’t give a damn about the fashion. I wanted to tell him, or not tell him, the thing that would damage him the least. But I mean, or I think I meant, the thing that would damage him the least in the long run.
In the long run.
Not the short run.

“Here,” I said, reaching for a bottle of Scotch. “Have a good stiff belt of this. Maybe it’ll slow you down a little.”

But before I could get him a glass, he seized the bottle out of my hand and downed a good inch of the straight liquor straight from the bottle’s neck. Slowly, he screwed back on the cap.

“I didn’t mean like that,” I said.

“It felt good,” he said. “It
feels
good.” He seemed to be relishing the relieving, releasing burn in his throat and stomach.

“You’ve really got it bad,” I said.

“I sure have.”

I felt a little sick, myself. Certainly I did not want a drink myself.

“You don’t know what it’s like!” he began, in a kind of strangled shout. “You—”

“Hill, I think just about everybody knows what it’s like,” I broke in. “At least, almost everybody. Just about everybody I’ve ever met, anyway,”

“But it can kill you!” he said. “I mean, literally.
Kill
you!”

“It certainly can. Even if you’re not a particularly sensitive soul.”

He went back to the one big chair and flopped down again. “It’s jealousy, I suppose,” he said, rather thoughtfully. “Some kind of jealousy. I don’t want her going out with anybody else.” He paused a moment. “I imagine so much. All sorts of things. All the details. With the boys.
And
the girls. Jealousy. Of some kind.”

I guess it was then that I decided to tell him. The kill that cures, or something like that. Anyway, my main thought was that he would certainly find out about it eventually anyway. Would the preparation not be better coming from me?

“I think I can tell you where you can reach her, Hill, if you want to. By phone, that is. My suspicion is that she is in Cannes. At the Carlton.”

Very slowly, he looked up at me. “With
Dad?”

“I rather suspect so,” I said. “Of course, I could be wrong.”

He did not answer for a little while. Then he said, “Jesus. Jesus Christ.” He seemed to collapse in the big chair.

“But what I don’t see is why you’d want to fall in love with
her,”
I said. Now I found myself desperately talking for time. Was I wrong? Had I made the wrong decision? “Is it because she’s a black girl? And you feel that’s part of your Revolution? You were going to save her? From something? From herself? Why her?” I drew a deep breath; and I objectively, coldly noted that it quivered. “And incidentally, or not incidentally at all perhaps, where is all this philosophy you’ve been preaching me the past year about monogamistic love being for the birds? Remember Anne-Marie taking care of the entire sub-committee? You don’t believe in monogamistic love, remember? That’s crap. Hypocrisy. Crap for us ‘Older Generations’. Your generation has changed all that. No more monogamy. Marriage and all that crap is out. —Unless of course two people, two young people, decide on it together. Remember the preachments you’ve given me? God, you must have given me a hundred lectures.” My breath had run out.

“It’s not the same thing,” he said dully into the empty space. “I want her.”

“Well, let me tell you something,” I said, getting another breath. “I’m afraid you’ve run into one girl, who for whatever reasons of her own, really believes like you once not long ago thought you believed. I can’t understand why you picked on her.”

He did not answer. “But with
Dad,”
he said, finally. It was curious how he capitalized the name when he italicized it.

“But is that so shocking?” I said. “It ought not to be, according to your philosophy.”

His voice was low and so dull, depressed, that it was almost inaudible. “I guess my philosophy’s changed.”

Then quite suddenly he looked at his watch, jumped up from the chair, reached for his jacket. It was almost as if he were being chased, running from the dark shadows of his own thoughts he could not control. “I’ve got to get over to the Odéon. There’s going to be a surprise demonstration at Maubert this evening, students
plus
workers. I’m assigned a crew to shoot it. Look, I’ll see you later, Jack. I’ll call you.”

And before I could agree, or say more, or do anything helpful—or even harmful—he was gone out the door and down the stairs.

From my windows I watched him legging it along the quai, fast. As if those shadows were still after him. I noted that he chose to go left, by way of the Pont de la Tournelle, rather than right toward the footbridge that would lead to Place Maubert itself. That meant he would use the old back road we were all so used to by now.

I sat around my apartment a long time after Hill left. I was trying to decide whether I should try and call Harry in Cannes. Maybe it was my duty. The very possibility of getting a call through to Cannes was highly unlikely. But even if I could, should I? Was it any of my business?

I was flopped down in my one easy chair, looking, I guess, as Hill had when he had been flopped down in it. Certainly I felt as bad. Finally I jumped up myself, much I suppose in the same way Hill had done. Only, I had no place to go.

I wound up at my windows, looking out on the new Paris scene—which hadn’t changed any since I watched Hill legging it off toward Odéon.

Since Friday things had not changed so much on the Île St.-Louis perhaps, but by looking across the river you could see it very plainly. France, or anyway Paris at least, was fast approaching total paralysis. Almost nothing moved over there. Most of the shops were shuttered and closed. And almost no vehicles moved along the Left Bank quais, which together with the Right Bank quais really form the main East-West traffic arteries of the city. Police camions, singly or in large groups, roared along the almost empty avenues. Every now and then Army trucks passed along, stopping at bus stops loading and unloading not soldiers but citizens trying to get someplace. And in all that empty space the traffic lights blinked merrily from red to green to red again, serving only the Army trucks, and the police camions who totally ignored them. It was an eerie sight, like some shot from a science-fiction horror film when for some reason or other the world has ended, and humanity no longer exists. But the traffic lights go on.

Only once in a great while did a normal civilian car move along.

On the Monday, the 20th, with the Métros, autobuses, railroads, etc. all already on strike,—the same Monday on whose evening I had carted old Harry over to the Odéon—there had been immense traffic jams of private vehicles all over the city. They were so immense that hardly any cars could move, literally for hours. Gas stations were beginning to run low on gas by noon, and long lines of cars were stalled blocks long in front of them.

The next day, Tuesday the 21st, even the numbers of private cars had noticeably diminished and it was possible to at least see a taxi now and then, though next to impossible to get one.

And now, on Wednesday, with gasoline supplies exhausted in the city and the taxi companies themselves on strike, nearly everything was at a standstill. Most business offices were closed, because their people could not get in to work. The schools were closed or closing for the same reason. About the only thing that was running near to normal was the truckers bringing food into the city. The big truckers were obviously being urged by their unions not to strike, but to continue food delivery, so that the emergency situation in the city did not turn into real general disaster. Even so, long lines of would-be hoarders-coming along much later than myself, who had been forewarned— stripped shops clean of everything on the shelves; butter, milk, sugar and flour simply disappeared, were not to be had. Most banks had closed on Monday, after a general panic run on their cash supplies, or else were limiting withdrawals to 1,000 francs: 300 dollars.

Everything Martine had predicted for me had been absolutely accurate.

The other most noticeable thing from my windows, besides the emptiness of the avenues and boulevards, was the accumulation of garbage everywhere. The gray or yellow plastic garbage cans, jammed to overflowing, stood outside every building on the sidewalks, and now they had been joined by huge piles of crates and boxes, and by just plain piles of gunk composed of old lettuce leaves, rotting tomatoes, used fruit rinds, rotting meat rejects. The garbage collectors had gone on strike on Saturday the 18th. One had only to look at it and imagine the field day the big gray-black rats from Les Halles and from along the river banks were having. This applied on our Island as well as everywhere else, and when you walked along the quais or streets it was already beginning to stink. Across the river the piles of overflowing crates were so huge, so high that you could see them all the way from here.

Martine had been absolutely right about everything.

I turned from my window feeling a little shiver in my spine, and went to the telephone, to try and get Cannes.

It took me over three hours. The automatic system, never too good in this country anyway, where you dial 15, then 93 and your number, was jammed, so overloaded that after an hour I gave up on it and went directly to the operators. They still maintained a skeleton crew, though they were on strike too of course. It took me half an hour to convince the girl that it was an absolute life-and-death emergency to get her to take the person-to-person call, and even then it took her more than an hour and a half to get such an “emergency” call through. I certainly didn’t feel guilty about lying to her. And now, when I think back on it, I’m not so sure I was all that far off, all that wrong, after all.

By the time I got through it was late enough in the day I was sure that I would catch him at the hotel, and sure enough, he was in his room there.

Harry was immediately guilty, defensive on the phone. I could hear it in his voice. And well he should be, God damn him, I thought grimly.

“Jesus, it must have taken you all day to get a call through to down here,” he said, making it an exclamation.

“It did,” I said. “Or nearly.”

“What is the emergency that would make you go through all that?” he said.

“Well,” I began, but was interrupted.

He began to talk about his film, and the striking of it. It was going very well. All the French groups but one had agreed to go out, and the one was visibly coming around. Of course, Steinerwein was pissed-off at him, was furious. But that couldn’t be helped. That was to be expected. Until Harry had come down, Steinerwein had talked the French crews into staying on because it was an American production, not a French one. Finally Harry ran down. Finally he stopped. “Harry,” I said.

“Yes?”

“Is Samantha Everton with you there?”

He did not answer at once. “How would you ever, how did you ever, figure out a thing like that?”

“I just had a hunch,” I said.

“Well, yes, she is with me,” he said.

“Hill came over to see me,” I said. “He is pretty distraught, to put it mildly. He is in love with Sam, and she has disappeared from the Odéon, and nobody who knows her, including Weintraub, knows where she is. What did you expect, Harry?” I tried to make it crisp.

“Now, listen,” he said.

I interrupted. “Hill knows where she is. That she is with you. I told him my suspicion. I remembered that night three years ago, when you told me about your Fantasy.” I deliberately capitalized the word “fantasy” with my voice.

“Christ. Did you tell him that, too?” I could hear some kind of irritable, irritated squawking somewhere in the room behind him.

“No, no. Of course not. Did you even think I would? I only mentioned it to point out to you that that was what led me to my conclusion.”

“Well, what are you sticking your nose into this for anyway?” Harry said in a near snarl.

“Well, I guess you know how I feel about you, and your family, Harry,” I said. “I helped to raise Hill. A little bit. And you know I love Louisa, too. And after all, I
am
McKenna’s Godfather.”

He smothered the mouthpiece with his hand, but dimly I heard him say, “Shut up! Just shut
up!
I’ll handle this in my own God damn way.”

Apparently he was not successful or forceful enough, because the next thing I heard was Sam Everton’s voice, and it was as full of venom as any voice I’ve ever had directed at me—except possibly my ex-wife’s on a few occasions.