Two Weeks in Another Town (42 page)

“Clara Delaney,” he began flatly, “refuses to go visit Maurice in the hospital.”

“Good,” Barzelli said. “He can die in peace if he has to.”

“No,” Jack said. “It’s the one thing he wants, that he thinks he must have.”

“Did he say that?” Barzelli asked, harshly.

“Yes.”

“Imagine that. That dry washrag of a woman.” She shook her head in wonder. Then she shrugged. “Well, even the worst atheists call for the priest when they think they’re going to die. So—Signora Delaney won’t go to the hospital.
Tragedia.
How does that concern me?”

“Delaney asked me to ask you please not to visit him in the hospital,” Jack said, clumsily. “He says if his wife hears you’ve visited him, she’ll never come to his room…”

For a moment, a look of puzzlement, incredulity, spread over Barzelli’s face. Then she put her head back and laughed aloud. Her laugh was merry and deep and innocent. At that moment, Jack hated her and had an overpowering impulse to lean over and kiss, the gentlest and hungriest of kisses, the smooth, powerful throat, where it swept up from her bare shoulders. Deliberately, he sat farther back in his chair, averting his eyes. Abruptly, Barzelli stopped laughing.
“Mamma mia,”
she said. “American women! They belong in museums! Imagine that! And what do you do after you leave me, Mr. Andrus?” she asked, biting the words off. “Do you go to every one of the fifty women that Maurice Delaney has slept with since he was married and request them, for the sake of Mrs. Delaney, not to visit the great man in the hospital?” She jumped up and strode back and forth, like a prowling animal in a cage, her bare feet padding on the marble floor with a surprisingly hard, calloused noise. “For your information, Mr. Andrus,” she said angrily, “and for Mr. Delaney’s information, too, let me tell you that I had no intention of visiting him in the hospital. I hate sick men. I avoid them. They disgust me. Tell that to Mr. and Mrs. Delaney. Tell that to the lovebirds.”

Jack stood up, getting ready to leave. Every time he changed his position abruptly, he felt dizzy and a haze seemed to obscure his vision. Now the sight of Barzelli prowling back and forth, barefooted and furious against the background of neon-lighted portraits, all considerably out of focus, was intolerable to him. He longed to be alone in the car with Guido, driving quietly through the dark night back to his own room.

“One more thing you can tell her,” Barzelli was saying, her lips curled back in a grimace of scorn. “Her husband has not made love to me. Not ever. He has slept in the same bed with me, but he has not made love to me. Is that sufficiently clear? Should I write it out in Italian? You can have it translated by the clerk in your hotel.
He has not made love to me.
It may be of interest to her. It is of no interest to me. American men, too,” she said. “Maybe they belong in museums, too!”

Suddenly she regained control of herself. She stood absolutely still, leaning over the back of a chair, staring coldly at Jack. “It is of no consequence,” she said. “Why not be calm? Tell Maurice I would like him to get well. Why not?” She shrugged. “It does me no harm. Now, it is really very late and we are all going to have an unpleasant day tomorrow, we must sleep.” She indicated a door that led into the hallway. “You do not have to go through the young men again. I see that they disturb you.”

K
EEP OUT OF THE
bedrooms of your friends, Jack thought, as he sat beside Guido, on the road back to Rome past the tombs; or even out of the living rooms of the friends of your friends—there are unpleasant mysteries hidden in such places.

He closed his eyes and dozed and awoke in the swiftly moving car only as it swept up the hill toward the Quirinal. The figures of the two horse tamers at the heads of their enormous stone steeds loomed in the dark square. The sentries stood with their machine pistols in front of the president’s palace.

“Nothing more tonight, Guido,” Jack said as they drove up under the
portico
of his hotel, a few minutes later. “But I’m afraid I’ll need you in the morning at about eight fifteen. I’m sorry for today…”

“No need to be sorry, monsieur,” Guido said. “When disaster strikes, one expects to lose a little sleep.”

Jack looked across at the grave, handsome face, and thought how patient and capable and resilient the man was, how gentle and understanding. He has lessons to teach all of us whose errands he has run this Sunday, Jack thought. Hard-working, graceful, sweet-tempered and enduring, Guido seemed, at that moment, to represent the deepest values, the permanent, marvelous, ever-replenished gifts of his race. It was one of the blackest marks against Guido’s country, Jack felt, that it could find nothing better for him to do than to drive the spoiled, invading children of the twentieth century around the city of Rome. I must do something for him, Jack thought, I must do something enormous.

“Tell me, Guido,” Jack said, “if you had some money, what would you do?”

“Some money?” Guido asked, politely puzzled. “How much money?”

“A great deal,” Jack said.

Guido thought for a moment. “I would take my wife and my three children to Toulon for a week,” he said, “and visit the vineyard and the lady for whom I worked during the war.”

Two hundred, two hundred and fifty dollars, Jack calculated. Hardly more. In Guido’s calculation, a great deal of money. Well, Jack decided, I’m going to give it to him. When they pay me. My tribute to Italy.

He sighed. He was tired and it took an effort to get out of the car. “Good night, Guido,” he said. “See you in the morning.” Let the gift come as a surprise.

“Good night, monsieur,” Guido said. “Sleep well.”

He drove off.

The concierge had three messages for him. They all said the same thing. Call Operator 382 in Paris, Parigi, the hotel operator had written. The first one had come in at noon, the last one only a half-hour ago. Jack looked at his watch. It was only ten minutes past one. So much had happened that day that it seemed impossible that it was only ten minutes past one. He suddenly realized that he was very hungry and he ordered a bottle of beer and some cheese and bread to be sent up to his room. As he waited for the elevator, crushing the three bits of paper in his hand, he remembered the morning, with Bresach waiting for him in the lobby, and Veronica’s telegram,
“Don’t worry, dearest…”
Fifteen hours ago. Another era, when people could write, Don’t worry, dearest. Zurich, he remembered. How were the heart cases in Zurich tonight, how did the Swiss stand on the subject of the fidelity of Delaney to his wife, what was the opinion, in that neutral country, of Barzelli and her three drunkards?

The telephone was ringing as he unlocked the door to his apartment. Jack switched on the light and went over to the desk and said, “Hello, hello…”

“You don’t have to snap my head off,” a woman’s voice said, with a little laugh.

“Who’s this?” Jack asked, although he knew.

“You know who it is, Jack.”

“Carlotta,” Jack said flatly. He hadn’t spoken to her since the morning in California, and had only communicated with her through lawyers, and it had been nearly ten years, but he knew. “I thought I saw you when I was leaving the hospital.”

“You don’t sound overjoyed to hear my voice,” she said.

“Carlotta,” he said, “I’ve had a hard day and I’m tired and there are several calls I have to make…”

“I’m down on the third floor,” she said, “with Stiles and a bottle of champagne. Why don’t you join us?”

“Tell Stiles he’d better go home and go to sleep,” Jack said. “He’s called for nine o’clock in the morning. And, while you’re at it, you can tell him to lay off the champagne.”

“I’ll tell him all those things,” Carlotta said. “I’ll tell him we want to be alone. I’m sure he’ll understand.”

“I’m not coming down,” Jack said.

“That’s not very friendly, Jack,” she said.

“I don’t feel very friendly.”

“After all these years.” Now she was playing, mockingly, at being hurt. “I’ve forgotten any grudges I might have held against you…”

“Grudges…” Jack began to cut in. Then he stopped. He wasn’t going to argue with Carlotta. Not tonight. “What the hell are you doing in Rome, anyway?”

“I was in London, having lunch,” Carlotta said, “and I heard the news over the radio.”

“What news?” Jack asked confusedly.

“About Maurice. I got the first plane I could. After all, he’s one of the oldest friends I have in the world. And the radio sounded so ominous…as though he…” She interrupted herself. “They wouldn’t let me in to see him at the hospital and all they told me was that he was doing as well as could be expected…Jack…” Her voice sank. “Is he dying?”

“Probably not.”

“Have you seen him?”

“Yes. For a minute.”

“What was he like?”

Jack hesitated. What was he like? He was like Maurice Delaney, that was what he was like. Once more he was worrying about a silly movie and a silly woman, more or less as usual, except that this time he was doing it flat on his back in a hospital bed, taking oxygen. “His spirit was high,” Jack said. That much was approximately the truth. “He said he wasn’t afraid of dying.”

“Oh, poor Maurice. Do you think they’ll let you see him tomorrow?”

“I imagine so.”

“Will you tell him I’m here, Jack?”

“Yes.”

“And will you tell him I’ll stay here until he’s better and that I want to see him?”

“Yes.”

“You sound terribly impatient with me, Jack,” Carlotta said reproachfully.

“I’m trying to reach Paris.”

“After that, don’t you want to come down here? Just for a minute…I’m so…so…
curious
about you.” She laughed.

“I’m sorry, Carlotta. Not tonight.”

“Jack, will you answer one question for me?”

“What’s that?”

“Do you hate me?”

Jack sighed. After Clara and Barzelli, it was easy to hate the entire female sex. “No,” he said flatly, “I don’t hate you, Carlotta. Good night.”

“Good night,” she said.

He hung up the phone, and sat hunched over it on the desk, with his overcoat on, staring at it. Carlotta. Along with everything else, Carlotta.

Then the phone rang again. He let it ring three times, sitting with his hand on it, then picked it up. It was Paris, asking if this was Mr. John Andrus, and then he heard his wife’s voice, against a background of music and other voices.

“Jack, Jack, can you hear me?” Hélène was saying, her voice faraway and indistinct, muffled by distance and the pulsating sound of something that sounded like a guitar. “Are you all right, Jack? I read it, in the papers this morning—isn’t it awful—and I’ve been trying to call you all day. Can you hear me, Jack?”

“Barely,” Jack said. He had the feeling that there was something puzzling in what she had said, but he was too tired to figure it out. “What’s that noise behind you?”

“I’m at Bert and Vivian’s,” Hélène said. “It’s a party. They have a Russian gypsy here. She’s playing a balalaika and singing. Can you hear me?”

“Well enough,” Jack said. Unreasonably, he was annoyed with her for talking to him from a place where her voice was nearly drowned out by a balalaika and a gypsy.

“I’ve been worrying about you all day,
chéri,”
Hélène was saying. “I’m sure it must be horrible for you.”

You couldn’t have been worrying too much, Jack was tempted to say, if you’re still out at one thirty in the morning, with all those drunks around you. Then he was ashamed of himself for thinking it, and didn’t say it. After all, what was Hélène supposed to do? She had never met Delaney, and she hardly could be expected to sit mournfully by the telephone because, a thousand miles away, he had been brought down by illness. Now the noise of the party swelled and Jack couldn’t make out what his wife was saying. There was just the timbre of her voice, hurried, affectionate, and a little heightened by drink. He listened, dazed with fatigue, vaguely comforted by the tone of love and the feeling that finally, in this long day, there was someone who was interested in helping
him,
rather than demanding something from him. There was a knock on his door and he shouted “Come in,” and the waiter entered with his beer and cheese.

“What’s that?” Hélène said. For the moment the line was absolutely clear and the singing behind her and the other voices had hushed and he could hear her as though she were talking in the next room.

“It’s the waiter with some bread and cheese,” Jack said. “I haven’t eaten all day.” He motioned to the waiter to put the tray down on the desk next to the telephone.

“Oh, Jack, that’s just what I was afraid of,” Hélène said. “You’re not taking care of yourself. Don’t you want me to get on the plane tomorrow and come down there?”

Jack hesitated, watching the waiter open the bottle of beer. He fumbled in his pocket and tossed two hundred lire on the tray for the waiter who bowed ceremoniously to him in thanks.

“Jack,” Hélène said, “did you hear me?”

“Yes, I heard you,” Jack said.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if I came down?”

The idea of having Hélène by his side for the next few days, staving off Carlotta, acting as a buffer against Bresach and Clara, being there to talk over the problems presented by Holt’s offer, was suddenly marvelously attractive.

“Well,” he started to say, “I think…”

There was a burst of laughter over the phone, from the guests at Bert and Vivian’s, and the balalaika and the gypsy voice came loudly over the wire. Now that’s too much, Jack thought, giving in irritably to his nerves. If she wanted so damned much to talk to me, she could have at least found a quiet room to call from. Perversely, he remembered her complaining at the airport that he hadn’t made love to her for two weeks and accusing him of being eager to leave. The claims, ambushes, demands, entrapments, of women. The music on the wire was infuriating him. He felt himself trembling. He knew he didn’t want his wife in this room. He felt cold, unconnected, grateful for the distance between them. Whatever love he was capable of in his exhaustion and worry, he was saving for Delaney. At that moment, he felt, if Hélène pressed him, he might say that he never wanted to see her again.