Villa America (38 page)
Authors: Liza Klaussmann
“All right,” she said.
Sara watched as she rose and stood back from the table, disappearing a little into the darkness. The guests hushed, and there was only the sound of the candles hissing and the cicadas and the birdsong as Ada placed her hand on her diaphragm.
She drew in her breath, and Sara, reflexively, did the same.
“An die Musik”—“To Music.” Ada’s
voix blanche,
clear, pure, unwavering, rose and floated over them, expressing all the sweetness, all the gratitude, all the sadness of Schubert’s music.
O lovely Art, in how many gray hours,
When life’s fierce orbit ensnared me,
Have you kindled my heart to warm love
Sara knew it from her youth traveling around Chicago, New York, London, with her mother and Hoytie and Olga. The warm realm of that still time, she just a sleepwalker then. She knew it from the concerts played at the house in East Hampton while she ran on the lawn, down to the beach, her hat falling on the grass behind her. She knew it from the drawing rooms in which she and Gerald had fallen in love; knew it from houses in which they’d made love. All that time forgotten that had brought them here, to this moment.
When Ada finished, none of them spoke. Sara realized that she had tears coursing down her cheeks. Ada sat back down. It took a moment before the gentlemen started clapping, and Ellen Barry, her eyes wet too, reached across Scott and took Sara’s hand.
“Do you know, I’m just so very happy right now,” she said.
Sara could only nod.
Gerald stood: “To Ada.”
“To Ada,” they cried.
By the time dessert had been finished and cleared, and Tintine had brought out the coffee and brandy, Gerald was feeling a little more relaxed. Whatever currents had been at work earlier in the evening seemed to have lessened, and some kind of peace had settled over them, starting with Ada’s singing.
He was chatting to Ada about music when he heard Scott’s raised voice. They both turned, Ada leaning forward a bit.
“What is it, Scott?” she said.
“I’m trying to talk to Gerald,” he said.
“Well, you’re at the other end of the table,” Ada said, laughing.
“Gerald,” Scott said, and Gerald had a sinking feeling. The timbre of Scott’s voice indicated that he had passed the point of social conversation.
“Yes, Scott. What can I do for you?”
He saw Sara try to take Scott’s hand, presumably to distract him, but he waved her away, saying: “I
will
ask it.”
From the end of the table, Sara gave Gerald a little warning shake of her head.
“Gerald,” Scott began again. “When did you and Sara first have sex? Did you do it before you were married? Sara won’t answer me.”
Next to Gerald, Phil groaned, putting his head in his hands. “Not this again.”
“I don’t care what
you
think, Phil Barry,” Scott said. “This is between me and Gerald.”
“Scott,” Gerald said. “Really—”
“Do you still have sex? Or are you the kind of man who is more concerned with your art? That kind of man. Or the kind who gives so much of himself that there’s nothing left over for your wife?”
“Christ, Scott,” Gerald said, but he felt he had to say something to shut him up. “Sara and I are very happy.” He could feel Ernest’s eyes on him, boring holes in him.
“Yes, but do you have the essence left in you?”
Gerald just stared at him. “What essence?”
“The essence of a real man, of a physical man who can love a woman.”
Gerald felt the blood leaving his body.
Before he could react, Sara stepped in.
“Scott,” she said, her voice cold and hard, “you think if you just ask enough questions, you’ll get to know what people are like, but you won’t. You don’t really know anything at all about people.”
Even in the candlelight, Gerald could see Scott’s face drawing in on itself, the skin tightening, flushing with rage. Scott rose, shaking, from the table and pointed a finger at Sara.
“How
dare
you? No one says that to me.”
“Really?” Sara said, arching an eyebrow. “Is that right, Scott? Would you like me to repeat it?”
When Scott didn’t respond, Sara stood, slammed a palm on the table, and said, enunciating slowly: “You…don’t…know…
anything
…about…people.”
Scott stared at her. He picked up his wineglass, one of the Venetian glass ones Sara loved so much, and threw it over the wall. He looked back at her, as if to make sure he’d hit his mark. Then he picked up Ellen’s and snatched Ernest’s clean out of his hand and did the same.
“Scott.” Gerald stood too, sheer fury coming over him. “Stop that right now.”
Scott hurled another.
Archie got up quickly and grabbed Scott. He started dragging him off, but Scott ripped away from him.
“Scott,” Archie said. “I think you should behave.”
Scott sneered, mimicking: “‘Scott, I think you should behave.’ You know what I think?” Scott asked, and he threw a roundhouse punch at Archie, hitting him square in the jaw.
Archie rubbed it a minute. Then, calm as anything, he clocked Scott—the sound like the pop of a cork—and knocked him out cold.
“Oh my God,” Phil said. “It’s just like college.”
“But better,” Ellen said. “I never went to college.”
Archie and Gerald picked Scott up from the terrace and carried him out to his car, Zelda trailing behind them.
“I’ll drive them home and come back for Ada,” Archie said.
“Dow-Dow,” Zelda said.
“Zelda,” Gerald said coldly. “Put him to bed. And when he wakes up, tell your husband he is not welcome here for three weeks. And not to bother writing.”
Zelda sighed but nodded and got in the passenger seat. “Will you tell Say-ra that I had just the most splendid evening?”
Gerald shook his head and left Archie to it.
Back inside the villa, Gerald leaned against the front door, Owen’s words running through his mind:
Could you live without it? Without the spectacle and the costumes and the fucking disguises…The endless conversations about ideas, and the misunderstandings…Could you, G.?
It was a question without an answer. Could he live without Ada’s singing “An die Musik” on a warm August night? Could he live without Baoth playing the guitar, one plump arm wrapped around Sara’s golden-brown neck? Could he live without his wife slamming her hand on the table and giving Scott Fitzgerald a run for his money? But then, could he also continue to live
with
the endless search for double meanings in his friends’ words, the fear of being just a bit
too
this or just a bit
too
that, of wasting his essence, as Scott had said, on a frantic performance? Could he live with being not what he seemed?
“There you are.”
Of course it was Ernest.
“Just bundled them off to the pulse of a motorcar,” Gerald said. “Our charming mutual friends.” Did he sound breezy and nonchalant, or did he sound…something else?
“Archie’s pretty tough,” Ernest said. “I had no idea. Those glasses hide it pretty well. Then again, Scott’s a soft touch.”
“I suppose we must be grateful for that,” Gerald said.
“Mmm,” Ernest said. “So why are you hanging back here?”
“Just recalibrating,” Gerald said.
“He said some awfully hard things.” Ernest’s dark brown eyes, almost black, really, regarded Gerald lazily.
“I was sorry to hear about you and Hadley. Is it decided?”
“I don’t know,” Ernest said. “In a way, I guess it doesn’t matter; she’s always been a kind of truth to me. A part of growing up, of where we came from. That won’t change.”
“I suppose there are different kinds of truths,” Gerald said.
“You think so?” Ernest put his hand on the wall near Gerald’s head and leaned in, his face closer than Gerald would have liked. He looked at him awhile and then said: “Do you think Scott’s a fairy?”
“No,” Gerald said.
“Me either,” Ernest said, not taking his gaze away from Gerald.
Gerald could smell his breath, sour from the booze.
“You know, I don’t mind a fairy like that pilot friend of yours. Owen.” His mouth went very round when he pronounced the
O.
Gerald stared at the opposite wall, silent.
“Do you mind a fairy like that?”
“No,” Gerald said.
Ernest looked at him a while longer, then smiled. “I didn’t think so,” he said and pushed himself away, chuckling. “That’s exactly what I thought.”
Gerald was awoken the next morning in the touring car, damp from sleeping in the open air of Owen’s field. He’d driven up the night before after everyone had gone to bed, determined to wait for him, but he had apparently fallen asleep.
It was Owen’s man, the mechanic, Eugene, who was shaking his shoulder, calling “Monsieur Murphy.”
“Yes,” Gerald said, sitting up as straight as he could, wiping some spit from the corner of his mouth. Somewhere he could hear church bells ringing. It was Sunday. He looked at Eugene. “I was looking for Monsieur Chambers,” he said. “I…”
“Monsieur Chambers is gone,” Eugene said.
“Gone?” Gerald was trying to shake himself into a semblance of normalcy. “Where did he go?”
“I don’t know.” Eugene shrugged.
“No, I mean…” He stopped. “What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“He’s gone, gone,” Eugene said. “You must not be here.”
“I’m sorry, what are you saying? What does gone, gone—”
“Monsieur Murphy.” Eugene rested his hand on his shoulder.
Gerald looked at it.
“Monsieur Chambers, he has left. He received a telegram and he…
il est engagé un autre pilote
…for this.” The mechanic spread his arms towards the field. “He is not coming back.”
“I…”
“You should go.”
“Did he leave a note for me?”
“You must go, Monsieur Murphy.”
“Damn it, Eugene. Where has he gone?”
“I’m sorry,” Eugene said.
“What…what am I supposed to do?” Gerald asked.
But the Frenchman just shook his head, unable or unwilling to answer.
M. Gerald Murphy
Villa America
Antibes
France
November 3, 1927
Herr Owen Chambers
Gossowstraße 13
Berlin-Schöneberg
Germany
Dear Owen,
I don’t know if this is the correct address, but, like Proust, I have been searching for you and was able to finally track down something resembling a place of residence. Eugene is blameless in this; he was as good as his word (or what I assume was his word to you) and never breathed even the smallest hint about where you were.
But I do know something about you, having loved—and still loving—you as I do. I have never forgotten a single word of what we’ve said to each other, not even seemingly innocuous comments about how much pilots could make in Berlin.
I won’t say that I don’t understand why you went away and left me without a word, a note, an explanation. Our whole time together is explanation enough, what it meant to you and to me, and what was impossible.
More than a year has passed, a whole year in my life where some essential part of me has been wasted, is atrophied like an unused muscle. A winter; another spring, with the sound of birds’ eggs cracking in your field in the silence of the night; a summer full of the smell of eucalyptus and all the shades of blue in the sea and in the evening sky; and a fall, the grass turning brown and cold winds coming down from the Esterel Mountains across your bay in Agay; all of this has passed. And now I face another winter, another season without you.
I won’t write to you of all the small things that remind me of you every day, which serve only to break my heart a little more each time. Or about the children, who are growing, or the new boat that has never had your body on it and is therefore useless to me, or the people I have seen who ask of you. Why would you want to know about these things?
What am I to you? I often ask myself this and have no answer. Could I will you back with the kind of will you so believe in? Can my poor heart call you back to me out of sheer loneliness?
My language is changing, I notice this sometimes, and I think of you. I am quiet more often now; I do not always want to talk about everything, wear it all out through exposure—the endless ideas, as you said once. This is your language, this silence, this watchfulness. You have altered me, and now I carry you with me. You are part of me. But you are also lost to me.
If I could call you back, through a letter, a word, a signal on the wind, or the image of a small camp bed and a woolen blanket in a leaning barn, then I call you back now. If volition is all there is, if it is as strong as you say, you will come.
G.
M. Gerald Murphy
Villa America
Antibes
France
February 1928
Herr Owen Chambers
Gossowstraße 13
Berlin-Schöneberg
Germany
Dear Owen,
I don’t know if you are receiving these letters. This will make four, and I am beginning to feel as if I’m writing into a void. Or maybe they are slipping through the mail slot of some hausfrau in Berlin, who is wondering what is wrong with this crazy American man. Perhaps, between her washing and cooking, she sits down and puzzles over my words, eking out their meanings and pondering the fate of this other American, the pilot. What has become of him? Has he found someone else? Is he dead? I don’t know why in my mind these are the only two options. Except, perhaps, it’s that they’re the two that would crush me, once and for all.
Here, France—our France, anyway—is changing. All of the people we counted on as immutable, as
like
us—as family, I suppose—seem to be leaving, returning to America, called back by some mysterious tie that neither Sara nor I feel. We ask ourselves sometimes if we are missing some critical loyalty or understanding of our home country. How is it that
we
feel we could
never
return when everyone we love has left or is leaving?
(Do you feel this too? Do you ever yearn to go back to your island or anywhere else? I wish I knew what you were thinking, and seeing, and feeling. My love.)
Pauline is pregnant and she and Ernest are leaving soon for Key West. They want their child to be born on American soil, Ernest tells Sara. Archie and Ada have bought a farm in Conway, Massachusetts, and are also departing. Zelda and Scott are in Delaware (although who knows? They may turn up, like a couple of bad but dear pennies). And the Barrys and Don Stewart are bound for New York.
Then there is Dos, who remains blessedly nomadic; he’s headed for Russia soon, to study socialism, and is as idealistic as ever, which comforts me and gives me hope for the future.
So there it is: The tent is folding, the circus moving on.
Vladimir, good man that he is, is still here, although he and I never speak of you. I don’t know why. Maybe he knows where you are and what you’re doing and is under orders not to tell me. If that is the case, then you may already know that he is courting a woman in town, though I’m not sure if it’s really all that serious.
As for Sara. Do I write about her? Do I tell you how she is just the same? How she said to Scott in Paris last spring when he tried to kiss her (again), “You really should stop that, you might catch something”? The thing is, I must tell you of her, because she is a part of us too.
I think perhaps you always thought it was you on the outside, me in the middle, and Sara on the inside. But there have been many times when I felt that I was the one on the outside—you and Sara are both strong; you believe in yourselves and in your ability to choose your own lives in a way that I have never been capable of. And she, too, must have felt like the odd man out at times. Have any of us been well served by this?
The idea of family is one I continue to cling to, despite the fact that the one I grew up with means nothing to me and the one made up of my peers is now seemingly disintegrating. Only the one that I have created with Sara remains constant.
Lately, I’ve begun to wonder if perhaps that tie is stronger than I think, strong enough for me to at least tell her the truth about myself, about us. Some people say that’s what makes a man, honesty; I still don’t know how one identifies that mythical and elusive figure. I know what Ernest would say, but when I think of a man, I think of you.
I think of you all the time, Owen. I still have no answers, no solutions to the problem that drove you away from me. But I feel that I’m beginning to at least see it more honestly. Is that worth anything to you?
I may never know. Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, whomever you’re loving, I remain constantly yours,
G.
M. Gerald Murphy
Villa America
Antibes
France
July 1928
Herr Owen Chambers
Gossowstraße 13
Berlin-Schöneberg
Germany
Dear Owen,
I can’t tell you what it meant to get your letter. And what you said about what you feel for me. What you feel still. And that you’re alive with me on this planet. And that you’ll come back. You’ll come back. Is it possible?
I know I can’t expect more than the visit you promise in August, but all I want is a moment, just to sit and be quiet with you and know you’re there beside me. Not to have to turn to make sure you really exist. Just to know.
What you said in your letter, about that one night—the only whole night—we were able to spend together in your rooms above the café in Agay. How it was the only time since you were a child that you awoke to know that someone you loved was beside you. That you could dream, even terrible dreams, without fear, with the certainty that there was another who would hold your hand, who would wake you up if you cried or called out. I know what it means. It is how I feel about you being alive.
I am afraid to write more about this now, afraid that I will revert back to that person in the spectacle, with the costumes and the fucking disguises. Those words you said haunt me even now, and in
my
nightmares, that is what I hear.
So we will talk of other things. How La Garoupe has been taken over by Riviera arrivistes who seem completely unaware that this beach belongs to us. To remedy this, Sara has encouraged the children to throw wet sand and seaweed around in a wanton manner and let the dogs run wild over their picnics.
Bob Benchley and his wife, Gertrude, will be coming to stay at the Ferme des Orangers, which is what Sara named the little farmhouse across the road, the one she tried to persuade you to move into. Benchley calls it La Ferme Dérangée. I thought that might amuse you.
I have started a new painting,
Portrait.
I don’t want to say anything about it just yet, only that it is different, or at least it feels different, than the others. There’s something in it…yet I don’t know if what I imagine in my mind is achievable on the canvas. We shall see.
As for your news, of course we know that politics exist, but the tensions you describe in Berlin are not visible here or on the streets of Paris. Or New York, at least from what I’ve seen. Poverty, yes, but not in the way of smashed beer bottles and strange militant rallies and such. Although perhaps we are just not in the path of such things. Dos would know.
His reports from Russia are fascinating, and I wonder what those German Communists you describe would make of it. If that is the dream they’re fighting for. He writes that he is as of yet undecided whether the extreme hardship is a necessity, in order to cleanse the past and make way for something greater, or only the sad result of that banal evil, centralized oppression. I certainly didn’t know how to respond to
that
.
Lastly, I’ve been up to your land and the tree on the edge of the field still stands, and you can see the stars through it at night. I just thought you should know.
None of this seems real. It won’t until you are returned. I am afraid, and happy, all at once. I should stop, I am stopping, before I ruin it.
Just come back.
G.
