Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald (22 page)

“Is that so?” I said, still annoyed.

“It
is
so. Greatest of my generation, and the top second-rater of all time.”

Top second-rater. I had to laugh, and just like that my annoyance was gone. I said, “It’s good that you’ve got it all in proper perspective.”

I tried the wine; it had a dark, velvety flavor, like blackberries and vanilla and ancient hillside moss. Bats swooped past above the olive trees, keeping those bloodthirsty mosquitoes at bay. A church bell tolled in the distance. Nearer to us, a dog barked halfheartedly. The scent of lavender floated up the hillside from where it grew among the rocks at the sea’s edge.

Scott said, “This is the place where we make it all happen. I can feel it.”

“Well, I do have to say it’s nice to hear you sound so certain again.”

“It’s nice to feel certain. It’s been a tough couple of years.”

“We did pretty well, though,” I said. “There were some good times.”

“Too many. I’m a wreck. Spongy”—he pinched his stomach, which did have some rolls now—“lazy, and my production is way, way off. Do you realize that for two years—more than two years, in fact—I hardly produced anything? One
failed
play, half a dozen stories, a few reviews, and a few articles. That was it, before I locked myself up and did those stories over the winter. This novel should’ve been
finished
a year ago. I’m twenty-seven years old. Time is running out.”

“Running out how?” Stars had appeared now, and the moon was sneaking out from behind the distant mountains.

“I told you, it has to happen before I’m thirty.”

“What has to happen?” I knew he didn’t mean the book getting done;
that
had to happen before the money ran out.

“Immortality. By thirty, a writer’s vitality is gone, and his unique vision with it. Anything he’s got to say about the world has to be seen through his youth, his unjaded—or less jaded—eyes. Remember that article I wrote, ‘What I Think and Feel at Twenty-five?’ To the me who wrote
Paradise,
I’m already an old man.”

“You’re forgetting people like George. He’s got lots of sharp thoughts and observations, and he’s forty-two now.”

“He doesn’t write fiction.”

“If you’re so worried, I don’t know what you’re doing out here with me wasting your time. Get to work.”

He stood up, and I thought he was going to do just what I’d said. But he took my hands and pulled me up from my chair.

“What I’m doing out here”—he put his arms around my waist and held me against him—“is reminding myself why it is I asked such a beautiful and impressive woman to follow me to and from—what was that list you made?—all those places, and making sure to thank her sincerely for doing so.”

23

The first time I lost track of myself, truly lost all trace of me, the girl I’d been, the woman I thought I was becoming, would happen there in Saint-Raphael, while I was wrapped in the benevolent warmth of a Mediterranean summer.

The romantic ending to our night on the terrace was a romantic
ending,
period. With Scott shut away all day working in what would ordinarily have been Villa Marie’s servant’s cottage, and Lillian in charge of Scottie, and no cooking or housework for me to do—which I did poorly anyway, it’s true—there was a very big hole in my day, every day. A big hole in my life, really, seeing as how this would be our routine indefinitely, and I had no friends at hand. Days longer than whole months crawled by. Though I read some and painted a little, restlessness was like a mosquito always buzzing about my head.

Lillian had firm ideas of what should constitute a toddler’s day. I wrote to Mama,

She makes Scottie eat all her fruits and vegetables and has begun teaching her the alphabet forwards and backwards both. They have morning exercise and afternoon exercise and bath and tea and what Lillian calls “the lesson period.” If I interrupt, Lillian scowls at me. I want to let her go, but Scott says—wisely, I suppose—that with the way I eat and my devil-may-care approach to the day, I’m no kind of teacher for a young child. He says Scottie needs structure and discipline or she’s bound to turn out like me, and we wouldn’t want that, would we?

And Mama wrote back,

In matters regarding the nanny, I would have to agree with Scott. We never did give you enough discipline in your early years, which resulted in some very trying times in your adolescence. I believe the Judge is still tired from raising you. The English are supposed to be superior nannies—though our old Aunt Julia was wonderful in her way—so my advice is that you find productive uses for your time. Write to your sisters; they worry about you, as do Daddy and I. But then, that habit will never leave a parent no matter how the child’s life proceeds.

To pass my time, I reverted to my Westport habits of wandering the surrounding countryside during the cool mornings, and swimming at the beach in the afternoons. Oh, it was heaven to dive into the warm, so-blue waters at our little stretch of beach and swim until I was exhausted. The last of my stubborn post-baby fat disappeared, melting away into the sea, and my skin absorbed the sunshine and begged for more. Now and then I’d persuade Lillian to include beach time in Scottie’s exercise periods, and now and then Scott would break from his work and join us, and we’d get a visitor for an afternoon or an overnight once in a while. Mostly, though, I was on my own.

I’d taken to bringing sketchbook and pencil and books to the beach with me. On a wide reed mat, I would lie in the sunshine like a sleek otter after a swim, and then I’d pass the day drawing anemones, reading James or Kipling or Ford Madox Ford and Colette’s provocative French romance
Chéri,
which I’d selected to help improve my understanding of the language, but which may have seeded my brain for trouble. I might jot down story ideas or write to my sisters or my friends. Entire days could disappear this way, and did.

The aviators we knew from the casino also began to come to the beach, three in particular, Édouard, René, and Bobbé. Their schedules had them training at night. They would arrive in their white, white beach clothes and put their mats down near mine, and we’d talk, them with their iffy English, me with my slowly improving French. They thought Scott and I were so cosmopolitan, so glamorous; they wanted to know everything about New York and literary fame.

The men were, all of them, lean and handsome and inquisitive and good-natured. Édouard Jozan, though, had the keenest mind, the softest manner. On the occasions when we’d seen him in the casino, he and Scott and I had debated things like nationalism and heroism and the question of art versus action.

“To write the book—eh,
novel
—it is all very good, yes.
Mais
the young man must
demonstrate
the thought, not represent it in words. If he does not, there will be no change, no resistance. Anarchy will rule.”

“What gives the acting man the instruction for what to do and how to do it, though?” Scott replied. “Books do! And novels do this best of all. They present the situation and model the hero so that you and your friends can emulate him—or not emulate him, as the case may be, dependent of course upon the story.”

“
This
result we can achieve by discussion, though.”

“The spoken word is fleeting. That’s why novelists are so essential: we record everything we see, we dissect and analyze and reproduce the essence of what matters, for posterity.”

“Too much time!” Édouard said, shaking his head. “This writing and the reading, it is wasted time, when things could instead get done. Zelda, don’t fear your misguided husband, tell me, what is it you believe?”

“Surely there are times when there’s too much thought and not enough action, and times when there’s too much action without enough thought. What I
really
think, though,” I continued, “is that somebody here had better take some action and dance with me before I run off and find somebody who will!”

I saw so little of Scott during my endless weeks, and even less of him solo. If he wasn’t writing the book, he was thinking about it, or talking about it, or we were with Scottie or a friend, or we were out. In bed at night, he put off my affections: “I’m already exhausted. Making love will ruin me, Zelda. The energy I’d spend, well, I have to keep it stored and waiting for the book.”

*   *   *

Édouard was a year older than me, and something in the way he listened so carefully made me think he valued me as more than just an amusing American. As June rolled into July, he began to show up to the beach without René and Bobbé. He’d put his mat right beside mine and then ask me to tell him about the South, and my childhood. “Tell everything, s’il vous plaît; your voice, it is my delight.”

I had already sensed the attraction between us—it was apparent from the first time we met—but that sort of attraction was so usual that it didn’t rate serious attention, let alone concern. When the attraction turned into something that smelled and tasted like substance, though, that was when things got complicated.

A married woman will first deny to herself that anything improper is going on. She’ll make excuses for her eagerness to see the man in question. She likes his sharp mind, for example, or his fresh views or the stories he tells about his experiences, which are so different from her own. She’ll dismiss as mere amusement her mind’s tendency to wonder where he is and what he’s doing and whether he’s thinking of her. She might even avoid the fella for a day or two, to test herself: if she doesn’t see him and she feels fine about that, she’ll know there’s no cause for concern. The test is false though, too, because she’s lying to herself to make sure she passes the test, which will then justify her choice to see him again, often.

Imagine languorous days with no responsibilities. Loneliness and Dismay are your regular companions, but they’re muted by soft sand, a sun-filled sky, and warm blue water, the sight and feel of which makes you drunk. Imagine your body is youthful, firm, a pleasure to live inside of—and you’re wise enough already to know that this is fleeting, this body and its condition. It won’t last. None of it will last. And because it won’t, you allow the beautiful person who seeks you out to become as much a part of your day, a part of this place, as the poppies that grow beside the rocky paths you follow to get here. You allow affections to develop and grow as if they, too, are poppies. You let it happen because all of it is illusory anyway, that’s how it feels, and that’s what you believe.

This lovely illusion, though, this romantic fantasy, will begin to seem real if given a chance, every bit as surely as delusions are real to a person suffering a breakdown.

A week into July, I was sure I’d fallen in love.

*   *   *

At the open-air, beachfront café, Scott sat at the table across from me. Gerald was to my left, Sara to his left. The children ran about the beach, with Lillian and the Murphy children’s nanny keeping watch. Lillian had dressed Scottie in a celery-colored jumper and a little straw hat; the hat hung down her back by its ribbons; the ribbon’s ends blew about in the breeze. She and little Patrick, who was her same age almost to the day, held hands, even while running.
She has her little beach-love, too,
I thought.

“How do you feel about Venice, Zelda?”

“Sorry, what?”

“She’s been terribly distracted lately,” Scott said.

If that’s not the pot calling the kettle black …

Gerald repeated, “We’re contemplating a trip to Venice. Cole’s doing a tremendous gala of some sort in this extravagant villa he and Linda found. Extravagant
palace,
rather. Forgive me for being gauche enough to say this, but they’re paying
four thousand
a month in American dollars for the place. I find it hard to support that behavior.”

“You know Linda’s well-off,” Sara told Scott and me. “Her first husband had to compensate her substantially when they divorced. But Cole came into a great deal of money of his own last year, and he seems determined to use it like water.”

Gerald said, “His grandfather was J. O. Cole, of Indiana—whose money was in mining and timber. Well, it was in speculation, Cole says. Calls him ‘the richest man in Indiana!’ in that way he has, you know.”

Scott said, “How rich is rich?”

“He didn’t name a figure, and I didn’t ask, of course, but how’s this: he’s hired Sergei Diaghilev and the entire Ballets Russes for entertainment.”

The word
ballet
finally centered me on the discussion. “What’s this about Diaghilev?”

Sara said, “We’ve all been close to Sergei for years; he’s tireless, and so talented. Last year he put on Gerald and Cole’s production,
Within the Quota
. Gerald did all the costume and set designs. It was a remarkable experience.”

“I wish we’d seen it. I used to dance,” I said.

“The man hired an entire ballet company to perform at a
party
?” Scott said. “The whole company?”

I thought we’d seen enough displays of wealth on Long Island that Scott would take another one in stride. Apparently not. This was, for me, yet another sign of why Édouard would be so much better for me than Scott had become. Édouard wouldn’t sit there gaping at the idea of what Cole was doing. Édouard wouldn’t care, except to express pleasure at the idea of this unusual presentation of fine performance art. “For the expression of life’s truest agonies and beauty,” he’d said to me, “nothing can exceed the dance.”

Everything Scott said rankled; everything Édouard said reigned. I was a woman possessed.

Gerald was frowning at Scott. “The whole company, yes.”

“His place there is
that
big, really?”

“He says it’s quite large.”

“Four thousand, you say?”

“Scott,” I said, “quit bothering Gerald with all that.”

“I’m just curious. In the book, see, I’m trying to work out the details about this wealthy character—”