Evening in Byzantium

by Irwin Shaw

  “You’re going to have more visitors,” she said. “Mummy’s arriving tomorrow and …”

  “Oh, God,” Craig said. “How does she know?”

  “I called her,” Anne said defensively. “She was terribly upset. You don’t mind that I told her, do you?”

  “No,” he said, lying.

  “It’s only human,” Anne said.

  “I agree,” Craig said impatiently, “I agree. It’s only human.”

  “Gail is on her way, too,” Anne said.

  “You called her, too?”

  “Yes. I only did what I thought was right, Daddy. You’re not angry at me, are you?”

  “No.” Craig put the water tumbler down and lay back resignedly, closing his eyes, to show Anne that he was tired and wished to be alone.

  “I have something to apologize to you about,” Anne said. “In my letter I was too much in a hurry to say anything about your script. I don’t know whether it means anything to you or not, but I love it, and I should have told you …”

  “You had other things on your mind,” he said.

  “I suppose you have a right to be sarcastic with me,” Anne said humbly. “But, anyway, I love it. So does Ian. He wanted me to tell you.”

  “Good.”

  “He’s talked to Mr. Thomas already. He and Mr. Thomas agree on a lot of things about the script. They’re both wildly hopeful.”

  “Good,” Craig said again.

  “Of course, Mr. Thomas doesn’t know anything about me yet,” she said. She hesitated. “Ian is afraid that because of me you’re going to be against him. About working on the script, I mean.” She waited for Craig to speak, but he kept silent. “I told Ian you’re too big a man to stand in his way just because …” She trailed off.

  “I’m not quite as big a man as I was last week,” Craig said.

  “Ian needs the job badly,” Anne said. “It’ll get him off the ground, he says. He’s been having such a bad time … You’re not going to say no, are you, Daddy?” She was imploring now.

  “No,” he said, “I’m not going to say no.”

  “I knew it,” she said. She was his happy little daughter now, being promised a treat, oblivious of the world of hospitals, pain, blood. “Ian’s downstairs,” she said. “He’d love to come up and say hello. He’s terribly worried about you. Can I tell him to come up? Just for a minute?”

  “Tell Ian to go fuck himself,” Craig said.

  Anne took in her breath sharply. It was the first time, as far as he could remember, that he had ever said the word in front of her. “Oh, Daddy,” she said. “How can you be so unjust!” She turned and ran out of the room.

  She’s a big girl now, Craig thought as he sank deeper into the pillows. She knows all the words. I’m going to move into a public ward. Where they don’t allow visitors.

  They operated on him that night. There was no enormous hemorrhage like the night in the hotel, but the tests had shown that he had begun to bleed again, a slow, steady seeping away in his gut whose source they couldn’t locate, dangerous and life-sapping.

  Before he was given the preoperative shot of morphine, while they were shaving his chest and abdomen, he realized that he wasn’t afraid. Fifty-fifty, the doctor had said. A man couldn’t ask for fairer odds.

  Faces came and went, briefly, silently, seen obscurely, through haze—Murphy, Thomas, Dr. Gibson, noncommittal, no warnings or encouragement, his wife, his daughter Marcia, grotesquely plump and weeping, Gail McKinnon, sea-fresh, Constance, almost unrecognizably stern, Edward Brenner … But Edward Brenner was dead. Were they all a dream? He spoke only once. “Marcia,” he said, “you’re a good size.”

  He was in great pain, but he kept from groaning. The African with tribal scars in first class would not understand. The White Man’s burden. He was stoical and waited for the morphine every four hours without asking for more. Who had said that stoicism was an unprofitable attitude? No friend of his.

  The stagehands, in white, brought on the props—the syringes, the blood. The lighting stage center was rearranged. There was the sound of surf in his ears. He woke. He slept. The faces came and went, with their several claims. Where was Ian Wadleigh, that loose, deceitful man? Belinda Ewen, in electric blue? What checks did she have for him to sign?

  Other doctors. The best man in the country. Soft medical voices, whisperings offstage. The Scandinavian blonde with the expert hands did not reappear. Alas.

  How many days ago had he left Meyrague? What drink had he ordered on the terrasse of the little restaurant overlooking the harbor of Cassis? What had that girl said about her mother?

  He could sit up in bed and even eat a little, but the fever persisted. In the morning it was around a hundred and one, in the evening it went up to one hundred and three and a half. The plastic bag hung on a stand above his head dripping antibiotics into his veins day and night. Either the fever or the antibiotics, or both, kept him in a heavy-lidded daze, and he began to lose track of time and not remember how long he had been there. Nobody mentioned it, not he nor any of the doctors, but he knew that they were afraid that he had picked up one of those new hospital-bred wild strains of bacteria for which no treatment had yet been found.

  Dr. Gibson had forbidden any visitors, and he was grateful for that. Dr. Gibson had told him that when he had been free of fever for three whole days, he would be discharged. In the meanwhile, he sleepily watched the television set that had been wheeled into his room and placed at the foot of his bed. Mostly, he just watched the baseball games. It gave him pleasure to watch young men running swiftly across green grass in the sunshine, clearly winning and distinctly losing. He remembered having read about the condemned murderer in Massachusetts who also had watched the baseball games on television in his cell and whose only regret was that he would never know whether or not the Dodgers had won the pennant.

  He wondered if he would know who won the pennant this year.

  Finally, Murphy convinced Dr. Gibson that he had to see Craig. Craig had had two good days. The fever had gone down to ninety-nine in the morning and one hundred and two at night. Miss Balissano still refused to tell him what his temperature was, but Dr. Gibson was more lenient.

  Murphy’s face when he saw Craig told him as accurately as any mirror how bad it was. He hadn’t looked in a mirror since the operation.

  “I had to see you, Jess,” Murphy said. “I have to leave for the Coast tomorrow. Things’re piling up, and I just have to be there.”

  “Sure, Murph,” Craig said. His voice sounded thin and old in his ears.

  “Three weeks in New York is all I can manage,” Murphy said.

  “Is that how long I’ve been here?” Craig asked.

  Murphy looked at him queerly.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “A long time,” Craig said.

  “Yes. And the doctors won’t give me an estimate about when you’ll get out.”

  “They don’t know.”

  “Gibson tells me you won’t be able to work—at anything—for at least six months even if you get out tomorrow.”

  “I know,” Craig said. “He told me.”

  “Thomas can’t wait,” Murphy said. “He’s got to start shooting in a month if he wants to do it this year. For the weather.”

  “For the weather,” Craig nodded.

  “He and Wadleigh have been working eighteen hours a day. Thomas says Wadleigh is really panning out. He says you’ll be crazy about the final script.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Do you want me to tell you about who they’ve got to play it?”

  “Not really, Murph.”

  Again, Murphy looked at him queerly. “Don’t worry about the money,” he said. “You’ve got a big chunk up front and five per cent of the profits.”

  “Tell me some other time,” Craig said.

  “Thomas has been a real gent about everything.”

  “I’m sure.” Craig closed his eyes. Murphy seemed to be far away, at the other end of a lo
ng hall, and it disturbed him.

  “You’re tired,” Murphy said. “I won’t bother you anymore. Just call me if you need anything.” “I’ll do just that.” Craig didn’t open his eyes.

  “Sonia sends her love.”

  “Thanks Murph.”

  “Take it easy, kid.” Murphy went softly out of the room as Miss Balissano came in.

  “Turn on the television, please,” Craig said.

  When he heard the noise of the crowd, Craig opened his eyes. It was sunny in St. Louis.

  On the day that his temperature was normal for the first time, Dr. Gibson allowed his wife to visit him. As far as he knew, Dr. Gibson hadn’t been told that they were in the process of getting a divorce, so it was natural for him to let her in. Dr. Gibson hadn’t warned Craig that his wife was coming to see him. He probably thought it would be a salutary surprise.

  Penelope was smiling tremulously as she came into the room. She had had her hair done, and it hung youthfully down to her shoulders. She was wearing a navy blue dress. He had once said that it was the color he liked best on her. A long time ago.

  “Hello, Jess,” she said. Her voice was soft, shaky, her face drawn. The last time they had met it had been in a lawyer’s office. He couldn’t remember how many months ago. She bent over and kissed his cheek. The ten thousandth kiss.

  “Hello, Penny,” he said. “How’s the web going?” It was an old joke between them.

  “What?” she asked, frowning. “What web?”

  “Never mind,” he said. She had forgotten.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Fine,” he said. “Can’t you tell?” He thought about her lawyers to keep from thinking about her.

  He saw her lips set, then soften. He knew she was trying to restrain her anger. “Dr. Gibson says there are encouraging signs. Very encouraging.”

  “I’m very encouraged,” he said.

  “You don’t change, do you?” she said. Anger had momentarily gotten the better of her.

  “I’m a faithful man,” he said. He was fighting against her pity. What she probably would call her love. What might very possibly be her love.

  “Dr. Gibson says you will have to rest for a long time after you get out of here,” she said. “You’ll need someone to look after you. Do you want to come home?”

  He thought about the broad brick house on the quiet, tree-lined New York street, the small back garden, now a dusty green, the desk in his study, his books on the shelves. They had agreed to divide the furniture, but they had not yet done so. There was no place he could put it. He couldn’t carry his desk from hotel room to hotel room. She waited for his reply, but he said nothing. “Do you want to call off the divorce?” she said. “I do.”

  “I’ll think about it.” He wasn’t strong enough to struggle with her now.

  “What made you do it?” she asked. “Out of a blue sky. Writing me that awful letter asking for a divorce. After all, we were getting along. You were free to come and go. For months at a time I didn’t even know whether you were in the country or not. I never asked you about your other—whatever they were. Maybe we weren’t love’s sweet young dream, but we were getting along.”

  “Getting along,” he said. “We hadn’t slept with each other for five years.”

  “And whose idea was that?” Her voice grew harsher.

  “Yours,” he said. She had a convenient memory, and he waited for her to deny it and believe her own denial. Surprising him, she said, “What did you expect? You’d been making it plain for years that I bored you. You’d invite anybody in the world to keep from having a meal alone with me.”

  “Including Bertie Folsom.”

  She flushed. “Including Bertie Folsom. I suppose that slut daughter of yours told you about Geneva.”

  “She did.”

  “At least he paid attention to me.”

  “Bully for him,” he said. “Bully for you.”

  “There’s another victim you can add to your score,” she said, all holds barred now, the hospital room, the plastic bag dripping ineffectual remedies into his vein from its chromium stand, all ignored. “Driving her into that drunkard’s arms.”

  “He’s stopped drinking.” Too late, he realized how idiotic it sounded.

  “He hasn’t stopped doing anything else,” she said. “Married three times and looking around for more. I’ll never talk to that girl again. And your other daughter. Poor Marcia. Flying here all the way from Arizona to comfort her father. And what did you have to say to her? The one sentence that crossed your lips. ‘Marcia, you’re a good size.’ She cried for days. You know what she said? She said, ‘Even when he’s bleeding to death, he makes fun of me. He hates me.’ I tried to get her to come up here with me, and she wouldn’t do it.”

  “I’ll make it up to her,” he said wearily. “Sometime. I don’t hate her.”

  “You hate me.”

  “I don’t hate anybody.”

  “Even now you have to humiliate me.” Coldly, he noticed the old false melodramatic tone that came into her voice when she recounted her trials. “Right now that woman is shamelessly parading herself downstairs, waiting to come up here as soon as you’ve thrown me out.”

  “I don’t know any ‘that woman,’” he said.

  “That whore from Paris. You know her all right. And so do I.” Penelope paced around the room, obviously trying to regain control of herself. He lay with his eyes closed, his head back on the pillow. “I didn’t come up here to argue, Jesse,” Penelope said, switching to her reasonable voice. “I came up here to tell you you are welcome to come home. More than welcome.”

  “I told you I’d think about it,” he said.

  “Just for my own satisfaction,” she said, “I’d like to know once and for all why you thought you had to have a divorce.”

  Well, he thought, she’s asking for it. He opened his eyes so that he could see her reactions. “I met Alice Paine in New York one day,” he said.

  “What’s Alice Paine got to do with it?”

  “She told me a peculiar story. Every October fifth she gets a dozen roses. Without a card. Anonymously.” He could tell by the sudden rigidity of her face, her shoulders, that she knew what he was talking about. “Any woman,” he said, “who has anything to do with a dozen roses on October fifth, year in, year out, is not ever going to get me—alive or dead.” He lay back and closed his eyes once more. She had asked for it, and he had given it to her, and he felt a great relief that he had finally gotten it out.

  “Good-by, Jesse,” she whispered.

  “Good-by,” he said.

  He heard the door closing softly behind her. Then, for the first time, he wept. Not from anger or loss but because he had lived more than twenty years with a woman and had had two children with her and he didn’t feel anything when he said good-by, not even rage.

  After a while he remembered that Penelope had said that Constance was in the building. “There’s a lady downstairs waiting to see me,” he said to Miss Balissano. “Will you ask her to come up, please? And let me have the comb and brush and a mirror.”

  He brushed back his hair. It had grown very long in the three weeks. Vigorous, his hair had rejected his illness. There was no more gray in it than before. His eyes looked enormous and overbright in his thin face. Losing weight had made his face look much younger. He doubted that Constance would appreciate this new simulation of youth.

  But when the door opened, it was Belinda who came in. He hid his disappointment. “Belinda,” he said heartily, “I am glad to see you.”

  She kissed his cheek. She looked as though she had been crying, the small sharp face made more womanly by her sorrow. She was still in electric blue. It was her costume for deathbeds.

  “They’re monsters in this hospital,” she said. Her voice was softer, too. My illness has improved her, he thought. “I’ve been here every day this week,” she said, “and they wouldn’t let me see you.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” he lied.
r />   “I’ve kept track, though,” she said. “I’ve talked to Mr. Murphy, too. You’re not going to work on the picture.”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  She pulled on her hands. They were small and harsh. Twenty-three years at the typewriter. Her nails were painted blood-red. She had an unerring eye for the wrong colors. She went to the window, pulled the shade down a little. “Jesse,” she said, “I want to quit.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Believe me,” she said.

  “Have you got another job?”

  “Of course not.” She turned away from the window, her face hurt.

  “Then why quit?”

  “You’re not going to be able to work when you get out of here,” she said.

  “For a while.”

  “For a long while. Jesse, let’s not kid ourselves. You don’t need me or that office. You should have closed the office five years ago. You kept it open just for me.”

  “That’s nonsense,” he said, trying to sound sharp. She knew he was lying, but the lie was necessary.

  “I’ve just been going through the motions,” she said quietly. “Thank you and enough. Anyway, I have to get out of New York. I can’t stand it anymore. It’s a madhouse. Two of my friends have been mugged just this month. In broad daylight. My nephew was stabbed in the chest for a pack of cigarettes, and he nearly died. I don’t dare leave my apartment at night. I haven’t seen a movie or even a play in a year. I have four different locks on my door. Every time I hear the elevator doors open on my floor, I tremble. Jesse, if they want this city so much, let them have it.”

  “Where are you going to go?” he asked gently.

  “My mother still has our house in Newtown,” she said. “She’s ailing, and I can help her. And it’s a beautiful quiet little town, and you can walk in the streets there.”

  “Maybe I’ll move there, too,” he said, only half-joking.

  “You could do worse,” she said.

  “What are you going to do for money?” Finally, you always had to come down to this question.

  “I don’t need much,” she said. “And I’ve managed to save quite a bit. Thanks to you, Jesse. You’re a marvelously generous man, and I want to let you know that I know it.”