by Belva Plain
Paul had wrapped things up as neatly as he was able; there was no one who needed him now—more’s the pity—so he was quite free, and his mind was already bound for Italy.
Old friends, warm friends, a Roman lawyer and his wife, had found a house for him, assuring him that it was not too large; it had been a stroke of luck to find it, since, as he must know, most of the villas along the lakes were enormous. This one lay between an olive grove (smooth, ancient, silver trunks) and the lake (still as a pool in the starlight). A cook came with it (pastas, and salads fragrant with basil) and a wonderful garden (purple velvet pansies around the base of a little fountain, spouting water from a marble cherub’s mouth). The house was named Villa Jessica.
Why, Ilse had written, why Italy? Couldn’t he spend a wonderful year in Israel with her instead? He supposed he could, and in a way he was tempted. But Israel was a strenuous place, and besides, Ilse would be working; he knew her schedules, and what was he to do, sit around until evening waiting for her? No, rest was what he craved now, under the Italian sun. Lately his breath had begun to come short, especially on stairs; he didn’t like to think about that.
So Ilse was going to come to him instead. But not right away, she wrote, to his disappointment. She had opened a clinic in a poor neighborhood for mothers and babies; it was just starting to function; she was still short of good nurses and couldn’t leave it just yet.
He understood, or rather, he made himself understand. He only hoped she wouldn’t keep him waiting too long. A man didn’t want to eat his dinner alone on the terrace with candles and flowers. A man needed …
Oh, the last of the romantics, I am! The body gets old while you still feel young, with all the craving for love and beauty still intact. Young people think you’re a fool, but they don’t know; wait till they get there.
All this he had poured out to Leah when he went to say good-bye. He had poured out much else too, and she had been horrified.
“I can’t believe you told Theo!” she had cried. “I simply can’t!”
“Well, I told you, didn’t I? I told Ilse.”
“That’s rather different. You trusted us. You knew we’d die rather than talk.”
“I trust him too. He’d never do harm to Iris. Never.”
Leah said thoughtfully, “I take it, from what you say, that that Jordaine business didn’t come to anything.”
“Apparently not.”
“I’m glad. She seems to be such a gentle creature. It didn’t make any sense. By the way, she hasn’t bought anything since.”
Paul smiled. “They can’t afford your prices, my dear.” More seriously he added, “They’ve got real trouble with that son, the one who runs about with Tim Powers.”
“Ironic, isn’t it? They’re cousins and don’t know it.”
“Second cousins once removed.”
“You should be a genealogist. Anyhow, Meg is absolutely sick over Tim. He’s always one step ahead of arrest. Have you said good-bye to her yet?”
“I’m going down this afternoon.”
And so he had said his good-byes to Leah, who gave half a promise to come with Bill for a visit, had gotten into his car, and driven down to Meg’s.
At the far end of the long country living room, Meg sat at the same tea table that her mother had set out every afternoon of her life. As he approached, Paul recognized the tray, the pink lustre cups and the repoussé silver basket of muffins. Also, to his vexation, he recognized Tim and a man who, on turning his well-tailored back, revealed the alert and skeptical face of Victor Jordaine.
Tim extended a hand which Paul had to take, crying, “Well, this is an unexpected pleasure! I never see you anymore.” And as Paul leaned down to kiss Meg’s cheek, he continued to effervesce, “I hear you’re off to Italy.”
“Yes, Friday,” Paul answered briefly, wishing he might tell Tim to stop putting on the act for Meg’s benefit.
“Tim’s just back from there,” Meg said and, turning to Jordaine, “You remember each other, don’t you?”
Jordaine inclined his head formally. “I had the pleasure at one of your Christmas parties.”
“Tim was Mr. Jordaine’s guest in Italy during the semester break. Do have a muffin while they’re hot, Paul.”
Jordaine seemed to be waiting for some comment or question from Paul and, when none came, reported with an obvious attempt at a casual effect, “I have a nice little place on Lake Garda. Don’t have time to be there much as I’d like, unfortunately.”
Paul became aware that he was gritting his teeth. A game, Leah had said. An innocent. That makes it more piquant He wanted to kick Jordaine’s face in, that smooth, clever face. Instead he took a muffin and tried to swallow some tea.
“I hear the climate is lovely there all year,” Meg remarked, being a proper hostess.
“Rather different from where I am in the Midwest,” Tim said.
Paul could not resist a comment. “From what I read in the papers, you’re hardly confined to the Midwest. You seem to be all over the place.”
“Oh, I keep busy,” Tim agreed pleasantly.
The pulses began beating in Paul’s head. He hadn’t expected this confrontation, for that is what it was, and a double one at that. The queer juxtaposition of Jordaine and Timothy was too much for him in his “getaway” mood of wanting to be rid of puzzles and problems.
So he turned to Meg to inquire, “Where’s Larry?”
“Out taking care of a mare in foal. An emergency. Did you know—of course you didn’t—he got kicked in the knee last month? There’s this stable, you see …” And she launched into a long, not very interesting, story.
Paul, half listening, was acutely conscious of the two men. Tim, in his best boyish fashion, was displaying his appetite, sprawled in the chair, happily spilling crumbs and totally out of place in this traditional, old-fashioned setting. Jordaine, bored with Meg, was restless; his eyes, when he was intent on his own thoughts, were dead black. Terrible eyes, cold as marbles, Paul thought, and wondered what the thoughts were that passed now behind that strong, square forehead.
Presently, when Meg’s tale ended, the two men rose.
“I’ll be going into the city,” Tim said. “Victor’s giving me a lift to the station.”
Each nodded to Paul, Tim saying, “Good seeing you.”
“Likewise, Mr. Werner,” said Jordaine.
When they had gone, Meg asked, “Did you notice the car?”
“Can’t say I did.”
“It was parked round the back. A Rolls convertible. He keeps it here in the country.”
“Who the hell is he, anyway?” asked Paul.
Meg looked surprised. “My, you sound angry. The fact is I never can figure him out myself. That remark about the ‘nice little place on Lake Garda’—don’t you believe it. Tim said it’s palatial, acres of gardens and a lake with swans, all kinds of rare swans. It even has a gatehouse. You have to be approved to get in.”
“That’s interesting.”
“Tim says he’s an international banker or investor or something.”
“According to Tim’s speeches capitalists like him deserve to be wiped out.”
Meg sighed. “I know. I don’t see Tim with Jordaine at all. I’ve said it a million times, and I’ve asked Tim about it, but all I get is his usual turnoff, that beautiful smile and a vague answer. So I’ve given up. I’ve got too much on my mind, anyway. I’m worried to death about Tom in Vietnam. That’s enough to worry about. It’s too much.”
So after a while Paul had taken leave of Meg, with promises to write and admonitions to keep well, and had gone home.
The apartment was already shrouded in sheets, with valuables put away. Katie was to stay on there while he was gone, to guard his home for him and also because she loved the place and it was her home.
“There’s a package from a florist for you, Mr. Werner,” she said when he came in.
It was a bonsai tree in a porcelain dish. Tiny, strong, and gnarled, it bent
like a tree on a windy coast. It looked brave and was very, very old. With it came a card without a signature. But the script was familiar and unmistakable, Anna’s pointed European script.
Strong until death, he read.
It was her way, he knew, of saying she was sorry about not going with him. Sorry, too, about not having gone with him years before. A man could break his heart over it, and almost had! Well, so be it. He put the card carefully in an envelope and slipped it into his wallet.
He was to leave on the S.S. United States on its final voyage. It was 1969, and the jet plane had completely taken over. This was to be the great, swift ship’s last race through the Atlantic, and possibly his own last voyage too. But who knew? As long as one was alive, each new day was a gift, and could be a surprise.
14
Theo looked down at the page. His handwriting was not exactly what it had been, yet it was respectably legible. Allowing his hand to relax for a few minutes, he drank some tea from the cup that Iris had put on his desk before going out to Parents’ Night at school. She would be gone until at least ten o’clock, which gave him ample opportunity to write his monthly letter to Paul.
These, as time went on, were becoming more difficult to do. Bound to each other as the two men were in tight and secret fashion, they had yet neither a past nor an ongoing life in common, and so Theo often had to wrack his brains for something to tell. What Paul wanted, he knew, was news about Iris. He did his best to provide it.
“—wonderful success at teaching,” he resumed. “She really seems to study each child. There was a pathetic girl in her class, terribly overweight and unpopular; Iris called the parents in and got them to do something about the child’s weight, and the result has been a triumph—”
A gust of wintry wind shook the windows. It was raining hard, which should have made the house seem warm and snug in contrast, but it only seemed small and stuffy. Try as he would not to feel it and certainly not to show it, Theo, remembering glass walls and snowscapes, felt shut in.
They had been almost a year in this house. It had been a year and a half since the accident. Sometimes it seemed an eternity since that other life: the operating room, the crowded office, the spacious house, the wallet thick with bills— And, shaking himself, he returned to the letter.
“It’s hard to believe that in only two more years Jimmy will be in medical school. We wish he weren’t already attached to just one girl at his young age, but at least she is a fine girl, a hard worker. They are both solid people.
“And so is Laura. You might not get that impression because she’s such a clotheshorse”—he started to write “encouraged by Anna” but checked himself. It would be unforgivably tactless to speak of Anna, or the fact that Laura was her lovely double. “She’s surrounded by young men, most of them nice enough as far as one can see. But there are far too many of them. With a face like hers I suppose there’s no help for it. But she has grown in many ways. She wants to work actively in conservation and has become a real outdoors person. The collie puppy that she found abandoned in the woods is already twice the size of our old poodle and takes up half of this kitchen, but neither Iris nor I had the heart to refuse him a home.”
Theo’s pen paused in midair. He had, for an instant, a vision of Paul reading this letter. Shut out from this family that was his, he would want to know everything there was to know, the not-so-good along with the good. Resolutely, then, he continued.
“Steve is always in our minds. We haven’t heard from him in several months, although Jimmy gets a card now and then. All we glean is that the country is beautiful, the commune is self-sufficient, and Steve is in charge of the apple orchard. Iris says that sounds peaceful enough, yet something tells me it is not peaceful, but ominous, only a calm before the outbreak of a new storm. I am more troubled about him now than I was even on that awful day when he was arrested in Chicago.”
That awful day. It was as if they had all, Iris and he and all of them, been riding in a car, over smooth stretches and expected bumps in turn, when without warning the brakes had failed and the car gone careening down the mountainside. Then it had landed, slammed to a stop, and they had all climbed out, miraculously still alive and in one piece. Alive but shaken, not what they had been.
The dog came in, Laura’s big, bumbling waif, and laid its head on Theo’s knee. He bent to stroke its head.
“Lonesome, old boy? Want somebody to love you, is that it?”
The animal’s soft eyes seemed to comprehend, and the two pairs of eyes, the man’s equally soft and sad, looked into each other. Yes, Theo thought, I know the feeling.
We’re here under one roof, working together and holding together, Iris and I. Friendly and civilized, we speak gently and are kind. Considerately, she remembers to bring the evening cup of tea to my desk. I answer the telephone and keep the house quiet when she has papers to correct. We have trust. We have—
And he wanted to write, to put on paper all his longing for the passion and the beauty they had once known, he longed to cry out: There is a wall between us, and will it ever come down? Tell me, will it ever?
He wrote instead, “That’s all the news for now, except to say as always how grateful I am for your amazing goodness.…” Then he wished for Paul’s good health and a pleasant vacation, and signed his name.
In the lofty dining room Paul was enjoying a second cup of coffee and a panettone. The steady wind from over the lake stirred the red silk draperies and brought a strong fragrance with it. Camellias or roses? he wondered.
He returned to the mail; having just finished reading a letter from Theo, he now turned it over to read it again from the beginning, making sure to miss nothing. Theo expressed himself well in the clear, precise English he had learned and often spoke more correctly than did many a native speaker of the language. In addition, he seemed to understand exactly what Paul might want to be told—except that he still hadn’t said that everything was perfect between himself and Iris, which was the thing Paul most wanted to hear. But that’s foolish of me, he said to himself now, for what on this earth is ever perfect?
The delineations of the children, though, were so minute, so definite, that it could seem to Paul sometimes that he actually knew them. Jimmy was one of life’s fortunates, dependable, steady, and sure to be admitted to one of the country’s best medical schools. Philip was still their sunny little boy, while Steve—Paul returned to the letter to scan it again.
“We haven’t heard from him … only a calm before the outbreak of a new storm.… I am more troubled about him now than I was even on that awful day when …”
Troubled too, Paul put the letter down. It wasn’t easy to be a parent these days. But then perhaps it never had been. He wouldn’t know.
And he turned to happier words about Laura, “surrounded by young men … far too many of them.… With a face like hers I suppose there’s no help for it.”
At that Paul had to smile. It was almost as if he were seeing before him Theo’s humorous, mock-mournful expression. It seemed remarkable that after such slight contact with the man, he could feel that he knew him well, as if there had been a relationship between them. But of course, there was a relationship now.…
And putting the letter down, he sat back to consider his surroundings. Morning light struck the mirror over the mantel and showered sparks on its silver gilt frame. With its flowered floor tiles, its massive silver ornaments, and carved Renaissance chests, the room could most certainly be described as “elegant,” and yet it would be no contradiction to say that it was also simple. For there was no clutter and no excess; everything it contained was used and necessary. Except perhaps the paintings, he reflected, although some people, and he was one of them, would say that art ranked very close behind necessity. Indeed, he would rather have done without a rug, would perhaps gladly have sat on the floor, rather than be deprived of art in some form. Just as books of poetry that you have known as a child in their worn, familiar bindings were friends, so, too, pict
ures were friends. He had no compunction about spending for them. He was enabling artists to live and he would enhance the museums to which he would bequeath them on his death.
He stood up and walked through another lofty room toward the terrace. In a previous letter Theo had sent a snapshot of the family in what Paul supposed was the backyard of the new house. It must be a very small place, humble in contrast to what they had left behind. The corner of the neighboring house was just visible along the edge of the picture. He had had it enlarged, and now it stood on the console table along with a pile of books and other family photographs, there being no reason, in a foreign country where none but strangers ever came to visit, why he should not display anything he wished. He had no need to study Iris’s face; he knew it now by heart. The sight of it had troubled him of late, and at the keen recall of Theo’s words he felt a dart of sorrow. She didn’t like him. He made her feel “queer.” And he turned away from her dark, brooding gaze.
Two of the sons were in the picture. The medical student resembled his father’s description of him. Nice and typically American were some of the adjectives that came at once to mind. The little fellow holding a bat and mitt looked appealing. And the girl—it was no exaggeration, the girl was a beauty.
From her Paul’s eyes went to that first, other beauty, so like her. That dog-eared snapshot, now enlarged, had been taken one day with her own Brownie box camera, many ages ago in front of the obelisk in the park behind the museum. He had put Ilse beside her. The contrast! The one so soft and flowery with her wealth of hair let loose and her dreaming, almost golden eyes; the other crisp and purposeful, with her frank, straight gaze, her sleek black hair, and the touch of humor on her lips. She had had the picture made in Israel and sent to him.
Two loves, he reflected during the minute or two he stood there, the one warm, hearty, and stubborn, whom he knew so well, and the other whom he knew—how? In vanished, fleeting recollections, longings, and fantasies.…
