The 50s

by The New Yorker Magazine

  She looked up at him, still holding the burning match in one hand, the big, slow eyes settling on his face, resting there a moment, moving away again, slow and contemptuous, and, bending her head, she blew out the match, but continued to hold the unlighted cigarette in her fingers.

  “I’m sorry, my dear,” Pratt said, “but I simply cannot have smoking at table.”

  She didn’t look at him again.

  “Now, let me see—where were we?” he said. “Ah, yes. This wine is from Bordeaux, from the commune of St. Julien, in the district of Médoc. So far, so good. But now we come to the more difficult part—the name of the vineyard itself. For in St. Julien there are many vineyards, and as our host so rightly remarked earlier on, there is often not much difference between the wine of one and the wine of another. But we shall see.”

  He paused again, closing his eyes. “I am trying to establish the ‘growth,’ ” he said. “If I can do that, it will be half the battle. Now, let me see. This wine is obviously not from a first-growth vineyard—nor even a second. It is not a great wine. The quality, the—the— what do you call it? —the radiance, the power, is lacking. But a third growth—that it could be. And yet I doubt it. We know it is a good year—our host has said so—and this is probably flattering it a little bit. I must be careful. I must be very careful here.”

  He picked up his glass and took another small sip.

  “Yes,” he said, sucking his lips, “I was right. It is a fourth growth. Now I am sure of it. A fourth growth from a very good year—from a great year, in fact. And that’s what made it taste for a moment like a third- or even a second-growth wine. Good! That’s better! Now we are closing in! What are the fourth-growth vineyards in the commune of St. Julien?”

  Again he paused, took up his glass, and held the rim against that sagging, pendulous lower lip of his. Then I saw the tongue shoot out, pink and narrow, the tip of it dipping into the wine, withdrawing swiftly again—a repulsive sight. When he lowered the glass, his eyes remained closed, the face concentrated, only the lips moving, sliding over each other like two pieces of wet, spongy rubber.

  “There it is again!” he cried. “Tannin in the middle taste, and the quick astringent squeeze upon the tongue. Yes, yes, of course! Now I have it! This wine comes from one of those small vineyards around Beychevelle. I remember now. The Beychevelle district, and the river and the little harbor that has silted up so the wine ships can no longer use it. Beychevelle…Could it actually be a Beychevelle itself? No, I don’t think so. Not quite. But it is somewhere very close. Château Talbot? Could it be Talbot? Yes, it could. Wait one moment.”

  He sipped the wine again, and out of the side of my eye I noticed Mike Schofield and how he was leaning farther and farther forward over the table, his mouth slightly open, his small eyes fixed upon Richard Pratt.

  “No. I was wrong. It is not a Talbot. A Talbot comes forward to you just a little quicker than this one; the fruit is nearer to the surface. If it is a ’34, which I believe it is, then it couldn’t be a Talbot. Well, well. Let me think. It is not a Beychevelle and it is not a Talbot, and yet—yet it is so close to both of them, so close, that the vineyard must be almost in between. Now, which could that be?”

  He hesitated, and we waited, watching his face. Everyone, even Mike’s wife, was watching him now. I heard the maid put down the dish of vegetables on the sideboard behind me, gently, so as not to disturb the silence.

  “Ah!” he cried. “I have it! Yes, I think I have it!”

  For the last time, he sipped the wine. Then, still holding the glass up near his mouth, he turned to Mike and he smiled, a slow, silky smile, and he said, “You know what this is? This is the little Château Branaire-Ducru.”

  Mike sat tight, not moving.

  “And the year, 1934.”

  We all looked at Mike, waiting for him to turn the bottle around in its basket and show the label.

  “Is that your final answer?” Mike said.

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Well, is it or isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “What was the name again?”

  “Château Branaire-Ducru. Pretty little vineyard. Lovely old château. Know it quite well. Can’t think why I didn’t recognize it at once.”

  “Come on, Daddy,” the girl said. “Turn it round and let’s have a peek. I want my two houses.”

  “Just a minute,” Mike said. “Wait just a minute.” He was sitting very quiet, bewildered-looking, and his face was becoming puffy and pale, as though all the force was draining slowly out of him.

  “Michael!” his wife called sharply from the other end of the table. “What’s the matter?”

  “Keep out of this, Margaret, will you please.”

  Richard Pratt was looking at Mike, smiling with his mouth, his eyes small and bright. Mike was not looking at anyone.

  “Daddy!” the daughter cried, agonized. “But, Daddy, you don’t mean to say he’s guessed it right!”

  “Now, stop worrying, my dear,” Mike said. “There’s nothing to worry about.”

  I think it was more to get away from his family than anything else that Mike then turned to Richard Pratt and said, “I’ll tell you what, Richard. I think you and I better slip off into the next room and have a little chat?”

  “I don’t want a little chat,” Pratt said. “All I want is to see the label on that bottle.” He knew he was a winner now; he had the bearing, the quiet arrogance, of a winner, and I could see that he was prepared to become thoroughly nasty if there was any trouble. “What are you waiting for?” he said to Mike. “Go on and turn it round.”

  · · ·

  Then this happened: The maid, the tiny, erect figure of the maid, in her white-and-black uniform, was standing beside Richard Pratt, holding something out in her hand. “I believe these are yours, sir,” she said.

  Pratt glanced around, saw the pair of thin horn-rimmed spectacles that she held out to him, and for a moment he hesitated. “Are they? Perhaps they are. I don’t know.”

  “Yes sir, they’re yours.” The maid was an elderly woman—nearer seventy than sixty—a faithful family retainer of many years standing. She put the spectacles down on the table beside him.

  Without thanking her, Pratt took them up and slipped them into his top pocket, behind the white handkerchief.

  But the maid didn’t go away. She remained standing beside, and slightly behind, Richard Pratt, and there was something so unusual in her manner and in the way she stood there, small, motionless, and erect, that I, for one, found myself watching her with a sudden apprehension. Her old, gray face had a frosty, determined look, the lips were compressed, the little chin was out, and the hands were clasped together tight before her. The curious cap on her head and the flash of white down the front of her uniform made her seem like some tiny, ruffled, white-breasted bird.

  “You left them in Mr. Schofield’s study,” she said. Her voice was unnaturally, deliberately polite. “On top of the green filing cabinet in his study, sir, when you happened to go in there by yourself before dinner.”

  It took a few moments for the full meaning of her words to penetrate, and in the silence that followed I became aware of Mike and how he was slowly drawing himself up in his chair, and the color coming to his face, and the eyes opening wide, and the curl of the mouth, and the dangerous little patch of whiteness beginning to spread around the area of the nostrils.

  “Now, Michael!” his wife said. “Keep calm now, Michael, dear! Keep calm!”

  December 8, 1951

  Eudora Welty

  HEY WERE STRANGERS to each other, both fairly well strangers to the place, now seated side by side at luncheon—a party combined in a free-and-easy way when the friends he and she were with recognized each other across Galatoire’s. The time was a Sunday in summer—those hours of afternoon that seem Time Out in New Orleans.

  The moment he saw her little blunt, fair face, he thought that here was a woman who was having an affair. It
was one of those odd meetings when such an impact is felt that it has to be translated at once into some sort of speculation.

  With a married man, most likely, he supposed, slipping quickly into a groove—he was long married—and feeling more conventional, then, in his curiosity as she sat there, leaning her cheek on her hand, looking no further before her than the flowers on the table, and wearing that hat.

  He did not like her hat, any more than he liked tropical flowers. It was the wrong hat for her, thought this Eastern businessman who had no interest whatever in women’s clothes and no eye for them; he thought the unaccustomed thing crossly.

  It must stick out all over me, she thought, so people think they can love me or hate me just by looking at me. How did it leave us—the old, safe, slow way people used to know of learning how one another feels, and the privilege that went with it of shying away if it seemed best? People in love like me, I suppose, give away the short cuts to everybody’s secrets.

  Something, though, he decided, had been settled about her predicament—for the time being, anyway; the parties to it were all still alive, no doubt. Nevertheless, her predicament was the only one he felt so sure of here, like the only recognizable shadow in that restaurant, where mirrors and fans were busy agitating the light, as the very local talk drawled across and agitated the peace. The shadow lay between her fingers, between her little square hand and her cheek, like something always best carried about the person. Then suddenly, as she took her hand down, the secret fact was still there—it lighted her. It was a bold and full light, shot up under the brim of that hat, as close to them all as the flowers in the center of the table.

  Did he dream of making her disloyal to that hopelessness that he saw very well she’d been cultivating down here? He knew very well that he did not. What they amounted to was two Northerners keeping each other company. She glanced up at the big gold clock on the wall and smiled. He didn’t smile back. She had that naïve face that he associated, for no good reason, with the Middle West—because it said “Show me,” perhaps. It was a serious, now-watch-out-everybody face, which orphaned her entirely in the company of these Southerners. He guessed her age, as he could not guess theirs: thirty-two. He himself was further along.

  Of all human moods, deliberate imperviousness may be the one most quickly communicated—it may be the most successful, most fatal signal of all. And two people can indulge in imperviousness as well as in anything else. “You’re not very hungry either,” he said.

  The blades of fan shadows came down over their two heads, as he saw inadvertently in the mirror, with himself smiling at her now like a villain. His remark sounded dominant and rude enough for everybody present to listen back a moment; it even sounded like an answer to a question she might have just asked him. The other women glanced at him. The Southern look—Southern mask—of life-is-a-dream irony, which could turn to pure challenge at the drop of a hat, he could wish well away. He liked naïveté better.

  “I find the heat down here depressing,” she said, with the heart of Ohio in her voice.

  “Well—I’m in somewhat of a temper about it, too,” he said.

  They looked with grateful dignity at each other.

  “I have a car here, just down the street,” he said to her as the luncheon party was rising to leave, all the others wanting to get back to their houses and sleep. “If it’s all right with— Have you ever driven down south of here?”

  Out on Bourbon Street, in the bath of July, she asked at his shoulder, “South of New Orleans? I didn’t know there was any south to here. Does it just go on and on?” She laughed, and adjusted the exasperating hat to her head in a different way. It was more than frivolous, it was conspicuous, with some sort of glitter or flitter tied in a band around the straw and hanging down.

  “That’s what I’m going to show you.”

  “Oh—you’ve been there?”

  “No!”

  His voice rang out over the uneven, narrow sidewalk and dropped back from the walls. The flaked-off, colored houses were spotted like the hides of beasts, and breathed their heat down onto them as they walked to the car parked there.

  “It’s just that it couldn’t be any worse—we’ll see.”

  “All right, then,” she said. “We will.”

  So, their actions reduced to amiability, they settled into the car—a faded-red Ford convertible with a rather threadbare canvas top, which had been standing in the sun for all those lunch hours.

  “It’s rented,” he explained. “I asked to have the top put down, and was told I’d lost my mind.”

  “It’s out of this world. Degrading heat,” she said and added, “Doesn’t matter.”

  The stranger in New Orleans always sets out to leave it as though following the clue in a maze. They were threading through the narrow and one-way streets, past the pale-violet bloom of tired squares, the brown steeples and statues, the balcony with the live and probably famous black monkey dipping along the railing as over a ballroom floor, past the grillwork and the latticework to all the iron swans painted flesh color on the front steps of bungalows outlying.

  Driving, he spread his new map and put his finger down on it. At the intersection marked Arabi, where their road led out of the tangle and he took it, a small Negro seated beneath a black umbrella astride a box chalked “Shou Shine” lifted his pink-and-black hand and waved them languidly goodbye. She didn’t miss it, and waved back.

  · · ·

  Below New Orleans there was a raging of insects from both sides of the concrete highway, not quite together, like the playing of separated marching bands. The river and the levee were still on her side, waste and jungle and some occasional settlements on his—poor houses. Families bigger than housefuls thronged the yards. His nodding, driving head would veer from side to side, looking and almost lowering. As time passed and the distance from New Orleans grew, girls ever darker and younger were disposing themselves over the porches and the porch steps, with jet-black hair pulled high, and ragged palm-leaf fans rising and falling like rafts of butterflies. The children running forth were nearly always naked ones.

  She watched the road. Crayfish constantly crossed in front of the wheels, looking grim and bonneted, in a great hurry.

  “How the Old Woman Got Home,” she murmured to herself.

  He pointed, as it flew by, at a saucepan full of cut zinnias which stood waiting on the open lid of a mailbox at the roadside, with a little note tied onto the handle.

  They rode mostly in silence. The sun bore down. They met fishermen and other men bent on some local pursuits, some in sulphur-colored pants, walking and riding; met wagons, trucks, boats in trucks, autos, boats on top of autos—all coming to meet them, as though something of high moment were doing back where the car came from, and he and she were determined to miss it. There was nearly always a man lying with his shoes off in the bed of any truck otherwise empty—with the raw, red look of a man sleeping in the daytime, being jolted about as he slept. Then there was a sort of dead man’s land, where nobody came. He loosened his collar and tie. By rushing through the heat at high speed, they brought themselves the effect of fans turned onto their cheeks. Clearing alternated with jungle and canebrake like something tried, tried again. Little shell roads led off on both sides; now and then a road of planks led into the yellow-green.

  “Like a dance floor in there.” She pointed.

  He informed her, “In there’s your oil, I think.”

  There were thousands, millions of mosquitoes and gnats—a universe of them, and on the increase.

  A family of eight or nine people on foot strung along the road in the same direction the car was going, beating themselves with the wild palmettos. Heels, shoulders, knees, breasts, backs of the heads, elbows, hands, were touched in turn—like some game, each playing it with himself.

  He struck himself on the forehead, and increased their speed. (His wife would not be at her most charitable if he came bringing malaria home to the family.)

  Mo
re and more crayfish and other shell creatures littered their path, scuttling or dragging. These little samples, little jokes of creation, persisted and sometimes perished, the more of them the deeper down the road went. Terrapins and turtles came up steadily over the horizons of the ditches.

  Back there in the margins were worse—crawling hides you could not penetrate with bullets or quite believe, grins that had come down from the primeval mud.

  “Wake up.” Her Northern nudge was very timely on his arm. They had veered toward the side of the road. Still driving fast, he spread his map.

  Like a misplaced sunrise, the light of the river flowed up; they were mounting the levee on a little shell road.

  “Shall we cross here?” he asked politely.

  · · ·

  He might have been keeping track over years and miles of how long they could keep that tiny ferry waiting. Now skidding down the levee’s flank, they were the last-minute car, the last possible car that could squeeze on. Under the sparse shade of one willow tree, the small, amateurish-looking boat slapped the water as, expertly, he wedged on board.

  “Tell him we put him on hub cap!” shouted one of the numerous olive-skinned, dark-eyed young boys standing dressed up in bright shirts at the railing, hugging each other with delight that that last straw was on board. Another boy drew his affectionate initials in the dust of the door on her side.

  She opened the door and stepped out, and, after only a moment’s standing at bay, started up a little iron stairway. She appeared above the car, on the tiny bridge beneath the captain’s window and the whistle.

  From there, while the boat still delayed in what seemed a trance—as if it were too full to attempt the start—she could see the panlike deck below, separated by its rusty rim from the tilting, polished water.

  The passengers walking and jostling about there appeared oddly amateurish, too—amateur travellers. They were having such a good time. They all knew each other. Beer was being passed around in cans, bets were being loudly settled and new bets made, about local and special subjects on which they all doted. One red-haired man in a burst of wildness even tried to give away his truckload of shrimp to a man on the other side of the boat—nearly all the trucks were full of shrimp—causing taunts and then protests of “They good! They good!” from the giver. The young boys leaned on each other thinking of what next, rolling their eyes absently.