The Puzzleheaded Girl

by Christina Stead

  “You’re surely not going to refuse?” said he.

  “You’re surely not going to force yourself on me?” she said. “We’re travelling together, my dear Russell, but we’re not intimate. We’re comrades, remember; we scarcely know each other though you’re my mother’s friend.”

  “Are you kidding me?” he said. “What do you think I came away with you for?”

  “You’re not going to get near me, you big ape,” she shrilled; and she was such a shrew that Russell quailed. He went out into the corridor and did not return for a long time. One of the maids became alarmed and the manager came upstairs. “Are you the American who’s walking up and down?”

  “You bet your nose I am; my girl friend won’t let me go to sleep.”

  When he came back, she seemed asleep; but was not, watching him angrily and crouched like a kitten that has been too much set upon by boys and dogs. Russell tried to make a conquest in the night, but she ordered him out; and the next morning found him crouching against the head of the sofa. She ordered their breakfasts downstairs. They went out to the cathedral during Mass. There was a light unpleasant wind. At lunch and in the afternoon, he made attempts to flirt with her. In the evening, as soon as they entered the hotel, she marched to the desk and asked the manager to find her another room.

  “I accepted this room,” she explained, “because I thought you might be short of accommodation. There are so many American cars about. But this man here is nothing to me; he’s my mother’s friend and his lack of gallantry is disgraceful. I can’t even bear his presence. He attempted to make love to me, not that he’s really capable; he’s only an American boor. Kindly find me another room. Please do what I say, because I’m paying. He has no money on him.”

  Russell did not understand so much French, but he refused to move out of the big bedroom. “You can stay with me if you want to. You know very well why you came away with me. I’m not going to pay for all that cheating. Stay or go. I don’t care.”

  “Well,” said Lydia, laughing spitefully, to the manager, “he cannot pay and he will not move. So I must move. Unless you are prepared to throw him out. I realize that would cause a scandal. I have the money for everything, so kindly do what I say. Oh, please do what I say, sir. I made a great mistake when I came away. I am foolish, I suppose. To spare any scandal I myself will move, but he must bring the bags.” Then she said to him in French, which he understood with difficulty, “I will now meet you at meal times. You will have to meet me for dinner, since you have no money. I have you at my mercy because you have no money, no sense and no French.”

  She dressed delightfully as usual. Everyone in the dining room looked at her. She had now dressed her hair in a Spanish style. She was perfectly at ease, with smiling gravity. After a considerable time, Russell appeared. He was a big hungry man. However, at the table, he turned his back on her and took no notice when she asked for the salt and pepper. She called the waiter, who offered them and cast indignant looks at the man.

  “Haven’t you any manners?” she scolded Russell in French. “Fortunately, I should never think of marrying you.” Her voice, though light, amusing, had a sort of scream in it. “Pass the things! If you are not a man in any other way, can’t you have the manners of a man?”

  He kept his back turned and ate, leaning over his plate. She reached for the bread herself. When she had taken a piece, she placed the basket in front of him and said, “Here, put it back! What will they think of you? You need not show in public that you are impotent.”

  He turned around at this, “What do you mean by that?”

  “It’s social impotence, not to know how to behave with women. It’s impotence to treat women badly and to sulk. It’s impotence to go away with them without the right money; that’s financial impotence and you may be physically, for all I know. I know nothing to the contrary. But why lead people to suspect it? And then you are in the wrong. Very much in the wrong. We are in France, not Keokuk.”

  He sat there eating his meal. At lunch, out of shame, he had eaten very little. She said, “Well, I’ve waited long enough. Are you ordering wine?”

  “I don’t drink wine,” he said.

  She hailed the wine-waiter and ordered. “I’m taking it, I’m used to it. Must you behave like a hick, you fat porky hick? Just because you come from a fresh-water college you can’t order wine?”

  In the night he tried to enter her room. She had left the door unlocked. She was waiting for him. She sprang from her bed and rushed out into the corridor calling for help. When the night-porter came, a squat man in pyjamas and a faded dressing-gown, with dyed hair and whiskers, she asked him to conduct Russell back to his room and to lock him in if he could.

  However, she insisted upon having breakfast with Russell in his room, for the sake, perhaps, of confusing the staff and irritating him further. He said at length, “Lydia, you don’t like me; you’d better go home. Leave me here. I don’t care what becomes of me. Go on, leave me.”

  She thought it over and then said she could not. “I got you here with a promise to look after you. I thought of going back on Friday when we got here but how can I leave you adrift? You’re so helpless. You’re like a little boy. You’re like a baby. When you’re asleep, your face is pinched up and I say to myself: why does he look like that, what does he want? No, no, Russell, I’ve got to see you through.”

  “Well, let’s both go back at once.”

  “No, no. I’m sick of this hotel. We’ll go to another hotel and I’ll see what I think. I shouldn’t have come to this hotel where I stayed with Mother. Oh, Russ, I thought I’d have some fun. I haven’t enjoyed myself at all. What’s the matter with you, Russ? I ought to revenge myself upon you, but I can’t. I’ve got to go through with it. Let’s get out of Chartres. It’s a dismal place. We’ll go somewhere else.”

  She settled up, asked the manager’s advice. He was plainly taken with her and advised her to leave this gentleman and to go back to Paris. “Oh, yes,” she said nervously, “I should marry a Frenchman, don’t you think so? That is why I came over. I have always thought so. But Mommy loves New York; and then I should lose my citizenship, you see?”

  “But no; you don’t have to lose it now, mademoiselle.”

  She got tickets and they went by bus to a place suggested by the manager. Here they walked about, ate and went up to their room; for once more she had asked for a double room for herself and her friend. Russell this time took no notice of her, turned his back while undressing, while she merrily mocked him for his underwear, his heavy body, his hairy arms. “Oh, you men, such dreadful creatures!” She got into bed with him, however, and each turned his back and stretched out on the extreme edge of the mattress. “You see,” she said as soon as she thought he was dozing, “if you really only came away to sleep with me, well, in a way you are sleeping with me.” He lay awake and silent. Presently, the bed began to shake with her laughter. He said nothing. She laughed more and more and presently out loud.

  “Oh, Russ, oh, Russ! If Mother only knew that here we were in bed together! Mother thinks you’re such a nice man! Funny things happen, don’t they, Russ?” She turned around and clasped his arm, “Don’t you think you’re going off to gulp and snore when I’m here. You may be weak, you may need a tonic, but to snore away when I’m here is too much.” She kept him awake for some time, when she herself suddenly fell asleep.

  In the morning she said to the chambermaid, with whom she was friendly, “Don’t hesitate to come in. Our relations are pure, you know. He’s oh such a sweet man; he lives with a woman like a brother.”

  She was so quaintly bewitching that the chambermaid could not help smiling. “Madame,” said she.

  “Oh, I am mademoiselle and shall be till the cows come home, if it depends on the anchorite here,” said Lydia, beginning to shake with mirth. The chambermaid could not repress a slight friendly smile. Lydia in her rose-sprigged white gown, pink slippers and ribbons looked like a schoolgirl. “Mademoiselle,” said
the chambermaid.

  “Why do you do that?” he asked. He had brought no dressing-gown and sat in his loose-cut pyjamas, looking his worst.

  “I wouldn’t mind you looking goatish if you behaved like a goat.”

  “You have no call to say that to me,” he said miserably.

  On the way in to Paris, she was shrill, uneasy, bitter. The man half groaned as he said, “I had no idea you were such a spitfire. You never gave any sign of it. You looked so sweet.”

  “I had no idea you came from the barnyard! A capon from the barnyard. When you dip a fowl in hot water to get its feathers off—that’s what you look like.”

  They parted at the station without a word, although she offered to take him to his hotel in a taxi. He appeared at her hotel about lunchtime and said, “Here is all I owe you,” and immediately went away again.

  Lydia sat in her room feverishly pulling over her goods, looking at herself every few minutes in the mirror and saying, “How awful I look! Like an old hen.” She tried on all her shoes, studied the hem of the dress that had been splashed and remembered that Emory had been sorry for her. She pulled a jacket on over the flowered and not too clean dress she had on at the moment and ran out with bare legs to the dyers’ and the laundry. Her things were not ready, and in a jolly scolding way she told them she had to sail within a few days. She telephoned one or two friends, made an appointment with a man; and because Tamara would not be home till five-thirty or six, she went and sat on the terrace of the next-door café drinking a lemonade. Sitting there with her hair hanging down her back, uncombed, for the first time snarled and wispy, her face pale and indignant, she looked ailing and almost plain. Emory saw her there and came over to her. She began to tell him about her wretched weekend, but almost at once, saw Tamara going home from work, and called her over.

  Tamara’s curly wiry hair was blown loose, her face was tired; she had a headache. There was no end to the legal papers to be copied, witnessed, restamped and paid for. There was no way of telling when the case would come up now. The lots had been drawn and she had had no luck; it would not come up before the law vacation.

  “I’ll come upstairs with you,” said Lydia eagerly. “I have so much to tell you. Oh, Tamara, this is my English friend. I told you about him. But I must tell you what happened this weekend! It was horrible, awful. I must tell you. Oh, lord, what a fool I am.”

  “You were telling me; do tell me,” said the Englishman. Tamara did not want to stay with them.

  “Oh, I oughtn’t to talk about it. I had the worst time of my life, I think.” Looking again pale, undone, wretched, tossing back her untidy hair with one hand and with the other on Tamara’s arm, she said, “Oh, I’m tired. I could die. I’ll come upstairs in a minute, Tamara.”

  “I’m going to take an aspirin and lie down; don’t wake me if I’m asleep,” said Tamara.

  “How pale your friend looks,” said Emory.

  “Yes, this divorce will kill them both, if it doesn’t separate them. Oh, there are hundreds of these official Americans in these messes abroad now. And then they’re afraid they’ll be called home: they have no security and of course none of them has any money. Oh, listen, Emory: I am sorry I went away. I was punished. Men are such wreckage. What we are supposed to put up with, because we are women, because he is a man! It’s funny, isn’t it? We’re supposed to be so delicate!”

  She told him the story of the weekend, leaving out no detail, but without embroidery. She trembled and laughed. “Oh, what should I do? My last opportunity has gone. I’ve got to sail in a few days. I saw nothing. I didn’t even see Chartres. I’ve seen Chartres a dozen times; it doesn’t matter; but it was as nasty as walking round in a wet bathing suit in an east wind. What is your advice, Emory? Soon I’ll be back with Mother and I can’t torment her again with my shillyshally. Shall I come to live in Paris? I expect so. I’m sure I can only be happy here. Frenchmen and Englishman are so much better than Americans; Americans are mere boys. But then I must bring Mother; and it will be the same. I am so worn out with teasing and tormenting Mother. Poor Mother. Well, I will come back next year. That is all that happens to Americans when they come to Paris—they come back next year.”

  She packed and suddenly was gone, rolling over the waves, her head and body burning, her tongue running on, laughing, asking; and at night she thought of curious things. It bored her to fancy anything; but she had a fancy, that she would like to jump into the dark sea’s water and swim. It was a long time since she had had a good swim, because of the rash on her back; but in the dark, in the wave, who could see? She would be alone, free, borne up, delighted.

  “What have I done? What is the matter with me?”

  And in her mind she returned with weariness to the hideous fever of the man-woman struggle in New York, necessary, terrifying, endless, ugly. She had to take part again because she was a desirable girl, in the insatiable checked licence, checked by cunning and calculation; in the lascivious longing, squalid fun; go back to dissatisfaction and cynicism, horror and fear, doubting; every hour the prey of a mad Venus, cruel with delay.

  “Well, Mommy, here I am again, come back to plague you. Do you think we should go and live in Paris? You used to study music there. You would get young again. I thought of you all the time; and I thought how selfish I am. Oh, no, I didn’t get engaged; I didn’t even look for the Frenchman I told you about; I didn’t go near his office. The French take love so seriously, I should have been involved. I had no time anyway. I saw nothing. I can’t tell you what the streets looked like. But I had such a good time and went out with plenty of people; so many beaux, Mommy, it was exhausting. Oh, what’s the news, the good old news?”

  “Your Aunt Di’s in hospital. Oh, I feel terrible. She was in a car crash in New Jersey and they’ve brought her in. Do you think we ought to go and see her? I must go and ask after my own sister.”

  Lydia said she thought it was no use and she didn’t care about Aunt Diana; but her mother worried about it so much that the next day they both went to the Second Avenue hospital and sent in their names on a slip of paper. A nurse came back almost at once; the sick woman said she didn’t know the name, didn’t know them.

  “But she is my sister, my elder sister; I must see her. You see, we quarrelled and she is bitter, but I know she’s very ill and I want so much to make it up.”

  Hester was a sparkling black and white and rosy little woman; she breathed generosity and affection. The nurse went and returned; but this time she was stiff and sharp. The patient said she did not know them and would be annoyed by strangers who thought she had a will to make: “I suppose they read it in the papers.”

  “I can’t believe it! How could she say it? What were her words, Nurse? I have been a nurse myself, I know that patients can be very cantankerous and queer when they’ve had a severe shock.”

  The nurse unbent a little, a faint doubt in her face. “Oh, Nurse, what did Aunt Di say?”

  “She said you were impostors who know she has money to leave. You must not insist; the patient won’t see you.”

  Diana was on the danger list; then she died. In her will, she left five thousand dollars to her niece if Lydia would leave her mother’s home. Hester was not to attend the funeral. The rest of the money—more than they expected, for she had done well in the stock market, she left to a doctor in the hospital. “He is the only person I have been able to trust since I was four years old; he taught me to trust people again.”

  “Five thousand dollars left to me! I can’t believe it. Oh, it’s so ridiculous. People are so ridiculous. Did she think I’d leave you, Mommy? People are crazy.”

  “She said I was not to go to the funeral and I did not go, but it looked funny. People will think I bore her a grudge. It looked so cruel. My only sister. She has got people believing that I ruined her life. I took her sweetheart and then I took his life and the life of my own child. Do you know, kiddo, I never hurt a fly. But I don’t cut any ice with people. Diana had so much cha
racter.”

  “All strong characters are bad. You’re not, you’re a failure, Mommy.” They laughed nervously. “What an idea! Creeping up the fire-escape to see my own Mommy. The midnight visitor. Don’t worry, Mommy.”

  “Well, darling, it’s a lot of money and I have to leave you soon; it might be any day. I think you’ll get married when I die. It’s me keeping you from getting married. You ought to live alone. You bring men here, and I can’t go out and leave the place free for you; it doesn’t look nice. I lived abroad all those years, but I was old-fashioned. Diana was a modern woman always.”

  “Oh, baloney! If she thinks she is going to do this to us—the claw from the grisly grave. Ah-ha-ha! Whew! It’s gruesome. It’s funny. Oh, I probably won’t marry anyway.” She was silent for a long while, then said, “Do you know, Mommy, I am going to that hospital and I’m going to see that doctor.”

  Hester looked frightened. “Oh, no, darling.”

  “I want to see the kind of man.”

  Lydia went to the hospital and saw the doctor, a tall, burly, dark, middle-aged man, with glasses, eagerly energetic, imposing, with an amusing street style. While they talked, she was looking at him, musing; her fierce, independent aunt, on her deathbed, had loved this man. How funny he was! “Your aunt had energy; what a worker she was! She was full of fun! She thought I would cure her; I didn’t,” he said, in a gentle, simple way. The doctor walked her to the door. “Of course I’ll give the money to the hospital,” he said.

  She came away very thoughtful.

  “What was he like, darling?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t really tell you.”

  “I thought we’d have a good laugh over him,” said her mother mirthfully. “What must he be like for Di to fall for him! A squib; she liked to dominate.”