Sara had carefully written down all the Spanish words in a black book she’d brought with her. Now she rolled them over her tongue.
A trumpet sounded, and Villalta and his three banderilleros came into the ring, their capes flashing. The matador was tall and slender and walked on the tips of his toes like a ballet dancer. He crossed himself while the banderilleros spread their magenta capes wide and the bull entered the ring.
They goaded the animal into attacking, making passes, exposing the gold lining of their capotes. Villalta, meanwhile, studied his opponent, the way the bull moved, its reactions to his assistants’ maneuvers.
Then he stepped forward into the center and called the bull himself. His stance was set—arched back, head forward, chin down, one foot planted, the other on tiptoe—as the bull circled and passed.
Something about his height, his profile, perhaps, reminded Sara of Gerald. The matadors were not bulky in a traditionally masculine way, and yet these men were the killers of bulls. They commanded by grace and skill rather than brute force.
It was like an opera, with its three acts and the staging and the bright colors and the arias of movement. With its noble, somehow tragic hero. Ernest had explained to her that there was no hatred in the matador’s killing of a bull; he respected the bull and would fight only a worthy and honorable opponent.
The picadors entered, each with a long lance held in one hand. She was rather shocked to see the condition of the horses they rode. They looked malnourished, broken down. They were blindfolded.
She looked over at Ernest. He was leaning forward, elbows on his knees, his face set hard in concentration. She touched the diamonds around her neck. They were slightly warm from her skin, though not exactly sparkling in the shade of their seats.
The bull had noticed the horses too and now went for one of them. Head down, it endeavored to thrust its horns into the poor animal while the picador turned the horse, his lance poised.
The bull’s horns ran the horse through its rib cage. Sara looked again at Ernest. “Why doesn’t it make any noise?” Sara whispered.
“They cut their vocal cords,” Ernest said without even looking at her, a slightly irritated tone to his voice.
She was suddenly quite angry that he hadn’t told her about this part. There was no honor in sacrificing a completely defenseless and worn-out animal in this fashion. There was nothing operatic about this.
The bull backed up ever so slightly and dipped its head. Its horns pierced the horse’s stomach at the same time that the picador’s lance pierced the bull’s neck. But the bull didn’t disengage. And then, all at once, the horse’s stomach was torn open and its bowels dropped into the dust, the horse and the picador dropping too.
A banderillero came from the side to distract the bull so that the picador could escape. But Sara had seen enough. She was disgusted.
Clasping her handbag, she stood up and walked quickly and furiously out of the ring.
Back at the hotel, she removed each piece of jewelry and carefully placed it back in the case. For a while, she studied the bracelet and necklace, lying straight out and still, like dead things, in their tray. Then she shut and locked the tiny casket and put it at the back of the dark wooden wardrobe and locked that too.
She lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling.
She heard footsteps in the corridor outside and sat up quickly, smoothing her dress, touching her fingertips to her hair. The door opened. It was Gerald. She lay back again.
“Sal?” He came over and looked down at her.
“He didn’t even notice that I’d left, did he?” She saw there was a piece missing from the ceiling rosette.
“Who? Ernest?”
She propped herself up, looking at him. “He didn’t, did he?”
“No,” Gerald said, a little sadly. Then he offered her his hand. “But I did.”
“Yes,” she said, taking it and smelling it, the lovely, clean odor of her husband. “You did.”
On the last night of the festival, Hadley sat outside at the Café Iruña watching Ernest and Pauline and Sara and Gerald dancing the boleras with a crowd gathered in the Plaza del Castillo.
Tomorrow she and Ernest would travel to Madrid, then on to Valencia and San Sebastián. Pauline was going back to Paris. Hadley wondered if she could even risk feeling glad about that or if what was so wrong with them would pursue them through their travels in Spain.
Ernest had said it was her fault for asking him in the first place if he was in love with Pauline, said she’d put the idea in his head. What could she do after that? She’d been forced into acceptance. No, more than acceptance. She’d felt she had to go so far as to arrange for those two to be together, just to prove that she didn’t believe it.
That, of course, had led to the awful ménage à trois in Juan-les-Pins; the three of them living together, swimming together, eating together. All the while, Hadley’s heart was breaking. And in Pamplona, things only got worse, although Ernest’s admiration for Sara softened the situation a little.
She felt for Gerald. He was certainly uncomfortable around her husband. She could sympathize with his position. Ernest was the kind of man to whom men, women, children, and dogs were attracted. It was something. And he could make you feel lower than those dogs if he didn’t respect you.
Although with Gerald, it was a little more complicated than that. Hadley had noticed that Ernest had started calling Pauline Daughter, and he clearly didn’t like it when Gerald used the nickname himself, which was his to begin with, for goodness’ sake. Aside from the fact that it made her feel sick to her stomach to hear him call Pauline that, it also signaled to her that there was some part of Ernest that was jealous of Gerald Murphy. Even if her husband would never admit it.
She watched them now dancing in a large circle, Ernest holding Pauline’s hand tightly while she looked at him, obviously smitten. Pauline seemed so small next to Ernest, and Hadley thought of her own bigger, stronger body, the one that her husband had loved and admired for its ability to fish and hunt and ski and make love. What did he see when he looked at it now?
She supposed she’d thought that the trip to the Riviera might banish her fears about her marriage. She’d arrived at Villa America with high hopes. Ernest would join her and Bumby, and they could be a family again. And that house, and the bastide, with its white painted floor and crisp sheets and vases of flowers and soaps made by monks; anything Sara touched became exquisite, it seemed. How could bad things happen there?
But then poor little Bumby had become so sick and she was cast out. No, that wasn’t fair. She remembered the look of sheer terror on Sara’s face when the doctor told them it was whooping cough. And she’d heard all about how Sara hung her own sheets in train compartments before letting the children board. Hadley didn’t think the Murphy children had ever had any of the usual childhood illnesses, so, while Sara’s reaction might have been over the top, it was genuine.
Ernest let go of Pauline’s hand and moved out of the circle, and for a brief shining moment, Hadley thought he was coming to get her. Her heart even raced a little.
But then she saw he was gathering a few people from the crowd and talking to them, a big smile on his face. His up-to-something expression. Whatever he was saying was spreading through the crowd and they began to circle Gerald and Sara, who looked a little alarmed. The group started clapping and chanting: “Dansa Charles-ton. Dansa Charles-ton. Americanos, dansa Charles-ton.”
Ernest had put the crowd up to this, and Hadley knew why. On the train journey down, Gerald had been going on about how they’d hired a professional American vaudeville group touring the Riviera to come to Villa America and teach them all, including the children, how to do the Charleston. This was Ernest’s revenge, his way of punishing Gerald for this luxury, this knowledge. It made her sad.
But then the band seemed to catch on and they started playing something resembling jazz, and the Murphys looked at each other. Gerald held a hand out to his w
ife, and they began to dance. And they did it beautifully, two dark blonds, like a matched set. And then fireworks lit up the night sky, and Hadley wondered if there was anything they couldn’t make come out right for themselves, anything that could leave a mark on them.
When Owen touched down onto the field, Gerald was waiting for him. Seeing him there, Owen knew what happiness felt like: it was the person you loved finally returning to you.
Gerald felt it too, saying with a kind of surprise or wonder in his voice: “My God, it’s you. I can’t believe you’re real. Are you real?”
“I’m real,” he said, pulling his overnight bag out of the cockpit.
“Are you still mine?” Gerald asked quietly.
He turned to him. “I’m still yours.”
“Thank God. Thank God for that.”
They started walking to the barn.
“How was Spain?”
“Horrible, wonderful,” Gerald said. “As Sara said on the train back: ‘Isn’t it a relief not to know how we feel about it?’”
“Do you not? Know how you feel about it?”
“I’m not sure. It was a pageant, a beautiful, bloody circus. There were things…but then, of course, there was also Ernest. He was wonderful to us, I’m not saying he wasn’t. He knew everyone. Took us everywhere. But I felt, more than ever, a sort of contempt coming off him like a bad smell.”
“Fuck him,” Owen said.
Gerald smiled. “What about you? What have you been doing?”
“Took a run to Berlin,” he said. “Met a man who flew with the Lafayette Corps. Not in my escadrille, but we knew some of the same people. He’s a pilot now for a new German airline. Doing runs to Paris and Zurich. And making a lot of money at it.”
Gerald stopped. “But you wouldn’t want to do that. You have this, the business to run.”
“I know,” he said. “But still. It’s a lot of money. Not many pilots know how to fly these planes.”
“If you need help…” Gerald said.
Owen looked at him. “Don’t.”
“I’m sorry. That was arrogant.”
They started walking again.
After a moment Owen said: “It’s not that I don’t appreciate it. You know that, G. But it can’t be like that between us. Like it is with you and Sara and all those artist friends of yours. I’m not a collectible.”
“I’m sorry,” Gerald said. “I’m sorry this is all so difficult.”
Owen shook his head. “It doesn’t have to be.”
But Gerald just looked down at the ground.
This wasn’t how Owen had wanted this to go. He’d missed him, he’d wanted to see him on the edge of that field every goddamn day since Gerald had left for Spain. “Forget it,” Owen said. “Come on. I have some German wine in my bag.”
Afterward, they lay on the blanket on the ground, their bodies entwined. He could still taste Gerald’s sweat, his insistence. Owen sat up a bit and studied his lover’s body. He ran a finger over Gerald’s lips, his eyelid. He ran his hand down over his hip bone, over his thigh.
“I wonder if I measured every inch of you and added it up what it would come to.” But what he really meant was: Would I know you any better if I could add the sum of your parts?
Gerald smiled at him. “I shudder to think,” he said softly.
Owen lay back. He was thinking of the evening he’d spent with the pilot he’d met in Germany. It had been an easy time, a few beers, talking about planes, about how it was during the war—not the bad stuff, just the funny stories. It had been a relief to meet someone like himself after these people who weren’t his own kind. These people who courted complication, who made a life—made a religion, really—out of their confusion.
It was Gerald who was studying him now.
“You look like the matador I saw in Pamplona,” he said. “Nicanor Villalta. Magnificent. When he was fighting, he arched his back from here.” Gerald slid his fingers under the small of Owen’s back and pressed on his spine. “His rooms were across from ours at the hotel and when I came back one afternoon during the siesta, his door was open and he was lying there on this cot, still and straight like you, but his hands were folded over the counterpane…like this.” Gerald took Owen’s arms and crossed them over his chest.
“He was surrounded by candles, with a sheaf of gladioli next to him, and statues of his saints. We’d watched him perform the day before. The bull had pierced his jacket without touching him. They have these outfits with hundreds of gold bullion coins sewn into the silk, and they call them suits of light.”
And, listening to him, Owen began to forget all the reasons why this thing, this passion, was too complicated, wasn’t right. There was only this handsome, lean man next to him who could find beauty amid ugliness, who found such joy in pageantry. Who wanted to make him happy and tell him all the things he’d seen since they’d been apart. Wanted Owen to be able to see the visions in his head, wanted to share those things with him. And then his hands on his body and the way that made him feel.
“Next to him, on a stool, his sword boy, his mozo de espada, was mending the suit. And he showed us the hole. And when I held that jacket in my own hands, its weight was startling.”
Owen pulled Gerald to him. “Enough. Enough talking,” he said.
When Gerald and Sara arrived at the Casino Hollywood in Juan-les-Pins, Scott and Zelda were nowhere to be seen, so Gerald arranged a table by the doors to the terrace and led Sara through the main room with its columns and flashy chandeliers.
They each ordered a champagne cocktail and Sara drummed her fingers on the tabletop.
“I hope they’re not going to stand us up,” she said.
They hadn’t seen the Fitzgeralds since they’d returned from Spain and Gerald knew that they were both a little nervous about what they would find. May and June had stretched their patience with Scott. Zelda, however, had been a sort of question mark; she hardly ever came to the beach or to the house, and when they did see her, she was somehow still strangely absent.
Zelda and Scott had left for Paris before he and Sara departed for Pamplona. Scott had said they were going because Zelda needed an appendectomy, but the way he’d said it made Gerald think that it wasn’t an appendix she was having removed. Of course, he hadn’t pressed the matter.
Sara picked the maraschino cherry out of her coupe and popped it in Gerald’s mouth. He loved them; she thought they tasted like sweet gasoline.
“Thank you,” he said, chewing.
She was wearing a dress he’d had made for her in Paris: blush and silver-colored beaded chiffon, floor length, with large draped sleeves and a sash. When she ran her hand through her hair, the tips of the sleeves dropped down her arm to her shoulder in a lovely fluid movement.
“There they are,” she said.
Gerald followed her gaze and saw Zelda and Scott crossing the casino towards them. Zelda, in a white satin gown, looked like she was floating above the ground. She had a pale pink rose, fat and open with what looked like a hundred petals, pinned to her shoulder. She looked like that rose, Gerald thought.
Scott’s head leaned into hers and they were obviously talking as they walked. Gerald could see that they had that look, that tonight they were companions, drawn together, inseparable; they were waiting for something to happen, expecting it. Something had to happen, something extravagant.
He looked at Sara and he knew she’d seen it too; she looked tense.
When they arrived at the table, Scott said: “No, no, no. We have to have a table outside. All the good people are outside.”
“Oh, all right,” Sara said, standing. She kissed Zelda, looked at her. “There are those eyes,” she said. “I’ve missed them.”
“Oh, Say-ra,” Zelda said. “How come you look like something to eat?”
Gerald embraced her as well. “You look like something from the garden.”
“Dow-Dow,” she said. “Oh, Dow-Dow. Where have you been all our lives?”
“W
e have missed you,” Scott said. “Paris was dull and expensive.” He looked at Sara, then caught her wrist. “Can I have this wrist?”
Sara gave in and kissed him on the cheek.
“Have you forgiven me?” Scott asked her.
“Don’t give it another thought,” Sara said. “I haven’t.”
And then the four of them went out to take a table on the terrace under the stars of the Riviera.
They drank—or, really, Gerald and Sara and Scott drank—copious champagne cocktails, too many, and Gerald was glad they’d brought the driver with them. Zelda hardly touched hers, although somehow she seemed high too.
Scott had been telling them about the new book he was working on, “World’s Fair,” but in the middle of a moderately torturous explanation of the plot, he stopped and turned to Sara.
“So, how rich are you?”
Gerald nearly spat out his drink, but Sara continued sipping hers calmly, eventually answering: “Oh, my father knocked over the Federal Reserve, didn’t you know?”
“Seriously, how rich, really?”
“Oh, and then, of course, he was in on the World Series fix. That’s how we could afford Villa America.”
“I need to know,” Scott said, whining a little.
“Scott,” Gerald said. “Let’s put it this way: you’re richer than we are.”
Scott shook his head, saying, “That’s not possible.”
“Don’t be a bore,” Gerald said.
Zelda put her head on Scott’s shoulder. “My husband is never a bore.”
Sara shrugged. “You’re a good woman, Zelda. A better one than I.”
Zelda lifted her head. “Say-ra, did I tell you I’m thinking of taking up ballet again?”
“Again?” Sara said.
“I was very good as a child. Everyone said so.”
“Everyone at the playground in Montgomery, Alabama,” Scott said.
“I think that’s wonderful,” Gerald said, more to stave off a fight than because he believed in the wisdom of this endeavor.
Villa America Page 31
