When they got outside into the cold, clean, but heavy air, pressed down by clouds, she turned to him. “Everything’s going to be all right soon. I feel it.”
“Isn’t it all right right now?”
“Right now,” she said, “is the brink of hell. But soon everybody will be able to step away from it. They will have to!”
“Well, let’s get away from precipices now and get to the concert,” Beanie said. “We’re going to be late as it is.”
They struggled into their seats just as the music started. After a second of tenseness Beanie sat relaxed and listening, and Virginia could feel that the music was unwinding into him like a fine thread. But after a moment it was as though the bows of the four instruments were being pulled across the top of her head, as though the high tones of the violin were being drawn like steel wires through her eyeballs. “Wolfgang—” she whispered, but he did not hear. She clenched her fists, ducked down her head, and endured.
At last intermission. Release.
Beanie gave a long sigh and turned towards her. “Enjoy it?”
Now the steel wires of sound had been withdrawn she could breathe again without willing each breath. “I don’t think champagne and music mix,” she said. “Next time let’s just have champagne.”
He laughed at her. “Come out and let’s get a breath of fresh air. Maybe you’ll enjoy the next half more.”
They made their way out through a side door of the casino that opened onto a dark, dank alley, stale and rank-smelling, but at least cold, at least air.
“I asked my mother to come tonight,” Beanie said, “but music bores her. Know her favorite occupation?”
“What?” she asked dutifully, her head now heavy, her mind furry.
“Going to séances.”
“Séances?”
“Yes. You know the kind of stuff. Dim lights and calling people back from the dead.”
Her eyes widened. “You mean she really believes it?”
“Sure.”
“I think maybe I’d rather go to a séance than a concert next time,” she said. “Would you take me?”
“Not on your life. I wouldn’t touch the stuff with a ten-foot pole.”
“There’s someone I’d like to call back from the dead,” she said suddenly.
“Sorry as can be, honey, but it can’t be done.”
“Your mother thinks it can.”
“Who do you want to bring back from the dead anyhow?” Beanie asked.
“Oh—someone.”
“Come on, tell me.”
“You wouldn’t know her. She’s been dead a long time. Before I was born, as a matter of fact.”
“Then why do you want her?”
“I don’t want her for me. I want her for somebody else.”
“Who?”
She hesitated, stepped down off the step into the dirty alley. “For Sam.”
“But who?”
She moved a few steps into the alley, the feel of it, the garbage and rags and snow, hideous to her feet. “His mother,” she said in a low voice.
“What a nice little thing you are,” Beanie said, “to worry about Sam like that. Wish you’d take it into that funny little head of yours to worry about me that way. I guess Sam would like her back, all right. And his father would even more. Sam has some crazy idea he’s thinking about marrying again.”
“Marrying who?” Virginia whispered.
“Oh, some dame in the South of France where they’re going. It’s nice of you to think about him. You are a good girl.”
“I’m not a good girl,” she said angrily. She moved another step away from him, then half-screamed as a dark body skidded across the alley, running right over one of her shoes.
“It’s a rat,” Beanie said. “Come on, let’s get out of this place. It’s filthy.” He took Virginia’s hand and drew her, shuddering, back into the steam-heated warmth of the casino, the luxurious feel of soft rags under her feet. “I’m sorry you can’t get Mrs. Fielding back for Sam and his father, little one.”
“How strange it seems,” Virginia said, trying to control her shivering, “to be alive when anybody else is dead. Not only people close to us, like—like my sister who died—and Beanie—Wolfgang—doesn’t it seem impossible no matter how long ago they’ve died to think that the world can go along without them, that they haven’t just moved to another city or another country the way we’re living in France this year? And if we could afford a transatlantic call we could just ring them up—but anybody, that anybody is dead—it just doesn’t seem to me quite possible to understand being alive while anybody who has ever been alive is dead.” She stopped, out of breath and confused, because her head still hurt and she was still shaking with fear from the dark shadow of the rat scurrying like a lie across her feet.
“You’re my very favorite idiot in the whole world,” Beanie said gently. “There’s the problem of over-population for one thing.” He put his hand against her elbow. “We’d better go back in now.”
The musicians came out onto the small stage and Beanie and Virginia joined in the applause. Beanie again disappeared into a web of sound and now Virginia felt that she was caught in the web, trapped in a mesh of music, and Sam’s dead mother, Mr. Fielding’s dead wife, could never return, and only the train to Bandol could save them if she could manage to pass through time safely, push them all through time safely until the train bearing Sam and Mr. Fielding left the station. Only the train speeding away from the cold and into the sun could take away the imprint of her mother and Abe Fielding standing there in the snow locked together by some private passion and her father sitting in the dark in his office typing alone and her mother lying flung across the bed.…
The music wound around and around her, wrapping her in a tight cocoon of pain. And all she could do was to sit there and endure, to get through time, to pretend that Beanie was Wolfgang, pushing her slowly out of today and into tomorrow.
Beanie walked her home. As they reached the turn of the road to the villa he stopped and bent down to kiss her, but she pulled away.
“What’s the matter, little one?” he asked her.
“I don’t think I like you well enough for that,” she answered.
“Remember I’m Wolfgang,” he said, “and you don’t hate Wolfgang.” Before she had time to turn her head he bent down and kissed her. She stood rigid, enduring it. “It’s nicer if you relax,” he said.
She shook her head again. “Mimi said you, being you, would probably try to kiss me.”
“Mimi talks too much,” he said angrily, and started to walk on to the villa. But then he paused again by the iron gate, saying softly, “Nevertheless you’re my pet little carrot top and tonight’s been fun and I can’t stay mad at you. Not mad at me, either, are you?”
“No,” Virginia said, and suddenly stepped closer to Beanie, shivering. “You may kiss me now if you like,” she said quickly. He bent down to her, gently. “Thank you very much,” she said. “That was almost as nice as the champagne.” She broke away from him and opened the door into the hall.
“Good night, little one,” he called.
She watched for a moment as he left her, as he went up the path towards the hotel where Sam was, where Abe Fielding was. Then she closed the door and went into the house.
Five
“I never thought I could be such a sentimental fool,” Mimi said, holding negligently with one hand to the T bar.
“You mean you think it’s soppy?” Virginia asked.
“I wouldn’t use that word. But—yes. And I think I always will be—soppy—about last night. All the idiotic Hollywood props—the sleigh and the horses and the bells jingling and the fur robe over us—and it was all as though nobody else had ever done it before.” They had come to the end of the tow now, and Mimi stood there on the snow, the wind blowing at the treacle-colored hair that came out from under her cap. She seemed tall and straight as a young tree and tremendously strong.—Will I ever be strong like that? Virgini
a wondered.
But suddenly Mimi turned towards her with a baffled and bewildered expression. “Vee, he didn’t kiss me.”
Virginia looked up from adjusting the clamps on her skis and waited.
“I kept thinking he was going to,” Mimi said, “but he didn’t. I should have asked him to. I was a fool. I behaved like a prim prude on her first date. Just because I wanted him to so terribly. I had my first kiss when I was ten. A trombonist friend of Jake’s. Jake happened to see us and he knocked him downstairs. We were spending a vacation in Majorca and the stairs in our villa were wide marble ones and he slithered down them on his back, head first, his trombone dancing down ahead of him. It was lucky it didn’t kill him.… Did Beanie kiss you?”
“You said he would.”
“But did he?”
“Yes.”
“What’s wrong with me?” Mimi asked tragically. “Why didn’t Sam kiss me? I thought he liked me.”
“Maybe that’s why he didn’t kiss you.”
Mimi considered this for a moment, then shook her head roughly. “How’d you like it with Beanie?” she asked. “It was your first kiss, wasn’t it?”
Virginia nodded.
“Well, how’d you like it?”
“I did.”
“That all you have to say about it?”
“I think it could quite easily become habit-forming. Come on, Mimi, let’s ski. I’m freezing.”
She pushed off and it was as though she were moving over an element more subtle than anything that could cling to earth; it was as though there were no line separating the snow over which her feet moved from the sky through which her body moved, as the sea and sky seem to merge together so that one cannot tell where the one leaves off and the other begins. She passed a clump of firs, their branches laden with snow. She leaned against the air, as tangible to her body as water, and turned swiftly. She was no longer aware that she was cold.
She reached the nursery slopes ahead of Mimi and waited at the tow, watching the groups of skiers with their instructors. She and Mimi had had an hour’s lesson earlier that morning and it was time to go home for lunch. She shivered, waiting for Mimi. Since they had come out that morning the sky which had been so high and blue above the white peaks had bellied down between them, deep with snow, and a whining wind was gaining force between the mountains. She wondered suddenly what her mother was doing, and she felt a terrible uncertainty as to who her mother was. Her mother had always been clear and simple and utterly dependable. Now it was as though the lens through which she had seem Emily with such clarity and detail had suddenly blurred. Or was it the lens which had changed? Was it not the subject itself?
And what was Emily doing now that Virginia and Mimi were safely off skiing? Was she doing something safe and comprehensible like playing songs at the piano for Connie? Or was she in the kitchen? Or was she talking to Courtney, which was no longer (and for many reasons) safe? Or was she with Gertrude which always seemed to unsettle her (and why, Gertrude so sure and capable and heroically stricken)? Or was she somewhere—at the casino or the Splendide or standing in the turn of the icy path—with Abe? No. That could not be. Abe and Sam were going up the mountains with their skis for the day; Sam had told Mimi this; so Emily could not be with Abe.
She was, in fact, running to answer the telphone. “I’ve got to get the phone before it bothers daddy,” she had called to Connie, and run.
She had not seen Abe since that chance encounter at the casino two days before. Nothing had been said then about when they would meet next. She had not seen him for one whole long gaping day, and unless this were he at the phone it looked as though another would go by.
It was Gertrude.
Perhaps he was punishing her.
“What are you doing this afternoon?” Gertrude asked.
“Nothing except coming to see you.”
“Good. I was hoping you would.”
“I’ll have to bring Connie, though. The kids are planning to go skiing again this afternoon so I won’t have my babysitters.”
“Bring her along, then. I ought to be used to her by now.”
“Anything you want me to get you in the village?”
“Yes, some bread and half a pound each of brie and reblichan if it wouldn’t be too much trouble.”
“No, I have to go in anyhow. See you later.”
She hung up and the door to Courtney’s office opened and he came out, his eyes widening against the darkness in the hall. “Who was that?”
“Gert.”
“Oh. I thought—” But he could not tell her what he had thought.
“What?”
“Nothing. I was a good many centuries away and the phone startled me.”
“I’m sorry, darling. I tried to answer it as soon as I could.”
“Yes. I heard you running.” He stood leaning against the doorframe, making no move to go back to his desk.
“Work going all right this morning?” she asked him, continuing to stand by the telephone.
“Reasonably, I hope. But I think I’ll stretch my mind and body for a moment. Where are the girls?”
“Virginia and Mimi are off skiing, and Connie’s cutting out pictures in the dining room.”
Then there was silence between them and he stood looking at her until, almost involuntarily, she moved under his gaze. “Emily,” he said, stopping her before she should leave him, “I’m very glad you didn’t fall down that crevasse yesterday.”
She looked at him, not quite understanding the intenseness of his voice and body as though he were saying something supremely difficult. “I’d probably be down in it now if you hadn’t seen me and rescued me.”
“I never knew I could jump so fast,” Courtney said. “Not a bad idea to find things like that out once in a while. Life seems to be a series of crevasses, doesn’t it? And I’m not always very good at saving you—us—from them.” Then, as though he had said more than he intended, as though to change the meaning, “I let you fight it out alone after Alice died because I was fighting alone, too. You’re right, Emily. It is a weakness. I do recognize it. Try to bear with me.” Then, seemingly tired physically, seemingly to make light of it, he stretched his arms above his head and yawned.
From the dining room came Connie’s voice. “Mama! Where are you?”
“I’m coming, Con,” Emily called back.
“Well—to work till time for lunch,” Courtney said.
The telephone did not ring again. The house seemed loud with its silence. Virginia and Mimi came home and had lunch and set off again, and Emily put Connie down for her rest and did the dishes, and by the time she was done Connie, who hadn’t fallen asleep, was demanding to get up.
—I’ll go to Gert’s now, Emily thought. He’s not apt to call now, in the early afternoon. If he calls at all it would be later. He’s probably off skiing with Sam or climbing with Kaarlo. That’s what they came for, winter sports, and he engaged Kaarlo ahead, and if he broke any of their times together it would seem strange to Kaarlo.…
She helped Connie dress, got the cheese and bread, and set off for the chalet. Connie gamboled happily ahead of her, playing with the soft snow piled high at the sides of the path, though every once in a while she would turn, saying, “Mama, the wind’s trying to knock me down.”
“It’s trying to knock me down, too, Connie, but we’re almost there.”
“Here, brat,” Gertrude greeted Connie. “Here’s your favorite book of post cards to look at, and a plate with four small cakes on it, all for you. I shall get your mother to make you some cocoa later. Meanwhile make yourself scarce.”
Connie settled herself in the zebra-striped chair, the book of cards on her lap, her fair head bent over it. Gertrude lay on the couch under the plaid steamer rug. “One nice thing about Connie, I don’t have to keep up any pretenses with her. I can be just as nasty as I like without feeling I’m shattering any illusions. Of course the illusions are for me, you understand. I don’t put on my act for th
e people who have the illusions, but for the illusions themselves. I like people to have them.”
“Connie’s very fond of you, you know,” Emily said, coming back from hanging up Connie’s snow suit and her own jacket.
“Is she? I don’t know why she should be, but I suppose it pleases me. Want to make us some tea?”
“Sure.” Emily busied herself in the kitchen and Gertrude got up slowly from the couch and leaned on the wide counter that divided living room from kitchen. “Where’s Kaarlo today?” Emily asked.
“Off with Abe and Sam.” Gertrude put her elbows on the counter and watched Emily readying the tea things. “Want some of that cheese?”
“Be nice.”
Emily took the tea tray into the living room. Gertrude got down on the couch again and as Emily brought her the tea, she asked, “Emily, do you think I’m bad for Kaarlo?”
“Bad for Kaarlo? Why, Gert?”
“Don’t hedge and beat about bushes. Am I?”
Emily took a bite of bread and cheese. “How on earth should I know?” she asked after a moment.
“You’ve seen us together often enough. You certainly have an opinion.”
“Well, I don’t. I never knew you without Kaarlo or Kaarlo without you. That makes a difference.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t know what either of you was like before. I didn’t know you as you were before you were ill or as you will be when you’re better.”
Gert moved restlessly on the couch. “I feel like hell this afternoon. You know, Kaarlo and I never meant to let romance rear its ugly head between us. It was just a question of—we’d always been friends in a careless sort of way. I’d slept with him a few times during the war when his need was great. It was more of a—a comradely gesture than anything else and I certainly owed Henri no faithfulness. Then when I came back here from Paris and I got so ill and it became obvious that I couldn’t manage by myself any longer it was sort of just a business of one good turn deserves another. We’d worked together and certainly we’d been single-handedly responsible for each other’s lives often enough before.… I swear passion couldn’t have been further from our minds.” She, too, reached for bread and cheese. “And then there it was. And there wasn’t a thing either of us could do about it. I can’t live without love, Em, I can’t.”
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