The doctor smiled and bowed stiffly as he came up to them. “Good evening, Miss Katherine. May I sit down?”
“Yes, of course. Aunt Manya, Father—this is Dr. Barna. My father, Mr. Forrester, and my—my—aunt, Madame Sergeievna.”
The doctor bowed. “I did not realize I was in such distinguished company. I am not intruding?”
“Not at all,” Manya said. “Do sit down, Dr. Barna.”
The doctor kissed Manya’s hand, bowed deeply to Tom. For a moment before he sat down, his pale-blue eyes wandered over a blonde English girl at the next table, looked her up and down, then returned to Katherine. She flinched a little under his stare, felt naked, looked down at the ash tray on the table and watched the smoke curl up from Manya’s cigarette.
The orchestra struck up a Strauss waltz. The English girl turned from her table and waved at the doctor. “Hello, Dr. Barna.”
He rose and bowed to her.
“They tell me the floor’s wonderful,” the English girl said.
“It is.”
“Do let’s dance, shall we?” The English girl smiled at him possessively, provocatively. Her dress was very low cut, completely bare over the shoulders. A pale-green orchid perched high on top of her over-elaborate curls. Her nails were long and their polish almost black. “Or am I interrupting?” She spoke with an insolent pseudo-well-bred drawl.
“Not at all,” the doctor said. “Excuse me just a moment—” and bowed to Tom, Manya and Katherine as the English girl seemed to drift into his arms. Katherine watched her grace and confidence and wished she were reading, sprawled on the bed in her cabin.
“He’s a beautiful dancer,” Manya said. “He’ll do you good, Katyusha.”
“Yes.” Katherine had not been in a ballroom since the days of dancing school long ago in New York. Desperately needing proof that she was out of swaddling clothes, she asked, “Please, could I have a cigarette, Father?”
“Being very grown up, tonight, eh? Like to dance?”
“No. I’d rather watch. You go ahead with Aunt Manya.”
“Are you sure you don’t mind, darling?” Manya asked.
“I’d rather watch.”
Tom lit one of his Egyptian cigarettes and handed it to her. She tried to watch them as they danced, Tom stiff, but a good dancer nevertheless, Manya moving with her usual graceful certainty. While Julie had had the gift of being able to lose herself in a crowd, Manya could not help standing out. Then Katherine’s eyes sought out the doctor; she saw him whisper something to the English girl, then smile at the lady in bronze sequins, while Katherine squirmed in embarrassment at the coy glance he got in return. But his eyes were vacant and his smile just as facile, as a South American girl in a brilliant cotton print waltzed by. Katherine felt suddenly forlorn, and pressed her fingers (clutching the locket) against her lips to keep them from trembling. Then she held the cigarette to her lips, and for a moment she felt quite poised and self-sufficient as she drew in the smoke, held it in her mouth, and finally blew it out, trying to hold the cigarette in her curled fingers in the same way Julie had.
The music stopped, and she choked a little as the doctor and the English girl came back. The English girl was smiling; her eyes were shiny, and she did not glance over at Katherine’s table.
“That was wonderful,” she said, sinking into her chair and fitting a cigarette into a long ivory holder. The doctor struck a match and leaned very close to her as he lit the cigarette. The music began again as Manya and Tom came back to the table. The doctor kissed the English girl’s hand, then bowed deeply to Manya. “Madame Sergeievna, may I have the honor?”
“Of course, I should be delighted!” Manya smiled her famous gracious smile, and Katherine noticed her father watching them with an expression half of pride, half of jealousy. Because with the doctor Manya was able to dance as she never could with Tom, almost everyone still sitting at the little tables watched them, holding cigarettes and cups of coffee poised in mid-air. Several of the couples on the floor went to the side and watched them, too. When he was dancing with Manya the doctor was so busy executing graceful and intricate steps that he had no time for glances and smiles at other women on the floor. When the music stopped and they came back to the table, Manya was flushed and radiant.
“Will my wife give me the honor of another dance?” Tom asked, emphasizing the ‘wife.’
Manya gave no reaction as she sat down and began to fan herself. “Tomoushka, I’m exhausted. Let me sit this one out.”
The doctor raised his eyebrows very slightly as Tom pointed the word ‘wife’, but Katherine knew that she need never be worried about his asking any questions. He turned to her, “Miss Katherine, may I have the pleasure?”
Katherine was suddenly completely panic-stricken. Manya kicked her gently under the table, so she said, “Oh, yes, I’d love to,” then added falteringly, “but I’m not a—not a very—”
The doctor took her elbow, and once more she felt each one of his fingers press separately into her arm. He bent his head so that she could feel his breath warm against her ear and whispered, “Now I have done my duty. What were you going to say, Miss Katherine?”
“Only—only that I’m not a very good dancer.”
“Aha!” he said, and she looked away from the round, blue eyes to the couples rapidly filling the floor. He poised her quite still in front of him, then held her very tightly and started slowly, in precise time to the music. Katherine closed her eyes and felt herself stiffen. “You must not be so stiff,” he said, pressing her closely to him. “It is too bad you do not go to Germany, Miss Katherine.”
“Yes … I’ve always wanted to go to Germany.” She opened her eyes, because he was holding her so closely that it would have been almost impossible not to follow him.
“My wife lives in Munich,” he said.
“Oh, I’ve heard about Munich. My—my—lots of beautiful museums and things.” She had been about to say, “My mother studied for a while in Munich,” but she could not bring herself to speak of her mother to him.
“So? Relax, Miss Katherine. You must not think.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Your—Madame Sergeievna is very beautiful.”
“Yes.”
“And a very great actress. I have seen her on several occasions when I have been in New York. Once I even sent her flowers. Red and purple anemones. You must try not to look at your feet.”
Katherine looked up and across his shoulder. The lady in black lace was leaning over the balcony, trying to catch his eye, but she could see him nodding and smiling at someone behind her. The music stopped, and his eyes came back to her face, paused at her eyes, and wandered down to her lips. He leaned toward her. “Mmmm, mmm, mmm,” he said, making kissing sounds with his mouth. Katherine drew back, sickening, afraid that in a minute he really would kiss her. But he released her hand and began clapping enthusiastically. “Aha!” he said. “Wonderful! You dance very well, Miss Katherine.”
“Thank you very much,” Katherine said breathlessly. They turned back to the table. “How does the wrist feel?” he asked, suddenly sounding almost paternal.
“All right, thank you.”
“Good. Don’t forget to come to my office tomorrow morning.”
But she couldn’t forget it. He reminded her of it every morning and evening for four days. Once Katherine overheard Tom and Manya talking about him in their cabin, when they thought she was on deck.
“It’s absurd,” Tom was saying. “Really, Manya, I don’t see why you let the child see so much of that man. You should at least go down to the office with her. There’s nothing the matter with her wrist any longer.”
“It still pains her.”
“Well, anyhow.”
“She’s your daughter, Tom. If you want to forbid her to see Dr. Barna, it’s your privilege to do so.” Manya was rolling her “r’s” even more than usual.
“You know I don’t want to do that. But Katherine is still very much a child, and
I don’t like the idea of that lecherous old roué …”
“Tomoushka doushka!” Manya burst into a peal of laughter. “He’s very charming and it’s high time Katherine learned how to cope with men, especially if she’s going to be isolated in a boarding school for the next few years—”
It was the first time Katherine had heard of her being sent to boarding school, and she left her cabin in a fury and went down to Dr. Barna’s office.
The little nurse with hair like Julie’s was sitting in her usual place, writing in the big ledger. “Good morning,” she said as Katherine came in. “I think Dr. Barna is waiting for you. You’re later than usual this morning.” Her face was deliberately blank, her eyes almost angry.
“I’m sorry,” Katherine said. The nurse pressed a little bell, and at the signal the doctor opened the door. He loomed up larger than ever, and his scars stood out white on his face.
“Come in, Miss Katherine,” he said. He took her arm, but she felt a difference in the grasp. She sat down in the chair by his desk and noticed that the portrait of his wife was lying flat in front of him. He removed the adhesive tape from her wrist, his fingers as firm and gentle as usual, but his eyes were preoccupied. Somehow she could not look at him; she focused her eyes on the picture. He followed her gaze.
“I do not think we need strap the wrist again,” he said, and she stood up to go. “Miss Katherine—”
“Yes …”
“I had a cable from Munich this morning. My wife is very ill.”
“Oh—I’m so sorry …” She caught her breath and looked away from the blue eyes and the scars that stood out so prominently.
“So—so I shall not be dancing tonight. You understand?” He had her hand in his and was twisting her fingers back and forth so that they hurt. But she knew that this time he was unconscious of them as fingers, that they were only something to hold on to. “You understand?” he asked again.
“Yes … of course …”
He dropped her hand and she walked out of the room, inadequate, confused. She wanted to speak, but she knew there were no words. She was unusually cross with Tom and Manya all day.
They sat at their usual table for coffee that night. Katherine sipped her demitasse carefully and asked for a cigarette. “Here’s Romeo, Katyusha,” said Manya as Katherine lit the cigarette from her father’s match. She looked up quickly, saw him come through the doorway and walk toward them as the music started up, acknowledging the various women darting glances and smiles at him.
“May I have the pleasure, Miss Katherine?”
“Of course.” She stood up; he led her to the dance floor and waltzed her silently across the room to the door. “I would like to go outside for a moment,” he said.
“All right.” Katherine watched the pale-blue eyes wavering about, the quick smiles and nods.
He led her out on the deck and stood beside her looking down at the sea. He reached out and caught hold of her hand. It seemed as though he were trying to get strength from it. Then he turned as though to take her into his arms, but instead walked abruptly back to the music and light of the salon. “This is quite absurd of me,” he murmured. The music stopped for a moment and he took her back to the table, bowed absently, and wandered off.
Manya and Tom were dancing. Katherine looked down at her unsmoked cigarette still burning by Manya’s crushed-out ones in the ash tray. When she looked up, she could see the doctor dancing with the lady in bronze sequins. He was making kissing motions with his lips at the air in front of her mouth.
When Tom and Manya came back, Katherine rose. “I’m tired. I think I’ll go to bed,” she murmured, and went down to her cabin, feeling quite sick.
She didn’t see the doctor again except to nod “good day” until the night of the ship’s concert. The day of the concert dawned gray and wet. When she woke up Katherine could see the rain slanting against her porthole. The decks were almost empty; people had congregated in the lounges and salons. Katherine put on her coat and went out on deck. For a long time she stood against the wet railing, watching the rain hiss on the wrinkled gray skin of the sea. Occasionally a gull swooped near her, telling her that the trip was almost over, that they were near land. There was one gull with only one leg that seemed to go by her part of the railing more frequently than the others. Sometimes it flew with its one leg dangling instead of tucked under it like the others, seeming to flaunt its affliction in a most un-gull-like way; and Katherine disliked it for this.
When she felt a cool hand put over her eyes and heard Manya’s deep voice suddenly become a shrill cockney one for her benefit—“Guess ’oo?”—she was unreasonably angry, and jerked away, not answering. Manya stood beside her, dropping an arm lightly about Katherine’s shoulder, but not attempting to draw her close. She, too, stared out at the water, at the sky that was so nearly the same color as the water that the horizon was almost indefinable; stared, too, at the sweeping gulls. When she spoke, it was almost as though she had forgotten Katherine’s presence.
“I keep watching these sea gulls and thinking of Julie. Not that strange one with the dangling left leg, but the free, proud ones.”
At the mention of her mother’s name something seemed to tighten up inside Katherine. She clutched at the railing, looking fixedly at the water, as Manya went on talking.
“She told me that the reason she knew she could never marry Jack Bradley was because of a ferry ride they took together. They stood at the back of the boat all the way over to Staten Island—it was always New York Julie wanted to see. She loved to watch it through the snow, disappearing and getting softer and more like a dream—Julie and I used to ride on the ferry often when we were first in New York together and were poor and hungry and frightened because people had thought we were good in Paris and in New York no one seemed to know we were alive … but it did become kind to us … And the sea gulls. You know how the sea gulls fly across with the ferry—how beautiful they are, gliding with the wind and being part of it … Julie said that the day she rode across with Jack Bradley it was windy and snowy, and there was a pigeon trying to fly with the gulls. And while the gulls were lifting their wings so lazily and almost seeming to drift forward, the pigeon’s poor wings were flapping desperately, and the wind beat against its breast, and sometimes it would be driven backward in spite of the breathless flapping of its wings. But whenever there’d be the least pause in the wind, it would beat forward again, and somehow it managed to keep up with the ferry and with the gulls that circled round it. And then, just as they almost reached Staten Island, it got driven way back—and Julie couldn’t see it—and when the boat stopped she wanted to wait. She wanted to see if the pigeon got safely to land. But Jack was in a hurry. He was cold and he wanted coffee; so he wouldn’t wait.”
Tom had come up in time to hear the last part of the story. He was in a bad mood; people had kept coming into the small dining room, where he was trying to practice for the evening’s concert on a bad upright piano; his sulky face was very like Katherine’s. “There are far more pigeons than gulls,” he said. “Sometimes I don’t believe there are any gulls. And I know there isn’t any land. I wonder if pigeons can swim? If they can, it isn’t so bad.”
“Julie was a gull,” Manya said softly.
“I still don’t see why you don’t play at the concert tonight, Katherine,” Tom said. “It would be good practice for you.”
“Oh, leave the child alone, Tomoushka.” Manya was laughing at him softly, turning up the corners of his mouth with her long fingers. “If she feels she isn’t ready to play in public, she undoubtedly knows best.”
Looking unwillingly into Manya’s eyes, Tom suddenly stopped frowning and smiled with his rare childlike charm, in the face of which Katherine could never be cross for long. “All right, kitten. I’m just a cross, officious, old parent. I hate the thought of this damn concert so myself that I can’t bear anyone else’s getting out of it. Manya—”
“All I did was say I wouldn’t perform unles
s you did, too,” Manya said hastily. “I don’t know what on earth to do for the poor fools. They expect something classical, I suppose, something that will raise the roof off the salon. I don’t know what I shall do for them. It’s all going to be a frightful bore. Do you want me to put your hair up for you, Katya?”
“No,” Katherine said. “I’ll wear it down. Thank you.” She did not know quite why she had refused so violently and rudely to play at the ship’s concert. It probably would have been good practice. Perhaps it was only because Manya had asked her, or perhaps because she had mentioned Julie when she asked, Katherine didn’t know. She only felt miserable and confused.
The concert opened with a selection by the ship’s orchestra; then the first violinist squeaked and screeched through some Paganini. When Tom played some of his own compositions, illustrating them with a short and witty lecture that set everybody laughing and applauding, Katherine could not help feeling proud of him, and, looking at his face, which was still like a little boy’s, and at his shaggy no-colored hair, at his long clumsy body that nevertheless looked comfortable in tails, she felt a strong desire to protect him, followed by a lethargy in which a voice inside her clamored that she was the one who needed protection, that she had no time to protect others.
The English girl sang Orpheus with his Lute in a high not-unpleasant voice, and was greeted with enthusiastic applause. Then came the eternal magician, with his fumbling card tricks.
A wind that rolled the ship about had joined the rain; the lights in the salon seemed brighter because of the storm outside. The rain and the wind and the turbulent ocean seemed to draw people together, to make them more friendly, to make them fond of one another simply because they were all human beings in a ship that was not very big when compared with the vastness of the rain-veiled ocean that surrounded it. So they laughed at the silly jokes of the amateur comedian, applauded the Londonderry Air squeezed out of a fat little boy’s flute, listened attentively to a young man with a wavering Adam’s apple give an arm-waving rendition of one of the soliloquies from Hamlet. When Manya’s turn came, a hushed and expectant silence fell over them all. Katherine had not seen Manya act since she had played with her in the Rostand play when she was ten, and she was suddenly filled with a desire that all these people gathered about in their best evening clothes should think her wonderful.
The Small Rain Page 8
